Note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
00:01
And I believe it comes down to leadership and similar to a doctor that has the Hippocratic oath that at the very least we cause no harm. At least you’re not worse after seeing me than you were before you came to see me. Leadership is like a mountain with no top. You have to enjoy climbing it and you’re never going to get there. There’s no arrival. We are either a
00:31
student of the circumstances or a victim of the circumstances. Pick one. It’s not about mandating back to work. It’s about magnetizing back to work, creating an environment where people want to
00:53
This is Dr. Meenal and welcome to Uncover Your Eyes, where we dig into conversations that affect your health, your mind, and our lives. Today, we are going to talk about something that most of us chase, but we rarely pause to understand it. Happiness at work. A research survey from December, 2024 found that 50 % of Americans are not very satisfied with their jobs.
01:23
This is affecting our mental health, our performance, and our purpose. Because it’s not just about clocking in, it’s about showing up for your life. Let’s get into it with Jennifer Barro;;, who has developed programs to help thousands of people. And she is also the upcoming author of a book called, How to Make Work Not Suck. Thank you so much, Jennifer, for being on today. Really appreciate your time.
01:51
Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. Thank you. So, you know, where are the happy people at? I want to say. And like, who’s happy at work and why and how? There are pockets of people. And I tell you, those people that are happy at work are happy because they have great leaders and they work for a company that is aligned with the values on the website.
02:20
Those are the people that are happy at work. And you know, it’s interesting. I had a conversation recently about somebody because as we’ll talk about, I’m sure I have a book coming out, which is essentially the working title originally was happy at work. And now I’m calling it make work not suck more so from a marketing angle. It’s all about the same thing, but I had somebody asking me what, what’s the book about? Tell me, give me the Coles notes. And, and I went through this list of
02:48
of how I think, you we spend so much time at work that it is unacceptable to be in a workplace that is toxic and so stressful and causes us to have anxiety and burnout and mental health, you know, struggles. I don’t think that’s acceptable. And I believe it comes down to leadership and similar to a doctor.
03:17
that has the Hippocratic oath that at the very least we cause no harm. At least you’re not worse after seeing me than you were before you came to see me. And I think leaders need to have that same oath, that same kind of oath that at the very least we make work not suck because people are just trying to make a living. They’re just trying to put food on their table. They’re just trying to pay their bills.
03:43
And we can create an environment where it doesn’t suck to come to work. And in essence, really what we want is for people to be happy and fulfilled and using their strengths and achieving their potential and their goals and realizing even beyond what they thought they could do and beyond the potential they thought they had. Great leadership is about bringing
04:12
the best out of people and elevating people. One of the comments that in this conversation, the gentleman I was talking to, said, but there’s gotta be a time, know, when work, you know, sometimes it’s hard and you just gotta get to it. And I said, no, absolutely. Making work not suck is not about not doing hard things. It’s not about it being easy. We can all do a job that’s difficult. It’s not about, we don’t want necessarily an easy.
04:42
ride, we want to be fulfilled and we can be fulfilled while doing hard things. And he sat back and he thought about that for a second. said, you know, you’re right. It isn’t about it being challenging. It’s about treating people well. It’s about being a better communicator. It’s about treating people in alignment with the values that you profess to have. Right.
05:09
What makes people tick though? Right? Like, I mean, I’ve had three clinics over the years. I have multiple people come and go and I have lots of stuff. I like to say I’m a happy person. I’d like to say that I’m a great leader, but you know, I’m sure there’s things lacking, but I have yet to figure out what makes people tick. Is it appreciation? Is it, you know, finding their strengths and, you know, making them do well in that? Like, how many things do I need to do and what are those things to like, what makes them happy?
05:37
It’s an interesting question that I think the answer has many, layers because you can be the best leader ever and you can be a great communicator and you can have all of the, you know, perks and reviews and celebrations and all the things you can do, all of the best things, all things you’re supposed to do. And still there will be somebody that’s disgruntled or somebody that
06:07
can complain about it. So at the end of the day, sure, there’s always going to be that. You can’t please everyone. And it’s also true that there’s a long list of things that we need to hold ourselves accountable to as leaders that make it, let’s call it increase, that increase the likelihood that you’re going to be fulfilled at work.
06:34
And a fulfilled person is a happier person. And you listed a couple of those things. When we hire people based on their strengths, and again, it to me comes right back to the moment we hire somebody. When you’re sitting in an interview with somebody, and I do workshops even on this, on how to hire the right people and then how to onboard them, because a lot of things happen in that first three months.
07:03
of a person’s tenure in your care that maybe they aren’t getting set up for success, right? Maybe there’s a lot of ambiguity and they’re just trying to do their best, but people just assume that they should know what to do next. So we need to set a system in place where we’re onboarding according to strengths and values. So your strengths and your values are the two secret superpowers that you have to…
07:30
bring people in alignment with the job description and in alignment with the values of the organization. What matters to you? How do you treat each other? How do you communicate with each other? How do you treat your employees? customers? What’s the vibe of the place? You hire and you fire on the alignment in strengths for the role and values with the team and the organization as a whole.
07:59
And to me, when you start with that and not try to retrofit that backwards after six months down the road, when everybody else on your team is complaining about that new person that has a terrible attitude and treats people terribly, right? That’s not when you deal with that person. You deal with that right in the initial interview in the first couple of months, you can tell if somebody is going to be a
08:29
fit or not. And I honestly believe that on our teams, if we are able to be honest with ourselves as leaders, we see those signs early, but we don’t want to really, oh, let’s give them a chance. Yes. Oh my gosh. It always backfires, doesn’t it? 100 % of the time. And I think by then, like you said, the culture becomes toxic to the point where
08:56
your good people leave. I completely agree. How does one become a better leader? How do you try to improve? What are the things that leaders need to improve on? I want to say some of them off the top of my head could be better, more effective communication with your team or regular meetings, but what are some big ticket items that you feel are lacking in the world right now?
09:22
Yeah, what a great question. And again, there’s many layers to that. I took a course years ago and I loved the context that they taught me in this course about being a better leader. They said, leadership is like a mountain with no top. You have to enjoy climbing it and you’re never going to get there. There’s no arrival. So when you’re in a leadership position, similar to like a relationship, you know, you
09:50
There’s always layers of the onion and there’s always ways that you can improve upon the practice. And I like to call it a leadership practice, again, like kind of like yoga, like there’s no perfection, there’s no arrival. You just can get better and you’re gonna have good days and you’re gonna have bad days. For me, the first thing, if you endeavor to be a better leader, the first stop is a look at yourself.
10:20
It’s not a look at other people. It’s a not a look at a blame of a generation of people, for example. It’s not a look at a blame of the government or a blame of the market or the economy. Let’s just stop putting the focus on everything that we can’t control. The first step is to take a look at yourself and your own behavior. Where I always start is to adopt your own sense of
10:47
of understanding what your core strengths are and your core values are. Start there always. And once you have that, you know what you’re going to connect with. You know what’s going to work for you. You know the tools that you even have in your toolkit and the tools that you’re missing. So you hire people that have the strengths that you don’t have and you rely on them.
11:13
The second thing that I think leaders need to do if you endeavor to be a better version of yourself as a leader is radical ownership. It’s on you. If you can own it, you can change it. If you can own it, you can have an effect on it. You can influence it. But again, if you blame it, if you point the finger at other people, if you’re always saying, well,
11:39
we would be fine except for this person or we would be fine except for this situation. There’s no ownership there. You have to own it. Those two things are foundational in my opinion, no matter your industry, no matter what you’re doing, no matter how big your team is, start with your strengths and your values, find out what they are and live by them. Like I have my, teach this and I also live by this. Like I have my strengths and my values, sticky notes on the side of my computer and I consult them all day, every day.
12:09
on every challenge, every decision I have to make. This is my alignment. This is how I am the best version of myself is by aligning myself with my core strengths, my core values. And then it’s on me. As long as I can look at the situation and say, okay, what did I do here? How did I impact the result that we have? This person has a really bad attitude. Okay, how am I contributing to this?
12:38
Maybe it’s that I hired them in the first place and I shouldn’t have done that. I got into fear about needing to hire quickly. We’re too busy. We needed somebody fast and I hired them and I brought them in and they made the wrong decision. Okay, own it. I love a good moment where I’m like, oh, that was me. Because then the greatest thing is that you can learn from it. So I say to all leaders have that
13:06
that level of radical ownership that’s just what, if it’s happening under the roof here, it’s on me, it’s on my shoulders. And then once you can do that, then you can learn and grow and navigate. Something very practical that I think leaders can do right out of the gate to be better leaders is something that you just mentioned. And it’s this idea of kind of check-in meetings. People love real-time feedback.
13:36
So not necessarily this quarterly review or this annual review. These are daily, weekly check-ins. How are you doing? What’s working for you? What’s not working for you? How can I help? What do you need from me? This doesn’t need to even be a scheduled meeting. It can be. If you’ve got managers working under you, I would suggest you schedule a
14:04
least at minimum a weekly 15 minute, very simple check-in. And I would suggest that it doesn’t happen even in the office space. Go walk and get a cup of coffee. That’s your check-in. You just go walk down the street, grab a cup of coffee. What’s on your plate? What do you need from me? How are things going? It’s pretty simple. And in that 15 minutes, when you do it on the weekly,
14:31
Not only do you get that information, which is very useful. So you catch it before it turns into something that bites you in the butt, but you’re also are building relationship. You’re building trust. You’re fostering connection with that person. And if they’re in a management position under you, they are likely taking care of the people working your frontline, running your business. So you need that 15 minutes. People say, oh, I’m too busy for the 15 minutes.
15:01
I heard a speaker talking about this the other day, Marcus Buckingham, a video popped up on him. He’s the strengths guy. I love all of his content. I would say to leaders go and read all of his stuff because it’s all great and based on data and surveys and so much information. And he said, if you don’t have 15 minutes to check in with one of the people that work for you or five people that work for you in a week, you don’t have 15 minutes per person. You shouldn’t be a leader. That’s what he said.
15:31
It’s one of those principles, I think, too, where the piper gets paid. What that means is if you’re not if you’re not investing the 15 minutes on the front end, you’re going to invest hours on the back end, hiring a new person or fixing the problem or remedying this unhappy person working for you. It costs you way less at the beginning than it does at the end. It’s like our health. You know, I can eat well today.
15:59
or I can pay for it down the road. And it’s a lot worse on the other end. You know what? I actually have heard you say this, you know, about going out for a cup of coffee before. And it’s funny because we did implement it. So I do listen to you, but we did implement it like nine months ago or so. And I’m going to say like, sometimes you discover things about employees that you would have never thought, right? That, know, maybe they have something going on at home that’s affecting such and such, you know,
16:25
One employee was like, I’ve got it. I really like seeing my kids play a certain sport after work. And if I’m not out at that time, that’s why I rushed, that’s why I do this. And so we’re like, okay, now that we know that, we can actually shift your hours such that you’re more comfortable and can leave appropriately and you won’t be stressed all day. So I think those hidden hidden things come out that make them unhappy. And you’re right, it’s at a cup of coffee, not in the work setting. So.
16:51
you we, we listen to you and I think it’s amazing. But a lot of this stuff that you’re talking about is, you know, when you were saying, you know, look at yourself as a leader, it’s almost like a therapist would say like about a relationship, right? She’ll always say like, look at yourself first, each of you individually, and what can you bring to the table? What can you change? So, um, it’s similar to that relationship with leader and employees. So, but you know, I was reading a survey that talked and it was such a high percentage. I think it was like,
17:19
98 % of people who responded to the survey said that they would be happier and work harder at work if they were more appreciated. What does appreciation look like? Is this a monetary appreciation? Is this a pat on the back? What does that mean? Yeah, great question. The first thing you need to know about appreciation is that it has to be authentic.
17:49
It has to be something that you feel that it’s genuine. Because if you feel that it is just a part of the program, I don’t know if you’re watching this amazing show called Severance that I just started watching. I recommend everybody to watch it. Obviously I’m not paid by Apple to promote this. It’s on Apple Plus. And it is an incredible story about
18:18
It kind of makes fun of the corporate things that we do to check the boxes. He talked, there’s scenarios. I’m going to go watch it afterwards. You need to, and I’m going to have a caveat. Like the first season, there’s three seasons now, the first season, you’re just like, what am I watching? And you get it by the end of the first season. And it’s almost like a farce about the silly things that we do to corporatize.
18:46
something so human as just genuine appreciation. And they have these things where they’re like, oh, you’ve earned a pizza party. And then they come in because you’ve done your work so well. You’ve gone to this level and you have earned a pizza party. And the pizza party has three different stations in it. And because you actually exceeded our expectations on this other level, one of your stations gets to be the s’mores or something like that. Like it is…
19:16
Hilarious, but what we do wrong, where we fail at work when it comes to appreciation, is we make it a part of a system. We check a box with it. We do the pizza party. This is what people do. They go, let’s get some pizzas in. We’ll have the thing. now everybody’s like, it’s team building. Everybody’s appreciated.
19:42
The other thing that spills out of this idea of needing it to be genuine is appreciation is not a one size fits all. Again, the pizza party doesn’t cut it for everybody because then Sarah, who’s gluten free, is like, yeah, thanks for remembering. And Jesse, who’s vegan, is also like, yeah, thanks for remembering. But it’s like, no, we did the pizza party. We did three pizza parties this quarter. What do you want, everybody?
20:09
And maybe it’s not a pizza party, but it’s something else that’s just like, we did the thing, we checked the box. To me, appreciation comes in small doses most effectively. And what I mean by that is when you see it and you say it and you’re genuine about it and you’re looking somebody in the eye and you just say, you know what, it’s been a really busy quarter.
20:38
And I know that we all have stretched in this quarter and you have really shown up and you’ve done an amazing job with this team. Again, maybe you’re talking to your middle management. I really appreciate how effectively you communicate to your team. You bring the best out of them. I see you with customers. You have such attention to detail with them.
21:06
I trust you implicitly with this place and it means the world to me. I just want you to know that. When you say that, now this is a very words-based thing, something that I teach and you’ve probably heard me talk about. I take these kind of Gary Chapman’s five love languages and I bring them into the workplace. There are certainly more ways to show respect and appreciation than those five, but even if we just stuck with those.
21:32
That’s a really wordy, heavy kind of way to say something. I really appreciate you. That would work with me. I’m very words-based. Some people, they are more gifts. They are more that you went on the trip to Hawaii and you came back with a sarong that you knew they would love. And you said, Jessica, I know you love these. every time you go to Bali or other places, you bring one back. And I thought of you the second that I saw this.
22:00
And I want you to know, just so appreciate you and I value you here. Because Jessica is maybe a gifts person, that’s like, oh my gosh, she sees me. I matter, right? I’m important. I’m not just somebody who clocks in and clocks out and just does this job, thanklessly, every single day. She sees me. Somebody who might be another language, know, acts of service. Like, it’s just, you do something for them. You know, maybe that person you were just talking about that
22:30
has their child is in a sports team and they really want to get out early so they can see them. To me, that’s an act of service to say, you can leave at four so that you can get to the game on time. Absolutely, we’ll make that happen. It’s like that’s, I see you and that what matters to you certainly matters to me. But those are the two top things I think about appreciation where we get it wrong. We either generalize and we throw the pizza party and think the box is checked.
22:58
Or we are not individual enough. We just think that it’s a one size fits all when really we’ve got to be paying attention to how people appreciate others. So that’s your cue, your prompt on, how do I know how to appreciate them? If they’re always telling everybody that they’re doing a great job, then they’re probably a words person.
23:25
then that’s probably the tool that you use to appreciate them. If they’re always coming back from staples with sticky notes and colorful erasers for everybody to say, Oh, I thought of you, I thought you’d think this eraser was so cute. They’re probably more of like a gifts person. If they’re always doing stuff for other people helping out, they’re probably an acts of service person. Right? Like you just got to pay attention to how they show up.
23:53
and show up in that same way and really recognize, you know, when you’re busy, especially when it is in those more challenging times, check in with yourself as a leader and realize, you know, where am I? Am I appreciating people? Am I genuinely showing up for people to let them know that I appreciate them? Because it’s in the slower times that we do it more, but it’s in the busy times that we need to do it more.
24:23
So that would be something else that I would say to a leader when it is, when you’re going through it as an organization, when it’s been a challenging time, really check in with how frequently you are appreciating. I love that you said that because I mean, I’ve worked for corporations and you’re right, it is the pizza party and it’s, well, we didn’t get, you know, the budget from corporate to throw the pizza party. You know, but you know what I always say like words or like even something as small as a
24:51
card or an email if you can’t be there. Something that’s individualized is always the best. Does money, you know, a lot of us assume that people just want raises and appreciation. So we will shy away from appreciating because we assume that if we appreciate, we will need to give a raise. So does money matter to people or I know I’m generalizing this or would you feel just honest appreciation matters more to people?
25:21
I mean, everybody likes a dollar, but there’s so much research out there right now on this topic because we’re actually in a work engagement crisis right now. Gallup studies recently have shown in 2025 that we are at a 10 year low in worker engagement. Wow. Like 70 % of workers in the, this is a US based study in the United States, 70%.
25:50
or what they would rate as disengaged. And what does that mean? We could break that down for an hour, but really what it means is they’re not happy at work, they’re not satisfied, they’re not fulfilled. A small portion of that is their paycheck. Sure, maybe that’s a part of the story, absolutely. And I won’t deny that that sometimes is in companies that I work with where I consult
26:19
we look at compensation as one of those line items when we’re looking at culture, absolutely. And most of the time, there are 30 other things happening that are contributing to this disengagement. And that has to do with communication best practices. That has to do with siloed workloads. That has to do with…
26:44
people acting in alignment with, again, the values on the wall. So character and integrity and the way that we say that we operate is not the way that we’re operating. a disengagement from and a lack of trust from the pillars of the organization. When people don’t see an alignment there, when there’s a lack of integrity there, they don’t bring their best. They disengage. And then they start to kind of quiet quit. They’re looking for another job somewhere.
27:13
And that is on the rise right now. Again, like I said, we’re at the all-time low over 10 years. Even COVID, it wasn’t as bad. During COVID, during a global pandemic, people felt more engaged. I see a lot of corporations, of course, but even clinical practices like myself, A lot of people are starting to give numbers, goals, retail shops. They give goals. They have to meet quarters and whatnot.
27:43
And a lot of that, like the leaders or the managers pass that on to their employees, right? Like, oh, we got to push through or we’re not going to make year end. We’re not going to make quarter end. Is that the right approach to take or is it more focusing on their strengths, like you said, and focusing on making them happier at work such that they will push through with their goals? Or is it important to also, you know, push them more quantity wise and get, and getting those numbers, pumping those out.
28:14
It’s interesting, you when you, when you asked at the beginning, you said, what makes people tick? And I think that that’s a question again, that has a few prongs because you can say what makes people tick on in regards to their level of, of happiness, their attitude. And there’s also a level of what makes people tick from a motivation, inspiration standpoint. And there are so many people out there that are competitive.
28:43
that love to compete with themselves, with others, right? That’s something, right. They go through the Clifton Strengths Finder that, you know, winning is one of those things. The competitor is in there. So again, go back to knowing your team. If you’ve got some of those competitors on your team, which chances are you do, tap into that. Let’s get some of this
29:12
going. If you’re a part of a chain, get on with a competition with other stores in your region where you can compete together on the same team instead of necessarily competing against each other within the store. So that’s one way is tapping into some of those natural extrinsic motivators. And then there’s those intrinsic motivators.
29:42
The things where when people really feel as though they have a high level of autonomy, so this is my kind of motivator. When you give me a task and you give me the tools to succeed in that task, I will over deliver every single time. When I’m in charge of it, I will give you 10%. I will give you everything that I’ve got, right? 10 out of 10. I’m always going to come to the table.
30:12
So when leaders in the past, when I’ve been an employee, when they tapped into that, I was fulfilled. I was producing. I was creative. I was inspiring other people around me because I was on fire. I loved what I was doing and I was given the autonomy to do it. Inversely, when I also was treated without that, when I was micromanaged and
30:41
babysat and handheld, I don’t bring my best. I feel like you don’t trust me to bring my best. I feel like somebody’s always watching over my shoulder. So I’m underperforming in those scenarios. So I always say, again, leadership, you’ve got to be honed into and tapped into the people that you, the players you have on your team. I always go back to this classic example of Wayne Gretzky. We all know Wayne Gretzky, famous hockey player.
31:11
He was not a big guy, right? He was the fast guy and he could score. So his coach didn’t tell him he need to hit the gym and bulk up. He put a team of people around him that would thrive in their strengths and allow him to get through and get to the net so he could shoot on the net. He hired strengths around that.
31:40
individual superstar so that they could empower him, enable him to get to the net and score all the goals. So oftentimes in our teams, we’re like, well, I need the high performing, you know, competitive edge and I’m going to one size fits all this with a competition. Well, some people are going to do well in that and some people are not going to do well in that. Maybe it’s that you need to empower some people under you and give them that sense of autonomy and give them that sense of
32:10
personal connection with those other people where they’re motivating them. Maybe that’s their superpower. And then you’ve got the higher scorers, they’re out there shooting the puck at the net. That’s what you’ve done. You’ve empowered the people to get out of their way, put them in place, and that’s where you see the win. So, I mean, all in all, I think it really is tapping into understanding who you’re working with, what makes them tick, and how you can help them do more of that.
32:37
You’re so right. Cause you know, back to the micromanaging, I used to be a micromanager, obviously phased out of that. Um, but we all have been there, done that. But there are certain employees that actually like to be micromanaged. And that’s interesting. Cause I’ve discovered that over time, right? There’s the ones that like to be empowered like yourself, like we were talking about that, um, who want to, you know, feel that sense of I’ve got this role or I’m managing this thing and you know, they feel responsibility and they’ll go give them, give it your, their 200%.
33:07
But then there’s the people that actually need to be given the tasks, right? Otherwise they just won’t perform it. And they want to be told what to do. And I think tapping into who wants what in your team is so important. I feel, least in healthcare, and I think a lot of other fields complain of this, we are having this crisis. I want to call it the burnout crisis, where everybody is just burning out, whether it’s mental health issues.
33:35
just overall burnout, why are we experiencing this, I want to say all time high of burnout at work? And is it because of leaders or is it because people are having difficulty with work home life balance? Like what’s going on? Yeah, great question. I I think it’s probably all of those things, honestly, and without some specificity around, okay, well, what’s going on in your life? That balance is tricky, especially
34:02
in a business where you’re an entrepreneur, really, you’re owning your own entity, but it’s also a part of a bigger collective. That bottom line for every business owner is so important and it keeps you up at night. You think about it, you’re always strategizing. Last night I just had a…
34:26
conversation with clients of mine and they’re in the same industry, they’re in the medical field and they’re just like, well, we need to hire a new person, a new middle management leader, but that’s going to cost us a lot of money. And so when the revenue goes down, like how do we, we can’t balance this. And I asked them very simply, said, like is what you’re doing right now working?
34:55
They’re like, no. Right now you’re not able to provide the level of service that you want to provide for your clients because you’re running around doing everything for everyone. You need to hire somebody to meet that need so that you can have the bandwidth to grow your business and not running around putting out.
35:20
fires every day and that, you know, caught up in the day to day working in the business, right? And we know this mentally, but it really, you have to step back from a burnout. If you’re feeling burnt out, I’m to go back to radical ownership. You need to step back and take a look at, what am I believing that contributes to this? Am I believing that it is going to be feast or famine that we’re not going to be able to
35:50
generate enough revenue to cover this extra team member that we need? Is that where I’m stuck on, I have to do everything? Okay, well then as a leader, I need to evolve out of that. I to build a system where I am confident that from our marketing, from our communications, from our client base, that there are always things that we can do to generate more traffic to increase our revenue.
36:18
It isn’t all on my shoulders. And that is the number one mistake that every leader makes is to put everything on your shoulders. And because just to be clear, that’s not what I mean by radical ownership. It isn’t just I have to do everything. Radical ownership is the decisions, the buck stops with me. And so if we’re in a place of burnout, I’ve made choice after choice, after choice, after choice that has gotten us here. Great news is.
36:47
as a leader, can make choice after choice after choice to get yourself out of that. And in some cases, you do need to hire a person from an external, this is, one of my great joys in my life and in my career that I get to come in and work with people that are experiencing burnout and they’re stressed and they’re
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full of fear and anxiety and I’m able to show them, okay, well, we can just adjust these three things. And you’re all of a sudden, immediately you’ve relieved a whole pile of stress, right? And that’s just in the next couple of months. Once we then do better at these other areas, we do better in your external communications, we do better at maximizing your email list, we do better at your social media so that you’re able to…
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generate interest and revenue and customers coming in, we can do these. These are things that we can do. It’s possible, but it doesn’t need to be your hand on every single thing that’s happening. Sometimes people just need to be reminded of that, honestly. Yeah, but I also want to flip it a little bit because as a leader, I don’t want to always blame myself, but employees, right? I also feel there’s some responsibility on their
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shoulders. Because as a leader, sometimes I do talk to my employees all the time and sometimes they just don’t tell me. And if you don’t tell me, I don’t know. So I’m trying my best to keep it an open door policy. So I want to flip it to their end where it is as an employee and even me as an employee to hire up. What responsibility lies on my shoulder? How do I communicate and
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What should I be doing to make myself happier at work? Like what lies on my shoulders to make it work? A hundred percent. Yes. And you know, my first book is make work not suck. My second book is make life not suck. And that is the part of our own personal ownership in every day of our adult lives. We have the responsibility to adjust our mindset. We have the power.
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to do it, we have the responsibility to do it. If you look through blue glasses all the time, the world is gonna be blue. If you look through negativity all the time, the world is going to be negative. There’s always going to be. analogy. As an eye doctor, I love that, by the way. I’m gonna use that every I you would. I knew you would. But that is as simple as you can make it.
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It is your perspective. It is the lens that you are looking at your life through. Now, I’m saying that that is simple and it is in its idea. Many, many people are wired in their brain, neurologically programmed, if you will, with chronic negativity. They’ve been patterned since
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childhood, they grew up in a negative home where everybody complained about everything. Everybody blamed everybody for everything that went wrong. And it was either the government’s fault, the policeman’s fault, the school’s fault, the teacher’s fault, the cook’s fault, the cleaner’s fault. Like it was a never ending barrage of
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spewing negativity. And I did not, I was not raised in that home. I was raised in a very different home. And genetically even my mother is positive to a fault. So I can empathize heavily with people that say, you know, that is easier said than done. Like I’m an optimistic person by nature. So I’m always
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Again, to a fault maybe, I’m always looking at the bright side. I married a guy who was raised in that other kind of home and he really works hard to change his perspective. What automatically comes to him is something negative, the most negative possible outcome.
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is what comes to him. And to me, again, I’m the most positive possible outcome. Like, it’ll be okay. Don’t worry about the right guy though. I know, right? He keeps me level and I bring him up, you know? So all of that in the context of the people coming to work in your workplace, there is absolutely an ownership that we as individuals need to have on the energy we’re bringing into the room.
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the mindset that we’re starting off with. That’s part of that personal radical ownership. So it’s not just on leaders. I think our lives, we should live this way in a place of I’m owning and I could go through so many examples, so many people, great and incredible world changing people that legitimately have changed the world. They wouldn’t have done it had they seen themselves as a victim.
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people that had the most awful things happen to them, not of their fault. They didn’t do anything to create it. It just was the way the world was at that time. And they found a way somehow to learn and grow through the challenge. And that is what we all have as an opportunity in everything that we experience in life. I always say, this is one of my favorite things to say, in life we are either
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one of two things at any given moment. We are either a student of the circumstances or a victim of the circumstances. Pick one. And if you decide to be a student, then you will come out on top. Wiser, stronger, more capable, right? Better than you were before.
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If you are a student of the circumstances, you ask this situation, what is this here to teach me? How can I learn from this? But if you’re a victim of the circumstances, essentially what you do is you give your power away. You’re suffering. If you’re a victim, you are suffering. And it’s awful. So back to the ground zero of bringing people on board.
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I want you to figure out in those interviews if this is a person with a positive mindset, somebody who’s a real learner, somebody who takes challenges as an opportunity to grow, or if this is somebody that really takes on that victim mentality and suffers. And you can’t outright ask people in an interview because they’re going to lie to you.
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Of course. They’re going to tell you, oh, I’m a great, I’m a student, I’m a learner. But I think really when you get down to it, you can craft a great conversation, a great initial conversation with somebody asking how they handle certain things and what matters to them in life. And people that when they, and again, I’ll go to my…
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you know, my values and my strengths, I have learning on both of those things. Wow. So what do you foresee as the future of workplace happiness? you know, you were giving that stat at the beginning. Like, are we on a downwards trajectory? It’s only going to get worse. I mean, it was better in COVID, you were saying, right? So are we, you know, how like, mean, half the world is working from home now, right? For me, it’s like, okay, well, if you’re working from home,
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can you not be happy? But there’s obviously that disengagement with their managers, et cetera, et cetera. But is that the culprit? And is this just going to go downhill or what’s the future of workplace happiness? Is basically nobody going to be working because that’s what I foresee. I foresee slowly people wanting six days to work and now they want to work five. Now they want to work four. Now I have a lot of my employees think, I just want to work three days a week, but I want to make the same amount of money. So
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Where is this future headed and is it scary?
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I mean, I’m optimistic. Oh, God. Wrong person I’m asking this question. Can we talk to your husband, actually? No kidding. Yeah, he’s like, the house is on fire. The roof has gone fire. Yeah. You know, there are always ebbs and flows in culture, in workplace culture, in trends and, you know, what works and doesn’t work. It’s a roller coaster.
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I think we are in a downward trend because my belief is that COVID really woke a lot of people up. And I don’t mean that word in the woke sense of the word woke. mean that, you know, we, a lot of people took some inventory of their lives and we ended up with what was, you know, what’s being called the great resignation.
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post-ish COVID. And that was the ripple effect of people going, I don’t want to be here. Like if there’s a pandemic, if we’re this volatile, I want to be doing something that lights me up. I want to work because the great resignation was not just everybody quitting their jobs. It was people shifting.
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people moved from one job to another job. They realigned. So it could be called the great realignment because the resignation is like, oh, everybody’s just quitting their job. What we’re seeing now though, I think is a reaction to what workplaces did when people left their workplace in droves. And now you’ve got some fear-based
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controlling behavior happening on a mass level. When you’re reacting in any situation in life from a fear-based place, you’re not going to likely get the result that you want.
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you’re gripping it really hard because you’re afraid of losing it. So you’re increasing your level of control and people don’t like that. So that is where we’re at to put it very simply. Again, you know, there are Harvard professors far smarter than I that have done far more research than I that will, that can go deeper and deeper in on that story. But that’s the Cole’s notes of the idea is that we’re
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experiencing this mass level of disengagement because there was a mass wave of control that took place after the great resignation. And so the answer to your question is, yes, I’m optimistic that it’s going to get better because systems always correct. It’s going to take us as leaders. And to me, this is kind of like
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awesome because I’ve got a book coming out about how to make work not suck, which is about how to keep people at your work and how to really make your workplace thrive. It’s going to take the recognition of
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how we need to behave as leaders. It’s going to take the recognition of, what I just said at the beginning, what am I doing wrong that I need to stop doing? And what am I not doing that I need to start doing? How can I make work not suck for my team? How can I actually build a team of thriving individuals? I heard someone say recently, it’s not about mandating back to work, it’s about magnetizing back to work.
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creating an environment where people want to come, where they get filled up, where they get fired up, where they get excited. That’s what I want to see in our workplaces. And I think we will see that there will be some culling. There will be some organizations that have to really change up their practices around how they treat people and how they communicate. But I certainly see this creating a rebound effect.
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where we really maybe see the pendulum swing in the other direction. Absolutely. So I think the take home is, for me at least, is, you know, we’re, we might be on a downhill trajectory, but we got to read your book so that we can make our workplaces better and, you know, make things not suck for our employees. Jennifer, thank you so much for your time today. Can you tell our listeners where they can find you? I know you’re on social media, but also about your book.
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I’m on social media, Jennifer underscore barrel, B-A-R-R-O-L-L, not like the barrel barrel. And my website is jennieb.ca, but it’s also jenniferbarrel.com, just because sometimes people in the US don’t understand .ca. So jenniferbarrel.com. And on that website, you are going to see everything about the book. We are launching, it’s official now. We’re launching in September. I just spoke with my editor on Friday. We’re on track.
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for that September launch. I’m really excited about that. So if you are looking for tools, practical tools, this isn’t just idea stuff. You can go to chapters and you can read so many books on all the ideas. This is a practical guide book. So I’m calling it a leader’s guide for teams that thrive. That’s the subtitle. And it really is, I want it to be something where you can open it up and
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daily, just get information on how can I operate in such a way that creates an environment where my teams are thriving. You can put your email in and we will give you all the information on how to get the book when it’s available, how to bring me in to talk about it if you want, how to use some resources. I’m going to make resources available for work not suck workplaces. So, you know, kind of this is a certified work not suck workplace.
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And so we’re going to do all kinds of fun stuff like that. But yeah, I would, I would love for you to come on by. I’m also going to start a podcast. So I’ll return the favor and have you come and, talk to my group. The make work, not suck podcast will be coming this summer. Amazing. And we’ll link everything in the show notes. Good luck with the book. Good luck with the podcast. Looking forward to listening. Thank you so much, Jennifer. My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you listeners and viewers for tuning in.
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If you want to catch more episodes of Uncover Your Eyes, make sure to follow or subscribe on your favourite podcast platform and on YouTube. To learn more about me, follow me on Instagram @Dr.MeenalAgarwal Until next time, keep those eyes uncovered!
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See comfortably, near and far.
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with total multifocal contact lenses. Feels like nothing.