Joy at Work Isn’t Optional for Managers Who Want Engaged Teams | Tessa Kampen

We read the book Love + Work By Marcus Buckingham so you don't have to!

Can you really love your job - or is that just wishful thinking? In this episode, Desiree and guest Tessa Kampen unpack Love + Work by Marcus Buckingham and what it means for new leaders trying to build careers that actually light them up.

Show Notes:
Last week we talked about redefining leadership with Craig Denison - how breaking the mold can make you a stronger, more authentic leader.

This week, we’re asking a question many leaders are afraid to face:

What if you’re succeeding... but in the wrong thing?

In this conversation, Tessa Kampen joins Desiree to break down the lessons inside Marcus Buckingham’s Love + Work and what every leader needs to know about burnout, joy, and doing work that matters.

If you're constantly putting out fires, questioning your path, or wondering why you feel so disconnected even in a “good” job - this episode will hit home.

Spoiler: Joy at work isn’t optional. It’s strategic.

By the time you finish listening, you’ll discover:

• How to identify your “red threads” (and why they’re crucial to career longevity)
• Why only loving 20% of your job can drastically reduce burnout
• What leaders can do today to create more joy and connection on their team

When you finish listening, we'd love to hear your biggest takeaway from today’s episode. Find us on LinkedIn, and share what hit home for you!

 Take 30 seconds to ask your team what part of their job they love most - and what they wish they could do more of. The answers might surprise you - and help you lead more effectively.

Guest & Additional Links:
Connect with Desiree and Tessa on LinkedIn
Grab a copy of

Connect With Desiree on Linkedin
Buy the book - Taking Intentional Action: How to Choose the Life You Lead

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Coachin...

Transcript

Desiree Petrich (00:03.298)
Hey Tessa, I can't wait to talk to you about Love Plus Work and you're actually the one who recommended this book to me. So first off, I would just love to hear why this book? What is it that impacted you about this book at the time that you read it that makes you feel like it's a good recommendation for people?

Tessa Kampen (00:19.941)
So I was reading a lot of his books, actually. I tend to go to secondhand shops all the time looking for books. And I discovered, think, I'm looking at my bookshelf right now, Strengths, Strengthfinder, or one of his strengths ones, first, something your strengths, anyway, can't remember. But I found his first book, read it, and then I just was like eating up anything Marcus Buckingham.

And I think it was at Maxwell Leadership, actually, where I was, where someone said, have you ever read Love Plus Work? And I didn't know that he had put that book out at the time, but I'm a huge believer of leaning into your strengths. So I thought, well, let's look at this new one that he wrote and absolutely fell in love with it.

Desiree Petrich (01:09.686)
Is there a specific overall message that this book gives that if someone were needing help with something, you'd say, this is it because it helps with this? What would that statement be?

Tessa Kampen (01:23.387)
I think it would be the overall message I think that he's really saying is that we could love our job. At the end of the day, he's saying we should love our job. And I think that most of us have been trained to perhaps settle for our jobs. And I think he's showing us that love actually belongs inside of workplaces. And I think there's a lot of people out there right now who are struggling with finding joy.

in their work with finding love in their work. think a lot of people choose work based on how much money they're going to make. Even the subjects that they were really strong in in school and they don't really consider, do I actually love that thing? And they go and take a job and they just settle the rest of their life. And I think what I love about this book is Marcus Buckingham is really challenging us.

to consider the love aspect of it. And I think if people did that, we may even see a decrease in burnout inside of organizations. I don't know. What do you think?

Desiree Petrich (02:26.37)
Well, it's interesting. So he has this quote, it's about halfway through the book, and he said, in any job, sustained excellence without love is impossible. Love isn't a luxury, it's a necessity. And I always say things like authenticity and vulnerability, they're buzzwords for a reason, kind of like love in the workplace is a buzz term right now because so many people are lacking it, but it isn't.

a luxury, it's a necessity because there was a statistic in here too that I thought was really interesting. It's from the Mayo Clinic and it said that if you don't love at least 20 % of your work, you're far more likely to experience burnout, have accidents on the job, start to medicate yourself with substances like drugs, alcohol, gambling, et cetera. If you don't love at least 20 % of the work that you're doing. And I thought to myself, I wonder if I were to go to any of the teams that I work with and say,

What percentage of your job would you say that you love? It would probably be a lot lower than that, if I'm being honest.

Tessa Kampen (03:27.237)
Yeah, and you know what? I often will quote that. I didn't know where it came from, but I remember hearing that quote. And I will say to them, you know, you only have to do 20 % of work that you love in a day to decrease burnout, I think by 75 % or maybe I'm off on the number, but I know it's high. And people are usually shocked because they're like, I don't even think I do 20 % of work that I love, right? And the question is always,

Well, how do we do that if we don't love any of our work? And then, you know, I laugh, but it makes me really sad. If you don't even love 20 % of the work that you do, I will actually look at them and say, then why are you here? Why are you here? You're trading your life to do something that doesn't bring you joy. And I often look at the leader. I'm not telling your people to leave your work here. That's not what I'm doing, right? But if you can't even love 20 % of your work,

I think you need to go and look for another job.

Desiree Petrich (04:29.486)
Well, then I started to ask the question and he ends up talking a lot about this in his book, specifically the last two chapters. He talks about how we can shift things even from the early ages of elementary and high school and college so that we're not settling for those things. I know that this isn't what this is about, but I got so fired up reading the chapters about how parents are putting so much pressure on the kids and teachers are putting so much pressure on kids for standardized tests that

Tessa Kampen (04:45.18)
Mm-hmm.

Desiree Petrich (04:58.338)
don't actually prove intelligence of any sort. And they're teaching us geometry and statistics and algebra. And then we don't put even nearly the amount of work into figuring out why do we like the things that we like? Why do we hate the things that we hate? And so it just got me really fired up because I'm sitting in this place of where do I send my daughter to kindergarten? And it seems like the most important question in the whole world. But when I read this, I'm thinking to myself, am I asking her the right questions and allowing her the space to do things that

she loves before I put her into a place that's gonna essentially standardize her. And I got off on a tangent here, but a lot of this book is about how can we set people up for success in the early term and how can we actually create that space in the workplace so that they, they, as in us, as workers, get to do the things that we love on a daily basis.

Tessa Kampen (05:31.793)
Mm-hmm.

Tessa Kampen (05:48.953)
Yeah, I, you know, I totally relate to that. And I was speaking to a bunch of students at a career day a few weeks ago, and so many of them have no idea what they want to do, right? They're lost. And I thought, okay, I'm to come in and I'm going to speak to this strengths and love and get them to think about, you know, what are you doing when you lose track of time? And I remember in one of the sessions, I there was a young woman and I said to her, do you know what you want to do? And she said, I have no idea.

And I said to her, well, what do you do that makes you completely lose track of time? Like you absolutely love doing it. And she said, I don't know. And it got me thinking like now that you're bringing this up, I don't think we ask those questions. I don't think we even allow our children to think about those questions because we're so focused. Now I'm in Canada, you're in the US and I know it's a very different

the schooling is very different, right? Like you're trying to get into that particular university and there's a lot of difference between Canadian universities and American, but it's the same thing here. The parents are still pushing them towards, you need to go to school and you need to get academics and that. And in my family, I have really tried to say, what lights you up? Like my son is 17, he's graduating this year.

he's going to go into the trades. And he said to me a few months ago, he says, you know what, mom, I want to do something that I absolutely love the rest of my life, even if it means I don't make as much money. And that was like a proud mama moment for me, because I have been saying that to them their whole life. Right. It's like, I want you to do something really, really great with your life. And I want you to work really, really hard. But you don't want to trade your life doing something just because, you know, it's paying you.

X amount of dollars. Don't look at that. Like really look at what lights you up. And I think in schools we need to start having those conversations. But more importantly, the teachers need to pay attention to when the students light up because that girl couldn't answer it. But I guarantee if I asked a friend or if I asked a teacher what lights her up, like what do you see her doing? Maybe they could have given her some insight.

Tessa Kampen (08:06.511)
And perhaps if she started thinking about that, she could have started to cultivate that. Now she's in grade 10, so she still has time, but I think this message needs to reach people who have influence over others to help them really think into like, at the end of the day, what do I love to do?

Desiree Petrich (08:24.728)
We talked about this on one of the last episodes you were here when we were talking about the hiring process of not just trying to fit people into the standardized, I keep using that word because it hit me really hard when I was finishing the book yesterday, the standardized job description that we've created with the expectation that they're going to fit into it and then not understanding or even asking what is it that lights you up? There was a topic in the book, The Red Threads, which

Tessa Kampen (08:29.691)
huh.

Desiree Petrich (08:53.672)
didn't impact me as much as it seemed to have impacted you because we've been working together a lot and I've heard you use that term. And I always think it's really interesting when you read a book, two people can read the exact same text and come away with something completely different based on what it is they needed to read. So I didn't highlight anything about red threads, which I find so interesting in the entire book. So tell us what is this concept of a red thread and how can we use it in the workplace to not only

Tessa Kampen (08:53.787)
Yeah.

Desiree Petrich (09:21.29)
know ourselves better, but to help the people around us.

Tessa Kampen (09:24.487)
that was probably my favorite takeaway of the whole book actually is the red thread. And I had this intention, I haven't done it yet, but I need to do it of any time I speak about strengths, bringing in red threads and giving it to people. Because in the book, know, Marcus talks about how if we can even just weave in, so if we go back to that 20 % of work that you love and work that brings you joy, if people can weave in red threads, which is things that light you up, things that you love,

throughout the day. So for myself, I'm a connector. I love to connect with people. I know if I'm stuck in my office and I haven't had time to socialize or connect, I can slowly feel my energy decreasing. So in the workplace, if part of love for you is connecting, then throughout the day, you know, finding time to stop and speak to a coworker or picking up the phone and, you know, reaching out to a client just to see how their day is or something like that.

weaving in those red threads, I think, is a way for us to bring in that love. And, you I also loved, I don't know if you remember when, it might be, and sorry if I don't remember when it came in, but when he talked about us being weird, I knew it was that term, weird. When I talk about the red threads, I'll often say to people, okay, tell me something that you love. And people will like yell stuff out, like I love data or.

Desiree Petrich (10:36.216)
Mm-hmm.

Tessa Kampen (10:48.923)
You know, I love fishing or I love, and I'll say, how many of you think one of those is weird? Right? Like how often do we say, you're so weird. You love numbers. And then I get them to embrace that, right? He spells it differently. He's not talking weird as in like how we spell weird, but he says, we're all weird. We all have this thing that we absolutely love and people look at us and they're like, you're weird. And he, and you know, he talks about embracing that weirdness.

And even when I share that with other people, you're weaving in those red threads. Don't be worried about being weird based on what you love because your love is really, let's bring in the six types of working genius maybe, but your love is a form of genius. It's your genius. It's that thing that makes you come alive. And I think it's just, that's what makes us unique. So bringing those red threads is really important into your day, especially if you decrease the burnout.

option or not option but potential.

Desiree Petrich (11:48.514)
Yeah, so I actually, this was one of my like six big takeaways. So find your weird. It's spelled W-Y-R-D and it's an ancient Norse term. The idea that each person is born with a distinct spirit, which is unique to you and guides your love to some things and your loathe or your hate to others. Your weird can grow. It's the areas that you've already displayed natural ease and ability with or your greatest opportunities for growth and learning. So where we struggle at work and school, they're labeled

Tessa Kampen (11:54.279)
Yeah.

Desiree Petrich (12:18.466)
like areas of opportunity or areas of development when in fact the opposite of true, our weaknesses need to be dealt with or that, we can get into this in a minute, but to use your team members to kind of counteract the fact that you're struggling in those areas, but the instinctive loves, the things that we really enjoy doing, those are the places where we actually need to put our time and our dedication and our growth potential into, not the areas where we're already struggling.

because that's what causes the burnout and the frustration and the resentment among team members who maybe are able to do something better than you in an area that you think you're supposed to do better in. Or, you know, I could keep going on and on and on. But that was one of the main things that I took from that book. And it's not just about what do you love, but what do you hate? And I constantly go back to I went into college thinking I'm supposed to be an accountant.

Tessa Kampen (12:55.143)
you

Tessa Kampen (13:05.35)
Yes.

Desiree Petrich (13:10.924)
That's what's gonna get me money. It's what's gonna get me into the administration field in healthcare the easiest. Within one semester, I hated it so much that I was terrified to go to class because I hated it. And I just think if I would have had parents or the expectation that I was supposed to do that thing and I would have just done it because I thought I was supposed to, I would be hating life every single day. And instead, if we can encourage...

each other to recognize those things and pull at the red threads and not be, you know, the things that we don't enjoy, our life can actually get a lot better really quickly. It doesn't take that much.

Tessa Kampen (13:48.359)
Yeah, I agree. And it actually makes me think of one of my favorite quotes from this book is when he says, you the real tragedy isn't failure, it's success in the wrong thing. And I think when we talk about settling, a lot of us are seeing success in the wrong thing. And that wrong thing is affecting our life. I actually just had a conversation with my brother. He called me yesterday and he was just

Desiree Petrich (14:00.142)
don't know.

Tessa Kampen (14:15.941)
We were chatting about stuff and he says, know what, Tessa, I just want to pick up and move. He's super successful. He's only 18 months older than me. You can figure out what that number is, but he is super successful. It's like he woke up yesterday and said, why are we just waking up doing this every single day? He's loved what he's been able to do.

But it's that like you get to a point where it just becomes like you're chasing and you're chasing and you're chasing. And it reminds me of that quote because it's like the real tragedy isn't failure. He hasn't failed, but it's success in the wrong things, which when you're miserable at work, you're bringing leftovers home to your family. Like you are not bringing your best to your family when you're miserable at work, right? You're coming home and you're probably

full of tension and on edge and your kids just want to love on you. And I think, you know, the more that we can love what we're doing. Now, you're not going to love every minute of it. He talks about that, right? You're not going to love every minute of your work. But if you hate it more than you love it, then I think we have a problem. And we see that in a lot of different professions, right? Like, I don't know, name a profession where you feel you're like,

I think everyone hates this job. Is there something that maybe comes to mind for you?

Desiree Petrich (15:43.833)
There's a lot of things that come to mind, but then again, mine are all based off of what I would hate to do. So I'm thinking like someone who does taxes for a living. I mean, I feel like something like we've talked about this in a past episode, but nursing, something that's so hard, it's just truly sometimes heartbreaking on a daily basis. But people can still find that love in it, those pieces that light them up.

Tessa Kampen (15:48.359)
That's true. That's true.

Desiree Petrich (16:10.242)
I don't know exactly where you were going with it, but that's the thing that comes to mind for me is something like hospice care where there is the potential for absolutely no love in it unless you find the thing that brings you joy from it.

Tessa Kampen (16:23.175)
Mm-hmm. Actually, I was thinking nursing because when my husband was a nurse, so he's a nurse practitioner now, but when he was a nurse, he worked with someone who she hated days, but she hated nights less. And so she took all his night shifts. So then he only worked days and she only worked nights. And I remember thinking, you hate days and you hate nights. I think it's time to leave. Like, you're probably burnt out. You've probably devoted, I don't know how old this woman is.

was, but she probably loved being a nurse in the beginning, but it's a very heavy, depending where you work. My husband was working in transplant at the time. So I'm sure she saw a lot of things and eventually it breaks you down. But I think when you get to a point where you're saying, I hate days, but I hate nights a little less, you really should consider doing something you absolutely love or go back to why you came here and can you do that again? And is there love and is there joy in this work?

Because now you're spending the rest of your life finishing out a job completely drained or miserable and that's going to come out of you, right? Like people are going to feel that when they work with you.

Desiree Petrich (17:36.142)
Well, and it's like that sunk cost fallacy of, I've already put in all the years of college, or I've already put in all of this money into student loan debt, or my husband went to four years of engineering school and dropped out because he's like, I don't want to do this. I want to do my own thing. And now he runs a really successful company. And it's like that sunk cost fallacy. If you can't get past the amount of time and money you've put into something and thinking that you owe something to it.

Tessa Kampen (17:41.061)
Yeah.

Tessa Kampen (18:02.053)
Mm-hmm.

Desiree Petrich (18:03.36)
you're never gonna get to a place where you can actually pick something for the joy of it, or maybe even the fun of it, because you're constantly thinking about what you owe to something that maybe served you at the time, but doesn't anymore.

Tessa Kampen (18:16.741)
Yeah, yeah, I know. And it's that realization that you can do that. My husband did the same thing. My brother-in-law did the same thing. And I mean, maybe some of us have those personality styles where we can go, I don't love this and I'm gonna go and do something else. And then other people, know, this sounds, for our listeners right now, you're like, okay, you this sounds really idealistic. You're saying that we could just pick up and go find another job, right? And I want everyone that's listening to know that's,

We understand the reality, we all have to pay bills. And at the end of the day, some people may be working in jobs that really don't bring them joy, but there is no other option. And I guess I'm gonna ask you and put you on the spot, how would you encourage someone like that who said, I have to work here, I don't have another option. And maybe they're a single mom or who knows their situation.

and you're telling me that I have to find work that brings me joy, how can I do that? Are there other ways if you can't find it in the workplace, maybe you've experienced this or something that you can share with our listeners?

Desiree Petrich (19:31.564)
Yeah, and he talks about this in the book too. You can you find your red thread doing things outside of the workplace? And I found mine in, I love to read, I love to exercise. And so I went and taught group fitness at the Y as part of my red thread of needing to galvanize, which Tessa and I are gonna do an episode on the book, Working Genius Later, which is gonna make more sense. But I needed that and didn't necessarily have it in the job I was in at the time. So I went and taught at the Y or-

you know, during COVID when a lot of our responsibilities were taken away because that control was taken away, I would teach live stretching over Zoom, things like that. It's can you kind of create opportunities if you love kids and you happen to work with adults? Can you go and teach softball, you know, coach softball on the side? Just some examples. Can you find a piano so you can practice outside of working hours and just bring in some of that joy into your life? I think

That's maybe one area or route that you could take. But the other question that I would ask for those individuals who claim that they hate their job because maybe they're not doing something within that job that they enjoy. Do you enjoy the people you're working with? Because that is a huge area for whether someone enjoys their job or not. I can't tell you the number of people that have quit a job after their favorite co-worker leaves because the reason they love their job was because of the people that they worked with. And so.

Tessa Kampen (20:42.725)
Tessa Kampen (20:51.791)
Yeah.

Desiree Petrich (20:56.244)
If you don't love the work that you're doing, but either you know it's important and you feel a sense of responsibility to be there because you have that skill or you are the single working mom or dad and you need that job because it pays the bills. Is there another area of that position that you can truly find some joy in? Like if you don't currently get along with your coworker, can you figure out how to get along and actually truly enjoy spending time with them? Is that going to make things better? What are your thoughts on that?

Tessa Kampen (21:26.181)
Yeah, again, it's funny, I'm bringing a lot of stories in about my family, but my son, he's doing a, not an apprenticeship, but he's doing his co-op right now and was hoping he was gonna get hired by this company. And unfortunately, just with the way our economy is working now, right, in construction, there's a lot of construction fields and different trades that are not seeing the type of work that they have before. So anyway, he...

He's like, well, I guess I got to go back and work for Uncle Dave. So my brother-in-law has a landscape company. And I said to him, said, Quinton, I thought you loved working at Uncle Dave's. And he was like, well, I love the people. I love the people. He knows every, my son is a huge, so on the disc scale, he's an I. He meets someone, he falls in love with them right away, remembers their name. He knows everything about them. He just really loves people. And so that's what you're talking about, right? Like he doesn't love going and cutting grass every day.

He doesn't love going and picking weeds every day, but he never comes home and complains about the work because he loves the people he works with and that makes that work bearable, right? So you're right. If someone says, well, I don't love the work I'm doing and my option is I have to stay, like there is no way I can go somewhere else, then yeah, that analogy of that red thread, how can you weave that into your day? What are the things that you do love? Like, I love to help people.

So is there a way for you to help people at work? Maybe that's going to give you enough joy to sustain the work that is draining or finding like those evenings and weekends or lunch breaks and really tapping into things that can at least give you a boost of energy to get through the rest of your day. Because I'm sure you have things that you don't love, right? You and I are both entrepreneurs. We don't have these massive teams that have to do all these things for us, but.

there's other parts of our job that we love so much that we can go and do those things because we know we're gonna get to do the things that really light us up, which brings us back to kind of to the beginning of the conversation. We need to take time figuring out what we love. I think that's the most practical thing is, you know, sit down and really think about like, where are you getting lost in time? And Mark, he talks about that in the book, right? What are you doing when you lose track of time?

Tessa Kampen (23:48.539)
Like what is that thing? And we all have it, but I don't think we pay attention to it because we live in a world of you need to get these KPIs, you need to hit these goals, you need to do this, and it's all very task focused. And I don't think people have time to sit and go, what do I actually love? Like what lights me up?

Desiree Petrich (24:10.018)
Yeah. The leadership game, is something that we both do with teams. They have some questions in there that when I first started working with teams and reading questions like what's something that you could do forever and enjoy it? I have no idea what the actual question says or, you know, what is what is it that you're doing when you do exactly what you feel like you were made to do? And we were in a group of executives and one of them said bird watching and everyone just kind of turned to him. He's this, you know, dressed up suit and tie guy and just no one would have ever expected it.

Tessa Kampen (24:24.295)
Okay.

Desiree Petrich (24:40.224)
And I say, isn't it amazing how one question with one answer can open you up to so much knowledge about a person that you would have never thought to ask about if not for taking the time to ask a simple question, to ask a better question than the ones we've been asking. And so for the leaders, because the assumption is that those listening to this are aspiring or new managers, what it is that I think Tessa and I are trying to get to understand is not only for you,

Not only for you and for your family and for your team, is it important for you to understand these things and to ask about them and to talk about them and to share them vulnerability with the people around you, but it's also important for you to create that space for other people and to ask them the questions and to, if it's within your wheelhouse, can you shift responsibilities a little bit so that they get to that 20 % or more of what it is that they're loving to do?

Or is there something they absolutely hate that someone else would love? Can you shift some of those responsibilities without constantly feeling like you're tied to what the job description you hired for them says? Can you be more flexible than society has kind of told us that we're supposed to be?

Tessa Kampen (25:48.197)
Yeah, and can you imagine working in a place, so this gentleman shares that he loves bird watching, now his team knows, and he's in a really stressful job, and one day he finds a picture that his coworker took of a cool bird, and he says, hey, what is this bird? Like, you like bird watching, now you're also connecting with that team member on something that they love, right? So now, they may not be able to sit all day and watch birds all day, because they have to work.

But now you can have conversations about things that you love. And I don't know about you, but when I talk to someone about something I love, I can just feel my energy. Sometimes my face gets flushed, right? And so you don't even have to be doing that thing that you love. But when you're talking about it and other people are interested in the thing that you love, maybe that's a way for us to get through our day when we're doing something that really doesn't fill us, pays the bills but doesn't fill us.

But maybe we start sharing that to your point with one another on teams, and then we can help one another lean into those loves. Like how cool would that be in an office?

Desiree Petrich (26:54.582)
Yeah, this I think ties this up perfectly as far as what this conversation is about. And it's another quote from the book kind of right towards the end. And it said, power of human nature is that each human's nature is unique. And we have to remember that we have to take the time to recognize that, especially in the workplace, because can we make it standardized? Can we make it boring and strategic and

Yes and yes and might those things help the bottom line? Absolutely. But if our goal is to help people enjoy what they do for the overall goal of the team, we have to understand that each human's nature is unique. And that's what makes us all right. We're all special in the same way because we're all unique in the same way. So I think that at the end of the day, can you ask people these questions? Can you get to know them on that vulnerable level where that trust can be built?

Tessa Kampen (27:41.095)
Yeah.

Desiree Petrich (27:49.588)
not necessarily the transactional trust where you know they're going to do something because you ask them to do it because, but because you know them on a unique, special, weird level.

Tessa Kampen (28:00.485)
Yeah. And this is where, and this is my favorite line that I'll say in any workshop I do is, you you need to get to know the human in front of you. You really need, like we come to work and we do work. And you know, if we bring it back, love plus work, well, there's so much more to Tessa than the work that I do.

And, you know, work needs to be a place where we can show up as humans and talk about things that we love and talk about things in our life and open up and then share even, you know, I'm feeling drained in my work. And, you know, you mentioned this, maybe there's someone on the team who actually finds joy in that. But if you're not having those conversations and we just come to work and do work, then we're never going to get to a point where we get to talk about like, what do I love?

What do I love to do? And how can I bring this into the workplace so that we can create love plus work? And I love that he called it love plus work. We were talking about is it love and work, love plus work? But I think the old school mentality, perhaps our parents or our grandparents, work was not love. It wasn't something you loved. It was something you did that you had to pay the bills so you can support a family.

And I know when I talk to even, you know, elderly friends and neighbors and I talk about this idea of loving my work, it's almost like, that's crazy. Like, how do you love your work? And, you know, I never loved my work and then you hear their story. And I think the younger generation coming in, they want this. They expect this. Yeah. And so if they're coming into your organization as a leader and you're just

Desiree Petrich (29:41.848)
They expect it.

Yeah, yeah, and I.

Tessa Kampen (29:49.275)
putting them to work, they're gonna leave.

Desiree Petrich (29:54.058)
This is a whole nother conversation in itself and I've been trying to wrap it up and I can't because there's so much to be said about it. But you're absolutely right. And it's the conversation around the different generations in the workplace comes back to love plus work. We and this is another quote that I actually read from his book that I wasn't going to bring up, but it speaks to this exactly. And it's that we have to remove the frustration from work by not expecting things from people that they can't give us.

Tessa Kampen (29:55.795)
Yeah.

Desiree Petrich (30:23.288)
that partially comes back to the generational topic, not completely, but in the sense that we want everyone to be like us. And if we're expecting everyone to be like us, we are the ones that are gonna get frustrated, which will in turn turn to frustration for other people. So if we can start to understand people at that base level and expect not what we want from them based on who we are, but based on who they are, it will really change the way that we view people and the way that they work.

Tessa Kampen (30:46.213)
Mm-hmm.

Tessa Kampen (30:51.226)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Desiree Petrich (30:53.452)
Okay, I'm going to stop talking now, otherwise I think we could go for another half an hour. I love this topic. Tessa and I both obviously loved this book. One thing I love about personal development and reading is that you can love a book at the same level, but for very different reasons. And we may read it again 10 years from now and find something completely different to fall in love with as a concept. And that's what I love about reading. That's what I love about books like Marcus Buckingham, Patrick Lynchoni, all the different ones. So we're going to link.

Tessa Kampen (30:55.963)
you

Desiree Petrich (31:21.026)
this book in the comments. If it's something that you're interested in, please go listen. I hope that this gave you a pretty good synopsis of what there is to be taken from that book. So thank you so much for joining us and make sure to go follow Tessa on LinkedIn. Follow me on LinkedIn. Send us a message. What hit the hardest with you? What do you want to hear about next? But just remember that leadership is a privilege, but it's also a huge responsibility and you're the boss now. So what are you going to do with it?