186: The Best Training Has No Measurable ROI, with Carré Le Page

Work doesn’t slow down just because we’re overwhelmed. 

Expectations climb, messages hit us from every direction, and the do-more-with-less mindset turns into burnout, stress, and that form of exhaustion where people show up but aren’t really there. We sit down with resilience expert and Resilient Minds founder Carré Le Page to get practical about what resilience actually is and how to build it without turning it into another performance demand.

We start with a simple definition that changes everything: resilience means keep moving forward. Carré explains why the water metaphor works so well for modern life and modern leadership. Water doesn’t only push through; it adapts. Sometimes it pivots, slows down, or pauses, but it still finds a way. From there, we get into workplace resilience, why leaders can’t shrug and say "it’s just busy,” and how boundaries and clear conversations help people focus on what they can control.

We also talk real-world change management, from COVID-era uncertainty to the moment ChatGPT made half a team excited and the other half genuinely scared. Carré shares why “clear is kind” is a resilience tool, how a reverse brief can save hours of rework, and why asking should we? matters as much as can we? If you’ve ever wondered how to measure the ROI of resilience training, he offers a metaphor you won’t forget.

Carré Le Page is a speaker, coach, resilience expert, mental wellness advocate, storyteller, and founder of Resilient Minds. With 20 years of global marketing and leadership experience, he has led creative teams across five continents and seen firsthand how pressure, change, and burnout affect performance. His message is simple: resilience may be called a soft skill, but it is one of the sharpest tools we have for modern work.

• Email: carre@resilientmindsco.com
• Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/carre-le-page/
• Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/carrelepage/

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Transcript

A Brutal Book Title Question

Carré Le Page 0:01

One of the things that I think is important is when people talk about these skills, a lot of business leaders or anyone, even if you're thinking about it personally, is what's the return on the investment of this of this training? It is really hard to define that because we're teaching people ultimately how to think a little bit differently, how to feel better, how to navigate those that chaos. So it's not that by doing resilience training, you're going to see 2x in terms of your productivity.

Manya Chylinski 0:37

Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, Manya Chylinski. My guest today is Carreé Le Page. He's a resilience expert, mental wellness advocate, storyteller, and founder of Resilient Minds. No surprise, we talked about the concept of resiliency. What is it? Why is it important? And that we all have it. This is an absolutely fabulous conversation. I know you're going to love.

Carré Le Page 1:13

Thank you, Manya. Me too. I'm excited to be here.

Manya Chylinski 1:16

Before we dig into the topic of resiliency, something near and dear to both of us, my first question for everyone is what would the title of a book be about you if your worst enemy wrote it?

Carré Le Page 1:32

I was thinking about this just before the call. And it might be something along the lines of never gets it done. And I say that because there's I'm looking at books on the floor here, four books that I've started. I've finished one of them. And I tend to start a lot of things and not necessarily finish them. And that's obviously been one of the, I guess, a catalyst for me to focus so much on resilience, because it's one of the things that I often say when I define resilience is how do we keep moving forward? So I think even just by thinking about that, that would really irk me if an enemy wrote a book or had a title of a book that said something like that, never finishes anything or never gets it done. That's probably a bit of fuel for the fire. That's what I try to remind myself. When I see things like that, I think to myself, okay, at least I'm aware of it now, time to make some change. So that I do think that I do finish stuff, you know, now that I reflect on it, but that would be something that would really irk me if that's what other people thought.

Manya Chylinski 2:36

Absolutely. And as you were saying that, I was thinking back to several started knit and crochet projects that I have in my basket. And it's such a thing among those of us who do these kind of crafts that you have multiple things in progress at any given time and are often instead of working on an existing one, you just pick up a new one because somehow that's really exciting.

Carré Le Page 3:01

Yeah. I think it's also it's probably a part of modern the modern world. And that's a it's a real challenge that I think most of us have is this constant, constant what's what's that over there, or is that book better, or can I make that crochet even better? So I'm glad to hear that I'm probably not the only one.

Manya Chylinski 3:23

Well, you're not the only one. And you're right, I do think it's a symptom of our modern, fast-paced, always connected, even when you really don't want to be worlds. Um, okay.

Defining Resilience With Water

Manya Chylinski 3:36

Well, we are talking about resilience today. It's something both you and I think a lot about, as I said. How do you define it?

Carré Le Page 3:44

Oh, that's such a good question because I asked every time I do a workshop or a keynote, I like to ask this question. I think if I was to sum it down to one thing, it's keep moving forward. I used to love the thinking about life as this metaphor of water. You know, water always finds a way. And uh that's what I feel that that's sort of like a nice symbol for me and my business and for what I like to do and help people is think like water, be fluid. You know, Bruce Lee said it, I think, back in the 70s, and I've sort of latched onto that idea. So, yeah, keep moving forward. Doesn't matter if it's it's not about persistence as much, it's more around uh deciding, you know, if there's a pivot or we have to slow down or we have to speed up or we have to even pause sometimes. But either no matter what, we find a way to keep moving forward.

Manya Chylinski 4:36

Right. That water analogy is fabulous. As you were saying that, I was already thinking of different rivers that have changed course because something got in the way and the like.

Carré Le Page 4:48

Fun fact about water, if I could just throw it in, is it's the only it's the only element to exist naturally in all three states. So it can it can exist as a solid, a gas, or a liquid naturally. And and so when I think about exactly when I think about rivers, if there's a rock in the way, it will meander through, even if it hits a dam eventually, it goes forward. You know, there's always water is the most fluid thing and most adaptable thing, I think, that I can think of.

Manya Chylinski 5:20

Right. That's interesting about it's existing in three states at the same time. I never thought about that. And I'm sure we could work that into the uh resilience analogy as well, somehow, all these different states, different ways that we need to be resilient or different places we need to be resilient.

Workplace Chaos And Burnout Reality

Manya Chylinski 5:40

I talk a lot on the show about leadership and managers and you know the importance of being resilient themselves and supporting resilience and their employees. Why does it matter in a professional environment?

Carré Le Page 5:55

Well, I often say that resilience is one of it's a soft, it's seen as a soft skill, but I always think it's the sharpest skill that we can have in any situation. Resilience is so important in the office or the professional environment because we are living in this state of chaos right now. And I don't think it's just right now, I think it's been for quite a few years, where there's so much uncertainty, there's so much change, there's technological advancements every single day, the expectations are growing, the the whole idea of do more with less. So there's a lot of things that are outside of our control. What resilience does is it allows people to focus more on what they can do versus all of those other factors that are outside of their control. And I think you know, the stats are all headed in the wrong direction. Even though we're talking about mental wellness and we're talking about opening up a lot more, the reality is that burnout's going up, stress is going up, anxiety is going up, absenteeism, and absenteeism and presenteism, you know, where people show up, they're present physically, but they're not actually present emotionally. All of those things are impacting businesses. And so if we can help our people build this resilience skill, this resilience muscle, it allows them to be the best version of themselves at the office. And then that allows them to be better people at home. And the downstream effects are awesome too.

Manya Chylinski 7:27

So, in terms of personal resilience, I hear what you were saying. What role does the actual workplace have in not causing burnout or or contributing to burnout or that presenteism or that stress?

Carré Le Page 7:47

It's a really great question. And that's that's obviously one of the challenges that we have. When I talk to organizations, sometimes the leaders say, well, look, it's just the way it is. It's busy here. You know, we're kind of I had one business describe itself as it's like we're driving at 50, 60 miles an hour in a car and we don't have time to stop and fix the car. We just got to fix it as we go. So I think I think number one is just by having this conversation, it demonstrates that the business is aware of it and cares about people's wellness. So I think just by having someone like me even talk about this subject, I think is a good step forward. But the idea is I one of the things that resilience isn't, coming back to your definition, is I is it's not suck it up and get on with it. And that's what I think. I think sometimes resilience does get that bad rap where people think, you know, just just move on. And I think that what what I I like to tell organizations is that sometimes it's just it's really about being aware of the state of your people, understanding what it is that they need and giving them the tools and the strategies and simple ways that they can get through tougher times, challenging times. That's part one. Part two is also acknowledging that the business has a role to play. You know, often we have senior leaders or founders even that are quite chaotic. They move at a ridiculous speed, they're working 24 hours a day, they expect the that from their people. That's unrealistic, and that's why that contributes a lot to burnout. So when I talk to resilient, when I talk about resilience to people, I try to emphasize that's out of your control. You can't necessarily control that person. That's like trying to control a thunderstorm. What you can do is focus on what's in your control. So, how do you set boundaries? How do you have that conversation with him or her or someone in leadership to acknowledge that you know you are a body point? Those are things that I think are practical and can

Control What You Can Control

Carré Le Page 9:56

really help.

Manya Chylinski 9:56

Absolutely. I think back to my own experience where I really first started thinking about the concept of resilience in the psychological sense. And it was because this thing external to me happened to me. Somebody made a decision and it changed my life. And it was really awful way to learn the lesson of I can only control what I do. And it was an obvious lesson of I can only control what I do, right? It wasn't like being in the workplace where you are working with somebody every day and you think, oh, I can just encourage them to do this differently, or I can just, if I just tell him I can't do it, he's gonna stop asking. So I I learned it in a very specific way of, oh yeah, I guess the world's just gonna go on and I'm just gonna have to figure out how to deal with it.

Carré Le Page 10:54

It's funny because most I think there, I think resilience is an innate skill in some aspects. You know, ultimately we don't have a choice. You just kind of have to, you have to get on with it. I think that what what what is really important about you know practicing resilience or at least talking about it and training it, is this idea that when when those things happen, which are inevitable in some capacity, whether or not they're small things or they're massive things, how can we be best prepared for that? And that's what that's I guess where I really focus on preventative stuff too, preventative tools. And you know, so if you can get through this, then you can get through that. But ultimately, so many, so many of us are thrown in the deep end randomly, you know, that whole razor's edge of life, which is something that I think about a lot. So we just have to be as ready as we can be.

Manya Chylinski 11:48

Yes. And, you know, it's you can't be kind of frozen by should I turn right at this corner or should I turn left, which is the way that the bad thing is going to happen. And you have to just do the one that works for you and then deal with whatever happened around that corner. But you talk about preparation, and I do a bit of work with uh business continuity professionals and crisis management teams, and that is all about what do we do to make the business help the business be ready. So when something bad happens, those tools are already in place, and then you can more easily help your folks tap into their own resilience. Um, but I never thought about the term resilience before somebody said it about survivors like me. And I remember I said to the person who said it, well, I'm not resilient. How do I get that? How did these how come these people are lucky and they have it and I don't? I think we're talking about it more and more these days, but how do we help people understand? Because I have also had people say to me, Well, I'm not resilient, and I counter with yes, you are. How do we help people understand that about themselves, whatever their external situation is?

Carré Le Page 13:11

One of the things that I lean on a lot when I talk to organizations or anyone really is that when you look up the most important skills of 2025, I think it was, was the last time I looked at the job report that comes out annually, or I think every every couple of years, it it's it lists the critical skills that are important in life. And a skill, when when you see resilience, resilience was second after um critical thinking, you know, with the with the the arrival of AI. And so when you think about resilience being that high up as a skill that is necessary, I was most I was interested in the fact that it was number two, but I was also loved the idea that or the the notion that it was seen as a skill. And so I talk to people about that and say it is a skill. It's like hitting a tennis ball over the over the net. You know, the first times you do it, it might be clunky and you might get frustrated because you can't really get there. But you do that a thousand times, ten thousand times, and then eventually it just becomes natural. Same thing with resilience, same thing with you know, those irritations. Someone cuts you off on traffic, the first instinct is to yell and curse and honk your horn. But then if the more you practice that, I the idea around these simple skills, these simple tools, excuse me, that can develop that skill, then you know, five, six times later, it's like water off a duck's back. And you're like, that person must be having a really bad day if they're rushing or they're they're driving so dangerously.

Manya Chylinski 14:41

I've noticed that in myself from earlier times to now, how easily it's just okay, I don't know what's happening with that person. Let's move on.

Carré Le Page 14:51

That's and and ultimately when we honk our horn and when we get irritated, the person who's who's suffering the most is us.

Manya Chylinski 15:01

Yes.

Carré Le Page 15:02

So I, you know, it's like it's whenever I feel myself irritated, I'm like, oh, this is only affecting me now. Like the other person's moved on. And so that's that's a quick reset as well.

Manya Chylinski 15:14

Yes, yeah. And that's a good reminder of, you know, I'm responsible for my own feelings and my own response and the the outside world will things will happen, but it's I make that choice whether to remain frustrated or just accept it and move on.

Leading Through AI And COVID

Manya Chylinski 15:33

So everyone, I think, has had a moment in their life or their work that changes how they think about being a leader or taking care of other people. What was one of those moments for you?

Carré Le Page 15:48

Well, one of the, I guess one of the big catalysts for me was when I we when Chat GPT came roaring out of, I don't even remember the year, I think it was 2023, December, and then early 24, we I had a, I was working as a marketing leader for a content and design team. And so I had a meeting with the team to say, hey, what do we think about AI? And I could see that half of the team were petrified and half of them were excited. And it was just such a visceral moment for me to see these people nervous about something that was going to change and and to the point where they didn't the immediate response was resistance. And I thought to myself, this is gonna be quite um, you know, impactful as a technology on us and our and who we are and what and the work that we do. And if we're not prepared to at least have be open-minded about it, I think that we really need some that we'll be in trouble. That was one of the things that I could see how much it was impacting people's mental health as well as that, you know, they were anxious, they were nervous. So I started to, we started to talk a lot about that, you know, let's focus on what we can control. That was just one little thing, one little moment, but it was a big moment, it was it was a small thing in the whole scheme of things, but it was a moment where I really paid attention to, well, if we don't have the skills necessary, it's it's going to be really challenging path. If I could offer another one, it might be that I spent 20 years working in travel, and when COVID hit, it was crazy. It was people were scared. And I remember walking over to early March, I remember walking over to some other people. We were all in the office back then, right? And and one of the uh girls in my team, she said, Carré, we need you to give us a pep talk. We need you to tell us that everything's gonna be okay. And I thought to myself, well, that first of all, thank you for thinking that I, you know, putting me in that sort of you know, bucket that I that you feel like I can give you that that pep talk. But I think I I think my message to them was much the same as what it what it's been with when we talk about resilience is you know, we just gotta focus on what we can do. And um, and I so I think to myself, when anytime I'm a leader, I really I really want to be anytime I'm in required to you know really step up as a leader, it's really about ensuring that people feel that they have the support, but that they also have the necessary tools to be able to manage it themselves when cookie when the cookie comes to the crunch.

Manya Chylinski 19:05

Right. Absolutely. Thinking about you know your work with teams and your work in travel, if you you know you could design an organization to be quote unquote perfectly resilient, which of course it would be a different definition probably every second, but what would be the first thing you would do?

Carré Le Page 19:28

This is a good question. If if I'm thinking about it, it what it takes to build an organization that is perfectly resilient. I mean, this is it's probably a bit of a cliche, but I do think it comes it comes down to the leader. I think it ultimately comes down to who is in charge and

Clear Communication Builds Resilient Teams

Carré Le Page 19:46

what values do they believe in. And so if if I'm leading that organization, I would really emphasize what are my values and make them crystal clear. When you ask that question, the first thing that came to my mind was the clear is kind, which is one of the tools that I talk a lot about because I think there are so many challenges with stress and anxiety because of communication these days. I think despite the fact that we can communicate 17 different ways, you know, someone will message me on LinkedIn and send me a text and then email me at the same time. The same person is messaging three different things that through that channel. And so it's not necessarily good communication. And so one of the things that I would say is let's get back to basics and focus on clarity. So that would be probably the first thing that I would really want to emphasize is how do we make sure that we've got a strong leader and how do we make sure that that leader can communicate clearly exactly what's important to the business and how and where we're going and how we're gonna get there.

Manya Chylinski 20:55

I like that phrase, clear is kind. And sometimes we think about communications, it's one piece of the whole, which it is. There's business, there's so many things going on. But in other ways, it's the whole game. It's the only way your team knows who you are, what you're thinking, what the goal is, what your values are. I appreciate you bringing up the concept of values. And I don't know how well we're doing in truly being clear. And you know, you mentioned earlier some companies who are just like, oh, we just can't do this. We've got too much going on. And but you do have time to be clear. And when you're not, things go wrong. And how do you help people understand that the absence of something is a problem?

Carré Le Page 21:45

I mean, we've I've seen it so many times. When I was working as a marketing leader, half my team would always complain about the quality of the briefs that they got. So they would get a brief from a client, an internal client, that would say, We need this thing and this thing, and they would go off and they would write the blog or create the design piece. And inevitably it was wrong because the clarity wasn't there at the beginning. And so we implemented a simple thing which was the reverse brief. That was where we would take that brief and we would interpret it, and then we would give give that brief back to the person and say, Here's what I think you want. Can you confirm that? Now, we don't not everyone has time for all that every single time, but the the emphasis was Abraham Lincoln says, you know, if you give me if you Give me six hours to chop down a tree, I'll spend the first four hours sharpening the n sharpening the axe. Something along those lines. I probably butchered that. But the idea being if we spend the time up front, it's it pays dividends when we actually have to do the work. And I I love that metaphor because I think that that's it. It's like any any organization says we don't have time to communicate properly. It says, Well, you you're gonna have a lot more time to fix things. You're gonna need a lot more time to fix things afterwards.

Manya Chylinski 23:03

Yes. Yes. It is somehow we a lot of organizations are in this in that situation of we're just gonna move fast. If it breaks, we'll fix it. And we're not gonna spend the time thinking ahead. You know, I know that's a pretty big thing in tech these days, the whole move fast and break things and then we'll fix them. And I can't say whether that's really the right way to be developing tech, but it's largely not the right way to deal with humans in other environments.

Carré Le Page 23:37

Can I say something about that? I I really resist and resent that's that saying. I've heard that so many times. And

Moving Fast Without Breaking People

Carré Le Page 23:44

I the reason for that is because I feel that when we talk about moving fast and breaking things, we're not really thinking about what we're breaking. And right now, social media is the perfect example of the impact that it's had, particularly on our our youth, and we're seeing that now. And that whole mentality, I think it came from Facebook in the Zuckerberg early days. It's like we're just going to move fast and we'll fix it as we go. We're not that no one's fixing those sort of things, and it's extremely infuriating to have that mentality. I don't mind the mentality of moving fast and adapting along the way, you know, and I understand that people want to move with pace, competitive advantage, and you know, there's a lot to a lot boils down to, you know, being agile. And but I think at if it's at the expense of things, we really need to question that. And that's what we're seeing now with AI too. We're implementing these things and we don't know how they're going to impact us.

Manya Chylinski 24:44

Right. And the corollary to that is the concept of spending so much time thinking about can I do something, and not thinking, should I do the thing? Um, I think those those go together and kind of have us where we are these days.

Carré Le Page 25:02

Fantastic point. Yeah, that whole idea of just because I can doesn't necessarily mean that I should. Yeah, that's so true. I wish more people thought like that. It just took a took a took a moment to think about it.

Manya Chylinski 25:13

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, we are at the end of our time, um, which I'm very sad about because I love talking with you about resiliency. So what I want to ask one last question. Like, what didn't I ask you that you would want listeners of this podcast to know about resiliency or any of these topics we've been discussing?

Carré Le Page 25:36

One of the things that I think is important is when when people talk about these skills, a lot of business leaders or anyone, even if you're doing thinking about it personally, is what's the return on the investment of this of this training? And it's really it is really hard

The ROI Problem And A Better Metaphor

Carré Le Page 25:54

to define that because we're teaching people ultimately how to think a little bit differently, how to feel better, how to navigate those that chaos. So it's not that by doing resilience training, you're going to see 2x in terms of your productivity. So it's very hard. That's probably one of the biggest challenges that I face when I talk to organizations. But I always think of the metaphor of a restaurant or, you know, the the artwork that you see, the ambience that you have when you go out to a nice restaurant, just because there's a beautiful painting on the wall, you can't measure the return of in on investment of that painting being there, but you can, but you know that it's making a difference. You know that people are gonna come in and they're gonna, they're going to have a better meal and a better experience because you've invested in that ambience. I think that that's that's something that leaders should really consider. When they think about training resilience or they think about any sort of development, it doesn't, we live in this world where everything has to have a if I if I invest X, I'm gonna get Y. Sometimes I really believe in the fact that you you know that this is gonna help people, that should be enough to you know, to invest and say, yep, I'm gonna really ensure that I I help my people navigate this change, this challenge, this chaos that exists in this modern world. So I'd encourage leaders to think less about less about the specific ROI when it comes to training like this, because it will make a difference.

Manya Chylinski 27:24

Absolutely. You have the best analogies.

Carré Le Page 27:27

I thank you.

Manya Chylinski 27:29

I'm I I'm gonna be borrowing a few of them and I will absolutely credit you on them. Before we stop recording here, can you share with our listeners a little bit more about yourself and what you do and how they can reach you?

Carré Le Page 27:43

Yeah, thanks, Manya. Well, so I I started Resilient Minds. I run a business called Resilient Minds, and I train organizations, leaders, young kids, even, uh, and individuals on the power of resilience when it comes to navigating today's world. You know, we're living in a world of change and challenge and lots of chaos. So I have a website which is called resilientmindsco.com. I'm on LinkedIn pretty actively. I'm on Instagram as well. I have a day, I have a newsletter that I send out twice a week. I tell a lot of stories. So what you just said there in terms of metaphors, like I really believe in the power of storytelling to get messages across. So it's not so much theory, it is practical tools, but I don't focus too much on the theory behind things. I like to share stories and analogies and quotes and things like that to really help get the message across.

Manya Chylinski 28:36

Oh, that's great. I will put links to those in the show notes to make it easier for folks to reach you. Um, Carreé, thank you so much. This was such a fabulous conversation.

Carré Le Page 28:46

Thank you, Manya. I I love I've been following your podcast for a while, so I'm really genuinely excited to be here. And uh I love what you do. Anyone who's talking about resilience is fantastic in Michael. So it was wonderful to spend the time together.

Manya Chylinski 28:59

Thank you so much. And thank you to our listeners for checking out this episode, and we will see you next time.