119: Leading Through Crisis with Joy, with Richard Sheridan

What happens when your company faces a crisis? 

For Richard Sheridan, CEO of Menlo Innovations, the answer wasn't found in emergency protocols or contingency plans. It was deeply embedded in the culture of joy his organization had built over decades.

When COVID-19 struck and Menlo lost 60% of its revenue, their collaborative in-person work model seemed impossible to maintain. Yet something remarkable happened. While Sheridan momentarily felt like Houdini shackled and thrown to the bottom of an icy river, his team quickly self-organized, experimenting with solutions that would ultimately lead the company to its strongest years ever.

The secret? A foundation of joy that's fundamentally different from fleeting happiness. "Joy is seeing over the horizon," Sheridan explains, "and realizing there's satisfaction that comes from fighting the hard fight, even when everything feels stacked against you."

In this candid conversation, Rich reveals the five-step framework that guided Menlo's recovery: survive, adapt, sustain, emerge stronger, and thrive again. He shares how vulnerability becomes a leader's greatest strength during crisis, why authenticity can't be faked, and how the question "What do they need as human beings?" transformed difficult situations.

Most powerfully, Rich demonstrates how compassionate leadership creates ripple effects far beyond the workplace: If people have better lives at work, they'll be better parents, better spouses, better neighbors and community members.

For leaders navigating uncertainty, this conversation offers both practical guidance and profound inspiration. The lesson? Don't wait for a crisis to build a culture of joy. Start today, because relationships and resilience are built over time, not overnight.

Richard Sheridan, is the CEO, Chief Storyteller & Tour Guide of Menlo Innovations and author of Joy, Inc. - How We Built a Workplace People Love and Chief Joy Officer – How Great Leaders Elevate Human Energy and Eliminate Fear.

Learn more about Menlo Innovations or sign up for a tour on their website and follow Rich on LinkedIn.

Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Richard Sheridan
• 4:57 Defining Joy vs. Happiness in Leadership
• 6:25 Navigating the COVID Crisis at Menlo
• 11:27 The Five-Step Recovery Framework
• 17:22 Building a Culture of Trust and Joy
• 23:14 Vulnerability in Leadership
• 30:08 How Joy Changes the Workplace and World
• 36:37 Closing Thoughts and Invitation

Transcript

Rich Sheridan: 1:15

Leaders are people too. A simple thing for all of us to consider is we need to care for each other. We need to care up to the front, up to the top. We need to carry down to the front lines. We need to care across. We need to chime in and ask people are you okay? And if you're not, listen to what they say.

Manya Chylinski: 1:37

Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, manya Chylinski. My guest today is Richard Sheridan. He's the CEO and Chief Storyteller at Menlo Innovations and the author of Joy Inc and Chief Joy Officer. He founded his company to end human suffering in the workplace and we talk about that. We also talk about the importance of joy and compassion in a workplace and why that's important if and when your company is dealing with a crisis.

Manya Chylinski: 2:12

You're really going to enjoy this episode. How do you even begin to think about joy when everything around you feels broken, when your city has burned, your team is shaken and everything is uncertain? What role does joy, or even compassion, play? It might sound impossible, but what if joy is actually the key to rebuilding your team? So today we're exploring this topic with Rich Sheridan, a leader who has built a workplace culture centered on joy, no matter the circumstance. So, rich Sheridan, ceo of Menlo Innovations and the author of Joy Inc and Chief Joy Officer, he's built a business that's rooted in joy. That's not a slogan, that's actually their strategy, and his approach has helped his company navigate all sorts of challenges, all while keeping his team engaged and resilient. Rich, welcome, thank you so much for joining us today.

Rich Sheridan: 3:15

Thank you so much, Manya. Great to be with you today.

Manya Chylinski: 3:18

Thank you so much. You know I've been thinking a lot about how companies handle crises, especially with the recent fires in Los Angeles and so many other natural disasters we've been dealing with. Some companies can recover well and others struggle, and maybe not necessarily because of the crisis, but because of how they respond. So I know your company has faced its own challenges. What's a time when your organization faced a crisis, and how did your company culture help you get through it?

Rich Sheridan: 3:49

Yeah, there's so many I could go through, but I'll go through a recent one that most of us have experienced. I'll talk about how we responded when March 16th of 2020 hit and the pandemic upended everything here, like it did for a lot of businesses and happiness, because I think, if we equate those two, it would almost feel like we're requiring people to click their heels and sing a happy tune even when their communities are burning to the ground or there's something else going on in their companies that sort of thing and it's just not true. Happiness is important too, but I don't believe you could have happiness every minute of every day in any context, without medication, and so, for us, joy is a much longer arc. Joy is seeing over the horizon, figuring out where you want to go, how you're going to get there, and realizing that there is, in fact, serious satisfaction that comes from fighting the hard fight, even when things feel like everything's stacked against you. Deeper answer to your question about how did we handle the pandemic Well, we went from our best year ever in 2019, and it looked like 2020 was on trajectory to eclipse 2019.

Rich Sheridan: 5:12

And then the pandemic hit. We ultimately ended up losing 60% of the revenue that year. So it was a massive hit to us. Our customers were pulling back. We obviously had to upend this delightful culture that you see a little bit of behind me here, where we went from this intensely in-person culture to instantly, like probably everybody else in the planet did, to a work-from-home culture, and the way we get a lot of information out to the world is through me doing public speaking around the topics inside my books. Obviously, that all ended in an instant because there's nobody coming to conferences. We do a lot of in-person tours at Menlo. We get between 2,000 and 3,000 people a year who travel from all over the world just to see what's going on in this room behind me and learn about us.

Rich Sheridan: 6:03

That had to end. And we work in this collaborative environment two people, one computer, switching the pairs every five days in a big, open and collaborative environment. That had to end. It was probably the most dangerous work environment you can imagine, right, sharing a keyboard and a mouse, sitting shoulder to shoulder with another human being and conversations with them all day long. And that had to change in an instant.

Rich Sheridan: 6:28

And one of our key practices is what we call high-tech anthropology, which is going out into the world and studying the people we're going to design and build custom software for, and we couldn't do that either. So I felt I personally that week of March 16th I felt a little bit like how I've heard some of the tricks that Houdini had to pull way back when, when they would shackle him hands and feet, put him in a straight jacket, put him inside of a box, lock the box and then throw it in the bottom of the deep icy river and see if we can get out. And I didn't know if we could. I really I was pretty despondent personally at that time because I thought maybe we just lost Memo. So I'm happy to tell you what happened next, but I want to make sure I give a little bit of breathing room here so you can ask me more.

Manya Chylinski: 7:23

Absolutely Well your culture is. It's so important to be in person and build those relationships in your culture. So how did that culture and how did your culture of joy help you get over that and help you feel like you could get out of those shackles in the box at the bottom of the river?

Rich Sheridan: 7:43

Yeah well, fortunately my team didn't lean on me for that, because, you know, I was walking around the empty Menlo like a little lost puppy and thinking maybe this is the end of everything. And then I finally had the wisdom to open my eyes and see what was actually going on, and the team had healed almost everything very quickly. In that moment I realized that all the cultural things we had done for 19 years up to that point were suddenly being applied in a way that I would have never imagined they had to, and the team began. One of our most famous phrases here is well, let's run the experiment. And that's just simply an acknowledgement that we can't figure everything out ahead of time and we don't always know what's going to happen and we don't always know what the best response is going to be. So we went through a series of very rapid experiments probably the quickest series of rapid experiments we'd maybe ever run since our founding and when I finally opened my eyes and watched what was happening, I realized they'd all fixed it, they all figured out how to do it and they didn't need me. You know, and I won't say they didn't need me at all, but I wasn't central, they were just doing what they know how to do. And they started running these serious experiments and many of them worked, and worked very quickly.

Rich Sheridan: 9:01

And the ones that didn't, we kept adjusting and my role at that time was to come back to them with what we called a serious rallying cry Because, despite the ability to adjust, the hardest thing to adjust to is a 60% loss in revenue. There's not much. You can just snap your fingers and say it's okay, we're not, we're not outside funded. We're owned by my co-founder and I. We, we survive off the cash we have in the bank and fortunately we've just come off of our best year ever. So we had a fair amount, so we had a cushion we're pretty conservative that way and um, but the rallying cry for the team became thrive again.

Rich Sheridan: 9:42

That was like the flag we were going to carry, that we're going to get back to thriving again. The way we're going to do that is a four step process and number one survive. That's critical If we don't do everything we needed to survive. And we took some pretty drastic steps, you know. Just give you an example. Founders said our salary is going to zero, so we're going to slow down the spend, so stop paying us. We reduced the income of everybody on the team down to a kind of a lowest base level and you know, nobody was happy about it, but they understood the goal was survival. Second thing was adapt figure out how we're going to do all these wonderful things we do in person and do them. And the adaptation part was just remarkable to watch how fast they were able to do that. The third level was sustain Get back to some level of the company and the business where we could tough this out for a long time, because I don't know about you, I thought the pandemic would last about two weeks.

Manya Chylinski: 10:35

I thought three, but yes.

Rich Sheridan: 10:39

And I think we both may be right, but I think we still have another two or three weeks to go after five years.

Rich Sheridan: 10:43

The fourth one was really the important one, the one the team grabbed hold of, and that was emerge stronger and what that meant. This was inspired by Patrick Lencioni, who had done a conference on this theme right about that time and he said look, there are going to be companies that die during this time. It's just a simple fact of life. But those that survive face the fundamental leadership choice. They're going to choose to emerge stronger and if they don't, they will emerge weaker, and those that get back to thriving again will take off rapidly, which is exactly what we saw. So that five-step process survive, adapt, sustain, emerge stronger, thrive again. Good news the last three years have been our best in our history.

Manya Chylinski: 11:29

Oh, that's fabulous and a testament to the culture that you built. It sounds like when COVID hit, we all had, we all hit that bump, but your team trusted you, they trusted the process, and it also sounds like they greeted it with curiosity how can we, what can we learn from this, what can we do? And that's been a theme of mine recently, just coming to situations with curiosity what can we do and what can we learn from this?

Rich Sheridan: 12:00

let me. Let me share one sentence that just saved me in my spirit. Molly, on our team, when we, when we were trying to figure all this stuff out, she spoke into it says this will be so exciting to figure out how to handle all this stuff. In my heart I'm like, oh, thank you, molly, this is what I needed to hear at this moment. So in many ways, that simple statement from her was about that curiosity. Like man, we got to figure some stuff out. We got to figure it out quickly. How exciting.

Manya Chylinski: 12:30

Yeah, absolutely so. You know, you gave me this five-step process, which I think is such a great model for dealing with a crisis. There are employees suffering from the fires here in LA. How would they be able to take that and help their employees and get the company back to that thriving stage?

Rich Sheridan: 12:50

You know, I think number one we have to recognize how connected we are as human beings and how much we need to care for each other and how much we need to lean on relationships in times like this and how much we need to sort of set aside the normal ambition and numbers and KPIs we're trying to hit and just say step back and say wait a minute, let's take a serious assessment of where are we right now, what are the greatest needs and, you know, give you somewhat of an example, maybe it'll translate, I'm not sure. There was a point years ago where we let somebody go on our team and they were surprised and they had just quit a previous job. The day we told this person they weren't going to make it going forward in our interview process and that surprise was kind of devastating for him. But it was also devastating for our team because they realized they'd really let him down by thinking that he was going to make it to the team and was confident enough to quit his other job. And then that day, literally the day he quit his other job, we told him he wasn't going to continue forward with us and my team was devastated. You know, this is the last thing on earth they want to do is affect somebody's life like this.

Rich Sheridan: 14:01

And they came to me and they were sort of looking for what should we do? What should we do? And I jokingly said to him I said boy, it really sucks to be you right now, doesn't it? And they were like, no, we don't want to hear that. I said, yeah, I get it, but I did tell them in that moment. I said you got to hang on to this feeling you have right now, because this is really important. You just learned an important lesson about how to deal with other people.

Rich Sheridan: 14:23

And then I asked him a question I think this gets back to your question about how do you deal with things. I said what does he need right now in his life as a human being? I said stop thinking about his former employees, stop thinking about the fact that you know you didn't make it through. I said what does he need as a human being? And they looked at me and they're like, well, I'm not sure. I said, come on, you just let him go. He just quit his other job. They said, well, he needs a job. I said, great, send him to me and I will open up my network to him personally to help him find that next position.

Rich Sheridan: 14:53

And so, again, what I would encourage you know, I can't even imagine the devastation that's going through people's lives right now. It's just unfathomable to me what you experienced out there, and so I'm not even going to try to say, oh, I can feel your pain or nothing, because I can't. Just it must be so devastating. But I would say as a community, as a business, we need to kind of set aside the normal stuff and say let's look at all of all the human beings here. What is the best thing we could possibly do for them? What do they really need right now that we could actually give them?

Manya Chylinski: 15:29

Yeah, I appreciate that. Let's remember these are human beings and how can we help them. What are some common mistakes that leaders make in a crisis and how can they be avoided or can they be avoided?

Rich Sheridan: 15:43

Well, I think the important thing to recognize and you know, it's why I told that earlier story about despondent me is leaders are people too. So I think a simple thing for all of us to consider is we need to care for each other. We need to care up to the front, up to the top. We need to carry down to the front lines. We need to care across. We need to chime in and ask people are you okay? And if you're not, listen to what they say and figure out. You know, through those active listening skills, how might we be able to help each other and recognize that, yeah, leaders will make dumb mistakes because they're scared too. They're probably in reptile brain as well. And I think the more we can rally together, because I think the big mistake is you asked me, like what's the biggest mistake you can make I think the biggest mistake is for the leader to pretend nothing's going on. And I'll tell you March 16th if that was the Monday, I think it was when we figured out that this was the storm of the century and we gathered the team together that morning and we said guys, we don't know what's going to come next. And I say I think number one is don't pretend you know something when you don't right. Be honest with them. They're adults, they can help if we allow them into a little bit of our inner psyche. We don't need to go there and scare them to death or anything like that, but they're looking for that authentic response that says we don't know how this is going to work.

Rich Sheridan: 17:14

I told them at a time. I said this is such a big storm. I said I don't know how it's going to go forward for all of us not just Menlo but like communities and businesses across the nation and the world without some government intervention. That was long before PPP loans were being considered or ERTC, anything like that. We didn't know that any of that would come. But I said I can't imagine how we get through this without some kind of government intervention. And I said but in the meantime, absent that we're making severe, drastic changes right now and it's going to affect all of us. And I think that's really the key is to understand that there is pain, but if it looks like well, that group doesn't get any pain and this group gets a lot more pain and all those top leaders don't get any pain at all, you're not going to have people rallying around you at that point.

Manya Chylinski: 18:07

Well, in your case, in your company, you had built this culture of joy and trust. And what about a company that hasn't or doesn't have as strong a foundation in compassion and joy and trust? What are some of the challenges they're going to be facing?

Rich Sheridan: 18:25

Well, I think number one as they say, the best time to plant a culture tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is today. I would say grow up fast, reset. You know it's not business as usual right now, so let's take that into consideration. Don't let a good crisis go to waste. This could be a defining moment, which it often is, and again you might not survive, and you know. This is your moment to choose because, quite frankly, a lot of times, survival is about making choices. It's not always that you can simply make choices to survive, but if you don't make that explicit choice, then you're kind of, in my mind, going down a path of self-destruction. You might delay it a little bit, but it'll be painful the whole time.

Manya Chylinski: 19:14

Right. What you say is one small change a leader could make tomorrow. Bring joy to their company, show compassion, start recovering from this crisis.

Rich Sheridan: 19:24

Yeah, I often give talks on this subject and I always say that if you're going into any situation and you say, well, they need to do this, it's up to them to do this. Whoever they and them are, rather turn it inside first. What kind of changes do I personally need to make and what kind of things do I have control over in that situation? And I will say, one of the most powerful impacts you can have with a set of people is to step into any situation, like Molly did, with a positive attitude. You know she was seeing the world the same as I was, and her statement was how exciting it will be to figure these things out. I'll credit me with listening to Molly and realizing in that moment gosh, what an awesome example of leadership that I need to follow. And so I think humility goes a long way in moments like this.

Manya Chylinski: 20:21

Absolutely, and you keep saying a word that I love and is so important, especially after a crisis, which is listen and listening. You built this culture at Menlo that is the envy of many leaders. How can leaders build that kind of culture where resilience and well-being are an everyday priority? It's not just something they think about when something goes wrong.

Rich Sheridan: 20:48

Yeah, Well, there you go. There's one element right there. You know, don't think this is the thing you pull out of the box in the corner when the crisis hits. Right, that's the first step. Number two don't ever look at anything like joy inside of your company as a zero-sum game, Like, well, we can't afford joy right now. You know that's not the biggest thing, and I get it. You know that's not the biggest thing, and I get it. I mean, we have as many pressing issues as any company does surviving and thriving in the markets we choose to be in.

Rich Sheridan: 21:20

But we have made some very, very explicit choices about our culture, about the processes that underpin the culture and about the purpose that connects to those processes in that culture. And the ability to communicate a strong purpose from a leadership position is probably one of the most critical things a leader can do, and you don't. In my mind, the purpose statements that don't work are the selfish ones. What we tell people to think about when they think about their own organization's purpose is you should be able to ask and answer two fairly simple questions who do you serve and what would delight look like for the people you serve? And if we can put those things together in a context for the people who work here. They will come in inspired, encouraged. They will go home at night and say good things about their work lives to their family at dinners, because they know they're making a difference in people's lives outside of our organization.

Rich Sheridan: 22:17

I think every time we can turn outward like Arbinger Institute calls it, the outward mindset often when we can turn outward to the rest of the world, that is what's truly inspiring to a team. That's when people will gather together, much like through the challenges you're having in Southern California, where you're rallying around each other. You're rallying for each other. You're not doing this for your own personal gain. You're not saying, well, if we help people who've gone through these devastating impacts, our company will grow and all that kind of stuff. That's not what it should be about. You're serving others in their time of need and figuring out the best way to do that, and that becomes very inspiring to us as individuals.

Manya Chylinski: 22:59

Absolutely. I love those. What would delight look like? I think that's such an amazing question, and I'm not sure that every company is doing something like that. Was there ever a time when you felt like you couldn't find joy or you lost your joy? And how did you, as a leader, how did you get that back?

Rich Sheridan: 23:17

Yeah, yeah. I often describe my trough of disillusionment years in my career and it happened in my mid thirties when, you know, I thought I was pretty good at this software thing. I got a couple of degrees from the great University of Michigan here in computer science, computer engineering, and it was a burgeoning time in the industry in the 80s and I thought I got the world by the tail. I've actually got a great job, I'm getting promotions and stock options and greater title and greater authority, and yet I go home and my wife would look at me and she's like you look miserable. You're not happy, are you? I said no, I'm not. And she's like what are you going to do about it? I said I don't know.

Rich Sheridan: 23:59

And I will tell you, in that moment I was scared because this was the thing I trained for, this was the thing that was keeping a roof over our heads, this was the thing that was going to provide us a good life. My parents were very proud of me, my wife was very happy with the life I was providing and I am absolutely miserable. And, um, I will tell you that I made a fundamental choice personally at that time. Uh, and it's sort of wired out of my optimistic nature. I said you know what? I'm stuck in a room full of manure here. I'm going to look for the pony.

Rich Sheridan: 24:31

And I think for me, that period that followed that sort of pivotal moment of saying you got to find your way out of this mess, was one of born of optimism, for sure, but also born of two other qualities that I think can often be very important patience and persistence. And what's interesting about the combination of those two is persistence itself is fundamentally an impatient response, right Like I got to fight my way out, I got to get out of here quick, and then that patience thing says you're doing the right thing, keep going, but it could take longer than you think.

Manya Chylinski: 25:10

Patience. That is something I feel like I learned anew every day. So you have taken this wisdom that you've learned and you've implemented in your own company in these two amazing books Chief Joy Officer and Joy Inc. And one of the things in Chief Joy Officer you talk about the concept of vulnerability in leaders, and I think that's something that leaders fear because, and especially in a crisis showing, like we talked about earlier, that you don't know something. How can a leader create a culture where it's safe for them to show compassion and to have that joy without losing their authority?

Rich Sheridan: 25:54

Right, there's no simple formula to that, but I think it goes to the heart of authenticity. I think authenticity, sensing authenticity in others, is probably one of the finest senses of smell. We human beings have evolved to develop over time, the millennia, you know, because you know, back in the old days somebody'd say hey, rich, go up over that hill and bring home, you know, a saber-toothed tiger or something. A lot of people didn't come back when they did that. A lot of others were like was he being sincere and authentic with me about that? But I think to develop that vulnerability with other humans, the formula is a lot like building basic human relationships in your life. It requires trust. Trust, it cannot be. I couldn't say to you, manu, in a second hey, just trust me on this. I mean, that's probably the most. It's probably the biggest flags going off in all of our heads. Is somebody says just trust me, it's all going to work right? Well, how do you build trust? Well, trust is based on relationships, and relationships in my mind I don't know any other way to do it is they are built by spending time together. That's how you build relationships. We can't just say you know, I went to a company once and they had read throughout their leadership team Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

Rich Sheridan: 27:23

So he walks into the room and this was a big deal book to my co-founder and I. We've used Five Dysfunctions for all the years of our existence. The opening lines of that book have been emblazoned on every office we've had, which says not finance, not technology, not strategy is teamwork alone. That is the most powerful competitive advantage, both because it's so powerful and so rare. And but the only way to build teamwork is through those formulas. And we're going to build teamwork through relationships, relationships through spending time together and if we do that long enough we will actually develop trust. But it takes time. This is not an instant thing.

Rich Sheridan: 28:00

But this executive, whose firm had apparently standardized their culture on this book by Lencioni, walks into the room and he says I just want to let you know we've ascribed to the theories of Patrick Lencioni and the five dysfunctions, so let's get that trust thing just out of the way. He says we trust each other here and later my co-founder and I leaned back and whispered to each other. I said I don't think he's actually read the book. The only way to be vulnerable is quite frankly and this is going to sound silly, almost trite. You need to be vulnerable and, yes, there are times where you have to also let people know yep, buck stops with me. The authority is here. I might have to make a decision that's either uncomfortable, unpopular or something like that. The only reason I get to do that is because they built that trust on the other side.

Manya Chylinski: 28:50

Right exactly Now. This example you just shared. I see that where it's almost as if leaders think they have a checkbox. If we say this, or we state our values or we say that we care, then that is all we need to do, but that doesn't actually build a compassionate culture, a culture of joy. What do you think is the biggest barrier standing in the way to that company? This example you just shared to a company like yours.

Rich Sheridan: 29:26

Everybody walks into Menlo every day. Who works here. They are probably intrinsically asking themselves a question, like every employee does, whether it's explicit or it's just kind of implicit. They're asking themselves should I keep working here? Is there some reason for me to be here anymore? Do I still like working here? Is this a place that I get personal fulfillment in my life? And I think a lot of the answers come from well.

Rich Sheridan: 29:48

Rich said this. Did he actually mean it? Is there evidence of this thing that Rich talks about on tours or writes about in his books or speaks about around the world when he's giving talks about joy? Is that the place that I work? Is what Rich is describing? Is it evident here? Because you know that alignment between words and actions, you know the silent part, you know, like you know, do as I say, not as I do. Kind of problem areas are big deals and you know we do a lot of tours here. We get, like I said, between two and 3000 people a year travel from all over the world just to see what's going on in their room, and I lead a lot of the tours not all of them, but quite a few. Sometimes I joke with the team. I said, yeah, I don't ever, because the tours are going on out in the space, right near our people. They can hear me, they can hear what I'm saying, and I never want anybody to come up after a tour and say, hey, rich, that was really an amazing tour. That company you were describing on the tour, could you tell me where they're located? Because I'd love to work for that company. I mean, the accountability that the tours hold me to is pretty profound, and I will tell you.

Rich Sheridan: 31:01

It happened the other day. I was describing one element of our process how we give promotions and pay rates and all that kind of stuff, and I said something. I said everybody in the associate column gets a review about three times a year and everybody in the other columns once a year. And I'm sure I said something extra to that. But Scott, one of our longtime team members who's been here over a decade, came up to me after the tour and he says so, rich, you understand that what you said there isn't true. That's a good place to be for me, that I have a team member who's willing to step up to me. And he didn't do it publicly, he didn't call me out during the tour or anything.

Rich Sheridan: 31:35

We just came up and said you know, that's not exactly true. And I said tell me more. And he said well, he says you know, there's some people who've been here that are supposed to get there three times and they're only getting two. And there's some people over here in the other columns that are supposed to be every year, and it's been a year and a half, maybe two years. I said our aspirational goals are to do this. I said sometimes it doesn't work out the way we aspire and we need to focus our attention on that. Scott was also again within 10 feet of hearing me because of where he was sitting in the room, and so my hope is that I at least confirmed for Scott that I was vulnerable enough to listen, that I understood what he was saying and that I was willing to state it publicly to the people who are visiting that here's the truth. We aspire to this and sometimes we fall short.

Manya Chylinski: 32:29

Yeah Well, and his coming up and talking to you speaks to the trust that you've built and the culture where people feel safe. So how does someone keep a culture of joy and compassion strong when the challenges keep coming? Because, as you mentioned, the leaders are dealing with the challenges as well.

Rich Sheridan: 32:48

You know it's actually going to seem, I think, fundamental, maybe even trite, but pull them into the problem, ask them for help. Don't be the hero, don't think, well, I got to keep them all safe from this. No, pull them right in and say, hey, I need your help. This is what we're struggling with right now. We need to adapt, we need to figure it out. We need to figure it out together. I know I'm a smart guy I'm not the smartest guy in the room and you can't count on me for every answer. And if I can let go of needing to be the hero myself which is hard for a CEO and a founder I will tell you things start taking care of themselves, things you would have never expected, because they're going to come up with different ideas than I will. They're closer to the problems than I am. They understand the potential solutions better than I do. I don't need to be answer man every time.

Manya Chylinski: 33:44

Wow, rich, I'm so enjoying this conversation and I wish I wasn't at our last question, but I am and I'd love to hear from you. If more leaders were able to embrace joy and compassion beyond that checkbox, really embrace it, how do you think that would change the workplace of the future?

Rich Sheridan: 34:05

Yeah, I'm going to go beyond your question and say I think it can change the world, because if we can have better lives at work for ourselves as leaders and for the people who work for us, guess what? They're going to have better dinnertime conversations with their family, they might bring less stress home, they might be better parents, better husbands and wives, better neighbors, better community members, simply because they're not carrying this burden around with them every day of. It's just a job. My job sucks. I don't like work. I'm working overtime until I'm so tired I can't see straight and we don't seem to be getting anywhere, and all of that stuff builds up and diminishes us in all those other important roles in our lives. So I think if we can change the world in a positive way inside of our workplaces, we can make changes out in the world as well, because the people who work for us become better family members, better neighbors and better community members.

Manya Chylinski: 35:08

Wow, that's really powerful. Thank you so much for sharing that, rich. So if you are a leader who's watching this, I want you to think what's one simple change you could make today or tomorrow to integrate compassion into how your teams work, whether you're in a crisis right now or not. And if you want more insights from Rich, check out his books. Chief Joy Officer and Joy Inc. Rich, thank you so much for joining me today. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Rich Sheridan: 35:38

I did as well. This was a lot of fun.

Manya Chylinski: 35:41

All right. Well, that concludes our show. Thank you everyone. Goodbye. Thank you for listening. I'm Manya Chylinski. I help organizations build compassionate, resilient teams that thrive by creating environments where well-being is at the core. Often, people reach out to me during times of crisis or significant change, but the truth is that building a healthier, more supportive workplace can prevent issues before they arise and empower your teams to thrive no matter what challenges come their way. If you're ready to make a meaningful change, I'd love to connect. If you haven't already done so, please subscribe, rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us, and if you'd like to continue the conversation, connect with me on LinkedIn or visit my website, www. manyachylinski. com. Thank you for being part of this journey with me.