Turns Out Your Team Doesn’t Need Cabo, Just Breathing And A Dad Joke w/ Nicole Van Valen

If leadership feels like carrying a world that never stops spinning, this conversation will change your grip. We sit down with Nicole Van Valen—speaker, therapist, and former pro dancer—to explore how joy, recovery, and psychological safety can power real performance without the grind. Instead of adding perks on top of pressure, Nicole shows how small, consistent practices shift culture from the inside out.

We start by tearing down the myth that joy is fluff. Nicole shares practical moments that build trust fast: an unexpected dad joke to open a tense meeting, a handwritten note that lands at the right time, a three-breath reset that settles a racing mind. We dig into early burnout signals leaders often miss—especially in high performers who mask strain—and how a simple “I noticed X; how can I support?” can reconnect people to purpose. You’ll learn why recognition, micro-recovery, and clarity are not “nice-to-haves,” but essential parts of a high-output system.

From there, we move into culture design. Nicole introduces her Ready Set Go framework: Ready to rediscover what fuels you, Set to redesign team norms and psychological safety, and Go to deliver with alignment. Her snow globe metaphor brings it home: stand steady while the glitter swirls, collect inputs, then act when the view clears. We talk through signs of psychological safety you can spot immediately, and habits any team can adopt this week—quiet blocks, five-minute check-ins, and rituals that encourage real talk across silos.

If you want a team that’s creative, focused, and resilient, start by treating well-being as strategy, not an afterthought. Listen, take a breath, and try one small shift tomorrow. If it helps, share the episode with a leader who needs it, subscribe for more human-centered leadership tools, and leave a review to tell us the next challenge we should tackle.

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Transcript

Setting The Agenda: Joy And Leadership

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey friends, welcome back to Mind Force. I'm your host, Snake Shear. Today we're talking about leadership in a way that doesn't usually get much airtime. Not the grind, not the hustle, not the pushing through at all cost. Contrary to popular belief, pain is not gain. The pillars of today's episode are joy as a leadership strategy, burnout recovery, and change navigation and cultural transformation through well-being. That's right. We're talking about joy, recovery, and well-being as a real leadership tool, the kind that helps people stay effective without burning out and helps organizations grow without breaking the human inside. Our guest today is Nicole Van Valen, and her work sits at an intersection of performance, psychology, and culture. This helps leaders and teams build environments where people feel safe, supported, and capable of doing their best work. The guest introduction, Nicole, let's start with you. When you look back on your journey, what experiences

Meet Nicole: Journey And Background

SPEAKER_00 1:06

have shaped the way you think about leadership today?

SPEAKER_01 1:10

That is such a powerful question, Nate. When I think about everything, I think it's like this whole ecosystem of looking at your experiences throughout your whole entire life, from childhood to young adulthood to adulthood in your whole career. And there's been this one thread when I look back on things that has helped me sustain myself throughout my career. And that has been connection. And having connection has been my fuel and my joy in life. So I've been able to harness connections in different ways to help elevate myself. And that's a lot of what my work is about today.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Awesome. So it's a brief introduction. Who are you? What do you do? And where are you calling from?

SPEAKER_01 1:58

All right. My name is Nicole Van Balen, not Van Halen. Like people tend to introduce me on the stages often. I am originally from the Bahamas and I spent most of my life growing up in sunny South Florida, Fort Lauderdale area. I have a background as a marriage and family therapist, learning and performance consultant. And, you know, I've been an entrepreneur. This is my second time over, first as a as a therapist with my own private practice. And now I'm a professional speaker, traveling the world, helping people harness their joy so that they can enlighten cultures and deliver on their goals. So I have a also the interesting thing is while I was climbing the corporate ladder, looking back, I found I realized that my joy, my resilience resource was dancing and cheerleading. So I am a former Miami Dolphins cheerleader and Miami Heat dancer. I went on and became an assistant coach for the Miami Heat dancer team. I'm still heavily, you know, at all of the football games and as an alumni. And that has always kind of been my fuel that helped me connect to my joy and other people that have that same type of joy outside of my career. And that has elevated it in into creating this new framework that I have called Ready Set Go and helping people have this joy-pound performance.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

That's awesome. Yeah. I think a lot of times like we're caught off guard by certain things. Like reminds me of my brother. My brother is bigger than me. He's a good 6'3 and has a beard and you know, kind of a burly looking guy. And uh he loves to dance. So he does ballroom and does some other things. And initially, I don't I don't think you'd pick that for him at a quick glance, but I think it's an important reminder of, you know, do what you love and do what brings you joy. Don't get caught up with what you're supposed to do, or you know, whatever those different things that society or whatever says you're supposed to be doing. So yeah, he loves it. He met his current current girlfriend right now as his dance instructor. And so, you know, things are going great. Uh, they're they're moving along, so you never know we're gonna get into. We'll do a quick warm-up. Uh, what's something that consistency consistently brings you joy even during demanding seasons?

SPEAKER_01 4:17

The thing that brings me joy is dancing, of course. I love to dance and I love to sing really badly, like karaoke. So that brings me joy. And also dad

Joy Habits: Dance, Karaoke, And Dad Jokes

SPEAKER_01 4:30

corny jokes bring me joy. Like I have a book coming out soon in the next couple of weeks, and every start of each chapter is a joke. And the funny thing is, when I was in corporate America and I'm, you know, pulling together cross-functional teams, people in C-suites, high-level executives to create this new product and service, I would start out our meetings with a dad joke. And normally people wouldn't do that. You know, it's kind of stiff. And I actually worked in procurement and finance at a particular point in time, but I was having them laughing. And what it did was it kind of decreased any barriers or any silos, and then people could feel more comfortable. There was a sense of psychological safety with everyone, and then we can get to work. So, Nate, do you want to hear my joke that I love so much? That it's okay, and uh, here goes. Hopefully I say it right. Because my my colleagues would say, Nicole, the joke is not that funny, but you trying to remember it and laughing before it's done is funny. But here goes Okay, how many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh? Ten tentacles.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

There it is, tentacles.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

But there is a strategy behind the joke. So I wasn't just like joking around and and not being serious at work, but I was saying the joke, but it also tied into what we talked about because we brought in cross-functional teams. Everyone had their own expertise and had different silos. So I said, we're coming together as one octopus. We have this the different tentacles that's gonna make the octopus succeed. So let's let's get together and brainstorm in how we're gonna do this and serve our customers. So I always kind of, those are my three things dancing, singing badly, and telling dad jokes, and they all lead to laughter.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Yeah, I love that. Uh over New Year's Eve, we got invited over to the neighbor's house and they invited us over for karaoke. I should have known that both of them can sing really well, and that's why they invited us. So I was kind of giving them a hard time because me and my wife both can't sing at all. And so it's kind of ironic, I think. They're like, Yeah, come on over and sing. Yeah, because we sound awesome. They're belting out these like power ballots, and I'm like, I barely sound good at all. I'm tone deaf completely, so kind of funny. Oh, come on over. Of course. Yeah, it was a good time.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

I have this karaoke machine and machine, and it's always up in our family room, so it's there anytime you just need it to de-stress. You just go over there and belt it out.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

That's awesome. Yeah. It also, what you said, kind of reminds me of uh Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott. It's one of my favorite books, but she talks about the beach ball method, and she's talking about the different colors on the beach ball, and so green might be finance and red might be sales, and you know, I don't know what the other colors on a beach ball are. White might be like operations. And if you look down, if you're standing on that specific sphere of a little quadrant of the of the sphere, you only see that, and that's all you ever think about. And so she wants you to be able to look at the whole ball, kind of the same way you were talking about the the tentacles, a part of the larger octopus. So it's good. It's good to be able to get outside of your shoes and get outside of your zones and you know, really think about how everyone organizes together. Before we get too much deeper, I'm gonna flip the mic. What's one question you like to ask me?

SPEAKER_01 7:51

The question I'd like to ask you is because you do this great work with your podcast, when you are interviewing others, what is that thread or commonality that you see in your guests overall?

SPEAKER_00 8:09

I think the common thread is wanting to help people. I think, you know, as we were born as, you know, caveman and as far as back as we go. I think you had touched on

Connection, Service, And Modern Loneliness

SPEAKER_00 8:20

it very briefly, but it made me think about it is that connection. We exist as social animals and we exist to help each other and take care of each other. And we used to have to farm and hunt and do these things together. Now we have modern technology, and I think it kind of drives us apart because it's kind of interesting. We're more connected than we've ever been, but there's a lot of loneliness and a lot of disconnection, even though we are, you know, more connected via the phone and things like that. I don't know if we're as connected, you know, heart to heart as much as we used to be. But I think that's the common thread, people wanting to help each other and jump on here, because we're all taking our time. And I think time is probably the most precious thing. We only have so much of it, you can't get it back. And so we're gonna take the time to help others. I think that's kind of the thread that brings us all together. We just hope that you know helps one person along the way and the me recording and editing and you taking your time is is all worth it if someone improves their life and gets a little bit better. But I think connection really is that thing that's like the most important. Yeah. So that's probably what I'd say.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

I was gonna say, Nate, thank you for sharing that because that connection and and that piece of loneliness that we're missing, that's a way when we're trying to help people. That is definitely a way to recover your joy. It's so interesting. It's like when you are feeling depleted or you're not feeling so good, if you decide to step outside of yourself and do something for someone else, then your joy tends to elevate more. So I think this is amazing having this podcast because you are serving others, but you're also enlightening others and elevating a sense of joy as well with sharing this content and information.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if you go help somebody, food bank or whatever it is, like you're not gonna leave that event not feeling a little bit better. Like if you're going do that and you don't feel better, I think there's probably other issues going on. You'll feel better if you help somebody along the way. Well, that's that's awesome. We'll move into your first pillar, which is a joy as a leadership strategy. So, one of my favorite questions, because it's usually a big softball, what's the biggest misconception leaders have about joy in the workplace?

SPEAKER_01 10:33

This one, that it's fluff, that it's like something that needs to be outside

Joy As Strategy: Myths Leaders Believe

SPEAKER_01 10:39

of the workforce. You just have to come in, get the work done. But we're not robots, right? We're we're human beings. And especially now that we're in this age of AI, we're seeing it more and more. And we have to kind of take time to re-energize ourselves, to have a joy kind of reset so that you come into the workforce fully engaged and working with your teams and developing your products and services and helping your customers, they kind of leave that piece out with joy, saying, I don't really have time for that. I don't have time to talk to this person, I don't have time to sit and eat dinner with my family. All of those different things, or I don't have time to go and see my friends or go to that football game or whatever it is that brings you joy. And sometimes those things don't even take a long time. Many times we think we have to take a trip to Cabo or, you know, wherever, but you can harness what you need. You have everything that you need within you. It could be as simple as taking three deep breaths, and then when you open your eyes, you're completely and utterly relaxed. I do that many times during my keynote presentations, and people are shocked that if you give yourself 60 seconds to actually breathe, it can do it can re-energize you. If you give yourself 15 minutes to reach out to a colleague or a friend and have a conversation, that could, well, you have to pick the right person, not someone that drains you, but it can actually uplift you. So I think that's the biggest misconception is that joy or re-energizing or taking care of yourself is fluff and you don't have enough time to do it.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

I think that's a good reminder, too, that things don't always cost money. I had a previous boss on here, and one of the questions I'd asked him was like how to have lasting impact. And he was talking about some of the things that you do that don't cost anything. He would do handwritten cards. I've had bosses that called on my behalf without me knowing to try to get me a position or thing that I, you know, needed or wanted. And like that doesn't cost any money. So sometimes, like to your point, I think we want this big, extravagant, like over-the-top thing. I think the smaller things, I mean, bigger are good too at certain points, but I think the smaller things are are just as important, if not more. So that's a good reminder. I'm curious, when was the first time you realized joy wasn't a distraction from performance, but more of a driver of it?

SPEAKER_01 13:12

You know, I it all is around dance for me. And there was a time when I was just juggling so much at all at the same time. Like I was in these high-pressured leadership roles at work. I was raising my daughter, I was a single mom. I was driving her to dance, you know, you know, 25 miles

When Joy Became Performance Fuel

SPEAKER_01 13:35

away and back and just really burnt out. And I was trying to just power through everything. And I just didn't take time for myself. I didn't take a pause. I didn't try to look at what my purpose in life was. I was just going on that treadmill on and on and on. And then it really dawned on me when I was doing all of that and my health wasn't that great. I wasn't feeling good, I wasn't looking good. And that's when I said, Oh, you know what? I need to do something differently. And that's when I really started practicing the things that I would preach with other people as a mental health therapist. I was, I was helping some, I was helping others, but I wasn't taking care of myself and I was kind of being depleted. And I had these stacks and stacks of three by five index cards. So whenever I was stressed out and I I needed to talk to my boss about something, I didn't know what to do, I'd research it because I'm an undercover nerd and I'd I'd have stacks of cards. And I said, you know what? I don't want anyone else to go through the stress and the burnout that I was going through because I was doing all that in my private life, but I was also having a tough manager, not so nice coworkers. Like I was feeling the stress and burnout on all sides. And so I took those cards and turned those cards into a keynote presentation and decided I'm gonna follow what I love to do, and that's that's professional speaking. And then I turned those cards and that keynote into a book, The Joyful Leader. And it's all because I want to service others in a way to help them not go through what I went through, make life a lot easier for others. So I think that was the defining moment when I was feeling it on all ends of my whole entire life, and then trying to figure out okay, how can I pull myself out of this? What are the areas that I have control over? And and I tend to be someone I'm more apt to help others than myself. So I was like, okay, let me figure out how to help others. And in doing that, I was able to help myself.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

It's so funny how that's true so often. I'd had the podcast for a while and I'd had, I don't know how many episodes, but my wife was like, Do you do any of these things? And I'd heard about journaling and quiet time and meditation, and I had a long list of things and I was ingesting all of it, but I wasn't doing any of it for a little while. And now I I rolled the clock back, I wake up an hour before I go to the gym, and now there's quiet time and devotion, and I work through these things where the house is asleep, it's quiet, the day hasn't begun, it's not crazy yet, because as soon as everyone gets up, it's crazy, work's crazy, all those things are like full speed ahead. So that time of the morning is super important to me, which is funny because I never considered myself a morning person. I kind of hated that, but now that got up there and get it going. In the UK, it's a little weird because we don't get a lot of sun. So that's a kind of a weird adjustment for the two years I've I've been here, but we'll end up moving again. But yeah, it's it's funny. We we hear things, we know the right answer, but sometimes we just gotta hopefully have someone ask us or maybe look ourselves in the mirror and actually do the things that we're supposed to be doing. Well, I love stories, Nicole. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

No, I wanted to ask you something because what you said was so intriguing because I'm a night owl also. And it was and and my husband's like an early bird. So I was like, well, how do I find this quiet time with myself? And a lot of it I had to think about what works for me. And so now my quiet time is at night because I'm a night owl. Everybody else is sleeping. And so so that's when I I get my alone time. But I love what you said about getting up a little bit earlier for your time. So I do that, I give myself like a half an hour earlier, not the whole hour because I really like sleeping. And I'll do my my prayers and my meditations and my gratitude journaling then. But like the full force take care of myself I do when everyone else is sleeping at night.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

Yeah, you gotta do it. Everyone listen out there. Just just do it. Don't don't think about it, roll it back, you know, set your phone off to the side, don't, don't adjust it and let it wake you up a little early tomorrow. Well, Nicole, I love stories. I think that's the way that we understand and convey the most information. So can you share a story where choosing joy changed the way you showed up as a leader?

SPEAKER_01 18:04

Yes. You know, there was this time I was doing a cultural group. It was like in this large healthcare organization, they had different cultural committees. So I was running one of these committees.

Inclusive Leadership And Psychological Safety

SPEAKER_01 18:20

And, you know, of course, when you're having all of these different people coming in, they're different personalities, different thoughts, experiences coming into the room. And we had one particular person that the rest of the group wanted to kick out of the group because she was kind of labeled as negative. And I refused to let her go because I said, you know what? We really need this person's input because what we're trying to develop as a team, there could be someone else that we're trying to serve that has that same thought pattern. And so we want to hear everything that this person has to say so that we can create what's needed that's inclusive for everyone that we could possibly and for me, being able as a leader to stand, you know, to support someone else brought me a lot of joy, but it also brought the group a lot of joy as well. And then what it did was bring this sense of psychological safety where other people could see okay, if Nicole is supporting and advocating this person's voice being heard, that opened up the room for everyone else to be able to share. So again, that's my joy as a leader is when I can bring people together. We have this sense of connection and purpose and working together, and then we kind of uplift the culture as we're doing that. And once as we're uplifting this culture, the stress levels tend to decrease. And then when the stress levels are decreasing, then people are coming to Together and joining. I'm not saying everything's perfect because we're human beings. We're not supposed we're not meant to be perfect, which I'm learning. I would love to be perfect, but that's not how we're designed. So I I really believe working together, all voices being heard at the table, and then coming up with the best, best pathway forward as a leader has really brought me a lot of joy and confidence. Because I feel like when you're confident in your leadership, you have space to be joyful. If we're lacking that sense of confidence in our leadership, then, you know, I've seen it time and time again where leaders tend to put other people down to bring out this false sense of joy and command.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

Which is so interesting to me, because I feel like so many leaders want productivity, return on investment, they want the bottom line, and they focus so much on that. And to your point earlier, like that joy should be off to the side or it should be an extra thing. It's like if you just took care of the people and made the people happy to a certain extent, because you won't make everyone happy, like you said, we're all human. But if they're generally happy, then the return on investment and the productivity on those other things that you want, you'll get. It's really odd that we've like focus on one thing when if you focus on a different thing, you probably actually get the thing that you want. And it does remind me, too, of another interview I did. One of my favorite ones was General Tiker, a previous boss that I had, and he had asked at the end of his command, he left, and someone had asked him, What was the best thing you did? And they wanted him to say something about himself. And of course, he's an awesome and humble dude. He said, It was listening to all of you. I don't have all the best answers. I'm not the expert, I'm not perfect, I'm not any of these things. The best thing I did was just get all the information. So to your point, the person that wanted to be left out, like who knows, maybe she had the best thing, or you know, whatever, or she inspired someone else to say something. So gathering all the information from the stakeholders is is always the best option. I think we know that. Maybe we just don't execute that as well as we should, but definitely collect on all the people. And we'll uh transition into your second pillar, which is burnout recovery and change navigation. Navigation. So you work with people under constant pressure. The C-suite, like you mentioned, what are some of the early signs of burnout leaders often miss?

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Oh, you know, one of the things is if you start to see

Spotting Burnout In High Performers

SPEAKER_01 22:32

they often miss those high performers. Those are the people that are always getting it done, they're meeting the deadlines, they're exceeding what was even expected of them. They're getting things done earlier. They're they're just like you look at them and you're saying, they're amazing. You know, I I have I have no other, you know, I have nothing else that I think they should be doing even better. They're they're hitting all the marks. And those are the people that leaders really need to pay attention to because those are the ones that could be cracking underneath the system. So if they, you know, just like you're paying attention to someone that may not be meeting performance metrics, you need to pay as much attention to the ones that are, because they might be the ones that are masking any type of stress or burnout. And that cost of burnout is not an emotional cost. Because, you know, a lot of times at work, we're just like, okay, just leave the emotion out the door, but it's an operational cost. You know, with the people having turnover because of this high level of burnout, you might lose your best people if you're not paying attention to them. Or if you're thinking, you know, I had to, you know, do all of this work, I had to meet all these deadlines. The world today is a lot different, especially after COVID. Employees have higher expectations of themselves and also of their leaders. So this talk of joy and this talk of performance, it's not a luxury anymore. This is something that leaders need to implement into their strategy so that they can sustain their people and so that the people are performing at their peak, but not at the expense of being burnt out. Because there's all of these stats out there that, you know, 77% of professionals are reporting experiencing burnout at their current job. You know, over a third of people are completely burnt out and they're looking for reasons to leave their role. And if they leave, that costs even more money to organizations. You know, and even the leaders are feeling burnt out. So their people are burnt out, the leaders are burnt out, and they're thinking about stepping down for their well-being. So, how can we maintain our well-being and maintain our leadership and have a healthy balance? And one of the ways to do that is to really pay attention to ourselves and have emotional awareness of your employees. So if you're seeing a shift or a change in an employee, they used to be really talkative and now they're quiet, or they used to be quiet and now they're agitated, these are the signs to look for. And then when you see them, then we have to talk about okay, what are we going to do to engage them to be at their ultimate ultimate performance at work? How are we going to get these actively disengaged employees to become actively engaged? And a lot of that has to do with making sure we're having this innovation and we're paying attention to the different retention issues that are going on in the workplace. So basically, I'm saying we just need to talk to them, you know, we just need to pay attention, see what's going around going on in our surroundings, and then ask them. I'm not saying be a therapist, but just say, hey, I noticed X. Is there anything that I can do to support you? And offering someone a sense of support and also recognizing them can do wonders. So it's a simple thing that we can do as leaders, but it magnifies and it compounds. It's like compound interest in that one recognition and conversation.

SPEAKER_00 26:32

Yeah, that definitely makes sense. Earlier you'd mentioned you don't have to go to Cabo. It doesn't have to be an extended period of time. So I'm curious, what does real recovery look like?

SPEAKER_01 26:45

Okay. I like, I want to experiment with you if you're okay with it.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

Okay. Not to put you on the spot. But this is something I do in my keynote presentations. It's a breathing exercise. Like we all know if we breathe, we feel better. Like we have to breathe to survive, but if we take intentional breaths, we feel better. So I tell a lot of people whether you're in a high-stakes Zoom meeting, face-to-face,

Micro-Recovery: Three Deep Breaths

SPEAKER_01 27:12

you can do this anytime and no one would know. If you're with someone, I'd say keep your eyes open. But if you're alone or what we're gonna do now, if you close your eyes, you can feel the sensation even more in your body. But just close your eyes or have a soft gaze. And then put one hand or both hands on your stomach, and then take a deep breath through your nose, all the way down to your stomach, expand your stomach and breathe out. Do it one more time, breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Third time is a charm, one more time, in through your nose and out through your mouth. And when you're ready, you can open your eyes. Now, Nate, how does that feel?

SPEAKER_00 27:52

It's it's nice. It's like centering, it's very calm. It's nice.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

Yeah, it's a nice feeling. I I mean, I was I did a Zoom kind of retreat with some leaders and went through this same exercise. It took a couple seconds, not that long. And the person he he did a lot of contract writing and legal contracts for the organization. And he said, you know, after the this this uh meeting we were having, the session I was giving, he had to go write more contracts and he didn't really want to do it. He was thinking of pushing it off to the next day. And it was late, it was like three, four o'clock in the afternoon. He felt re-energized just from the three deep breaths. And that's something we have control over. Like we can do that anytime. Anytime. But we have to one recognize that we're feeling stressed. And then two, we have to actually go do the thing and breathe, right? Like we know what to do, but we have to actually do it. And then we can go go fresh because we've gotten more oxygen into our system to do whatever we have to do moving forward, whatever our goals are. So that's one simple way that you can address stress in the moment that you have control over. And you can do this in your personal life and you can do this in your professional life.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

That's wonderful. Yeah, I was gonna ask for a story because I love a story, but you just highlighted that. He was able to take the three deep breaths and get back in there. I like the stories because you have actionable. I think a lot of times if you read some self-help books and other things, it's like hypotheticals and things like that. It's always good to see the real-world examples. You know it's real, you know it's true, and it's coming through. So we'll transition to that third and last pillar, which is culture transformation through well-being. So when you step in an organization, you're helping out, you're doing stuff, you mentioned the large healthcare organization. What tells you immediately whether the psychological safety exists or not?

SPEAKER_01 29:57

So, you know, when you walk into a space and you can feel the thickness in the air, like no one has to say anything at all. You just walk in there and you can feel the energy. Have you ever experienced that?

SPEAKER_00 30:11

Oh, yeah. I mean, they say cut the tension with a knife, and that is that is definitely real. You can feel it. Kind of like back to the person that was on the outside or whatever. There's certain times where you just know that things are a little, a little off.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So that's so that's one thing is just being aware of your surroundings. And so that's one. But then two, it's also just observing. When you're observing how people interact with each other, how they, their, their choices of communication, the words that they use. All of these nuances define the culture because organizations are made up of people, right? So that's all organizations are. It's a lot of people that are working together on a particular goal.

Reading The Room: Culture Signals

SPEAKER_01 31:00

So you're looking to see the dynamics of the people that are working together. You're looking at it from a systemic approach of, you know, if people are aligned, you're gonna sense that. If there are silos, you're gonna sense that as well. And a lot of the work that I talk about is yes, looking at yourself individually as a leader and then rediscovering yourself, what matters most to you, make sure you're re-energized, and then stepping into the landscape, which is your culture. And how are you going to influence that culture just based on who you are and how you speak and how you operate and how you support and collaborate with others? And you can, you know, who's in your corner, who are your allies, how are you going to work together? And then you go and deliver on your goals collectively and individually with that beautiful energy that you brought to the table, with that culture that you have, because there's this line of alignment straight through. And this kind of talks about my ready, set, go framework where you get ready to rediscover yourself. You get set and you redesign the landscape, that culture, and you go and you deliver on your goals. And so it's a model that people can do. Anytime there's a question of a challenge, a change, trying to do something different, you're hitting a roadblock. I mean, I think about this ready, psycho model all the time, several times a day, when I feel stuck about something. And I'm like, okay, I'm hitting my head up against a brick wall. It's time for me to take a reset. It's time for me to take a break, go do something that I enjoy. I have rose bushes in the backyard. I have all these plants and trees. So I might go literally go and smell the roses in my backyard or take a 15-minute walk around the neighborhood because I do a lot of work from home or whatever. It's drinking a hot cup of chai tea. Like whatever that is, depending on how much time you have, do that thing. And then you're in a different headspace. Or the deep breathing, like we did before. You're in a different headspace, and then you're able to work with our perfectly imperfect colleagues in the landscape of our culture so that we can figure out what we want to do.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

Yeah, that makes sense. So for everyone that's listening out there, maybe there's some leaders that are like, oh, well-being, that sounds kumbaya, sounds a little mushy. From your experience, how does well-being translate into actual performance?

SPEAKER_01 33:37

Yeah, so it's this well-being is something that we can't just do one thing and then magically we are in this well-being. Well-being is more something that we we nurture, that it's it's a preventative, proactive measure that we do. So it's not something that's fluff. It's actually having joy and it uh fuels the leadership and the strategy that we have. So we kind of just have a, we're able to have this peace and psychological safety and a sense of trust and team clarity when we realize that this joy that we're building, this well-being that we're building, it's not fluff because it needs to be the part of the foundation. It's a part of who you are. And it's a part of something that you're continuing to nurture and make sure that it's it's filled. Because if you let your well-being drop, that means you're at a lower vibration or you're you're at a lower level. You're not your best self. And when you're not your best self, you're not able to give and support at your best self in helping others because as leaders, that's what we're here to do. So it's really important to focus on your well-being. I'm not saying forget about all your roles and all of the things that you need to do,

Ready Set Go: A Practical Framework

SPEAKER_01 35:05

but when you focus on your well-being, guess what happens? Those things, those moments when you feel the most stressed to try to perform, if you're focusing on your well-being, you are setting yourself up to be aligned to have less stress. So when something comes at you, you're standing at a place of clarity. I like to share about the snow globe. So you know when you have a snow globe, right? And you shake it up and the snow and the glitter, it's all over the pa place, it's chaotic. But that figure in the middle of the snow globe, what does it do?

SPEAKER_00 35:40

The whole time steady.

SPEAKER_01 35:42

It stands steady. It doesn't mean the leader that's in that chaos doesn't know that it's going on, doesn't feel it. They're choosing to stand steady. They're paying attention, they're talking to their teammates, then they're talking to the stakeholders around them to understand and assess what's going on while this is happening. They're not running around chasing the snow to make it look like they're busy doing something. No, they're assessing, they're taking a look at things. And guess what always happens after you sh shake the snow globe and set it down? What happens to the snow?

SPEAKER_00 36:18

It settles.

SPEAKER_01 36:19

It settles. So we know it's gonna settle. One day it's going to settle. And when it settles, that leader did the homework while it was standing still while he or she was standing still. While they were standing still, they were gathering information, they were connecting with their team, they were strategizing, they were coming up with a plan. So when they go and when the death settles or the sparkle settle, they can execute on that plan because it's already well thought out.

SPEAKER_00 36:49

That's good stuff. I love the examples where you can, you know, physically, tangibly think and see the example. That's awesome. So there's teams out there, Nicole, right now, that are struggling or there's something going on. What's one small shift? So practical advice, one small shift teams that could make some lasting impacts today.

SPEAKER_01 37:11

I would say if a team is feeling the stress and burnout, take that as a signal that maybe the music changed a little bit, right? But your and your internal rhythm to that music change hasn't caught up yet. It doesn't mean it's the end of the world. It just means that there's a change going on and we need to do something different. And doing something different doesn't mean dealing with resilience, the old way of pushing through things, because there's a new way to be resilient. And the new way is self-care, focusing on your well-being, doing something joyful. And and once you do that, you're able to go forward and have the real performance, right? The real performance where you give yourself grace to take a pause, you then realign yourself, and then you can go and take action.

SPEAKER_00 38:12

Nice. That's good stuff. Okay, Nicole, I'd like to bring it all together. We had three wonderful pillars today. So for leaders listening who feel responsible for everything and everyone, what would you want them to hear right now?

SPEAKER_01 38:28

I would want them to hear that if you're you're leading right now through any type of uncertainty or you're feeling like the heavy weight of burnout.

Well-Being To Performance: The Snow Globe

SPEAKER_01 38:40

I just want you to hear that joy still matters. There's still a space for joy, even if you're feeling that weight. And that joy is the key that's going to help you rise again as a leader during these difficult times.

SPEAKER_00 38:57

Okay. Thank you, Nicole, for the work you do and the way you reframe leadership as something sustainable, human, and powerful. Before we close, where can people connect with you and learn more about your work?

SPEAKER_01 39:11

This is my connection piece, yes. So I do want to hear from you all. You can connect with me on LinkedIn under Nicole Van Ballen. You can connect with me on my website. It's keeninsights.com, K-E-A-N-E-I-N-S-I-G-H-T.com. And when you go there, you'll be able to find a resource. It's my complementary sphere of resilience assessment. So it assesss you on eight domains holistically to see where you are in resilience. So you can find out where your strengths are, where you can help other people, and you can find out where your gaps are, where you need some additional support in regards to resilience. So I think those are the two best places. And you could just send me an email at Nicole at KeenIsights.com and and I'd love to connect with you and see how we can support each other in this journey of life.

SPEAKER_00 40:06

We're all trying to get through this crazy thing called life one day at a time. Well, to everyone listening, if this conversation resonated with you, please share it with a leader that you know, or maybe even a teammate that needs a little bit of help. I love you all. See ya.