Leading in an age of burnout, w/Arianna Huffington & Padmasree Warrior

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1:32You feel you can't speak up. You can't express yourself. And that's when we burn out. You have to create a culture of belonging. And leaders have to become better listeners. We have to be more empathetic. We have to be more understanding. I think hard work is a given. What is being questioned now is not identifying with your work. There is nothing worth doing that does not involve hard work, but it also involves well-being. It involves health. It involves relationships. It involves time to wander and find joy. And in fact, here is the paradox. That is going to make us better at work.

2:23That was Arianna Huffington, founder of Thrive Global and Huffington Post, and before that, Padma Warrior, founder of Fable and former chief strategy officer at Cisco, speaking on stage at the Masters of Scale Summit in a session called Leading in an Age of Burnout. I'm Bob Safian, former editor of Fast Company, founder of The Flux Group, and host of Masters of Scale Rapid response. I wanted to share my conversation with Ariana and Padma because as new tech like AI disrupts everything, the burden on each of us to stay up to speed, to get a step ahead, gets more and more intense. How we address the inevitable stress that comes with high performance is arguably leadership's most important role, whether at a startup or an established brand.

3:11Ariana and Padma share their experiences and their advice on cultivating and nurturing an organization's human talent. Whatever machines can do for us now, they argue, human capital remains the differentiating factor for every enterprise. While the risks of burnout have never been higher, by prioritizing health and well-being, they say, we can improve our own quality of life and improve business outcomes.

3:50Avva and Ariana, thank you so much for being here. The business question really is, how do we get the most out of the human capital within our organizations to maximize productivity without draining energy? And back in 1975, more than 80 % of the value of the S &P 500 companies came from physical capital. and today more than 80 % comes from human capital and that human capital is under stress, right? There's a struggle in the workforce and in the workplace. All right, I want to start by asking you, until the pandemic, most organizations looked at employee well-being and mental health for their teams as kind of fuzzy area, maybe not exactly core to the operation.

4:40And then during the pandemic, everybody kind of said, oh, that's important to us. but there are a lot of things that have proven transitory about the things that we thought were habits from the pandemic times. I'm curious whether this is really something that is anchored in the companies you're talking to. Where are we? We are going through a major cultural transformation, much bigger than we're even realizing. All the burnout epidemic that is now at the forefront of the cultural conversation pre-existed before the pandemic. The pandemic revealed it and elevated it from just the HR departments to the C-suite.

5:22When we launched with companies at Thrive, whether it's Accenture, CVS, Walmart, we now launch with major leaders, the CEO, the CFO. I want to be very optimistic here because we are focusing on the breakdowns and we are missing the breakthroughs. This is an unprecedented opportunity to redefine the way we work and live. When you talk about the role of leaders to energize their employees, to basically, as Julie Sweet, the CEO of Accenture called it, earn the commute. If you are inviting them to the office, you have to earn it. Suddenly, they are talking like HR leaders. And the reason is that they're realizing that the well-being of their employees affects the bottom line.

6:12Attrition is costing Amazon$8 billion. This is not like a warm and fuzzy benefit. We now have to acknowledge that every business is a healthcare business. And CEOs recognize that. So multiple studies say that executives, when you ask them, are they doing more for their employees than they ever have before? Yes, like 90%, right? But when you ask employees, are employers doing enough for you? The answer is almost always no, right? And I guess, I don't know, are executives deluding themselves? Are they lying? or are employees like too needy? What is that disconnect about? I think fundamentally leaders are human too.

7:01And we think we have to be this image of what a leader is supposed to be. And this image of leaders know everything, including what's good for employees. So when we prescribe benefits for employees, people say, this is not what I want. I want something different. So I think there's an element of allowing people to choose that is now here to stay. It is called human capital for a reason. And as human beings, we are a tribe. We identify with the sense of belonging, with wanting to be who we are. I grew up in India. I started my career in the semiconductor industry and I'm an engineer. And when I first came to the US, there were very few women engineers in the semiconductor industry who were brown.

7:46And so I was given a prescription of what I had to wear to work, what I had to say at work, which was very different from who I was authentically as a person. So I had this inner conflict and it was very much preventing me from being all of me at work and contributing. I think that is now brought to the forefront where people want to belong. You can no longer say DEI is enough. It's not enough. You have to create at work a culture of belonging. And leaders have to accept that, which means we have to become better listeners. We have to be more empathetic. We have to be more understanding. So no, leaders are not lying, but I think we have this old mold of what a leader should be, and we prescribe benefits to employees, and maybe 90 % of them are meaningless.

8:36Yeah, I guess I also feel a little bit like, I'm curious, Arianne, And when you look at the culture of work, are businesses expecting too much from their team members? Is culture asking us all to work more than we should? And that's creating this burnout and this stress? I think what is happening starts with a big mindset shift. Ever since the industrial revolution, we've been revering machines and after machines, software. And what is the goal with machines and software? Minimizing downtime. But for the human operating system, downtime is not a bug, it's a feature. So when we recognize that, we realize that productivity and well-being are on the same side of the ledger.

9:26And we see that with elite athletes. We see Tom Brady talking about why, because he prioritizes his sleep and what he eats and his recovery time. He can win Super Bowls in his 40s. So peak performance requires time to recharge. But here's the good news. At Thrive, we call them micro steps. And we have hundreds of them. You can start with small, daily, incremental steps that become healthier habits. Sleep, food, movement, money, a huge source of stress for people. Focus, a relationship with our phones. We check them 344 times a day. 72 % of the world go to bed with their phones, either on their nightstand or cuddled up with them.

10:17That is the stupidest thing that brilliant people do, because the phone is the repository of every problem and every project. So a micro step is to set a time at the end of the day when you declare an end to your working day, because there is no end. And you declare it through the ritual of charging your phone outside your bedroom. You may say, Ariana, this is impossible. I can never do that. I say, do it one night and try it. Start with these micro steps. How do you cultivate these new habits? You need to re-onboard your employees. And the first question is, what's important to you outside of work?

11:01And how can I, as your manager, support you? That puts flesh and blood on what managers say. Bring your whole self to work. People don't believe it. Because we're all brought up saying, leave your problems at home, bring your professional self to work. But if you start with that question, you give them the confidence that they can bring their whole selves to work. And that's essential. So it's a journey. That's why we have this paradox that you mentioned about what managers think and what employees think. But it's an amazing journey because we've paid such a heavy price when we believe that burnout is the price we pay for success.

11:47Patma, I know you spend your Saturdays, you do like a digital detox, right? You do analog things like cooking and painting. I started this process that I call digital detox when I was at Cisco. I was leading all engineering at Cisco. So I had a team of 26 ,000 people. And any time I wanted something, I would just send off an email. And I suddenly realized on the weekends, I would send emails and people like three levels down are working to get me the answer. And I didn't need it right that moment. I suddenly realized I was not only burning out, I was burning out my whole team. So actually, one town hall meeting, I announced that, hey, I'm taking digital detox from now on.

12:31I'm not going to work on the weekends and I'm going to be doing these other things. I could literally hear 26 ,000 people sigh, a sigh of relief. And it was just like eye-opening for me. And I think sometimes we do things as leaders without realizing that it's causing stress for others. I don't think it was any bad intention. You know, I was just working and I was trying to get the answers that I needed. At my new company, Fable, by the way, Fable is for communities to come together to read stories together. There is now a lot of neuroscience that supports when we read a story, it's actually relaxing for us and it de-stresses us.

13:12We're a startup, we have 30 people. Now I went from 26 ,000 people organization to a 30 % team, but we're all distributed all over the world and we do something every Friday that we call fable fika. Fika is actually a Swedish coffee time tradition and we've made it our own. Someone comes up with a prompt and the only rule is that the prompt has to be something that doesn't have anything to do with work. Like what are you holding in your pantry that you should throw away that you haven't thrown away and what does that say about you as a person? And so we take one hour in a week and it's part of our operating system in the company.

13:50The point is making sure, just like we're having operations review, town hall meetings, budget planning, you need to have a ritual where you can share, we can laugh, we can cry. People see each other as human beings. The messages that Arianna and Padma are delivering here are about intentionality, about making employee mental health and a sense of belonging a priority, and that there are many ways to get to that goal. After a quick break, they dig into the drivers of burnout, why working super hard doesn't have to be a burden, and managing the inevitability of stress. We'll be right back. This is Mike Nicholas, Capital One business customer and co-founder of Ansett Uncles, a plant-based restaurant and community space in Brooklyn, New York.

14:36And he's telling us how they started a product line. We already had a space in the community. The food was an extension. of our lifestyle and our values. So we know we wanted to create something that was an offshoot to that. Our pepper sauce. That's my grandmother's recipe. That's like a liquid gold, right? If someone wants to approach us and ask us, what do we do? We provide flavor. Growing a product line is no small investment, but Mike and his wife and co-founder Nicole were able to manage with the help of their Capital One Business card. Working with Capital One Business, we're able to leverage our limits and utilize those points, making sure we can continue the scale at the speed that we needed to go.

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16:37Tune into Sequoia's new season of Crucible Moments to discover how some of the most transformational companies of the modern era were built. Crucible Moments is available everywhere you get your podcasts and at cruciblemoments.com. Go listen to Crucible Moments today. Before the break, we heard Arianna Huffington, the founder of Thrive, and Padma Warrior, founder of Fable, speaking live at the Masters of Scale Summit about how to get the most out of our teams without creating burnout. Now, in response to questions from the Masters of Scale audience, they delve into the drivers of workplace happiness and of workplace stress and how to balance between them.

17:15Let's listen in. Here's a question from Charmaine. I'm working to build a digital platform that's a safe place for creatives. How can I be more intentional in building and growing the platform? Well, if Charmaine is the founder, I think this is a great opportunity to put her own oxygen mask on first which is what we tell our leaders that we work with because that's how you demonstrate the behaviors you want to see in the company and you give cultural permission to people all the way down the organization and if you can be vulnerable talk about what's the challenges in your life and what you are doing to deal with them that creates a culture where a lot of the rituals that Padma talked about can exist.

18:08Padma, it reminds me of something you've said, that people who are busier at work sometimes are happier. But this is Cameron asking, isn't this talk about burnout just excuses? Every project demands sprints and late hours. Don't you just have to do the work to be successful? You know, many of you are entrepreneurs and you know working with deadlines, You have to get the product out. You have releases. People are working hard. And I don't think we should assume just because people are working hard, they're unhappy. Actually, in my previous company, we did a pulse survey and the teams that were the busiest were the happiest.

18:43And so I think it's a misnomer to just think less hours is going to make someone happy. I think what's important for people is to feel that the work is meaningful. It's not a toxic environment. If you have a toxic culture, you could be working four hours a day and be miserable because you feel you're not treated with respect. You feel you can't speak up. You can't express yourself. And that's when we burn out. It's not because we are working hard and we are happy. We are contributing. We are building something. We are changing the world. I think all these things are actually positive things. We should be careful not to assume just because people are working long hours, they're going to burn out.

19:24I think there are other circumstances that lead to it. Human beings are complex. And this is the biggest challenge I feel leaders have. How do you, when you lead, even if it's 30 people, how do you know what motivates each single person? Because each of us is motivated by something different. But as leaders, we sort of have to have that empathy to understand. And I find my experience, you become better at it by exposing your own vulnerabilities. It's being completely transparent with your team. People should know working at a startup is not easy and we're in this together. Then people feel invested in the company.

20:04And I don't think if you're invested and you're working hard, it's sort of like getting into the flow. You know, as an artist, when I'm painting, I can paint for 10 hours and I feel really relaxed after that. It's the same thing at work, I feel. I think hard work is a given. I think what is being questioned now is not identifying with your work. That is really a revolution we are going through. If you think of the scientific revolution, when we acknowledge that we're wrong, the sun does not revolve around the earth, the earth revolves around the sun, now we are going through a human revolution, where each one of us has to acknowledge that life does not revolve around work.

20:54That life includes work, includes hard work. I totally agree with Padma. There is nothing worth doing that does not involve hard work, but it also involves well-being. It involves health. It involves relationships. It involves time to wander and find joy. And in fact, here is the paradox. That is going to make us better at work. I think there's another important point. Look how you introduced us, right? Meet Padma Sriwarri, founder of Fable. Arianna Huffington, founder of Thrive. We all introduce ourselves with our titles of work. We don't say, meet Padma. She's a mom. She's an artist. She loves to make jewelry.

21:35She loves to cook. There are just so many things that define us as human beings. One of the things that I started doing when I was at Cisco, and I've continued that tradition, is when people introduce themselves, I ask them to tell us a fun fact about you. And immediately people's eyes light up. But we all put ourselves in this box of our work and that becomes our identity. Let's change it. What do you think about from now on we go out and we introduce ourselves in a fuller way? Yes, Padma is the founder of I am the founder of Thrive, but I'm also a mom. And I'm also a grandma with a one-month-old little son.

22:20Grandson. So there's so much more to each one of us. Stress is unavoidable, no matter what we do. Stress is part of life, but cumulative stress is avoidable. And there is an amazing new study that Microsoft put out that shows that if we can have little breaks in between things, and when I say little, I mean 60 to 90 seconds. Because if you tell busy people like everybody here, can you take 20 minutes to meditate? They'll say, Ariana, you don't know what my life is like. I can't. But if you say, can you take 60 seconds between Zooms? Nobody's going to say no. We've created a ritual. when we onboard someone, we ask them to create a 60-second video of things that give them joy.

23:10If I played you my video, you would see my daughters, my grandson, favorite quotes like Rumi, live life as though everything is rigged in your favor, a favorite piece of music, Taylor Swift, you need to calm down. And suddenly, in 60 seconds, you would have a glimpse of me, And it builds some of that social capital that we are losing. I think that the thing, though, we have to create that permission that it's okay to do at work, which I think is a fundamental shift we have to intentionally make at work, right? We just all have to be part of the solution, practice it, write about everything we are doing, because it inspires and empowers others to start on this journey.

23:56Well, I want to thank you both. There's a line that some CEOs say, which is you get the investors that you deserve. They think it's the same thing with employees. You will get the employees you deserve depending on how you treat them. And that's what they're saying. And thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Thank you.

24:42I know in my experience, there's nothing more satisfying than when a team pulls together to achieve something. The sense of group belonging becomes a wellspring to draw from when things get hard as they inevitably do. I'm Bob Safian. Thanks for listening. Meet Emily Warden, Capital One Business customer and owner of Emily Warden Designs, a handcrafted fine jewelry store in Richmond, Virginia that got its start in a dorm room. I said I was going to try it for a year. I signed up to do craft shows, trade shows, got into a few local boutiques, and then things just picked up from there. Emily's steady success at trade shows gave her the capital she needed to invest in a storefront.

25:25Every cent that was made was going back into the business. I was nervous that we weren't going to get enough traffic, but we had a huge turnout. With Emily Warden Designs firmly establishing itself in the Richmond community, Emily would need to significantly increase inventory in order to keep up with demand. And she looked to her Capital One business card for support. The purchases were so high, I needed to get a business credit card. And I looked at Capital One. The options and the cash back was so amazing. It gives me even more of a push to take a leap in getting one or two extra stones because I have that extra cushion.

26:05To learn more, go to CapitalOne.com slash business cards. Your company's data is everywhere, in systems, in silos, and across teams. But if your AI can't reach it, then that data isn't working for you. Every business has unique data. What really makes a difference is how you use it. IBM helps your AI access your data wherever it lives to change how you do business. Let's create smarter business. IBM. Masters of Scale Rapid Response is a Wait What original. I'm Bob Safian, your host and Masters of Scale's editor at LARG. Our executive producers are June Cohen, Darren Triff, and Chris McLeod. Our chief content officer and interim president is Lori Hoffman.

26:52Our producers are Chris Gauthier, Masha Makutonina, Adam Skuse, Alex Morris, and Tucker Ligurski. Our music director is Ryan Holiday. Original music by Eduardo Rivera, Ryan Holiday, and Daniel Nissenbaum. Sound design and audio editing by Keith J. Nelson, Stephen Davies, Liam Jenkins, and Andrew Nault. Mixing and mastering by Aaron Bastinelli and Brian Pugh. Special thanks to Aria Finger, Saida Sapieva, Jodine Dorsay, Alfonso Bravo, Colin Howard, Tim Cronin, Kelsey Saison, Sammy Aputa, Sarah Tartar, Brandon Klein, Brad Worrell, Luisa Velez, Justin Winslow, Nikki Williams, Chineme Ozaquena, Marielle Carriker, and Katie Blasing.

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