The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done by Adrian Gostick, Chester Elton

Episode Date: April 20, 2021

Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done by Adrian Gostick, Chester Elton Executive coaches and #1 bestselling authors of All In and The Carrot Principle offer insight and advice in this practical eight-step guide both managers and employees can use to reduce work anxiety in the office and at home. Have you ever dreaded Sunday night, got a pit in your stomach on the way to work, or had your heartbeat speed up at the sound of your boss’s voice? If so, you may have had anxiety at work. In this empathetic and wise guide, executive coaches and gurus of gratitude Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton explore the causes of workplace stress and anxiety and the management practices that have proven successful in reducing tension and cultivating calm. If you’re a manager, how do you keep up with demands while creating a stress-free work atmosphere? How can you spot rising anxiety levels in your people? If your employees feel overwhelmed or worried about the future, what can you do to ease their concerns? How do you engage in productive conversations about emotions in uncertain times? Anxiety at Work builds on the authors’ vast knowledge and experience working with the leadership teams of some of the world’s most successful organizations to offer effective strategies that can make any workplace better, helping supervisors and their employees: Weather uncertainty Balance overload Beat perfectionism Build confidence Create and sustain an environment that fosters resilience Strengthen strong social bonds In today’s volatile, fast-paced, and ever-changing global climate, organizations and their employees are under more pressure than ever to perform. Anxiety at Work shows how everyone at all levels can work together to build an environment that fosters camaraderie, productivity, and calm.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast who saw that one coming oh my gosh oh wow we've got just two amazing authors, not one. Normally, when you buy the Chris Voss Show, because I know you're all paying for it in the subscription that's coming in your credit cards, you only get one author at a time.

Today, we have an advanced value set up for you where we have two authors that are coming to you with their newest book that's going to be coming out anxiety at work eight strategies to help teams build resilience handle uncertainty and get stuff done books written by adrian gostick and chester elton i'll hold up the book here give it the model swipe with the hand and uh we're excited to have these guys here to see the video version let's go to youtube.com for just chris voss hit the bell notification button go to facebook uh linkedin twitter just pick your tiktok whatever go there there's chris voss shows there it's everywhere today adrian gostick is the co-author of the new york times and wall street journal bestsellers the carrot principle leading with gratitude All In. An executive coach and keynote speaker, he writes on leadership strategy for Forbes and is often quoted in publications

such as The Economist, The Financial Times, and Harvard Business Review. Gostick is named as one of the top 10 global gurus in leadership and organizational culture. Not to be outdone, his co-author is the co-author of The Carrot Principle, Chester Elton. He's leading with gratitude and all in, and is a sought-after lecturer around the world. He co-founded the motivational assessment firm FindMojo.com and is ranked number two among organizational culture experts around the world and among top 10 in leadership. You guys have a very similar bio there. Welcome to the show, guys. Thanks so much for having us. I love your energy. I love your excitement and really appreciate being

here. By the way, this voice is Chester Elton. The next voice you're going to hear will be Adrian Gostick. Yes, the smooth dulcet tones of Chester Elton. That was, folks, and I'm Adrian Gostick, so great to be here, Chris. There he goes. It's an honor to have you guys. When does this book come out? When is this book going to get released? May the 4th of 2021, so may the 4th be with you. That's when the book hits the shelves. Holy crap, we're almost halfway through the year. Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. Where does this time go i want my money back but we got a chance to introduce you guys it looks like you guys have worked on several books together is that correct then from my reading of the bio it is anxiety at

work is actually our 14th book that we've written together we've been writing together now for over 20 years imagine that holy crap yeah i was going through massive deja vu when i was reading your guys's bios there i'm like wait i was, it feels like I've been here before. What motivated you guys to want to take a crack at your 14th book and write this one? Man, thanks for having us on, Chris. This one is very personal to both of us. We've had a lot of anxiety, mental health issues within our families. What we were finding even a couple of years ago before the pandemic, we were working with

a lot of our clients and they were telling us, look, our anxiety levels are rising, especially with younger people coming into the workplace. And managers really had no tools to be able to deal with that. What we would tell people is go talk to EAP, go talk to HR. That's really never worked. In fact, EAP levels have not been increasing even during the pandemic. So what we found is that we have all these people suffering. In fact, right now, 2020 numbers show about a third of our workforce have severe anxiety-related issues. In fact, more than 45% of people in their 20s. So this really is another

epidemic, and we're not talking about it at work at all. Yeah. And just to jump in on that, it is really interesting. You talk about trust levels in the workplace and what is the number one cause of anxiety right now is, do I have a job? That kind of uncertainty really drives people to, as work levels are way up, people are working more, not less. They're not taking their paid time off. And the other data point that really was shocking to us is only one in 10 employees say that they are comfortable talking to their immediate supervisor or their boss about anxiety or mental health issues. So there's this huge stigma there. And we're hoping to remove that stigma with our research, with our book and the work that we're doing. There you go. Anxiety about

talking about anxiety. I get it. Exactly. I've been there. So give us an arcing overview of the book, if you guys would, and if you want to both throw in for that. Sure. I'll kick off here. What we wanted to do is approach this. We interviewed dozens of some of the world's experts in anxiety, but we didn't want to make it a PhD kind of book. We want to make it very accessible.

So it really is about how you build resilience, is how you as a leader can build people who in your team who are able to bounce back, who are able to get stuff done despite anxiety, and maybe change the way that you work. I was working, it really began a couple of years ago. I was working with this big defense contractor. I have 300 executives in the audience. And we opened it up to questions afterwards. And every single question was about, how do I get my younger employees to cope better, to figure out how we do business here? Everything was about how do you get them to figure out this is how we do things. Not a single person was thinking about what do I do differently?

And that's what we found is that we have to lead a lot more empathetically. We have to lead in different ways that bring down anxiety levels while we still get all of our stuff done. Yeah. You talk about what really inspired us to do it. And I'll tell you, Adrian's son, Anthony Gostick, who's one of our co-authors in this book, really gave us an insight into the millennial mindset and worked through a lot of issues. In fact, we've dedicated the book to Anthony. And I'll tell you a cute story, Chris. He didn't know that until we sent out the pre-press copies. And when he read it, he was very moved and very touched. We wanted it to not be just from our perspective. We've done a lot of work in culture and leadership and so on. We really wanted a deep dive into the psyche of younger workers.

And of course, Anthony had great insights for us there. There you go. And so you guys have built eight strategies that can help these teams build resilience, handle uncertainty and get stuff done. Let's get into some of the deets. What are some of these eight strategies that we can maybe utilize, or at least we can tease out? Yeah. One of my favorites is be an ally at work. We talk about, there are a lot of people in the workplace that feel marginalized or don't feel safe. A lot of talk about psychological safety in the workplace. And so do you have an ally? Do you have a leader that you trust? And how do you do that? And we're big fans of leaders doing one-on-ones and asking, how are you doing today?

How can I help? And not just sympathizing. We've got a great part of the book where we say, when you sympathize with somebody, it's going, oh man, bummer, dude. You're sad. I get that. Or how can I help fix you kind of thing? As opposed to the empathetic leader that says, and I think COVID has been a big benefit here because so many of us are going through the same thing. Everybody was affected by the pandemic, not just a certain segment. Say, hey, listen, I know you're worried about teaching your kids

virtually. We're suffering with the same thing. I can really empathize with you on that. Or sharing their stories of anxiety. Boy, that is so powerful when the leader says, I'm going through it too. Now you've got an ally. Now you've got somebody that's going, sharing the same experience and someone you can trust. So I think having an ally at work is one of the chapters that I think will hopefully have a huge impact in removing that stigma. And one of my, I think one of the most important is a chapter we have on uncertainty, because right now we're all in uncertainty. And most managers we talk with say, look, we are in uncertain times. I don't have all the answers. So how do you deal with that? And really there are three questions that employees want to know. First off is where are we going as an organization? Even if you don't have all the

answers, you need to be clear. What's our future vision? Second is, am I adding value? Am I making a difference? And am I helping? Because as Chester mentioned earlier, job security, number one concern right now. And the third is, do I have a future here? Are you going to help me grow and develop? There you go. So do we need to use the word anxiety or do we need to specify it? For example, during COVID, my guy friends, we never said we loved you, each other.

I love you guys too, but we never said that to each other because we're guys. Yeah. But what was really weird that was kind of an interesting dynamic is after COVID started, we realized that our friends that we loved and care about could be gone in an instant and you don't get to go to the funerals. You don't get to go hospital beds. You don't get this.

It's like they get sick. They go to ER. Why? Uh, you don't even get to say bye. And, and suddenly life became like you guys are talking about in the book, more anxiety because there's a real freaking roulette wheel of loss of life that no one knew who was targeted

next to a certain degree. And so a lot of my friends, we call each other up and they're like, hey, how you doing, man? You doing okay? Yeah, I'm doing okay too. And I think probably we were ghosting or saying, I'm feeling a little weird, like anxiety. Are you feeling weird? And we started telling each other we loved each other. And not in the sort of grinder sort of way, but just like the grinder sort of way.

But like basically, hey, man, I love you. And I hope you don't get COVID. And we see each other again. And it gives us, I think, a deeper intrinsic friendship and value. And I think we got better, maybe more in touch with our manliness or some crap, but we'll probably never say that again to each other after. But do we need to say the word anxiety? We say, look, anxiety, a lot of people use anxiety and stress as the same kind of words,

and we do differentiate that. Stress tends to be momentary. You've got a big project due or a certain situation. That anxiety is that lingering thing that's always there. Like you say, the uncertainty of, will I see my friends again? Or when will I be able to see my friends? We interviewed a wonderful CEO, Derek at Lifeguides, and he was checking in with his employees. And this is a good five months into the pandemic. And the lockdown was still in place in most places. And an older employee that he called just to check in and said, how are you doing? Her husband had passed away.

And because of COVID and because of her situation, she could be compromised. She hadn't even seen her grown kids or her grandkids. And he said, what's going on? What can I do to help? I know you're missing people. And she paused and said, Derek, it's been five months, five months since I've had a hug. And you think about that, five months since I've had a hug. And you think about that five months since I've had a hug. So this idea of, like you say, we've got this veneer, this exterior, we call it the duck syndrome, right? Those ducks, they're just sailing along. You're in a zoom call

and the office looks great. And you're, if I had hair, my hair would look great. And that would leave your Facebook life. And then underneath you're just paddling like crazy because you're worried about your job. You're worried about your family. And so I love the fact that you're reaching out to your friends and making that connection. Because now we really figure out what's important to us. Friends, family, those people near and dear. Even though we're paddling like crazy underneath, we're trying to be that calm, cool guy above the waterline. Yeah, that hit me in the feels with the whole hug thing. I haven't been able to hug my

sister for a year and a half. She has MS and dementia in a care center and we've been keeping her safe and protected. And I think sometime in the next week with me being outside the Moderna, I'll be able to do that. Do you want to chime in here, Adrian, on the, do we need to say the word anxiety? Yeah, no, it's a great discussion we're having. And the same thing with me. My sister has MS. She's in a long-term care facility too. I haven't seen her for over a year.

And my 90-year-old parents. No, I think we're all going through things like this. Now, yeah, I think it's really important. And Chester talked about this is there's three terms. There's worry, which is, it's very momentary. We're worried, gee, I don't want to get sick. Stress is when it starts becoming physical. And anxiety that Chester mentioned, it lingers even after the threat is gone.

And that's what a lot of people really don't understand is that it can be at a time or it may be something that people are living with. And what we're finding right now with those numbers I threw out earlier, you've got almost half of people in their 20s that this is something they live with. And as we interviewed a lot of younger people for the book, what they told us is, look, guys, you older folks, you don't have any clue. We, my generation, talk about this and we don't hide from that word. And yet, as in the older generations, do we really want to, if we talk about anxiety, will we cause more anxiety? We have this naive view of it. That's really interesting that there are. So are they better in touch with their feelings and expressing them? And the thing is, they tell us is, look, Chris, you can't solve something you don't talk about.

And, you know, as Chester mentioned earlier, only one in 10 employees is willing to talk about this with their boss. And bosses push back and they go, now my people, they tell me about everything. You should hear some of the stuff they tell me about, except mental health. Why? Because it's going to limit my promotion opportunities.

You're not going to give me cool assignments. You're going to think I can't handle it. No, I'm going through something here. And just if I had an injury to my leg, if I'd been skiing, this is an injury to my most important organ. It's my brain. And we all go through this at some point in our lives. Yeah. And just to wrap up on that, Chris, I do think you do need to use the word anxiety because you've got to take the negativity away from that word. Like Adrian said, Chris, I do think you do need to use the word anxiety because you've got to take the negativity away from that word. Like Adrian said, look, if you had the flu, they'd say, absolutely stay away. You say, look, I need a mental health day. I say, oh, can't hack it. And that's very much a generational thing. I'll share a personal story with you that I

grew up in sales and Adrian and I were both working for a bigger company. It's where we met and started to work together. And I was under a lot of stress and I was under, I had high anxiety. And the CHRO was one of my best friends in the company. And I'm talking to her in my car and I'm getting all worked up and I'm starting to speed down the Garden State Parkway and maybe yell a little too much. And she basically says, hey, stop, Chester.

You need to take a break and you should get counseling. And don't worry, we will give you time off and it's all confidential and blah, hey, stop, Chester. You need to take a break and you should get counseling. And don't worry, we will give you time off and it's all confidential and blah, blah, blah. She went through the whole nine yards. You can trust me. I said, absolutely not. That's in my jacket. You will end my career. She goes, it's all confidential. And I'm the one in 10 or one of the nine of the nine and 10 that said, don't believe you and got it out. My generation was take that anxiety, push it down, let it fester, let it boil until you absolutely can't take it anymore. And I regret that as then we started to have stuff happen in our family. I reacted to it badly. I'll admit it. I'd say, Hey, get up, be happy, put a smile on your face, go to school. And it was absolutely, and we did all that stuff that was, and then we started to get good counseling and saw the results and i was converted and had

a lot of regrets of how we dealt with it in not only in my life but with our kids yeah it's an interesting thing that we've there used to be always this thing where your dad would be just like just walk it off you'll be fine rub some dirt on it get back in the game rub some dirt on it have some beers you'll be fine it's just a flesh wound but yeah i love that it's interesting how we're learning more about the mind and and how it works and we're getting more in touch like we talked about earlier with our feelings and stuff and emotions and things like this one of the other things you guys talked about is the prospect of workplace burnout i know a lot of people right now are going to workplace burnout because they're stuck at home like it used to be they could most of these people that had family and kids could

escape that send the kids off to doggy day or not doggy daycare but daycare if you want to send your kids to doggy daycare i think they'd love it they'd to doggy daycare, I think they'd love it. They'd love it. But they'd have fun. Yeah. They pet the dogs. Treats. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Don't eat those treats, kids. Because those are just, those are, nevermind. Anyway, the little dog things they leave on the lawn. Anyway, the segue of that joke. You're easily distracted, aren't you, Chris? Well, I get talking about dogs and dog turds and that threw me way off the path. Anyway, but no, a lot of people right now they're stuck in their home and so they can't have those breaks from each other whether it's a husband wife or

kids or both or everything including the dogs don't get a break from anybody and now i think there's even more a compactness of burnout because it's everything all the time in the same place is that a good analogy oh absolutely we're seeing that a lot. And what happens is typically, because we coach, we do some executive coaching with leaders. And what happens is they'll tell us about every single one is able to tell us a story of at least one really good employee who burned out. Maybe they ghosted. They just never came back. Maybe they just started pulling further and further away until they finally left. And they typically are giving little clues. I remember talking to one leader and she said she just got a note on her desk one morning and this

guy was just gone and never came back. And as she talked to the employees, the other employees in her team, they all knew he was gone. She didn't know nothing about her. This comes back to what Chester was talking about earlier. It's that idea of trust, is that he probably did reach out in some way. He probably just said, boy, things are overwhelming, huh? He probably gave some, he put his little toe in the water and he wanted to test out to see if it was safe to talk about his mental health or not. And probably she said something like we all do. Yeah, it's just what it's like around here. Yeah. Hey, you're doing fine. Just keep at it instead of really digging below the I'm doing fine. Yeah. And I'll tell you, Chris, too,

a lot of times these are really your smart top performers because they put a lot of pressure on themselves. One of the chapters we talk a lot about is perfectionism, that everything has to be perfect. And boy, that drives anxiety really high, right? Because I'm worried about my job to begin with. So every assignment has to be just world class, just knocking it out of the park. And to your point, because there is no commute to maybe decompress, but you're at it all the time. Your commute is you walk through the door. That puts a lot of stress on the whole system, whether it's work or family life. One of the things that we came across some really fun best practices on how to alleviate that was we had a wonderful leader and she decided with her team, she said, Friday at the end of the week, no obligation, no guilt. We're going to

throw a wine and wine party. Okay. So we're going to take an hour at the end of the week and we're going to throw a wine and wine party. Okay. So we're going to take an hour at the end of the week and we're just going to complain about all the crazy things that happened, how corporate didn't support us. That one customer that drove us crazy, no judgment, bring a beverage, alcoholic or not. And let's just decompress and head into the weekend. And then by the way, no emails on the weekend, like none. And the important part of that, of course, is that the leader has to do it. Because if the leader says it, but then puts out an email at four o'clock in the morning on Sunday, the message is just kidding. If you want to be me, you better be working on the weekend. So we love leaders that create some fun, create some space, let people decompress,

and give them time off. And I love this idea of no work on the weekends because we're working more Monday through Friday anyway. If we can't get it done Monday through Friday, it can wait. And that's a great message. That definitely is. But your message is on Amazon. Have you seen how hard those people work? No, I'm just kidding.

Exactly right. Yeah, another thing with what I love with perfectionism, we actually spoke with a fighter pilot who flew with the thunderbirds on the air force thunderbirds and she was really amazing and one thing she told us is she says first time i'm flying with them i'm flying upside down we're 400 miles an hour and we hit turbulence she says first thing of course what do you do you tighten up and we'll get it back on ground she says the other pilots came up to me they said sorry we didn't tell you, Nicole. He says, when you hit turbulence, you loosen your grip.

It's two fingers on the stick. And she says, that's counterintuitive. But the point is you got to loosen up in tough times. And it comes back to our workplaces. What we found in our research is more than half of employees say their manager gets more controlling, more micromanaging, more impossible to live with during times like this, where, more micromanaging, more impossible to live with during times like this, where they're micromanaging every little detail, or in the opposite, they just leave you alone and you never hear from them. What we find in the middle is this empathetic leading we're trying to talk about, where that's not taking your whole day, but you're putting a little bit more time and attention into your people. It's the magic

between the micromanaging and the laissez-faire. You're on your own. There you go. There you go. What role does uncertainty play in the rise of anxiety? Give us some instance of that. It's the number one cause, right? If you don't know what's going on, we talk often about in any kind of situation where

you're going through, whether it's a pandemic or a merger acquisition or resizing, right-sizing, whatever you might call it, communication has to accelerate, as does gratitude. Because when there is that gap, it creates uncertainty. And in those gaps, we fill those gaps with rumor, innuendo, and fear. So upping the communication, we did a lot of great work with Texas Roadhouse restaurants during the pandemic. And as soon as it hit, of course, all the restaurants had to close. And when you've got 600 restaurants and 70,000 employees, yeah, anxiety goes up. What's the deal? And so they immediately came out and said, here's what we're going to do. We're not laying off anybody. We're not taking any government

bailout. The CEO put in his salary, which was over a million dollars, another $5 million of his own money to make sure that even if you couldn't come to work, you'd get your pay and whether we had compromised families at home. And then they met every day, every day. What are we going to do? And they conveyed those messages to all the employees. They didn't allow for that communication gap to be filled with fear. And then what we really loved with our work in leading with gratitude and so on is gratitude goes way up. Hey, we really appreciate you hanging tough with us. We don't know all the answers. As soon as we do, we're going to let you know.

Here's what we're doing. Here's where we want to go. Here's how we think we're going to get there. And we're going to keep you informed all along the way. If you take away that uncertainty, boy, you can exhale. You can exhale what the plan is and how we're going to get there. Adrian, what would you add to that? That, I think, was the most vivid example of up communication, up gratitude, lower anxiety.

Yeah. On this idea of uncertainty, of course, with our executive coaching, we hear a lot of leaders who tell us, my people just have to get comfortable being uncomfortable. And it's the stupidest thing they could ever say is because some people will never become comfortable in uncertainty. Watch an NBA game and there are guys at the end, the other team's going to foul that seven-foot Lithuanian because he's going to brick it every time. It's just, he does, we actually focused on Sam Cassell in the book because the guy had, I think he shot 86% free throws throughout his career, but in clutch situations, when it was the last couple of minutes

or in overtime, I think he shot over 96%. So the guy had just ice in his veins. He is a rarity. Unfortunately, as we know, many people, they get in uncertain times and they become like deer in headlights. Either they freeze, many cases they're going to flee, or they're just not going to be able to cope and give you the production you need. So this idea of we use anxiety as this weapon to get people to perform better is this old idea that actually is disincentivizing a lot of people from producing their best work. Yeah, just to clear that up, Chris, he was talking about Shaquille O'Neal.

He wasn't talking about a seven-footer. He's a Jersey boy. He's from Newark, so I can make fun of him. But yeah, you definitely wanted to follow Shaquille O'Neal. All right, don't make me separate you two. Don't make me separate you two. Jack is way bigger than me. Don't make me pull separate you two. Don't make me separate you two. Jack is way bigger than me. Don't make me pull a car over.

Don't make me come back there. Let's see. How can leaders help marginalized groups such as racial minorities, LGBTQ, and others feel more supportive and accepted in the workplace? Yeah, that comes back to being an ally. I'll make sure. And this is where we've got a list of things that leaders should be looking for. You're on the Zoom call. Who's not talking up?

Who's usually pretty voracious? Who's not contributing? Who's changing behavior? Who's getting more angry on the calls? Look for those changes. Make sure everybody's voice is heard. The great leaders go around and say, hey, Chris, we haven't heard from you in a little while.

I know you've got some thoughts on this. Make sure they're inclusive, particularly with the social situation we've got in the U.S. in particular. If you're any kind of a minority, your antenna's up. If you're LGBTQ, you're wondering, is it safe? And so the really good leaders that we, and we highlight many of them in the book, what are some of the things that you do to make sure people are included, that they're not marginalized, that their work is appreciated? Again, the one-on-ones. Looking for those clues, though. Be aware. Where is behavior changing for good or ill? And then do your one-on-ones and talk them through it. Make it safe. More than anything, make it safe. And what we have to understand is

that bias really is existing in our workforce. Whether you are a person of color, you're LGBTQ+, or you're a religious minority, there's so many people who feel like others in workplaces that we often don't, as leaders, don't consider. One professor from Duke University, she told us, she says, the stress of hiding can be extremely anxiety-inducing, but we all do that. But she says, if you remember focusing on too much on what others think of you, you remember junior high, incredibly anxiety inducing that was. Now she says, now imagine bringing that to the workplace. We've all felt like another somewhere.

Maybe you traveled overseas and you were the only person of your race there, or you've been in a meeting where you're the only man or woman, you're the only person. Now she says, imagine that happens every single day. there, or you've been in a meeting where you're the only man or woman, you're the only person. Now she says, imagine that happens every single day. Are we really considering these people? Are we listening to them? Are we sponsoring people like this to rise and to do their best work? And what we find is anxiety levels with these marginalized groups can be through the roof, and we're just not paying attention to it. So as Jester says, we have a lot of ideas in Anxiety at Work about how you sponsor, how you help people who feel like others rise and do their best work. We've had a lot of great inclusivity agents and authors on the show, people that work for different universities and things like that.

We had one young lady on who she's done some exclusivity teaching training courses on LinkedIn. And I imagine that's a pretty good aspect that they can have on board to help with maybe with not only anxiety, but also feeling maybe accepted in the workplace. Yeah, absolutely. We were doing some really nice work with US Foods lately, and they've got a lot of employee groups that get together and they all have executive sponsors. That's really important. That makes it safe, right? Whether it's the Latino group or the LGBTQ plus or women in the workplace and so on. Those groups are great places to find people that are like you and are dealing with things that you're dealing with. And that executive sponsor then of course

can bring that to the company and create these safe places. There was a really interesting study done on soldiers that came back with PTSD and how did they deal with it. And of course, your initial reaction is, well, let's get you a counselor. Let's send you to a doctor. Very low success rate. They said, well, maybe if they could talk to their captains, their sergeants, their superiors, very low success rate. Where they had huge gains is when they could talk to other soldiers that had gone through PTSD. That made all the difference. So again, if you can create these communities where you can come together and say, hey, how are you dealing with it? Here's how I deal with it. Here's how my boss made it safe for me. And then that executive sponsor that says,

you know what? Everybody needs to know this. That's really cool. And a lot of companies are going in those directions and have had great success. There you go. What roles can gratitude and purpose play in promoting a supportive workplace?

You know, this is the secret sauce we really found in every great culture. In our work now, Chester and I, we've surveyed, well, with research partners, more than a million people. And in every great culture that sustains over time, there is a higher preponderance of gratitude. And it's what we find with anxiety is that oftentimes leaders will think, look, my high performers, they don't need as much gratitude because they're more intrinsically driven. What we find is that's a myth. Those high performers often have what we call is imposter syndrome. No matter how talented they are, they need that affirmation from their manager that they are doing good work and their work is

valued. We actually found as we were interviewing dozens of millennials, Gen Z, for this book, we found really interesting finding that many of them said, look, if my boss doesn't praise my work on a regular basis, I will keep trying different ways to get that work done until I finally hear that approbation. How incredibly unproductive to have people trying to do things a different way, finally getting that nod from their boss. And what they tell us, look, I'm not just gratitude hungry. Gratitude tells me I'm on the right path and I'll keep doing it this way. If you don't give that to me, I'll just keep

trying different things. Yeah. Doing your job three, four, five times because you're anxious and haven't gotten that last word and talk about unproductive. Tell you a cute story we came across, and it was with Oprah. And she talked about all the thousands of people that she's interviewed, and how we all need that affirmation. And she said, whether I was interviewing Michelle Obama, or Beyonce, and I love she said in all her Beyonce as soon as the interview was over, every one of them said the same thing. And it was, how was that? Was that good? How did I do? Was it okay?

And you're thinking, wait a minute, you're the president of the United States. You're Beyonce, for heaven's sake. You're Lady Gaga. What do you mean? You don't need my approval. We all need that approval. And as Adrian said, we never came across a great culture, a great leader, a great team where they didn't cheer for each other and support each other and build each other up.

And boy, when you're going through pandemics or you're in that dark place, you're suffering from severe anxiety, you need people to reach out and give you validation and let you know that you are valued and that you matter. Yeah, most definitely. What can leaders start doing today, like right away, to better manage and reduce workplace anxiety? I imagine some people are still working at home and maybe working at home for indefinite periods. So what would you give some immediate advice to people other than just go buy the book? Well, that's what I was going to say. Please go buy the book. Actually, buy one for you and one for a friend. There you go. Give it to all your employees. Exactly. I'll just be like, I don't care about your anxiety, and one for a friend. There you go. Give it to all your employees. Exactly.

I'll just be like, I don't care about your anxiety, but here's a book. You work it out, man. Let me know how that goes. And we made it actually very soft. You can use it as a pillow. There you go. No, there's some really simple things. Because sometimes Chester and I will get asked to come in and work and build a more mentally strong culture,

a mentally resilient culture. And there's a few simple things you can do from a macro perspective. A lot of this is working individually by individual. But the macro, you teach people to say, what do you think? That is an incredible anxiety reducer is getting people's opinions on especially things that affect their lives. It sounds really a no-brainer, but listening to people and the only response is, thank you. Instead of, Chris, there's a reason

we're not doing that. We tried that back in 1987. Immediately you start arguing. Your answer is, thank you. So the first thing you do is you actually listen to people, give them a voice. That's really one of the most powerful ways you can actually bring down anxiety levels. Yeah. I think the key word for leaders is listen. You don't have to have all the answers. People are coming to you and they want you to listen. And again, one of the things we encourage people not to do, and we've got a wonderful quote, it says, never in the history of the world has telling someone to calm down actually calmed down anybody. Down or else. Yeah. Would you kids just calm down? Yeah, that never works. This idea of listening though, people are coming to you. They're very vulnerable. They don't expect you

to have all the answers. They do want you to, and hopefully expect you to listen and care. Damn it, man. So as a manager, CEO, I have to, and hopefully expect you to, listen and care. Damn it, man. So as a manager, CEO, I have to listen and care too? Sorry, I doubled down on you with that last one. Damn it. I was having trouble with just the caring part or the listening part, but now I have to do both at the same time? Anyway, but it sounds like a lot of managers or CEOs need to start putting this into their toolbox. That's the idea here is we're not saying

you have to change everything overnight, but we do have to become a lot more empathetic and understanding if we want to, especially knowledge workers, people who are coming in to use their creativity, their minds, and if you want their full engagement, you are going to keep losing people if you don't change a little bit of the way that you manage to become a little bit more empathetic, a little bit more understanding. And as Chester just mentioned, have a little bit more of a listening perspective. Yeah. And there's always going to be a war for talent and you want to attract the best talent. And a lot of times your top performers are those that suffer from anxiety. They're perfectionists.

They're super smart. They overthink a lot of things. You still want them. And if you want to keep them, you've got to create an environment where they can thrive, where they've got an ally, where they feel like their boss listens, where their opinion matters. It just hit me, the epiphany that I remember now when we had lots of employees, I was always the psychologist and especially salespeople. They would come in and be like,

Chris, I can't get motivated to pick up the phone or whatever my issue is. I got my ex-wife bugging me. I'm behind on child support. I'm dealing with all this stuff and I'm trying to stay focused. Help me. I did marriage counseling too. As a CEO, I'm like, why is this my job? I probably should have just hired a psychologist to work in the office somewhere and be like, go bother them. But yeah, I would have to care and work them through their problems and then bring their wife or husband in and be like, okay, why can't we all just get along at home? Because I got shit to sell here. But yeah, there's a lot of that. But it makes sense because I guess I technically I was doing it a lot of times. A lot of my employees were asking me, I'm having some

issues. Can you help me? And next time I'll bill them by the hour. As we go out, is there anything more that you guys want to take and share about the book and get people to buy it? I just love what you said there a second ago about it was your job and probably wasn't something that was really motivating to you. Actually, we developed a motivator's assessment, Jester and I, and remember, I think we found 23 human motivators. I can't remember exactly, but I think 21 or 22 for me is empathy. And it was really interesting. I showed that to some of our former employees and then to a person, they said, really, Adrian, you're really empathetic. And it was like, that was my job is to listen to you and to care because I cared about you as a person, but I don't get up every morning going,

I want to be empathetic today. And yet some people, that's really what drives them. So as a boss, I just had to learn to do it. I had to learn to be more empathetic, to care. You did good for you, Chris. You took the time with your people because you knew it would create better salespeople. That's the thing is if we're willing to take just a couple hours a week at this, we're going to have better teams, lower turnover, and it really is going to make a difference on our bottom line. We're really hopeful that the information in the book is a guidebook for leaders to be more empathetic, to understand that everybody's got a story. We coach a lot of executives and we say, look, know your team, know who needs a hug, know who needs some space and know who needs to, maybe

you need to be a little tougher on them and stuff. I think more than anything, we're hoping the book will remove this stigma that you can talk about when you're overwhelmed. It's okay to take a mental health day and we'll fill in for you. I think another big message, and we really are sincere about this. A lot of people are suffering through the pandemic with the isolation and so on, is that you're not alone. You're not alone. You've got a boss that listens. You've got a group that you can go to.

Because there's nothing worse than suffering alone. That's where things can get really dark in a real hurry. We really do hope that this will be, be not just information and case studies. There's tools there as well to help you build that team where people feel safe, where they're not alone and they can really thrive. There you go. There you go.

This has been wonderful guys to spend the time with you and get some insight in your book. Give us your.com is a place where people can find out more about you guys and order up the book online. You're on mute there, Adrian. There we go. I will start now on mute. Welcome to Zoom. Zoom life. First time. Yeah. Thank you so much, Chris, for having us on. The book is Anxiety at Work, available wherever fine books are sold. We've got some great offers for you at anxietyatworkbook.com. And you can also check

us out on adriengostick.com or chesterelton.com. And follow us on LinkedIn. We put a lot of stuff up there and that we think is very helpful. We've got a LinkedIn live show. That's always a lot of fun. Oh, do you? Yes. Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

And when it's live, you never know what those kids are going to say. And we've got a gratitude journal and newsletter. There's lots of places can go but i think where we want to focus is find bookstores everywhere and anxiety at work book.com has got a lot of great resources right there for you there you guys go well it's been wonderful to spend time with you guys today thank you very much for coming by we're deeply honored oh listen it's been a delight we love your energy we love your humor. And thanks for helping us spread the word. Thanks, Chris.

Thank you. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Be sure to check out the book, guys, Anxiety at Work, Eight Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get That Stuff Done. I'll hold the book up here. Thanks, my audience, for tuning in. Go to YouTube.com, 4chesschris Chris Voss to see the whole video version of this.

And you can also go to Instagram, YouTube. What is I said that before? Facebook, LinkedIn, just go everywhere. The Chris Voss show it's everywhere. Just Google it. It'll be there. Thanks guys for being here. Wear your mask, stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.