A Job Done Well - Making Work Better

How to Thrive at Work

• Jimmy Barber, James Lawther and Caroline Mabon • Season 3 • Episode 3

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This week, hosts James Lawther and Jimmy Barber welcome Caroline Mabon, co-founder of Compassionate Cultures, to discuss the concept of thriving in the workplace. 

They explore how individuals can take care of themselves, find joy and grow in their professional lives. Caroline shares insights from her company's research, including their Thrive and Grow Index, which helps organisations create environments where employees can thrive.

Caroline shares tips on how to 'Lead Yourself', aligned with her simple model: setting intentional goals, owning your personal development, and building resilience. 

Don't settle for work being ok. You deserve moments of joy every day!

To find out more, check out Compassionate Cultures makes us Future Fit

Got a question - get in touch. Click here.

Speaker:

Hello, I'm James. Hi, I'm Jimmy and welcome to a Job Done Well, the podcast that helps you improve your performance enjoyment at work.

James:

Good afternoon.

Jimmy:

Afternoon, James. How are you?

James:

Fabulous. Thank you

Jimmy:

How come? You are fabulous. It's raining.

James:

well. I'm always fabulous. It's added to which it's my natural environment. I like a bit of rain. Reflects my moods. Go on then. What are we talking about

Jimmy:

Today we are going to talk about, thriving at work. We're going to,

James:

Okay.

Jimmy:

discuss what is and how you go about looking after yourself to ensure that you thrive in your work. Something that, I don't know, we should all aspire to do, but seldom do we achieve it. So we have an expert with us.'cause you and I know very little about thriving, so we have an expert who's going to help us on that journey.

James:

Super. So before we get into that, what have you been up to?

Jimmy:

Well, James, I have been doing some painting and decorating at home. So I, I started painting and then I realized why it was a mistake'cause it was a tiny space and I could barely fit into it. So yeah, less of that. About the better. What have you been up to anyhow?

James:

Well, my my daughter, my eldest daughter starts work next week, so we've been moving her out of our house into a flat in London, and I have never seen so much stuff in my life.

Jimmy:

So you are, you are going to be a, a half empty nester

James:

Well, half. Yeah. Yeah. We shall see.

Jimmy:

Welcome Caroline. You are

Caroline:

you.

Jimmy:

expert on thriving, but not just that. I won't do justice to to tell about your experience. So do you wanna introduce yourself?

Caroline:

Yeah. Thank you both of you and thanks so much for having me along. So yeah. I'm Caroline Maban. I'm one of the co-founders of Compassionate Cultures. We formed from a shared, really passionate belief. That work can and absolutely should be a place where everybody, regardless of who you are and what you do, deserves to find joy to thrive and grow. we do that by focusing mostly on leadership development. Because the way that we experience leaders at work has a biggest impact on our ability to thrive. And we've also created something called the Thrive and Grow Index, which is a way of codifying what it means to thrive and grow at work. And we use that with our clients more broadly with organizations to help them work out what they can do to build thriving workplace cultures.

Jimmy:

Codify sounds like models. James will be very excited about this.

James:

I am already getting quite frothy moving on.

Jimmy:

So thank you again for, for coming on Caroline. But maybe we should start off with, how do you define thriving and, and why is it important to people?

Caroline:

Yeah, that's a really great question. Well, I'm really curious to understand what thriving means to each of you.

James:

Yeah, well it's so I think it's really important For me it's about enjoying yourself. It's about growing, it's about achieving things. Maybe those three things together, but I absolutely agree with you. If you've got people who are thriving at work they fall over themselves to get in at nine o'clock on a Monday morning. Yeah. And they'll still be there at seven o'clock on a Friday

Caroline:

Yeah.

James:

How do you make that workplace for me? How do you make it so good that people want to be there and really enjoy it? Interactively pushing. So that is what I think thriving means.

Jimmy:

Yeah, and I,

Caroline:

and what about you, Jimmy?

Jimmy:

I, I'd echo a lot of that. I, I think for me it's about I, when I think about thriving, I think about health and happiness. Wellbeing and it's something that, it's quite aspirational. I'd like to be thriving in my life. I'd like to be thriving in my work life. So I think it has that wellbeing and aspirational tone. I think the, the slight, and I'll just be out in the spirit of openness, be tell you that 10% of me gets caught in the, the slight cynic about it because it is a word that I see have seen pop up in the HR world in the last. Five or so years. And therefore sometimes I, I can get a bit cynical it could mean a lot of things to a lot of people. But from your perspective, how do you think about it?

Caroline:

Yeah. Well that's a great question. And I guess we spend 90,000 hours or a third of our lives at work and yet multiple data sources. Points, the fact that many of us are not thriving, so we want people to thrive. And so we've worked hard to unpick and understand what that looks like. the reason I ask both of you is because we are currently doing a PhD on what it means to thrive at work, and we're asking that question to lots of professionals. because we are all individual, we're all very unique. Everybody comes back with something slightly different, but there's lots of connected themes within that. So the academic definition of thriving is a psychological state where individuals experience a sense of vitality and learning. So, you talked about growth developments moving forward in things really, really important. Other things that come up are things like. Examples from our PhD, a room full of people sharing conversation, excited to share what's going well. So something about energy in there. Living and breathing a project, that feeling you get when you get stuck in and you get your hands dirty or growth. So growth and progression is something that's come out as a really key part of our research. This idea that we want to make progress both in what we do on a daily basis, so what we've achieved on a daily basis, but also from a kind of longer term career perspective. So lots of different things. And what we've done is combined 50 years of working within and with organizations with that research to codify, thriving into what we've defined as seven key attributes. And we look at those attributes through three dimensions. and just to give you an example, one of those attributes is meaning. So the idea that we find meaning in the everyday and make everyday meaningful. So I think that plays into what both of you were saying there, that idea that, I'm connected to what I'm doing and I'm clear on why I'm here. You know, if you ask anybody what thriving means, it means different things, and I understand the cynicism. I guess one of the things that we have been able to show through using the index is that when people feel better and they can respond more positively to the statements that we look at within our diagnostic we do see a connection between how they feel and the impact they go on to have. So from a commercial results perspective, we see increases in profitability. We see better talent retention, see better sales. We hear stories about people wanting to join a team because of the reputation that team's got, and that, for us is what thriving means.

Jimmy:

Yeah. And my cynicism Caroline is, is less about the principle of th thriving.'cause I think it is absolutely what we would want to do. The experience I've seen of thriving as being an an HR initiative, almost saying, you should thrive. You must thrive. Whereas actually I think what you're talking about is the principle of it, as opposed to an initiative that gets pushed out saying, we're now going to thrive.

Caroline:

Yeah, so I think, I think it's a two-way street. So I think the organizational conditions that we are part of contribute hugely to whether we are able to thrive or not. But we look at our Thrive and Grow index looks at thriving through the dimension of steal. how well am I able to thrive and how do I create those conditions and I guess get in the driving seat of my ability to thrive? How well do we create the conditions to thrive and grow together? So what does that look like in terms of all the teams I'm part of? And then how well does the organization enable thriving?

Jimmy:

And in particular, you, again, share with us some of, what you found around, how do, how do I thrive?, How can I correct the conditions and how can I take some ownership for that? Now, I know you've mentioned. And PhD and research and stuff like that. And James is chomping at the bit for that, all that sort of stuff. So what has your research showed you so far?

Caroline:

Yeah, well our index itself, we've been running for nearly four years now. And really sadly, the area of self, so the dimension of self, which explores how well am I thriving, is consistently the lowest performing dimension wherever we go. And the particular statement that jumps out is the only 6% of us can say that we always show ourselves the same level of kindness as we do to others without any sense of guilt. And I recognize this might be playing into that cynic in you now is, which is, you know, can we really show ourselves the same level of kindness as we do to others?

Jimmy:

So actually, Caroline,, that doesn't bring out the synica at all because I do think that. It's massively overlooked. And people in organizations, particularly leaders, will worry about how do they look after their team, not really realizing that they need to look after themselves first.'cause if you are not fit, healthy, well, focused, relaxed, whatever it is, how can you possibly think you can care for others and, and look after others and, and create an environment for others?'Cause you, you can't keep giving more of yourself. You've got to refuel yourself, aren't you?

Caroline:

Absolutely. And I think there's a number of different reasons why that happens. So I think part of it is systemic, it's cultural, it's part of the work world that we've kind of grown up in, which is, well, no, you know, we stiff up a lip here and we've got to look after everybody else, and we've got to look after the bottom line and let's not worry about ourselves. And you know, I, I grew up in an amazing organization, but even still faced. Challenges with my ability to lead myself effectively because I was so busy looking after everyone else around me and nearly hit burnout. And so I'm personally really passionate about the dimension of self because I recognize the impact that that had, not just on the team I was leading at the time but also on my friends and family. If you aren't thriving at work from a kind of self perspective, then the impact that that has on so many other parts of your life is, is quite, profound.

Speaker 2:

As well as recording this podcast, we help individuals, teams, and entire organizations achieve outstanding results.

Speaker 3:

If you'd like to find out more about how we can help you, please get in touch email, either jimmy@ajodowell.com or James at ajo dunwell com.

Jimmy:

What else does the data tell you then, Caroline?

Caroline:

So the other really interesting point is, is that, so there's this idea that when we look at self, we say that we are not scoring that particularly highly, and particularly this idea of showing ourselves the same level of kindness as we would to others.

Jimmy:

Yeah.

Caroline:

But one of the other attributes that we look at is collaboration. And the statement that we get delegates to respond to is, I don't just accept we're all different. truly value the difference people bring. Now that often scores quite high. So what you start to see is this real tension between, I'm really valuing difference in others, but actually I'm not standing back and able to value the difference in myself and recognize what I need to thrive at work. I think there's another really interesting point around that, which is when we look at the dimension of self we start to look at the scores overall and look for patterns in the data. We start to see that those people who are able to score themselves highly in the self dimension. Also score their ability to thrive in the context of others and the collective. So within the context of the organization really well as well. So exactly to your point. You know, if you know how to bring your best version of you to work, you are much more likely to be resilient and be able to deal with all the challenges that are thrown at you every day. And the impact that you have, or if you are a leader or a manager on people around you is so much more positive too. You bring that best version of yourself, you've got energy to deliver, and therefore the organization benefits too.

Jimmy:

And one thing you mentioned there was, the, the leading yourself. And I, I really like that as a, a concept because, sometimes self care and all that sort of stuff can seem all a bit, a, a bit wooly, whereas actually leading yourself, that, that makes it quite, it makes it quite tangible, doesn't it? And it, and it, and it, and you see it as a continuum and as an extension of leading others lead yourself that enables you to lead others.

Caroline:

absolutely.

James:

So there's a little bit of what was the phrase I was told once you can't change others, you can only change yourself. I suppose this plays into that a wee bit. Does it?

Caroline:

Yeah, it absolutely does. So I think. There's a couple of things I would say here is one is, how can we help people to build that level of self-awareness about what thriving looks like for them? You both told me slightly different stories about what thriving looks like for you. So how can we start that dialogue? And then as a leader, how do you start inviting other people to have those conversations with you as well? and what we do through the diagnostic is it helps us to pinpoint certain statements that we are noticing. That then help us think about what, what, so what do we do about that then? And have more meaningful conversation.

James:

I'm looking at this and thinking, well, if my staff aren't thriving, then they're not giving me everything they could give me. Right. So as a manager, it is absolutely in my interest. For my staff to be thriving, loving what they're doing.'cause I know they're not. That's the way I get the best outta them. but people don't see it that way, I don't think, you know, you're not here to have fun and so is there an element of getting people to realize themselves, that they have to thrive at work, to get the most outta the people who work for them? Just see where I'm coming

Caroline:

Yeah. I think it's about bringing a language in that people can relate to, which is why I think when you talk about thriving and we started here, it's quite broad brush. It's a word that's out in the ether. people have different relationships with it. think when you start to get into actually conversations, and we use the word joy quite a lot.

James:

Hmm.

Caroline:

what does joy mean for you? And people start to come alive and tell us the things that light them up. And we are not talking happy clappy stuff. Here we are talking about what gets you out of bed every day. What's some of the language that you can take down to a kind of more, Imagine we're at the pub and we're having a drink together. What are some of the conversations that we'd have that help us get to know each other as human beings, to really get under the skin of what helps us to thrive? And I think the self element that awareness that. You can get into the driving seat of it and you can influence some things. As a manager, I would want to see the whole picture because there's certainly things I can influence across the spectrum as a manager about what we might do differently and how we work together as a team. But if we are focusing on self, then I think there's a few things that we would say, actually, here's some really big top tips. You know, if we were to say kind of three or four things to do, that might be really useful.

James:

I think Joy's a really interesting word, actually. I mean, most joyful job I, you know, I loved it. I was interesting problems, interesting people. I used to drive halfway across the country to get there. It was fantastic. But the opposite is also true. I've had the job and I once said, oh, this place just sucks the joy out of me. And again, why would you want to work in a place like that? So I do. Yeah, I totally get

Jimmy:

You shared with us a a scary statistic about people feeling moments of joy in their working life.

Caroline:

Yeah, that's right. So, you know, when we are looking at thriving, we look at joy and only 12% of us can say that we always look back on our week and find moments of joy in every day. And we are not saying is the whole day joyful. Moments of joy is what we're asking people to respond to. and I love how you've just described that because if we can start getting individuals to have conversations about, you know, what jobs have you done that lit you up? of the jobs when you look back on your day and you felt like the day went really, really quickly'cause you loved. Bits of it, you know, what were those elements in the day and how can we help individuals to find ways of more of those things into what they do?

Jimmy:

I think the use of the word joy is interesting as well because I think it's very British as in we have an emotional band that is like that, you know, we we're always in that band and, and actually things like thriving and joy actually force you out of that. And so I think it, it does force you to, to aspire to have more than works. Okay. And you touched on it earlier somebody said to me very recently, you know, work should be a source of vitality, not a cause for a daily recovery. That's how a lot of it is, you know, when you're doing a job that you don't get joy from ever, at the end of the day you come home and you need to, have a nap or something. When you're doing a job that you're thriving in, you come home, you've got loads of energy.

Caroline:

Yeah,

James:

It is the gin and tonic index.

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

How much, what proportion of a bottle do you drink when you get home? It's not a good sign, is it?

Jimmy:

No, definitely not. But I can see at an organizational level, thriving. If you had an organization that's thriving, it's gonna be performing well, people are going to be enjoying to being, being there, at a leadership level, a team level, if you can create that environment. But what are, you know, we're talking a a bit now about self and how do I. Thrive myself. How do I lead myself to this thriving environment that, that actually we should all have the right to, to have and aspire to have. So from your research and your experience, can you just share with us some of your top tips for for thriving yourself?

Caroline:

So I think one of the statements we look at is I get up each day with a sense of purpose and I go to bed each night feeling my day has included meaningful work. So that plays into this idea that I described from the PhD around actually people want progress and progression. So I think the first thing that I would say is actually. How do you get a bit brave and really start asking yourself the difficult questions like, what do I really want? Tony Robbins says, setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible. You know, I'd say like, get intentional about the goals that you are setting yourself really work hard to think about, if thriving is all about vitality and learning, what energy do you have? For the goals that you've set yourself today, know, if you were to mark those goals out of 10 and say how excited are you about them? And you were to ask that of your own goals or those of your team members, you know, what's the stories they're building around those goals? smart for example, is a great framework, but it still might not bring you joy. So if that goal was to bring you joy, what would be different about it? What ribbon would you wrap around it? That would make you feel excited by it. And I think that's about helping individuals, first of all, understand what does make them thrive, what gives them joy every day? then, you know, if you are a manager or a leader, begin conversations with people that says, oh, and how is, to me some times when you felt like that at work and how can we fine tune or tweak some of the things that you are working on to weave more of that in? I think it's a bit about kind of thinking, how do I get clear on where am I going? What's my why in life? What's my purpose, what drives me? it doesn't have to be something really big and lofty. It could be I want to see my team smiling every day. It could be that simple. But actually, if that is kind of really, really important to you, how do you get more intentional about the way that you set your goals around it?

James:

You said which really just resonated for me. That's bad. It resonated for me. You can tell I worked for an American company for a while, can't you? It resonated. Now your point about smart goals, right? So yeah, I've had smart goals rammed down my throat for God, 30 years.

Caroline:

Mm-hmm.

James:

Nobody's ever really said, do you give a damn

Jimmy:

Yeah.

Caroline:

Yes.

James:

And that's really quite interesting, isn't it? So you've got these entire organizations, which. Have these frameworks, but nobody really cares if anybody's excited by it. And are you surprised when people are, yeah. Don't

Caroline:

And I,

James:

about

Caroline:

and I think, you know, it's, this is courageous stuff. Like to have these conversations as a manager with the people that work for you is brave because they might go, no, actually, it doesn't make me, it doesn't make me energize. It doesn't excite me. it's not about saying, oh, change your goal completely. It's. How could we tweak this? What could we do differently with it? But similarly, you know, it's looking yourself in the mirror and saying, if this doesn't really excite me, what can I change within this?

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Speaker 4:

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Jimmy:

What else would you tell people to, to think about if they want to look after themselves and thrive at work?

Caroline:

So continuing the theme of courage and progress,, this is a courageous journey. and so many of us then get into doing the do every day and get into that. Trap of languishing or stagnation. I would say that the second thing is all about how do you really start owning your development? and how do you change up some of the things that you're doing? So it might be that you proactively. Think, gosh, I'd like to get to the next level in this organization, but I'm gonna be brave and go and have a conversation with my boss and say, I really want to be here, but I want to understand how you see my performance Where do I need to get to? Where am I now? And so I can start to join the dots. you know, Bernadette Dwyer, she says, you can accidentally build the kind of career you want, or you can create it on purpose. And so, once you've got clear about the goal itself, you've gotta make movement towards that goal every day. So I think it's about, you know, really taking ownership for it. And if your line manager is not having a conversation with you about it. Be a bit brave and say, you know, I'm really keen to understand what I'm doing here. And again, if you're constantly being pushed back, it might be a signal to you that you're not working somewhere that's going to equal what thriving looks like for you. Not easy conversations to have. You know, another huge theme that comes out of the index in our research is that people aren't having those really

Jimmy:

Yeah.

Caroline:

conversations that are so necessary in the workplace today to not just promote thriving but to make sure that we are moving forward in all shapes of what, you know, all areas of what we're doing. But I'd like to cut across that though. That's, I So you say they're brave conversations, but they bloody shouldn't be. Excuse my language. Right. But that's half the problem. If you think it's a brave conversation'cause of the organization you are working in and the boss that you've got. Mm.

James:

Well, you're probably not gonna thrive in that organization anyway'cause it's not the sort of organization which promotes that way of thinking,

Caroline:

there's a couple of things in there. We are, I guess we're speaking from a position of perhaps privilege where we might be able to have agency to make those choices and decide where else to go. you don't, and you feel that because of your personal circumstances, your inner job where you know you can't do anything else, then what things could you personally take ownership of and change? It might be really simple things like, could you choose to walk a different way to work? Could you inject a bit of, thriving into your own day? And I'll come onto this in 0.3, which is around, how do you build that personal resilience? But switch things up a little bit. Who else could you go and build connections with if for you, human connection is something that really stimulates your ability to thrive. So what are the small things that you can pepper into your day that don't drastically change what you are doing, but enable you to walk away and go? Yeah, I did think there was a few more moments of joy today. So there's lots and lots of small things we can do. It might be, you know, I get up 15 minutes earlier to watch the sunrise and I put my phone down and I don't doom scroll, but it's that building that self-awareness of what are some of the things that I'm doing to myself that stop me thriving. I live and breathe this stuff because I need it too. And I've definitely found myself in places where I've worked out what I need to thrive. Like I need fresh air and and exercise in the morning. And without that, I definitely don't make such good decisions. I'm not so eloquent at work. I get tired faster. I can also find myself doom scrolling in the morning or getting straight onto my laptop and doing something. And it's like, how do you, do you be a best friend to yourself in that situation? And find the courage to say, do you know what I'm actually, I know this really matters, and half an hour to myself in the morning going to make me much more productive at work, and everyone else will benefit much more. And it's not selfish. Going back to that point about showing myself the same level of kindness. It's not selfish, it's actually. Promoting not just me, but everybody else to thrive to.

Jimmy:

I think your point's a, a good one, Caroline, take ownership for it. Don't be passive, whether it is having the conversations about your development, whether that's promotion or learning or whatever.

Caroline:

Yeah.

Jimmy:

if you can't do anything in that realm, it's just, well, how can I make my life a little bit better? How can I create the, environment around myself that means I can thrive?'cause you can't control certain things, but there are a lot of things you can control. I mean, your examples are a really good one. I. I have to take the dogs out every morning to go to the the loo, and I used to take my phone down with me. I used to, scroll for 10 minutes and while they were doing their business. Now I, I don't take my phone, I just stay off and enjoy the moment in the fresh air. And then later on I go into the world of work and whatsoever is going on in the world. But it's just like creating that little space for yourself can make a big difference.

Caroline:

It does. And when you say big difference, what's different for you when you do that? Jimmy?

Jimmy:

I just, I find that the, the weight of the world doesn't come straight down on me. I, I haven't seen the latest email from someone annoying or from, you know, what antics trumps up to, or whatever it is. So I'm more set up and then by the time I get into any of that in the day, I'm in a better frame of mind.

Caroline:

And I think one of the things that you've just pinpointed there is like, you know what? If you are a leader of someone else and you are doing those things, be open about it

Jimmy:

I.

Caroline:

well, because the. Impact that that has and the permission it gives other people to think about their own personal thriving is really, really powerful. We've heard stories of leaders who perhaps do those things that go, oh, well I don't, you know, I won't tell everybody that. I won't tell people that I'm going for a walk at lunchtime because I don't wanna look like I'm not around. actually the flip of that is, if you are transparent and open about it, how much more powerful is it to you for you to go? Do you know? I know that if I take. Half an hour in the morning and I won't have my phone with me. I'm gonna be so

Jimmy:

Yeah,

Caroline:

productive and I'll be able to be so much more supportive to you because I'm gonna come in in a really great frame of mind. And what do you need to do that,

James:

Talked about being intentional in your goal setting. We've also talked about owning your development, but what else is there? Then you mentioned three things.

Caroline:

Yeah, I think the final bit is about that sense, and we've started to go there around building resilience and accountability in yourself. So those small habits that keep you able to maintain, I guess. courageous journey that you're going on, looking after yourself and, and learning to thrive. So, and I think that resilience is both mental and physical. So, we are huge fans of physical intelligence. We've got 50 trillion cells in our body, about 400 chemicals surging through our bodies at any one time. And yet we spend a lot of time thinking, not noticing what our bodies are telling us and what rich sources of data they're giving us. And so a few things that I would really encourage in this space. So one is. of self-reflection. So where are you reflecting on your day? How are you in your morning walk thinking about what will make today great and how are you spending a few minutes at the other end of the day thinking what brought me joy today? Where did I thrive? What did I do well? Really important I think, to celebrate the good things. There's a, a great book the Gap in the Gain by Benjamin Hardy, and he says, if you focus on what, what you lack, you lose what you have. If you focus on what you have, you gain what you lack. And I think there's something really. Lovely there about,, are you measuring the good things that you've done and the progress that you've made, or are you obsessing about the things that haven't worked so well? So I'd definitely say some self-reflections really important. We use something called the six minute Diary. I was introduced to it by somebody who coached me. I found it a real game changer in helping me understand myself really well, but just some journaling prompts on, what would make today great. And then at the other end of the day, you know, what did I do? service of that, what worked really well and what could I do even better tomorrow? Just helps you make those marginal gains. And then there's some physical stuff, how are you nurturing your physical state? so that might be about noticing for example, how you are showing up. Before I came onto this podcast today, in true transparency, I did a bit of dancing and shaking with my daughter who's on her school holidays in the kitchen because. I can really feel how that changes my state and gives me some energy and my fingertips start to tingle and that's sending my mitochondria all around my body in a really powerful way. There's something that we do in physical inte intelligence called the power pose. So, if you are going into a meeting and you're feeling a bit nervous and you want to put your best self across, think about how a runner starts a race or ends a race at the Olympics. They stand there with their arms high, they're a winner. Their bodies open and they're injecting all sorts of positive chemicals like oxytocin, which we need for connection, like testosterone, which we need for confidence. Serotonin, which is really important for self-esteem around our bodies. And so there's lots of different things that we can start to by getting into the driving seat of our own body, start to notice what helps us to feel. Better and then perform better. I think the really simple one, which is something we all have access to, I think we take about 50,000 breaths a day and we are very unconscious of that breath because it's something that our body does just really naturally for us. It's free. know, if we can do some paced breathing, if we can learn to box, breathe. There's lots of great apps like Headspace that help you think about how do I slow down my breathing? There's a lot of scientific evidence that says that that. more we do these things, we enhance not just our how we feel physically, but our cognitive problem solving capability increases significantly. And so these things that you touched on, wellbeing when we talked about self, but these things are, know, they shouldn't be classified as separate to thriving. I think they should be integral to what we do. All of this stuff is not, you know, a bit of wellbeing on the side is not enough. It's like how do you weave it in really consciously into everything that you

Jimmy:

I think we've we've covered your three key areas and you've done a, an amazing job there, Caroline, of TA giving it very simple, purpose, manage your development, building resilience, and then you've given us about 20 under each one of how we could do it. So thank you for that. That's really a really useful. Anything else that you'd like to cover today around, how individuals thrive?

Caroline:

I think. If I was gonna finish on anything, I'd just say, you know, from a self perspective, it's about really looking yourself in the mirror and starting to build a better relationship with yourself. Understand yourself, and if you are a manager or a leader, don't just understand yourself, but think really consciously about what self do I want to bring and how do I get really curious about what makes everybody else in my team tick too, in that respect.

Jimmy:

Thanks. And James, what's your key takeaways?

James:

a bit of a, two, you know, when you have an aha moment, it's usually one of those things, which is so blindingly obvious. You think, why the hell did I think of that earlier? But actually, if you're not enjoying yourself at work, why the bloody, how would you think your team are enjoying themselves? Yeah, it's just, it's. Yeah, obvious. If you are showing up and you're miserable as sin, it rubs off. Right? So it's, yeah.

Caroline:

Nickname.

James:

Yeah. Manage yourself. I think that's a very good point. The other one was just, it was something you said, Jimmy, but you, Trump, I used to get so wound up about Trump. I've been watching YouTube and I've been listening to podcasts and I've just come to the conclusion I can't do anything about it. There's no point in listening to it. And, I feel ever so much better. So there are things which you just, you know, don't worry about the stuff you can't change. pick your battle.

Caroline:

Find an accountability partner in each other, you know, or people around you. So, you know, it's hard to commit to going out for a walk every day, but if you ask somebody at home to help you or at work to help you think about, you know, how do I, if you notice me on my phone, put it down how do you encourage me to go and have some of those brave conversations that I might not have had? That can be really helpful as well.

Jimmy:

Finally from me, I get the concept, the principle of thriving a lot better now. And I think Simon Cynic said about fulfillment, it's very similar. Fulfillment is a, is a, a right at work, not a privilege. And I think a thriving is the same way we should be. Thriving at work. It's, it's what we should aim and aspire to do. And I love your point about yeah, leading yourself. So thinking about how am I gonna do that for myself once I'm thriving? I can help others thrive. You can't

Caroline:

Yeah,

Jimmy:

expect everyone to thrive around you. Like James says, if you, you know, if you're giving out your energy, people around you ain't thriving. That's just simple as that.. And if people wanna find out more about thriving and how they go about thriving and the work you do, the best place to to do that?

Caroline:

Oh, that's brilliant. Thank you, Jimmy. So you can find, out all about us at ww dot Thrive and grow index.com. That's the word. And spelled a ND, not with a a abbreviation. So the Thrive and Grow index.

Jimmy:

don't worry. We'll put the, we'll put the link in the a in the show notes as

Caroline:

So, and we also have a LinkedIn page, so you can find us on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn, Caroline Mabon. You can find Compassionate Cultures and also the Thrive and Grow Index. So any of those routes you can find us. It's our massive ambition to get thriving as a KPI on the scorecards of organizations all around the world so thank you for having me along to be able to talk about it and to raise its profile because, you know, the more organizations take thriving seriously, the more, not only individuals will thrive, but they will thrive from a commercial business results perspective as well. And that's only a good thing.

Jimmy:

And we better stop there. Karen. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. You mentioned the word KPI, and we'll be here for another 20 minutes if we let James get involved in that KPI discussion. So let's draw a line there and thank you for joining us today.

James:

Thank you very much. Super. Speak to you later.

Jimmy:

Thanks everyone.

James:

Cheers now.

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James Lawther

Co-host
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Jimmy Barber

Co-host
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Caroline Mabon

Guest