The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Fair Share: How Men and Women Can Create a More Equitable Workplace Together by W. Brad Johnson, David G. Smith

Episode Date: June 23, 2026

Fair Share: How Men and Women Can Create a More Equitable Workplace Together by W. Brad Johnson, David G. Smith https://www.amazon.com/Fair-Share-Equitable-Workplace-Together/dp/1647826829 How outdated work norms undermine careers, caregiving, and gender equity—and how leaders can fix the system. The workplace is broken—and it’s holding everyone back. Women still struggle to grow in their careers, while men who endeavor to do their part at home are often stigmatized. This disconnect means that even when men take part in flexible work arrangements or contribute to caregiving, women end up picking up the slack and missing out on professional opportunities. If companies want to reach their full potential and achieve true fairness at work, the workplace must change—and it starts at the top. In Fair Share, gender-in-the-workplace experts W. Brad Johnson and David G. Smith offer a blueprint for how leaders can break down systemic barriers across the organization so that men can do more outside of paid work and women can take their rightful place in the ranks of corporate leadership. They suggest focusing on three key areas: Rethinking company culture and the structure of work Going all-in on caregiving options and employee benefits Making gender fairness routine through process and policies Filled with examples and insights from both men and women, Fair Share offers a look at what companies can become when leaders finally break down the obstacles holding everyone back. By working together, men and women can create a better workplace, one where every individual can achieve what they want—both at work and at home.

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. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. 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 role. rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hey, folks, Voss here from the Chris Voss Show.com. Ladies gentlemen, the one our latest thing that makes the official, welcome the big show. As always, the Chris Voss shows, family that loves you. It doesn't hate you like the rest of the world does because you're here to grow. You're here to change.

You're here to evolve. You're here to make yourself better, as it were. So for 16 years and nearly 3,000 episodes of bringing the Chris Voss show, we are the oldest broadcasting podcast that broadcast daily, daily is a handful of us left of the oldest, and we're one of them. And we're still alive and kicking. So for the show to your family, friends, relatives, go to Chris Faw, or Facebook.com, Forchess, Cresfuss, LinkedIn.com, for Chess Chris Foss, YouTube.com, forsts, Chris Foss. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the

Chris Foss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it's not endorsement or review of any kind. Today, we have two amazing young men on the show. We're going to be talking to them about their insights and journeys. and business acumen, Brad Johnson and David Smith to join us on the show. We're going to be talking about their book. Their book is entitled, Fair Share,

How Men and Women Can Create a More Equitable Workplace by W. Brad Johnson and David G. Smith. We're going to get into with them, and it's out by my favorite company, Harvard Business Review Press. Welcome to the show. How are you, gentlemen? Doing great, Chris. You're having us, Chris. Thanks for coming.

We certainly appreciate it. Give us your dot-com, sirs, and where people can find you on the interwebs. Workplaceallies.com would be a good start. So you guys have a combined there for the two of you? We do. And so give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside your guys' new book? I'll give you each a shot at this.

Dave, you've got a lead off, man. Yeah, yeah. Fair share is really our third book as we think about it. And a trilogy of this idea of engaging men as allies. And our first two books really focused on these ideas around how do we show up in the workplace as dudes and how do we have the kind of relationships we have and getting it, trying to get it right. And we really left off at the end of our last book, Good Guys, which is a fan favorite out there of really how do we do this and change, also change the workplace, not just ourselves, but how do we change the workplace so it works for all of us? And we can really lean into that. And that's what Fair Share is all about is how do we begin to think about, how do we create a,

workplace that not only works for women and helping them to be leaders and managers out there and reach their full potential. How do we as guys show up and be able to be, again, most of us want to be caregivers of some kind, not you, Chris, but we do. Yeah, and we're men. Yeah, that's part of who we are. And the workplace isn't really designed in a way that allows people to do that in the way that we want to. Brad? Yeah, and I would just add that for too long, we have dealt with a workplace that was created by our great-grandfathers, by men, four-men, to do men's work. And really, that workplace isn't working for anybody in the 21st century men, women. No one's happy with it. So this is a book about, hey, how do we

begin chipping away at that archaic workplace, 20th century workplace, so that it actually works for those of us that want to have lives and rocket at work? Yeah, we want to enjoy work. Is that what you're trying to get us to do? It is a whole lot of word. Now, you guys both, and I think David Moore, referenced that there's something wrong with the system. Tell us what you guys have found in your analysis and research.

To start off, there are a lot of things wrong with the system, but to start off, the system tends to assume that women are caregivers, men are workers, men are breadwinners, Women have to do it all at home. And we have created a workplace that sort of caters to that. The workplace works for single earner families, typically a male with a wife at home, but that doesn't reflect the current demography at all. Most of us share breadwinning. Most of us want to share in caregiving. And the workplace doesn't allow for that. So that's one of the things that's wrong. When you say caregiving, do we need more support for, I know in some countries, both men and women or one or the other can choose to stay at home and they get a stipid to be able to do that and do the initial caregiving? Is that more what we need? Do we need more child care support, maybe? Yeah, all the above.

And really kind of this idea around how do we value caregiving in our workplaces and broadly in our society. And part of it is the beginning, right? around care around children and when women are having children in the early months and in weeks of caregiving at home. But it goes beyond just the child care portion of this, right? Care is something that spans the whole spectrum. People like maybe me and Brad, for example, we're at that stage where we don't have care needs anymore, but we do have, we're at that stage where, hey, elder care is a thing, right? The aging workforce, the aging demographics, people are living a lot longer today. They're working a lot longer today. And so there's other care needs

that we have. And certainly that shifts and changes. And so some of us are dealing with both of that, not us right now, but others in the workplace are dealing with that kind of that sandwich generation where you still got kids at home. But maybe you've got an aging, ailing parent out there too. You've got to care for. I was going to bring that up. I just heard that term, the sandwich generation from about four months ago, three months ago. I heard it for the first time from a guest. That's how I learn everything as I do the show. And yeah, you have these younger parents that they have kids that are in diapers or maybe five to ten maybe. And then they have parents that are in diapers and basically five to ten suffering from dementia, Alzheimer's. And these

people do become like little kids. My sister's going through that now, with a mess and dementia. and yeah, and so you're caring for like two sets of children sometimes on both ends. Yeah, a full 47% Chris, just to reinforce 47% of us identify as caregivers, as sandwich caregivers. Yep. Really? Wow. Yeah. That is wild.

I didn't realize it was that large. Yeah. But we do have a huge boomer aging population and we're living longer. You know what I mean? I think one of the thing, challenges is. that we have is we're living longer now than ever before, and we're coming across issues we've never had before. We've never had to take care of parents that are reaching 100.

I think when Social Security was created, it was a boondog for the government because they're like, yeah, there barely anyone makes it the 65. This is great. We keep all the money. And now it's flipped. Your thoughts on that. Yeah, I think the elder care piece of this is really a critical component because I think where you started with this conversation,

around child care, for example. When you become parents out there today for the first time or the third time or whatever it was, there's a lot of resources available to you. People know there's tons of books written. There's plenty of people out there to give you advice and guidance on how to care for a newborn all the way through getting them into college, right? I can find plenty of that. But what I can't find today is if I have a parent suffering from dementia and I'm the primary caregiver or one of the many caregivers in some cases because it's often patched together when we think about elder care, it's hard to find the resources. And who's going to show me, it's like what needs to be done?

What are the things I need to pay attention to? How do I do this? And so we really, it's really hard for those who have done this to find the resources, the things that you need so that you can do this. And oh, by the way, most people are at this point in, they're really at a very busy point in their work careers. So now you're trying to balance this. And then there's just this stigma at work, too, about sharing with others or divulging the fact that you're caring for somebody with Alzheimer's or dementia.

And you don't want to ask for help and you don't really want to share and ask for, how do you do this? And there's no support groups or anything. And so people feel very lonely when they get to this point. And that's part of what we've got to solve. And so you guys have researched and studied how to rethink company culture and the structure of work. Now, Brad, you're a professor. Emeritus, PhD at leadership, leadership. Let me re-cut that.

Brad, you're a professor emeritus of leadership, ethics, and law at the U.S. Naval Academy. You were a clinical psychologist and the founder of Workplace Allies for nearly 30 years. You served our sailors and Marines in the U.S. Navy as a first as a commission officer and later as a tenured professor at Annapolis. And then David does professor of practice

and co-director of the gender and work initiatives at John Hopkins, Kerry Business School. So you guys have both spent a lot of time researching human behavior and researching this thing. What are some tips that you guys have that leaders could take a look at? Is this book targeted towards CEOs? Leaders of all stripes, I would say. Leaders at every level, including managers.

We want to get to those deck plate managers and the CEOs. Here are just a couple of things to kick this off. Number one, stop framing gender fairness as a women's issue. You look across corporate America today. That's exactly what too many companies do. If we want to bolster gender fairness, what we do is have a mentoring program or a leadership program for women. We have tea and cookies on International Women's Day. But there's nothing else meaningful going on.

It's not woven into our business practice. And it's conveys to everybody that fixing this, is her problem. It's a women's problem. Men see that and think, yeah, that's not for me. So I'm not showing up. I'm not really engaging. And if I'm a male, let's be honest, in the workplace today, and there's anything on gender on my calendar, it's probably a siloed compliance-based training on sexual harassment or implicit bias. It's a shame, blame messaging for men. We fail to invite men in. Let's show dudes what's in it for us when we're better, when we're better collaborators with women, when we're inclusive, when we lead into caregiving. Boy, there's a lot on the plate for us if organizations would simply show men the benefits.

Yeah. How do men navigate this in the Me Too era? Because that really put a lot of men on the back foot. and it made it, it presented a lot of challenges that really backfired on women. The concern of sexual harassment, for a while there we had the microaggression BS going on. It was taking it, I think, a little too far in my opinion. When we're starting to cut things into microaggressions, it's just, come on, man. But how do men navigate this?

Because a lot of them are scared. I know there's, there's, in the 90s, I wouldn't let women be alone with me in my office as a CEO. and a lot of men now, I was just reading something on Facebook, sorry to go along here with this question, but I was reading on Facebook, this gal was writing about how at her work, her boss will not meet with any of the women alone, privately. And there always has to be either another woman or another person in the room. If there's any communication, it always has to be with a witness. And this person is just protecting themselves. This is a man who is protecting himself because he doesn't want to be me too.

and I've certainly had enough experiences over my 35 career of working with women that when stuff goes weird and you're trying to avoid, hey, I'm not interested you and we're at work. This is professional. There's a lot of issues there. Anyway, I'll let you guys get a crack at that. What do you guys think about what men are on with the Me Too thing? Yeah, I think there's a lot there with that. And it certainly shifted and changed a little bit over the last 10, 15 years since we've been doing this work as well.

And we saw a lot of that that happened right after our first book was launched, Athena Rising. And it did change a lot of the conversations were having with leaders, and especially more senior leaders. And we certainly heard the same thing you did, Chris, around men who were afraid or scared in some way they were going to be in this. And suddenly Me Too became a verb in some way as well. And the reality is there that in the research,

and Brad and I looked at this very closely over the years, is that there's really not any substance to the idea that women are going to go out there and make false accusations, one, which is one of the things that you hear a lot of men talking about, that women are just going to make these false accusations about what happened to them that I did in some way. And the reality is that it's really rare around false claims around sexual harassment. And it's really something that we just as men have to push back on because the reality is that most of us are out there bumbling around and we're not getting it quite right, times and we've got to have a little grace for each other. And women do, I think, to certain extent, but understanding that you have, you're approaching this with good purpose and intent, right, that how you're acting and behaving and trying to role model the behaviors and set the example

in the workplace that the people are looking for when it comes to this. And I think that's part of it is setting the example. And women can tell you who those guys are in the workplace that are, they're the good guys to be around, right? They're the ones you want on your team. They're the ones that you want to work for. And it goes even beyond that within kind of the women's network broadly out there. Women talk about this quite a bit with us is that they have, you can go look at glass door or whatever to look about at the culture of a company or an organization, but they really count on their female colleagues, this women's network. And they'll go say, hey, is this, is this a good place to work? How's the culture there? Is it, you know, they're treated fairly and

all of that. And that's where they're going to share. Hey, this is a great place. to work and here's why. Here are the people that you want to work with and work for. And it's a great way to find out really who are those people. And the common, I think the common trait that we often find here is these guys are really, they lead with authenticity. They are real, right? There's no hidden agenda. There's no covering of anything. They're not one thing right here in front of you and then something else when the door closes behind you. This is what you see is what you get. And they're setting the example, very transparent about who they are, what they are, what they do and what's important to them. The other thing I would just say with this whole closing the door

and having somebody in the room with you or whatever the case might be is that think about the signal that this sends to women that somehow they're not trusted. I don't trust you to be in a room with me. And so it's really setting up a really bad situation. Oh yeah. And a culture and a climate for you. And then what does that say about me, right? That I don't, that I can't be trusted either. And it's I don't think from just having a great culture of what it's like to work in a workplace. That's not something that I would want to advocate for. Hey, and last thing, make this part of your brand, Chris. A lot of guys are afraid of rumors and gossip, right?

If they start mentoring a woman, make this part of your brand, meaning don't just mentor one junior woman, right? That looks creepy. Mentor lots of women, lots of men. It's just part of your brand. If that's who you are, people just know that's what you are. people just know that's what you do. You promote people fairly. So I don't think you have anything to worry about at that point. Yeah. What are some other techniques that leaders can use to try and develop a fair share? You bring up a great point that I didn't think about, the element of trust in the workplace being gone.

It was really destructive. Even in dating markets, it's a problem of what's going on with between men and women right now. It's pretty toxic. What are some other things that leaders can do or companies can do inside of leaders inside of the company to try and make things more equitable? Is there things we need to tools we need to give men maybe more? Like I think we related to maybe time off or maternity care, things like that. I don't know. Boy, yeah. How long's your show, Chris? We'll just hit a couple of them here.

Let's just start with Flex Leave, right? Flex hybrid remote work. This is unfortunately, it's been sort of framed as a way. women's program, right? And I think that's one place we've gotten it wrong. Even though men often have had access to this, they've not been taking it. And part of it is they get stigmatized, they get shamed if they take flex work. So men don't engage in it. Women do. So then very quickly it defaults to it's a maternity thing or it's for working mothers. Until that changes, Until workplaces get really serious about allowing men to have flex, allowing men to take part in caregiving equally at home, not just after a newborn, but long term.

I want to be engaged with my kids. So why can't my partner and I both have some kind of hybrid work arrangements or really sharing fairly? And it's not enough for the company to say, okay, guys, you can take flex work. My manager needs to let me do that without shaming me and saying, hey, that's for women. Don't you have a wife at home? That narrative keeps too many guys from sharing equitably. Yeah. And I think one of the stories we share with us in our interviews for Fair Share from

who's a really good bloke from down under, Michael Ray. And Michael's just a great guy to get down to just the nuts and bolts common sense. So how does this work down there on the shop floor? on the plant floor. And he was working with an automotive company, right, in a plant. They had typical eight-hour shifts that overlapped, or 10-hour shifts, whatever they were, that overlapped with both the, you said, hey, what's one thing that would really help you, and these were mostly men, right?

What would help you as a man show up and be able to do some of the things that you want to be able to do from a caregiving perspective? Geez, if you could just give us one thing, one easy thing, and that would be, can I, Can I do the pickups or drop-offs with the kids in the morning and the afternoons? One of those. I don't need both. Just give me one so I can do my 50%, right? Thinking of that as their fair share.

And so he worked with the company leadership and say, right, we're going to extend the work day by two hours. And we're going to have two shifts that work overlap in the middle, but allow one shift to have it off in the morning, one shift to have it off in the afternoon. And then they can decide how they're going to rotate that over and over. And it was a huge win. it was a huge success for the company. And it was a huge success for these men, right, to be able to, hey, wow, they actually listened to me. They did something about it.

And I'm actually able to show at home that, yeah, I'm able to do these things. Yeah. Hey, Chris, one more thing. We interviewed somebody who said, one of the things you've got to do is socialize this with those male managers who are really reluctant to give, for example, women flex work. She said, I have this male manager. He said, there's no way. I'm letting her have a hybrid, flex work, remote work thing, because I know she's going to be doing laundry.

And later, she finds that same dude at the water cooler talking to another guy about the NFL game over the weekend. She says, laundry, you're doing laundry right now. It's laundry, really? Yeah. And let me ask you guys this. This is a curious thing I've got. So about, I don't know what it was, four months ago, six months ago, I really burn out. We were doing four shows a day, Monday through Friday. And now we do three shows a day, Monday through Thursday. And I determined that my weekend was not making it for me anymore. I couldn't decompress. It's really hard to do that many shows, Ask Letterman or Carson, to put on a show and to do two or three a day, or more for that matter. It's really hard, especially to produce the show. If I was a guest, it'd be much easier. Not that I'm saying being a guest, is easy. But I don't want to take a, well, it's me. I'm so, I'm suffrage. Anyway, my poor hosting. But so I cut off, I just realized that I was going in and by the time I decompressed from the

week, it was like mid-sunday. And then I would be finally enjoying the weekend. And it would just take me that long to decompress. And so finally I said, you know what, I'm just going to take Fridays off. So I can have a three-day weekend. And by the time I actually decompress, it's It's Saturday for a change. And I tried to experiment about four months ago, six months ago maybe. And it has been the best freaking thing that I have ever done for myself creatively, business-wise, just on every scale. I work harder.

I can do more Monday through Thursday. I can kick-ass, take names. I can grind it all out. By Friday, by Thursday, 9, I'm sick of it. but that Friday, Saturday, Sunday, three-day weekend, and there's a lot of talk about moving to a four-day work week. And for me, I'm more productive. I'm more on point.

I'm not crawling in Monday morning going, man, I did not get rest. And I think, do you guys think maybe going to a four-day-week-in and offering Friday, Saturday, Sunday? Because that would give dads and moms more home time with their children. Yeah, I think one of the things that we, as we're looking at all the different forms of thinking about flex work as Brad was describing it, but really just these other ways to think about not being always physically present in the office, not just a standard 9 to 5 or 9 to 9 or whatever you work, right, every day of the week. But there's a lot of different forms, a lot of companies, depending on the industry,

the type of work that they're doing, the size of the company matters, right? Small businesses have different options than large corporations or global distributed companies around the world. So they're all experimenting in different ways. And we tried to highlight a lot of the different versions of that. But I think the common takeaway for us was really that a lot of these leaders and managers who are able to really effectively be creative and innovative with the way that they change the workplace days or hours to help their. Again, it was all about meeting client need or customer need, at the same time, matching. it with employee performance, right? We've got to match those two things up. But finding ways to do that was really listening to their employees and their clients and customers about what they needed,

what would be most helpful, most effective, and creating this really starting to create some transparency around what it is we need and to understand that. I think you've hit Chris, talking about your going to a four-day work week. You've hit on something Dave and I cover in the book, which is the results only work environment, right? You're getting your shows in in four days. You're feeling healthier. And you're producing. You're producing the shows, the episodes you need. That's a key takeaway. How do you, as a leader or manager, move to a results only workplace where we're not interested in where, how, when you work so much? We're just interested in what you produce. Are you cranking out the stuff you need to crank out?

Is it good quality? Are you meeting customer needs? That's what we're interested in, not how many hours you're sitting at your chair. Yeah. And the additional Friday would give a chance for dads to pick up and do all that stuff and interact on Friday. But either way you could cut it, I think eight hours a day is too much either when it really comes down to it. maybe maybe give people the pickup hours the daycare pickup hours they want. How do you,

somewhere in other, you'd have to make this balance, though, because if Bob's got pickup hours in the morning and I can't get pickup powers, one of the things I, we started our first companies in Utah, and one of, and there's a little Mormons up here that they don't smoke or drink and stuff.

And so the people that do smoke are really a very small segment, even back in the, there's probably a larger part back in the 90s when we started. But, but I remember one time my employees came to me, And they go, hey, this isn't fair what's going on. These guys are going out smoking for half an hour. And sometimes longer, they're just out there joking around on the patio.

And they get four or five of these unofficial breaks because they're smokers. And they're basically, someone did the math. I think it was a secretary at the front desk because she was monitoring coming in. And she goes, they're getting a free hour a day. And I was like, you guys are, I never did the math, but you guys are right. And so we had to kibosh the time that they had and all that stuff. But people were right. They're like, this isn't fair.

It's just, who knows? Chris, we interviewed Bridget Schulte of the Better Life Lab. And she said, when I was at the Washington Post, I had an editor who would come around the newsroom around midnight. And he would make comments like, I know who all the good reporters are because they're here, right, at midnight working. And she said that was such BS because this number one, this guy should know who the good reporters are by the quality of their stories, right? Not where they're sitting. And she said those dudes that were sitting there at midnight were playing solitaire, right? They weren't doing anything meaningful.

So just the smokers, right? You got to look at results, not how many hours. Yeah. Jump in here, Dave. Yeah, I think one of the things that is really important that was telling us, you about was really around this creating transparency in the organization and in really understanding what the needs are of people and specifically around the structure of work matters right the hours that we work where we work when we work how we work all that matters and if we can put that

together in a way that works for our people we can be more efficient with our time just right and that could include smoke breaks i don't know whatever whatever you want to include in that yeah if bob's got you you got a way to make it echo right so bob's got there you're They're letting him come in an hour late so he can drop off his kids and stuff. And so John's sitting there going, how come Bob gets a free hour off? Where's my comp and where's the equality here, right? And so they have to figure out somebody. Maybe Bob gets, I don't know, he gets leave an hour early because he's doing the thing.

One thing that we're moving to society that's highly single. I don't know if you guys have seen that in your studies yet, but the new Gen Z years are coming up, they're not getting married, they're not even really dating. And the fallout that's going on, the dating markets with them, doesn't look good for the future for children, families and stuff. And so I think you're going to have more and more a single person society that have children. And so even more dads are going to need help if they're a caregiver or father, if they have the, what's it called, where they have, they got to take care of the kids either 50-50 or maybe they have the kids more than the mother in time by divorce courts. And I think you're going to see more of that. And so that is going to be an issue for men because like you said, women are normally adopting

of that role of parenting and childhood care and stuff. And it's a biological thing. But more and more men are going to need some sort of support for taking care of children, I think, in the future. Because I think it's just going to be single people from here and out the way it's going. There's a lot of that, right? We see a lot of more single parent families today. And that's dads and moms, right?

Certainly, it's always been trending in the direction where it's more moms than dads, but it's more, but they're both going up at this point, as you said. And it, but it points to the fact that this workplace, if a workplace is structured in a way that it only works for people who are married, you know, and he's, he's the one doing the full breadwinning, not doing any caregiving. She's at home doing the caregiving and the household responsibilities. It doesn't work for most people today. Most people, again, families today are, even though we see,

this single parent increase going on today. Most of us are in dual earner families because it takes two paychecks to make the rent. And if it takes two paychecks to make the rent, I need both of us actually collecting those paychecks and not just one that's making 10% and one that's doing 95 or whatever percent of that as well. So we need to make it so it works for both people. And employers need to quit sticking their hands in the sand and saying that dads don't dads don't have caregiving response, but there are no single dads out there. I don't know of any.

I don't know what they're talking about in the press, right? There are no single dads in my company. It's probably just because you haven't asked or you just don't know. You're blind. And so we have to understand what's going on. But today, so many employers, so many bosses out there are afraid to ask about their employees caregiving responsibilities because they're afraid they're going to get sued. They're afraid there's litigation's coming out of them. And then us as caregivers, if his dads, we're afraid because there's all this stigma against, I'm going to get this backlash or penalized. I'm not going to get that raise.

I'm not going to get that promotion or opportunity because they're going to think, oh, he doesn't deserve it. He's just going to do whatever. He's not going to be focused on his work. And so we have this gap, right? And we've got to close the gap here about what employers know and know about their workforce population and help employees get to what they need so that they can achieve. that performance. And now you guys have written a lot of books. Let's get a plug in here for all the

books you guys have written. I think I think you guys written books together. How many books you guys written together? And then for each of you, how many books do you guys have? Wow. Dave and I have written three books together and happy to plug those for you. And I've written a few others on mentoring in particular. So that was that was where we started. I had been researching mentoring my whole career. Dave comes along. We start having the these gender conversations about why men tend to stay on the sidelines and don't engage, especially with talented women at work. So that was our first book, Athena Rising. That's what we think of as the interpersonal. It was all about, hey, how can men be better, active, deliberate

mentors and sponsors with women? I'll just give you a couple takeaways, and Dave can talk about good guys, listening. I don't know if this shocks you, Chris. When we ask women, hey, what's the one thing, you wish men would do more in developmental relationships, listening was the number one thing. Apparently, we guys are not so good at listening, generously, graciously without just trying to fix her or her problems. And then assumptions, right? Just because I'm a woman, don't make assumptions about what I want or don't want in my career. Actually ask me, find out, do the listening. Then Dave, good guys comes along. Yeah, and then good guys, interesting time to launch a book. in October of 2020 during a middle of a pandemic.

I'm just going to say. But interesting, right? This was really picking up, as Brad said, from the interpersonal side about how do we show up in the workplace, but really adding the public piece of this. And this is what you were getting at earlier, Chris, about coming off the Me Too movement and everything that was going on there. It's like, how do we get guys to get past this idea that something's going to happen to me? But I actually have to be a great public ally and advocate out there in doing this.

this work. I got to role model it for people. And so when I hear something biased or sexist, I got to speak up. I got to do something about it right there in the moment. And that happens a lot of times when women aren't even in the room, right? The whole locker room talk aspect of it, right? Most men are not going to speak up when they hear that going on in a setting when it's just dudes in the room. Yeah. Because they think everybody else agrees with it. And the reality is that we find the research is most of the guys don't, but they're not going to speak up because they think everybody else does. So it just takes that one person to say something right there in the moment. And it breaks all that apart.

The other part of this is really about advocating for people who don't look like us, right? We're not part of that group. And so suddenly, guys are afraid to advocate for women in some ways, well, what's going on there? Why are you talking her up? And so there's assumption that there's something, there must be something else going on out there if he's doing it this way. But back to what Brad started with early in the conversation is this is part of your brand. You're going to make this part of who you are and what you do. You value talent of any kind, shape, gender.

It doesn't matter, right? We were looking for the best people for the job to get the job done. And that comes in all sorts of gender, right? Shapes and sizes. Yeah. A way to make the workplace more equitable. I always knew what my employees' homes lives were going. I used to call it touching the hearts and minds of my employees when I go around and I talk to them and check in with them.

How does this thing's going, man? And I let them know that I cared about them. And I was interested in how they were doing in their home life. Because the one thing I learned, especially with salespeople, is if there's something going on in their heads, they've got stuck on something. There's home life's problems. There's some sort of issue that maybe they're having. That can really affect their sales. And it can affect them as people too.

And so I used to go around to people's booth and check in with them and how are you doing? How's the family? How's things going on? making sure everything's good there. And I think it's important to kind of know what people are going through. I've had employees that my one of my best employees, she had a son with schizophrenia, and then she had shingles herself, and she needed some extra care and time off sometimes or a break. But she was the person that five o'clock, all my employees would be in that sprinter position,

starting position, down on their knee with the ready to go at 4.59, right? As soon as that bell hit, man, they were punching that clock, out of there. But she was that employee who would always be there hours after doing stuff. I think as a leader, you need to know who those people are. You need to be, number one, kind of concerned that they don't burn themselves out. But number two, know their value. And she was one of my best employee. She worked harder than anybody ever. But I did need to monitor her time and try and say, hey, you need to go home, your family. You need to go home. You're here. And I love what you do. and you're doing a great job for me.

But come on, it's like 8 o'clock. Let's go home. Yeah. Yeah. Chris, you've just role-modeled one of the things we really hit on in fair share, which is what world-class managers do, right? Exactly what you just described. Do you take the time to have the empathy, the awareness, a concern to check in

and find out what are people's caregiving obligations? While you're doing that, you also find out what they're working on, right? So you're in a position to advocate and sponsor them for the good work. But yeah, we need more of that kind of managerial empathy and awareness. There's not quite enough of that. There isn't. And knowing she had a lot of problems where her son with schizophrenia would get arrested or get into problems. He was constantly in problems.

And it's a very sad disease. And but yeah, knowing who your best employees are, knowing what they're going through at home, Sometimes I, as a CEO, and I think many leaders, managers have to be a psychologist in some cases. And you've got to know where your employee's headspace is. Because if it's somewhere else, they're dealing with some sort of problem, especially at home, they're not really at work. Their heads someplace else. I really think that, I don't know, there needs to be an equitable way to somehow accomplish this. I do think, what was it going to say?

There's other countries that do give time off for things. They do have caregiver services. I think it's interesting those same companies operate here in U. Or are based here in America, but in France or Italy or Europe somewhere where they have laws that require. I think there's, I think in France and Italy, they actually pay for a caregiver to come help the mother at home and do stuff and kind of give her a break and support. And maybe that maybe that's the thing we need to do more of. Maybe four-day work week and we're cutting hours back into six hours a day. I don't know, there's probably a lot of different ways we can approach it, but maybe that's

what a leader needs to do is maybe you send out a questionnaire and say, what's your status? Can you ask that legally? What's your relationship status and what's going on? Or how can leaders approach that without walking into some sort of lawsuit? Yeah. We're talking about a care. Dave and I have been talking about a care census for a while now, and you're getting to that. And I think the key here is, is it anonymous, right?

You can't cross boundaries. You can't force people to identify their partnership or their caregiving status, but you can offer it. And if employees see year to year, you're doing this care census, you want to find out what the caregiving load is for your own employees. And you want to then tie that to creating better benefits for caregivers. Now, suddenly, you're building trust with me, right? I fill this out anonymously.

I wasn't sure what you're going to do with a day. data, but now I see you're offering vouchers for child care or you're equalizing paid leave or you're doing flex work programs. Okay, now I trust you, right? This company takes it seriously, this caregiving identity I have. And boy, you're likely to retain me and get the best of me when you show up that way. I wonder if you could get a volunteer program to fill out the forms. Because somehow I'd have to know, okay, Bob, Bob, and here's another, here's another,

wrench in the system. There's a lot of married gay men that probably have a hard time getting time off to take care of children if they take care of children. And like we mentioned before, exclusively it's thought of society-wise or whatever as women do that stuff. And men don't. Maybe, I don't know if LGBTQ caregivers get the same opportunities or treated the same. And that's probably something to identify and address. Yeah, it's really about kind of getting back to that basic value. How do we value care in our workforce and not making it an accommodation? Something, this is part of part of our work, part of who we are as people. And we, and the other, I think the challenge with care is often beyond, again, this kind of gender normed piece around

it. It's women that do this is also the fact that it changes over time, right? It's not like it's always the same. It's very cyclical. It comes for periods of time, right? It's really intense around, like when kids are very young, and then it fades off as they get into school. And then maybe you get an ailing parent or an ailing partner, for example. There's times where you've got to care for you. You're the one who's going to be caring for your partner. And that might just be for a few months. It might be for a year.

I don't know. It shifts and it changes. And so we've got to have a system that's flexible enough to kind of, these are not accommodations. These are something that we all deal with. And that's, again, the research shows us that somewhere between 70 and 80 percent of of your current workforce, no matter where you were, identifies as a caregiver.

And most employers do not know that. So we don't understand the need to help. And again, these people are dealing with it. They're dealing with it on their own because it's an individual problem. And I just got to figure it out on my own. And I'm going to hide it. I'm going to hide it from many of my peers out there. So I don't want them to know about it, but they're dealing with a lot.

And guess what? They're just not performing in the ways that we want them to or need them to. And many of them, you wonder why our workforce is stressed out and burned out today. A lot of it is because they're doing both at the same time and there's almost zero support across the workforce. And one more thing, Chris, if you're a leader, if you're a leader of any kind, you've got to lead on this. And a key way to lead is to talk about your own caregiving burden, right? Don't hide it. So many leaders that we know of, and these are usually older men who look like Dave and I, if they have something at home, they sneak out the side door, right? Maybe they got to

pick up a sick kid. They slink out. They don't make it public. They miss an opportunity to role model and share with everybody that, hey, I've got stuff going on or I'm going to have to take leave for six months or I've got to have every morning off for my disabled child. Make that clear, make it public because when you do, suddenly it normalizes it for everyone else. Yeah. And there needs to be, correct me if I'm wrong in my thinking, because you guys do the research on this, I'm just a hack. But I have had thousands of employees. There needs to also be some guardrails in place. I'll give me an example. I had one gal who was a processor from my mortgage company that we had, and really good worker, really good employer, employee,

but she started having problems where she started missing things, costing us money. She wasn't collecting the appraisals like she would. We'd had four or five write-ups, two or three write-ups where we'd said, hey, man, you're, you got to collect this money because you're losing almost as much money as we pay you. And when you lose more money than we pay you, that's kind of negligible. But what we found out was what was going on at home was her partner, her husband. And they were young kids, so this is probably some of that. but he wasn't changing the baby's diapers and feeding the baby because he wanted to play Xbox games.

Now, these are in your 20s, young people, but she was kept asking for time to go home in the middle of the day for an hour or two to take care of this. Now, at first, I was the good employer boss who went, okay, that's, that's exceptional. And the things we're talking about here with your books, let's go ahead and let that happen. But then it tried to become a thing where every day I need to go home and babysit. And at the point where it was costing me more than we were paying her in her screw-ups at work because she was spending all day, we didn't know, yakking at this husband who wouldn't, who's just lazy, I guess. And she's, he, we won't change the diapers. And so finally we had to put her foot down and go, look, you need to get your relationship in sequence here. Okay, everybody else here has, you need to take care of what's going on at home because this isn't our problem.

you're making this our problem. Once or twice for an emergency, I can see that. But I think you kind of would have some guardrails in to make sure there's not abuse, maybe. Am I wrong on that? Go ahead, Dave. Yeah, I was going to say that I think those are, again, I see those as exceptions. And it do happen.

The exceptions always do happen, right? And those are the exceptions. And I think the vast majority are not out there to abuse. and it's really about, hey, most people are out there just trying, they honestly want to do good work. They're trying it, just like I'm sure this woman was, right? She's trying, she's trying her best to do good work, and she's working with a disadvantage right now here with this particular partner she's got. But I think solving some, helping them, again, the ability to help solve some of the problems, how much of that you want to do within as an employer is one thing, right? And then how much

that needs to move outside. But I think too many. employers and have, unlike you in this situation, too, and the employers are looking, we look completely at any sort of care situation as a, that's a private issue. Completely private. That's your issue. And I don't want to hear anything. And I don't need to know anything about it. Right.

And I'm not here to support you in your issues. If you can't figure it out, I'll find somebody else who can do the work. I think somewhere in between, right? There is a happy medium here and the ability that, again, I think we can put guardrails in place for some of these exceptions and how do we want to handle those at that level? The harder part is often how he or you maybe as a very senior leader or CEO handling this. But often it's a lot of frontline managers, especially in much very large companies out there who aren't as equipped in thinking about how do I handle these kinds of situations, right?

And they often just write people off and they're going to fire, they have firing authority or get them fired and then move on to the hiring and retraining somebody else and bringing somebody else in, when there was probably some leadership that could have been done there and just work with this person. And is there some, is there a benefit? Is there something that we can, we have access to as an option to help them sort this out so we can retain the real talent in the company if that's who they are? Yeah. And Chris, my inner clinical psychologist is kicking in here. You think of your case, maybe it's not going to work, right? She just can't produce because it's, it's just a disaster with her partner at home. But I would at least want to show up.

in that exit interview or when I had to just say, hey, we need to put you on leave for a while. This is not going to work. And just say, hey, you produce great work. I'd love to keep you. I see your talent. I'd love to promote you for things. But you've got to sort out what's going on at home. And let me just offer my observation that this partner may not be a partner to you.

And you may have work to do on deciding about that relationship. But I wish you the best. And as things change, please come back. I want to be your advocate. Yeah. Thankfully, that problem reflects itself. But that was basically the conversation I had with her. I go, look, I don't mind giving a few breaks for emergencies or something out.

I'm not going to be all anal and be like, that was a sick day it cost you. I'm going to be gracious and benevolent as much as I can as a leader, but there's a certain point where things get taken apart. And that cigarette story that I told you about the cigarettes thing. One thing I found was the people were supposed to just have a 10-minute cigarette break. They were turning in half an hour hour out there. They were having a, they were just like, Chris doesn't seem to notice this, so we're just going to go with it. And when the fairness thing came up, when people said, hey, these people get an extra

hour a day to smoke, and we don't get that hour. That's not fair. And ever since then, I've been thinking about the fairness in the thing. Like the case for this gal, she, and I'm like, you. you've got to get your husband to man up and take care of this. You have to take, I can't go to their house and tell her husband what to do. But once we did the, I think it was the third or fourth write-up, and she'd lost more money than she'd earned that month for us.

So we were paying double. We wrote her up and she was like, oh, well, you guys are going to meet this way. I'm just going to quit. You guys are awful. There's a famous story of her cussing me out in front of my whole office, and I just sat there drinking of a drink of vodka. I think it was, or it was whiskey. And I just went, okay, yeah, I'm an asshole.

So I thought most of my bosses were assholes. So as far as I'm concerned, I was doing my job. But thanks for playing. But she quit. So that took care of it. But I think what I'm saying is there are ways that abuse, just like the smoking thing. If you don't put in some guide rules to maybe some of these things where people want time off or people want, you know, issues like this. And then you've got to keep a balance.

If Bob gets two hours off on Monday, does everyone else get? two hours off? How do we work this so that there's equity or maybe equity pull? Maybe we need to have a third designation. You get sick days and vacation days, right? Maybe we need to have some sort of equity pull that if Bob needs to take two hours, Bob can take two hours, but everybody knows they've got that maybe bank where they've got five emergency hours a month or something. I don't know. What do you think about that? Well, I think also more organizations are freeing themselves I would describe it, Chris, from a lot of those kinds of nuts and bolts, right? You're not punching a clock anymore.

I want to just see the results. Dave and I write about the results-only work environment. In a lot of industries, it doesn't really matter where you're working. I don't need to see you in your seat. I want to see what you produce, right? I want to see your contributions to our team or this client or this project. Just show me the results. And if your results are world class, go for it.

You need to show up late because you're dropping kids off. You need to take Fridays because there's a family obligation. I could care less, right? As your manager, I love the results you're producing. Yeah. Do you want to jump in here? Yeah, I was going to say, you mentioned the four-day work week, for example, right? And that's it turns out in many, many different businesses today, that works really well.

because people find that I can be just as productive, if not more productive, by compressing into those days because the time off allows me to be fully engaged and right back at it at my highest level come Monday morning or whenever you're back at work in that environment. So again, finding where people can do their best work or when they can do their best work, the quality of the work matters. A lot of times people, they can get you probably good three or four hours of work in a day. and then after that it's like, unless it's just turning widgets out every day, it's probably not all that good. So if you're in that in that world where you're doing a lot of the deep think work and things that take some time and thought and interaction with customers and things like that, doing that for 12 hours a day is probably, they're probably not as effective at the 12th hours as they were at the first and second hour.

So how do you want to really want to spend that time? How do you want them spending that time? and what's the best use of it? Could they be doing something else in that time? And then let's get them back. I want to get more of those productive hours and then let them do something else and those other productive maybe recharge their batteries or take care of something that needs to happen that's holding them back.

Yeah. One of the one of the one of the one of the, I lost the thought. One of the big things is giving people time off. I'm not a big thing on these sabbatical things, giving people sabbatical. I just don't, I don't know how I feel about that. So I'll let you guys jump in on the question when I get. ground out here. But maybe if we gave more people incremental time off, they wouldn't need sabbaticals or maybe need more mental health or even health issues, giving people a little

incremental pieces of time to deal with their stuff. Maybe you can improve their health and maybe you'll pay less for health insurance as a company and all that good stuff. But yeah, I think we need to do more assessment of the real work. Now I remember what it was. So I've been marketing on LinkedIn for, I don't know, since the beginning of LinkedIn. We have, I think, 60,000 followers over there. We have a huge 135,000 member group over there. I've been marketing on there for a long time. One thing I learned, and this is, I think 10 years ago I learned this,

is I don't bother people that I'm marketing to on Monday, because Monday is when everyone kind of shows up, answers all their emails, does all their work. They're all busybody doing their things. And then Tuesday is the day when they're still working, but they start looking at stuff. And so Tuesday is the key time to get front of them on LinkedIn, especially in the morning. And then the watch of anything or work of anything seems to fall off.

And Friday is just a complete fuck up. People are, we're doing what, Relax Friday now or whatever it is. And people are showing up flip-flops and shorts and underwear and pajamas and stuff. And they're in that mental state. I know because that's why I wear shorts every day. And but the hours of what people are doing, there are a lot of times of Friday, I think they're just watching stuff on YouTube. We found that if you send an email on Friday marketing, no one looks at that thing. No one looks at it because they're just goofing off.

That's what they're doing. I'm saying everybody's goofing off on Friday, so don't throw rocks at me and send me emails, folks. But a lot of people are in that mindset. And I think we need to look at, that's what I've done. I've compressed my week Monday through Thursday. And I'm working my ass off those four days. to the point that when it reaches Thursday night, I just want to, I'm done. I'm sick of it all.

And that's good because I put in my work. I love what I do and stuff, but it's time to decompress. And I think more people need to do that. A lot of countries have moved to 40-day workweek. A lot of companies or countries have moved to the force support for men and women and stuff. And I think we need more of that. And maybe you'd have workers that don't suffer from burnout as much and different things like that. Any final thoughts on that as we go out?

Yeah, as it turns out, there's a lot of great research that shows that, right? That when you can give people the space and the time to kind of take care of themselves a little bit, right? And be, take care of what they need to do, whether that's just, I need to decompress. I need I need to do some caregiving for somebody else or whatever the case might be. Or maybe I just need some time away from the work that they're more productive. And they're also more committed. And I think that's one of the things, when you think about burning out high talent people out there, the people that you count on the most, right?

You know you can go to them and to get the job done. It's like, don't burn them out, though. You've got to give them the space, got to give them the time to be able to do their best work every day. And understanding, again, what is it that does that? How does that work for you? And again, there's great research. And we highlight some of that in the book about how companies are using that research to restructure their work weeks, just like you talking about four-day work weeks, one way to do it.

There are a lot of other ways that companies, again, because of the nature of the work that they do, if you have a Salesforce work, right, that you're all externally focused on clients and customers, it's a little different model than others out there who might be doing more kind of service-related work with patients and health care, right, or in education with students. That's a whole different model when we think about the kind of hours and days of the week, the rhythm of work that we have to have. Yeah, and Chris, one last thing. Don't knock sabbaticals, brother.

I've had three of them. We academics are spoiled. And I can tell you, those were golden years for me. But let me just tell you, there are companies like Intel that operate on a sabbatical system, right? They give all of their employees' sabbaticals. In fact, they're not even voluntary. They're mandatory. Every few years.

Really? You've got to take seven weeks. Really? Yes, we require you to do it. And I know this because one of my best buddies from high school has been at Intel, his whole career. And let me just tell you, he was really loyal. He looked forward to those little mini sabbaticals. I want a sabbatical?

How come I don't get a sabbatical around here? I've been self-employed for 35 years. Say, look at the mirror. That's why. Yeah. My boss is an asshole. But somehow I still live with them. I'm thinking about what you guys have cooked up in this book, giving fathers or mothers more time to pick up kids.

I know that the whole daycare thing is like a whole nightmare situation just in costs alone and just the menagerie of it and outs. I think I had some employees that would sometimes ask to go pick up their kids and then they would come back to work and drop them off and stuff because they charge $5,000 for every second that you go beyond the 5 o'clock mark or whatever it is at the daycare. So, you know, I think six days, I think if we're going to do Monday through Friday, we just need to cut it down to six hours a day. And then that would give baby space morning and evening to do that thing. And more employees want, we won't get into this, but more employees, they want more value in work. They want to see more, they want to see it improving their lives and all that good stuff. Give us your guys' final pitch out as we go out and your dot-coms. I'll give you both of you a lead up on that for people to pick up your books.

Yeah, I guess my final takeaway. from fair share, it would be when we allow men to share fairly, equitably in caregiving, then we really can invite women into sharing more equitably in leadership in the workplace. That's the nuts and bolts of it. And find us on workplaceallies.com. Yeah, and I would just, I want to highlight the importance that you've been focused on here, too, Chris, is that at the end of the day, this is about getting the job done, too, right? This is not just about giving people something, right?

And we don't want to make them accommodations. But at the same time, we're enabling people to live their lives fully so that they can perform at the highest level, right? We want them to be great workers for us because that's where we're going to make our money, right? We're not in this for free, right? This is about being profitable as businesses and organizations or completing the mission. Brad and I come from military backgrounds.

And the mission accomplishment is job one. And everything else there is to enable job. one. And I think that's the part we've lost. We're missing out on the fact that, hey, getting job one done, mission accomplishment done has changed, right? And how we get to it, how we support it, the kind of families, the people that we're working in there, it's a different society today. Things have moved. Things are shifting and changing. We've got to keep up with the times. Wonderful job, guys. Great book. And we'll look forward to seeing more of the books from you. And, of course, people can pick up your other books to find out more about how to do stuff.

mentorship and the workplace and all that good stuff. And yeah, people leave over bad leadership. And I think people leave if they feel burnout, if they don't feel valued. And this is more ways to make people feel valued. It's the number one reason people leave a company is poor leadership and feeling unvalued and just abused. And people want more. The millennials want more, Gen Z, or want more. So thank you guys for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Chris. Thank you. Thanks, thanks for tuning in. Order up their book wherever fine books are sold. It is called Fair Share, how men and women can create a more equitable workplace together. Thanks to my minutes for tuning and go to Goodrease.com,

Fortresschusch, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortresschastchristfoss, YouTube.com, fordustchchchris Foss and all that's a crazy place on the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning. Consuming too much of the Chris Walsh Show podcast can lead to people taking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult the doctor for any resulting brain bleed.