August 27, 2025 • 33 mins
What does it mean to build a workplace culture that people want to join? In this episode, Kevin talks with Jennifer Moss about this important leadership question. They discuss the societal shift in how we view work, the psychological idea of mortality salience, and how these concepts are influencing employee expectations today. Jennifer also shares the basic elements of a strong work culture: inspiring hope, creating purpose, and fostering genuine community, whether your team works remotely, in a hybrid setting, or in-person. Additionally, Jennifer challenges the one-size-fits-all approach to office mandates and presents an alternative idea of the workplace as a “third place” where creativity and collaboration can flourish.
Listen For
00:00 Introduction and why culture matters more than ever
01:24 About Kevin’s book “Flexible Leadership”
01:49 Introducing guest Jennifer Moss
02:48 The new book: “Why Are We Here?”
03:05 What is a discovery writer?
04:56 Journey from burnout to culture
05:56 Career pivots and “life is short”
07:02 Mortality salience and identity at work
08:06 How the pandemic reframed our view of work
08:40 Everyone has agency in shaping culture
09:50 Managing up and generational empathy
11:18 Foundations of culture: hope, purpose, and community
13:08 Losing joy at work and the great detachment
14:16 Time poverty vs. remote work
15:06 The office as a third place
16:23 Contradictions in return-to-office policies
17:56 Productivity vs. presence and the AI contradiction
19:15 Data-driven leadership and ignoring the data
20:04 The chapter on “Freedom”
21:20 Women opting out and redefining freedom
22:41 Leadership betrayal and lack of trust
24:09 Focusing on goals, not hours
25:15 Supporting employees who finish early
25:38 AI increasing workload
26:32 Leaders need real conversations about AI’s impact
27:02 Culture can change in 20 minutes
27:56 Weekly manager-employee check-ins
28:25 Jennifer’s favorite morning ritual with her daughter
29:53 What Jennifer is reading: The Tell by Amy Griffin
31:07 Where to find Jennifer and her book
31:52 Kevin’s closing challenge: “Now What?”
Jennifer's Story: Jennifer Moss is the author of The Burnout Epidemic, which tackles employee burnout and was named one of Thinkers50's "10 Best New Management Books for 2022." Her latest book is WHY ARE WE HERE?: Creating a Work Culture Everyone Wants. She is an international speaker, award-winning journalist and author, workplace culture strategist, and co-founder of the Work Better Institute, a global workforce policy think tank. She is a nationally syndicated radio columnist and writes for Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Fortune. Jennifer has been recognized as a Canadian Innovator of the Year and an International Female Entrepreneur of the Year, and is the recipient of a Public Service Award from the Office of President Obama.
This Episode is brought to you by...
Flexible Leadership is every leader’s guide to greater success in a world of increasing complexity and chaos.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Culture has always been important,
but is perhaps more complex and confusingnow than ever.
That's why this episode is so important.
Prepare to be enlightenedand feel more confident in your role
in building a more effective culturefor your team and organization.
Welcome to another episodeof the Remarkable Leadership Podcast,
(00:29):
where we are helping leaderslike you grow personally
and professionallyto lead more effectively and make a bigger
difference for their teams, organizations,and the world.
If you are listening to this podcast,you could have joined us live.
Well, we can't go back for youto be live for this one,
but you could join us for liveepisodes in the future.
(00:50):
And to do that, you need to know whereto do that when they're happening.
And the best way to do that is to joineither our Facebook or LinkedIn groups.
Those aren't the only placeswhere we run these live stream,
these live, but those are two placeswhere you can get in the know.
Find out when they're comingand get involved sooner.
And you can do that by goingto a remarkable podcast.com/facebook
(01:13):
or remarkable podcast.com/linkedin.
Do that and you'll be in the knowjust a little sooner.
Today's episode is brought to youby my latest book, Flexible Leadership.
Navigate uncertaintyand lead with confidence.
It's timeto realize that styles can get in our way,
and that following our strengthsmight not always be
(01:34):
the best approach in a worldmore complex and uncertain than ever.
Leaders need a new perspective,a new set of tools to create
great resultsfor their organizations and teams.
That's what we need, and that'swhat flexible leadership provides you.
Learn more and order your copy todayat remarkable podcast.com/flexible.
(01:55):
Now with all of that folderall out of the way.
Let's get to the meat of the matter.
The heart of the matter.
And I'm bringing back my guest,Jennifer Moss.
Back because she's been here before.
And maybe we'll talk about that beforewe're done.
But Jennifer specializes in futurefocused leadership development,
expertly balancing employeewell-being with performance.
(02:19):
And that balance is super important.
As an award winning writer.
An internationally acclaimedkeynote speaker, she specializes in
transforming workplace cultureusing data driven leadership strategies.
Her book, The Burnout Epidemic tackledemployee burnout and was among thinkers
5010 Best New Management Books of 2022,
(02:40):
and she was on this podcastat the end of 2021.
And her latest book, and what we'retalking about today is Why Are we here?
You probably asked yourselfthat question before
why are we here creating a work culture?
Everyone one Jennifer.
Welcome back. I'm so glad it's over.
It's so great to see you, Kevin,I love it.
(03:00):
I love the energy.
I'm really looking forwardto this conversation we're going to have.
So one of the things that you saidin the beginning of the book,
you said somethingI don't think I'd ever heard before.
You called yourself a discovery writer?
Yes. So what do you mean
that that captured my attention.
And I think it's useful as aas a construct to start this conversation.
(03:24):
So what do you mean by that?
So you wrote this book in 2021that came out at the end of 2021?
The the burnout epidemic.
And and then you decidedto write another book and
what do you meanby being a discovery writer?
I love that you, that you noted thatbecause it was a label, actually,
that my editor, Kevin Evers, he'sjust written this great book about Taylor
(03:46):
Swift and business, and,he is someone that I work very close with.
And I think he said thisto be very kind to me about how often
we iterate on the book, because for me,
it's not just like I have a plan, he says.
Some writers, you know,
they have a plan, they follow that planand that's exactly how it's executed.
(04:09):
And he says, for me, it'sreally about this gut instinct that I have
or this sense of, you know, predictingwhat I think might happen.
And so then I have to prove outthat hunch, or,
you know, find that it'sthat hunch is wrong.
And so that means a lot of, going downreally long
(04:29):
pathways of writing and then sometimeshaving to rewrite it entirely.
And, and so that can be frustrating.
I'm sure.
It's frustrating to me
and I, it's not even me like,I, I'm frustrated for you in that moment.
And maybe your editor, too, I don't know.
So so
let's talkabout how you ended up with this book.
(04:49):
Right.
So you spent, you wrote this great book
about the burnout epidemic,and it came out at just the right time.
And I will encourage people,but in the show notes
how people can go backand find that episode.
But this book is about culture.
There's lots of books about culture now,but what's the journey
to this book for you specifically?
(05:10):
Well, you know,and I've written The Burnout Epidemic
and had started writing about itlong before the pandemic actually struck.
So I did have to do a lot of rewritingfor that as well,
because just so much had changed.
It wasn't even just thatI was going on hunches,
it was that everything that I had written
had been fundamentally,you know, turned upside down.
And, and what was really interestingin the pandemic and potentially,
(05:34):
you know, sad as well, is that burnout
became this very ubiquitous termthat everyone was talking about.
So the book, you know,topic was very popular.
I was doing a lot of traveling,
even in the middle of the pandemicand a lot of places I was traveling,
and I was spending a lot of timepromoting the book and talking
to Uber drivers, which is kind of like,why are we here?
(05:57):
Is like this canary in the coal mine.
But what I kept hearing from peoplethroughout the years that I was traveling
in that 2021 to 2023 was,
a lot of people were makingthese massive career pivots.
And when I would ask them about itand moving to driving Ubers from it,
like working on Wall Street
to being in a law firm to,you know, these things that people are
(06:18):
sort of jaw dropped at the factthat they would leave that very,
sort of elite, respected,well-paid post to then be driving Uber.
And they kept telling me life is short.
And that statementled me to look into the science of,
of facing your mortality,which is called mortality salience,
(06:39):
and what kind of psychological triggersit actually made collectively
and globally,to change our identity with work.
And that was,sort of the precipitating factor
in, in going into my discovery modeand figuring out,
you know, are peoplebecause of this great resignation,
are people choosing thisbecause they feel like life is short?
(07:02):
Is there a sense of urgency?
Do they want to shift their thinkingbecause of the pandemic and that's why
why are we here, you know, answering
an existential questionof an existential time.
In just over 200 pages, everyone.
So that's,
you know, if you've asked yourselfthat question now, you can get the answer.
Now, in all seriousness, I think that thatthe the statement that you made a second
(07:27):
ago is, is really importantthat that society, us as a whole,
are viewing work
differently than we did pre-pandemic.
And ultimately, to me,that's the big story
of how the pandemic has impacted work.
It's not about where people are working.
(07:48):
When people are working,those are important things.
And we spend lots of timehelping people unpack all of that.
That's not the real story.
The real story is that wewe have collectively reframed what work
looks like or could be for the first time
in about 100, about 90 or 100 years.
And we did it
(08:09):
in a weekend.
And the impacts are still with us.
So out of all of that,you're writing about culture.
And I want to get in to sort of the, the,the ideas and the stuff in the book,
but I, you and I were talking beforewe went live about something
that I think is a critical part of this,
and it's throughout the book,but it's, it's this idea that all of us
(08:33):
so often we hear about cultureand people already are saying,
oh, I'm going to have to try to get my CEOto listen to this conversation.
But all of us have agency, as a leader,as an individual contributor,
because culture is collectivelyhow we do things around here.
All of us have agency.
So talk to us,talk to the people listening.
(08:54):
So whisper in their ear as to
why it is that they truly do have agency.
And the ability to impact cultureregardless of where they sit.
We all have, a locus of control.
So they're always going to be even at thehighest levels in policy and leadership.
I mean, leaders are dealing withlots of different changes
(09:17):
in, you know, politics or weather.
I mean, climate change, lots of impactsthat happen at the highest level.
And so even at the CEO level,there's a locus of control, things
that they can't mitigate.
They can't we none of us at the CEO levelcould be fixing a global pandemic.
So you had to deal with things.
(09:37):
And that trickles down all the wayto the individual where individuals
they have maybe less locus of controlthan the CEO, of course,
but there still is a lot of things insideof their purview that they can manage.
You and and I like to make a point hereto say, you know,
that it's a privilege to just say,no, this is not what I'm saying.
(09:58):
If you're a single mom of three kidsand you're trying to balance
still staying in a job versus quitting,or just saying no
to your boss, I mean, this is not the kindof practical advice that I'm offering.
I'm saying that these are things like,you know,
how can I have conversations with my bossabout my workload in a practical way?
That will and this is in the book, like,how do I actually have those conversations
(10:20):
with them so that it's,
it's the best way of managing up,you know, how can we have Gen Zers
and, and Xers and Boomershave better conversations with each other?
How do we have more empathy and compassionin our conversations
around AI as a manageror as an individual?
I mean, it's it's really aboutjust practical steps to be able to,
(10:43):
make your experience of workfor the first little
while maybe 5% better,and then over time, maybe 10% better.
And having realistic objectives of howto to change the experience of work
so you prevent burnout and stressand you just enjoy it a lot more.
And oh, by the way, at the end of the day,we also get better outcomes
and we get better productivitybecause that all those
(11:05):
those things are all bundled togetherin the end.
Right?
So, so the book opens talking about whatyou call
the foundation of a culture that everyonea work culture that people want.
And you talk about three things there.
I'll put them up here on the, below us.
Here is hope, purpose and community.
Talk to us briefly about what you meanby those three components and why they are
(11:28):
you consider themthe foundation for us to consider.
Well,some of the things that have happened over
the last five years is that we swungthe pendulum really far in one direction,
and so we have kind of resetour idea of what work is.
And this to me feels like it'sso ego driven that in five years
(11:50):
we're going to have figured outthis massive social experiment.
I mean, the office is 500and something years old.
We can't imagine that in five yearswe figured out
this whole experience of work thingand probably the biggest disrupter ever.
And what's happened in the last fiveyears, though, is we've lost a lot of,
parts of work that are the parts that makeit joyful, parts that make it fun.
(12:12):
I always, you know, I've been saying thisin the last few years.
Is that going to work?
Is like going to school without art,gym or recess.
You know, people are just really understimulated.
They're bored.
And they're also hopeless.
And that's really drivinga lot of people's disengagement.
(12:32):
Gallup is calling it the great detachmentbecause we're just disconnected.
But how can you feel hopefulin an organization when you feel
like you're building out technologyor innovating to replace your job?
How do you feel hopefulif you're, you know, a young person
that has gone to school for four yearsand their degree is now obsolete?
(12:54):
I mean, how do you feel hopefulwhen you know you have leaders
that are saying things likeit's about a market values culture versus,
you know, familial or sort of friendly,you know, human centered cultures.
That's not the kind of workforcethat any young person wants to engage in.
And so we need to be rebuildingthe foundation of hopefulness
(13:17):
inside of organizations, because that'show people see themselves in the future.
That's how they engage,you know, in a way that's
based on loyalty and connectionto the mission.
You know, you need people to be,you know, pulled together.
They need to feel a sense of purposeand what they do.
We've seen a lot of people feel likethey don't matter, that that their effort
(13:37):
is just like leading to obsolescence,or it's leading to not having
a creative, engagement with their workand then friendships.
I mean, you know, we blame we blame
working remote and this whole hybrid work.
We blame thatand why there's loneliness and isolation.
(13:57):
But I actually really strongly believethat it's time poverty.
We have increased meetings by 252%.
We're not actually getting timeto be with each other.
People are less social
because they know that meansthey're working in their pajamas at night.
It's these things that we need to,to coalesce around our foundational to.
Then how do we optimizeand increase performance.
(14:20):
But without these foundational aspects,we can't get there.
And leaders are scratching their head.
They're like, why is this not working?
Why are people still disengaged?
And, and I think that they're missingthis very important
psychological behavioralmindset that's changed.
Yeah.
This community piece is really important.
And and I don't want peopleto just drop that into, well,
(14:43):
that means we need to be in the officeor we
shouldn't be in the office or whatever.
But you do, you do say something.
In the book that I find incredibly
provocative in a way,
and that ismany of you may have heard that,
that, Schultzat when he was creating Starbucks,
(15:04):
said he wanted Starbucksto be to be the third place that you had.
You had,
you had a place that you could goas the third place in your in your world.
And you say that the office perhaps
should be the third place.
So what do you mean?
And why do you say that?
(15:25):
Well, I love the idea of the third placeand actually came
stemmed from World War two,where there was, you know, a
Russian dissidentthat was living in, in Germany
and was obviouslyin a very precarious position
and in the resistance he had createdthis place that was a third place.
And it became somewherewhere all different ideas,
(15:48):
all different backgrounds and culturescan come
and have an open spaceto really think about solving problems.
And, you know, work right nowcan be done in
so many different parts of the world,in so many different places.
And we proved within the pandemicthat we can work remotely
and still be highly productive.
(16:09):
So that question of productivityhas been debunked
by Stanford professorlike Nicholas Bloom and Mark Marr.
You know, lots of,research has been done to show that
these return to office mandatesdon't actually improve all of this morale.
And, and, and so we need to rethinkwhat that looks like.
And we need to think aboutthe office is not a place where we can
(16:31):
just pull peopleat what feels very arbitrary, from a place
where they feel likethey're doing good work into a space where
they're just doing the exact same thinginside the office.
So they're still on zoom.
There's they're still isolated.
They're not gathering, they're notideating, they're not innovating.
And so the office now needs to bethat third place where you go to think
(16:54):
together, to collaborate,to make up strategic
AI, you know, plans, and you work together
side by side, and then you go hometo do all the other stuff.
And I make this point because I thinkthis is really critical of CEOs,
you know, really loudly talking
about shrinking the workforcebecause AI is going to come in.
(17:16):
Do we care if AI is not in the officeor in the office?
I mean, when we talk about that, beinga coworker, you know, AI is our coworker.
And then on the other hand,we're talking about morale.
It has to bewhere you're working together.
It doesn't compute.
Then when we're bringing AIinto the conversation
because they're in the cloud,
we are never going to interactwith them in an in-person way.
(17:38):
So we're even.
Trying to call it a day,and it's not a day.
It's a it's.
Yeah, exactly.
It's and this is the thing that I feel
seems very hypocritical, this ideawe're going to have AI as our teammates
and yet we all need to be in personso that we can be more productive.
It's just very contradictory.
I think the really important thing
(17:59):
you're saying here,and I've been saying this for
ever sincepeople started coming back to the office,
right when they were ableto come back to the office was,
if you're going to work in the office,the days you're going to work
in the office,those need to be different days.
And to create the third place,they have to be different days.
We can't be goingand doing exactly the same thing.
Any leader who's had someone say to them,
(18:21):
why am I coming to the officeto do exactly what I did at home
should be answering.
You're right, you shouldn't be.
We need to.
But that's not that's not an indictmentof the employee or of the work.
It's an indictment of whatthe expectations are of when we gather.
And how can we create the gatheringto create the things
(18:43):
that we want and need,both individually and organizationally?
Right.
I completely agree with that.
And I know, you know,you've been advocating for this too.
And I think there's more of usin the data,
data backed, you know, research
that has come to this conversation
(19:05):
lately, just not understanding why
the data is not being followed.
You know, we the lot of CEOs, a lot oforganizations and leadership, they talk.
About,oh, they're cherry picking the data.
Let's be there cherry picking the data.
And this is the thing is that, you know,they taught some of these organizations,
these large organizations tout being datathat they make data back decisions.
(19:30):
They guide other organizationsto make data back decisions.
And yet this is datathat they're not following.
And for me, that feels like there'sthere's something behind that in it.
And a lot of it has to do with the factthat their mode of leading for very many
yearshas been to see people to show that, like,
if you're in the officeand I know you're working,
(19:52):
and that's how I am comfortableleading and
and so I think that that's been a big,a big problem,
you know, in, in, in and frustration,I think for a lot of us.
There's a chapter in this book, youopen it up, you won't be able to see it.
But I've got a little marker rightnext to it.
There's a chapter here in a bookabout work titled Freedom.
(20:15):
And there are some leaders heresay freedom.
Jennifer, what are you talking about?
Like, there's athere's a level of control.
There's a set of boundaries here that arerequired in order for work to happen.
Like, what are you talking about hereas it relates to freedom?
I felt like from my discoveringthat this was
(20:35):
maybe one of my favorite chapters,was this idea of under it was an for me
because I was feeling this sense of,you know, that people were resisting.
And I kept, you know, I kept seeing,
and having more conversationswith employees talking about making
these really dramatic turnsand deciding to opt out of work.
(20:57):
I was noting that or noticing that we wereat the thinnest executive pipeline
for women that we've been in decades,women are making these choices.
And I started to follow that.
And I found that, you know, women havereally increased their startup activity.
Number of patentsthat women having have built in the last
several years has doubled.
(21:18):
You know,they're they're moving into part time now.
And there's there's obviously
a major concern inhow do we maintain this talent base.
But what we're finding iswomen are just saying, I need flexibility.
I need the things that you promised meand you betrayed me by pulling those back.
I'm going to take my careerand my plan in my own hands.
(21:42):
And that really brought me againinto the science of of freedom.
And our our sense of freedomis so deeply wired.
It's so baked in that it'svery subconscious.
When we're given somethingand we have autonomy
and then that is stripped from us, it'sclawed back.
Our response is to fighteven to our own personal peril, to get it.
(22:07):
And this is a big part of where,you know, policies are coming in
and trust is declined because there'sa subconscious part of our brain
that's saying you took my freedomand you took my agency.
And so now I'mnot going to give it back to you,
because I don't trust that you're goingto do good things with it.
And hence the highest levelof active disengagement
(22:27):
in a decade, people,you know, not being as productive.
We see people rage applying and quietquitting.
And, you know,we see all the these responses, on TikTok
and from Gen Z's that are saying,I'm not going to opt into that model.
And so we burned a lot of bridges in thosepolicies being given and taken away.
And that's where leaders
(22:48):
need to come in and understandthat freedom is a fundamental right.
And how do we rebuild that trust?
By making sure that we're not overpromising,
and under deliveringand also giving people what they need,
which is focus on well-being, which isflexibility, which is agency and autonomy.
Those are all things that leadto higher performance.
(23:10):
And the idea of goingeven doubling down further on taking away
freedom,I think, is a very ineffective strategy.
I was on the other side of the micyesterday.
I was being interviewed for a podcastand the radio show, and the question
that I was asked had
was framed around, what if?
(23:30):
What if people get their job donein less than 40 hours?
What should you do?
And I would say, well,
I should rejoice.
Like why not? If there.
The reason for I'm making bringing this upis that as long as we as
leaders are framing this around the hoursnow, I know that
in some caseswe're paying people by the hour.
(23:52):
But take that out of this.
If our conversation in our own headis all about
are they workingrather than are they accomplishing
the expected actions at theat the quality level we require,
then we're
as long as we're focusing on the time,we're focused on the wrong question.
If someone's getting their workdone for me,
(24:12):
that's everything that I could dream of.
And they're doing it in half of the time.
Then one of two things eitherrejoice for everyone
or help them find ways to use more of thattime to serve both of them
and the organization like thatshould not be a problem.
That should be an opportunityall the way around.
This is good that way better than I saidyesterday.
(24:34):
Oh, by the way.
That was I was just going to say like,that is so perfectly articulated.
This is exactly how I feel.
It should be goals, not ours.
We should be completely changedthe way that we measure GDP.
We should be thinking about unpaid labor.
I mean, there's so many thingsthat we need to be thinking about
when it comes to measuring success.
(24:56):
It should be goals, not ours.
And when we think about what you justsaid, I think is really critical is
if someone finishes earlyand they get their work done in less time,
talk to them aboutwhat would be exciting for them
to be working on, you know, careerpath thing, what could be,
you know, something meaningfulthat they want to engage in.
(25:16):
How can they be, you know, using thiswhatever they're
they're basically giving themselves now50% time to go
and do, you know, really cool thingsand work on projects that they love.
And and it's also to the promise ofI was to save us time.
That was the promise of AI.
It's going to take care of all of that,that work
that is just tedious and boringand takes up a whole bunch of time.
(25:39):
Well, what I keep hearing now,and there was great research
that just came out, a studythat found that
now people are finding that with AI,they're actually working more
because they're getting more workpiled on after
they're using this technology to be,you know, more efficient.
And they're also having to work withAI that isn't quite there yet.
(26:00):
And here's the thing.
So ifyou're finding that in your organization,
if you're if you're a leaderand you're sensing that,
then what you need to dois have a conversation
with your team, like,is that what they're feeling?
How are how is this playing out for us?
Because, you know, and there's
throughout the history of time,
as we've gotten things that have allowedus to be more productive,
(26:22):
there's always been new stuff,like we shouldn't be surprised by that,
but hopefully what we're addingare things that can add greater value
to the world, to the customer,to the team, to the individual.
And so as a leader,
we can be impacting thatby having a conversation with our folks.
Yes. No.
This is something that I, I agreewith as well.
(26:42):
And we talked about this earlier,but I believe culture can be changed
in 20 minutes or less.
It's really just havingthat these types of conversations
and being open to hearinghow people feel about their own role
and how successful they feel likethey are in it, and what are the things
that they would liketo, you know, to do to try to improve it?
(27:04):
And is I actually helping them or has it
taken away all that mundane work?
And yet the promise again,was to build up their creativity
or be able to upskill them.
Have they been upskill this is anotherbig problem, is that people that you know
are now just kind of afraidto put their hand up to say,
(27:24):
I really don't have work to do.
And so then this idea of seeing peoplework, they'll just create, you know,
busy work.
Task masking iswhat's happening a lot now, too,
because managers aren't really asking.
And we gather data.
The best way for us to gatherdata is for managers
and their direct reportsto have weekly ideation conversations
(27:47):
that are non-work related,and then also bring in
what's stressing us out, what's making us,you know, excited this week
and being able to have rapportso you can build trust.
And then over time,you can really learn what motivates people
and what holds them backfrom being successful.
And that's where managers,I think are really squeezed right now.
(28:08):
They're also highly burned outbecause they have this pressure,
but that 20 minutescan be the most effective for you
to hit your revenue numbers for you to hitgrowth goals, for you to hit, you know,
productivity goals.
All of that can be measured
and tracked back to having these kindsof relationships with your team.
We're having a conversation
with Jennifer Moss about her new book,Why Are We Here?
(28:32):
Creating a Work Culture that works, workculture that everyone wants.
And before we wrap up
and let you tell us
where they can get the bookand all those good things,
I have a couple of other questionsfor you, and I want to know,
Jennifer, what you do for fun.
That's
such a great question, especiallybecause it changes all the time.
(28:53):
But right now,what I do for fun has been going out
with my teen daughter in the morningand she's 15, going to be 16.
So this is precious time right now.
We get up every morningand we go for this walk up to this place
called Poppy's Bagels,and we go and get a very specific bagel.
Bagel.
And we sit, we take the dog for a walk,
(29:15):
and I talk with herabout what's going on in her life.
It takes about an hour every daythis summer,
and I have to tell youthat that for me, is not just fun.
And I feel goodbecause I'm going to be physical,
but I'm really gettingto spend precious time with my my soon
to be 16 year old, daughter,which I know is going to be fleeting.
(29:35):
And listen.
Feedback says not every 16 year oldwants to spend time with mom like that. So
you're doing something right, and that'scertainly helping with it, I'm sure.
Every day you'rehoping for one more of those days, right?
Who knows?
Listen, I want to know to Jenniferwhat you're reading these days.
(29:55):
So I have just put this book up,I will, I'm loving it.
It's called The Tell by Amy Griffin,and it's an excellent book.
It's a memoir.
And, she's a perfectionistthat, you know, has worked in New York.
She owns this venture capital company.
And and she later in life finally decided
(30:15):
to tell herand share the secret of childhood trauma.
And so she writes about that perfectionismand how,
you know, how it really drove her,why she became a, long distance runner.
She just ran and ran, but she was runningaway from a secret about her life.
And I think it's a really it'sa vulnerable book, but it's a book
that shows that,you know, things that we've dealt with
(30:38):
can be overcome by by communicating itand sharing it with other people
and getting that kind of supportfrom people around you.
The title, again, is the the tell.
The tell Amy Griffin.
We will have that in the shownotes. The tell.
I just couldn'thear that second word. Right.
I wanted to make sure I got it rightand we will have it in the show notes
(31:00):
for everybody.
So, Jennifer, the question you've mostwanted me to ask from the very
beginning ishow can people connect with you?
Learn more about what you're doing.
Where can they get the book,all those kinds of things.
So you can get the book anywhere.
You know,
you can get in your library to Amazon to,you know, to wherever books are sold.
But if you want to find outjust more about stuff, I have a lot of,
(31:22):
articles that I've shared on the siteand resources.
It's jennifer-moss.com.
Jennifer Dash Moscone that will also be,of course, in the show notes.
Now, I have a question for all of youwho are watching or listening,
whether it's with me live right nowor whether it's later, it doesn't matter.
The question is the same now what?
(31:44):
What actionare you going to take as a result?
And I can look at my notesand, and share with you
what I'm going to do as a result of this?
One of those things I want to sharewith Jennifer after we're done,
but it doesn't matterwhat I'm going to do.
It only matters that matters to me,but only matters to you.
What you're going to do. And you.
(32:05):
If you take this as a way to collect
knowledge, it has a has a value.
It has a much greater value.
If you say, I'm going to take that insight
and apply it in this question helpsyou do that.
Now what?
Now that I've got this information,what will I do next?
(32:25):
I hope that you willtake that question seriously.
Because I'm going to keep
asking you every weekand I hope that you'll do that.
Jennifer, thanks so much for coming back.
I've been looking forwe had a bit of a delay to get this done.
So glad we finally didand so good to see you.
Thanks for being with you.Thank you. Kevin.
And so everybody, if you enjoyed this,make sure you're subscribed
(32:46):
wherever you're watchingbecause you don't want to miss another.
And there will be another livein just a couple of days.
But every single week,there'll be another one of these
great conversationsat the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.
So wherever it is that you are watching,make sure you subscribe.
Make sure you tell someone elseso you can come back next week
for another episodeof the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.
Culture has always been important,
but is perhaps more complex and confusingnow than ever.
That's why this episode is so important.
Prepare to be enlightenedand feel more confident in your role
in building a more effective culturefor your team and organization.
Welcome to another episodeof the Remarkable Leadership Podcast,
(00:29):
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(01:55):
Now with all of that folderall out of the way.
Let's get to the meat of the matter.
The heart of the matter.
And I'm bringing back my guest,Jennifer Moss.
Back because she's been here before.
And maybe we'll talk about that beforewe're done.
But Jennifer specializes in futurefocused leadership development,
expertly balancing employeewell-being with performance.
(02:19):
And that balance is super important.
As an award winning writer.
An internationally acclaimedkeynote speaker, she specializes in
transforming workplace cultureusing data driven leadership strategies.
Her book, The Burnout Epidemic tackledemployee burnout and was among thinkers
5010 Best New Management Books of 2022,
(02:40):
and she was on this podcastat the end of 2021.
And her latest book, and what we'retalking about today is Why Are we here?
You probably asked yourselfthat question before
why are we here creating a work culture?
Everyone one Jennifer.
Welcome back. I'm so glad it's over.
It's so great to see you, Kevin,I love it.
(03:00):
I love the energy.
I'm really looking forwardto this conversation we're going to have.
So one of the things that you saidin the beginning of the book,
you said somethingI don't think I'd ever heard before.
You called yourself a discovery writer?
Yes. So what do you mean
that that captured my attention.
And I think it's useful as aas a construct to start this conversation.
(03:24):
So what do you mean by that?
So you wrote this book in 2021that came out at the end of 2021?
The the burnout epidemic.
And and then you decidedto write another book and
what do you meanby being a discovery writer?
I love that you, that you noted thatbecause it was a label, actually,
that my editor, Kevin Evers, he'sjust written this great book about Taylor
(03:46):
Swift and business, and,he is someone that I work very close with.
And I think he said thisto be very kind to me about how often
we iterate on the book, because for me,
it's not just like I have a plan, he says.
Some writers, you know,
they have a plan, they follow that planand that's exactly how it's executed.
(04:09):
And he says, for me, it'sreally about this gut instinct that I have
or this sense of, you know, predictingwhat I think might happen.
And so then I have to prove outthat hunch, or,
you know, find that it'sthat hunch is wrong.
And so that means a lot of, going downreally long
(04:29):
pathways of writing and then sometimeshaving to rewrite it entirely.
And, and so that can be frustrating.
I'm sure.
It's frustrating to me
and I, it's not even me like,I, I'm frustrated for you in that moment.
And maybe your editor, too, I don't know.
So so
let's talkabout how you ended up with this book.
(04:49):
Right.
So you spent, you wrote this great book
about the burnout epidemic,and it came out at just the right time.
And I will encourage people,but in the show notes
how people can go backand find that episode.
But this book is about culture.
There's lots of books about culture now,but what's the journey
to this book for you specifically?
(05:10):
Well, you know,and I've written The Burnout Epidemic
and had started writing about itlong before the pandemic actually struck.
So I did have to do a lot of rewritingfor that as well,
because just so much had changed.
It wasn't even just thatI was going on hunches,
it was that everything that I had written
had been fundamentally,you know, turned upside down.
And, and what was really interestingin the pandemic and potentially,
(05:34):
you know, sad as well, is that burnout
became this very ubiquitous termthat everyone was talking about.
So the book, you know,topic was very popular.
I was doing a lot of traveling,
even in the middle of the pandemicand a lot of places I was traveling,
and I was spending a lot of timepromoting the book and talking
to Uber drivers, which is kind of like,why are we here?
(05:57):
Is like this canary in the coal mine.
But what I kept hearing from peoplethroughout the years that I was traveling
in that 2021 to 2023 was,
a lot of people were makingthese massive career pivots.
And when I would ask them about itand moving to driving Ubers from it,
like working on Wall Street
to being in a law firm to,you know, these things that people are
(06:18):
sort of jaw dropped at the factthat they would leave that very,
sort of elite, respected,well-paid post to then be driving Uber.
And they kept telling me life is short.
And that statementled me to look into the science of,
of facing your mortality,which is called mortality salience,
(06:39):
and what kind of psychological triggersit actually made collectively
and globally,to change our identity with work.
And that was,sort of the precipitating factor
in, in going into my discovery modeand figuring out,
you know, are peoplebecause of this great resignation,
are people choosing thisbecause they feel like life is short?
(07:02):
Is there a sense of urgency?
Do they want to shift their thinkingbecause of the pandemic and that's why
why are we here, you know, answering
an existential questionof an existential time.
In just over 200 pages, everyone.
So that's,
you know, if you've asked yourselfthat question now, you can get the answer.
Now, in all seriousness, I think that thatthe the statement that you made a second
(07:27):
ago is, is really importantthat that society, us as a whole,
are viewing work
differently than we did pre-pandemic.
And ultimately, to me,that's the big story
of how the pandemic has impacted work.
It's not about where people are working.
(07:48):
When people are working,those are important things.
And we spend lots of timehelping people unpack all of that.
That's not the real story.
The real story is that wewe have collectively reframed what work
looks like or could be for the first time
in about 100, about 90 or 100 years.
And we did it
(08:09):
in a weekend.
And the impacts are still with us.
So out of all of that,you're writing about culture.
And I want to get in to sort of the, the,the ideas and the stuff in the book,
but I, you and I were talking beforewe went live about something
that I think is a critical part of this,
and it's throughout the book,but it's, it's this idea that all of us
(08:33):
so often we hear about cultureand people already are saying,
oh, I'm going to have to try to get my CEOto listen to this conversation.
But all of us have agency, as a leader,as an individual contributor,
because culture is collectivelyhow we do things around here.
All of us have agency.
So talk to us,talk to the people listening.
(08:54):
So whisper in their ear as to
why it is that they truly do have agency.
And the ability to impact cultureregardless of where they sit.
We all have, a locus of control.
So they're always going to be even at thehighest levels in policy and leadership.
I mean, leaders are dealing withlots of different changes
(09:17):
in, you know, politics or weather.
I mean, climate change, lots of impactsthat happen at the highest level.
And so even at the CEO level,there's a locus of control, things
that they can't mitigate.
They can't we none of us at the CEO levelcould be fixing a global pandemic.
So you had to deal with things.
(09:37):
And that trickles down all the wayto the individual where individuals
they have maybe less locus of controlthan the CEO, of course,
but there still is a lot of things insideof their purview that they can manage.
You and and I like to make a point hereto say, you know,
that it's a privilege to just say,no, this is not what I'm saying.
(09:58):
If you're a single mom of three kidsand you're trying to balance
still staying in a job versus quitting,or just saying no
to your boss, I mean, this is not the kindof practical advice that I'm offering.
I'm saying that these are things like,you know,
how can I have conversations with my bossabout my workload in a practical way?
That will and this is in the book, like,how do I actually have those conversations
(10:20):
with them so that it's,
it's the best way of managing up,you know, how can we have Gen Zers
and, and Xers and Boomershave better conversations with each other?
How do we have more empathy and compassionin our conversations
around AI as a manageror as an individual?
I mean, it's it's really aboutjust practical steps to be able to,
(10:43):
make your experience of workfor the first little
while maybe 5% better,and then over time, maybe 10% better.
And having realistic objectives of howto to change the experience of work
so you prevent burnout and stressand you just enjoy it a lot more.
And oh, by the way, at the end of the day,we also get better outcomes
and we get better productivitybecause that all those
(11:05):
those things are all bundled togetherin the end.
Right?
So, so the book opens talking about whatyou call
the foundation of a culture that everyonea work culture that people want.
And you talk about three things there.
I'll put them up here on the, below us.
Here is hope, purpose and community.
Talk to us briefly about what you meanby those three components and why they are
(11:28):
you consider themthe foundation for us to consider.
Well,some of the things that have happened over
the last five years is that we swungthe pendulum really far in one direction,
and so we have kind of resetour idea of what work is.
And this to me feels like it'sso ego driven that in five years
(11:50):
we're going to have figured outthis massive social experiment.
I mean, the office is 500and something years old.
We can't imagine that in five yearswe figured out
this whole experience of work thingand probably the biggest disrupter ever.
And what's happened in the last fiveyears, though, is we've lost a lot of,
parts of work that are the parts that makeit joyful, parts that make it fun.
(12:12):
I always, you know, I've been saying thisin the last few years.
Is that going to work?
Is like going to school without art,gym or recess.
You know, people are just really understimulated.
They're bored.
And they're also hopeless.
And that's really drivinga lot of people's disengagement.
(12:32):
Gallup is calling it the great detachmentbecause we're just disconnected.
But how can you feel hopefulin an organization when you feel
like you're building out technologyor innovating to replace your job?
How do you feel hopefulif you're, you know, a young person
that has gone to school for four yearsand their degree is now obsolete?
(12:54):
I mean, how do you feel hopefulwhen you know you have leaders
that are saying things likeit's about a market values culture versus,
you know, familial or sort of friendly,you know, human centered cultures.
That's not the kind of workforcethat any young person wants to engage in.
And so we need to be rebuildingthe foundation of hopefulness
(13:17):
inside of organizations, because that'show people see themselves in the future.
That's how they engage,you know, in a way that's
based on loyalty and connectionto the mission.
You know, you need people to be,you know, pulled together.
They need to feel a sense of purposeand what they do.
We've seen a lot of people feel likethey don't matter, that that their effort
(13:37):
is just like leading to obsolescence,or it's leading to not having
a creative, engagement with their workand then friendships.
I mean, you know, we blame we blame
working remote and this whole hybrid work.
We blame thatand why there's loneliness and isolation.
(13:57):
But I actually really strongly believethat it's time poverty.
We have increased meetings by 252%.
We're not actually getting timeto be with each other.
People are less social
because they know that meansthey're working in their pajamas at night.
It's these things that we need to,to coalesce around our foundational to.
Then how do we optimizeand increase performance.
(14:20):
But without these foundational aspects,we can't get there.
And leaders are scratching their head.
They're like, why is this not working?
Why are people still disengaged?
And, and I think that they're missingthis very important
psychological behavioralmindset that's changed.
Yeah.
This community piece is really important.
And and I don't want peopleto just drop that into, well,
(14:43):
that means we need to be in the officeor we
shouldn't be in the office or whatever.
But you do, you do say something.
In the book that I find incredibly
provocative in a way,
and that ismany of you may have heard that,
that, Schultzat when he was creating Starbucks,
(15:04):
said he wanted Starbucksto be to be the third place that you had.
You had,
you had a place that you could goas the third place in your in your world.
And you say that the office perhaps
should be the third place.
So what do you mean?
And why do you say that?
(15:25):
Well, I love the idea of the third placeand actually came
stemmed from World War two,where there was, you know, a
Russian dissidentthat was living in, in Germany
and was obviouslyin a very precarious position
and in the resistance he had createdthis place that was a third place.
And it became somewherewhere all different ideas,
(15:48):
all different backgrounds and culturescan come
and have an open spaceto really think about solving problems.
And, you know, work right nowcan be done in
so many different parts of the world,in so many different places.
And we proved within the pandemicthat we can work remotely
and still be highly productive.
(16:09):
So that question of productivityhas been debunked
by Stanford professorlike Nicholas Bloom and Mark Marr.
You know, lots of,research has been done to show that
these return to office mandatesdon't actually improve all of this morale.
And, and, and so we need to rethinkwhat that looks like.
And we need to think aboutthe office is not a place where we can
(16:31):
just pull peopleat what feels very arbitrary, from a place
where they feel likethey're doing good work into a space where
they're just doing the exact same thinginside the office.
So they're still on zoom.
There's they're still isolated.
They're not gathering, they're notideating, they're not innovating.
And so the office now needs to bethat third place where you go to think
(16:54):
together, to collaborate,to make up strategic
AI, you know, plans, and you work together
side by side, and then you go hometo do all the other stuff.
And I make this point because I thinkthis is really critical of CEOs,
you know, really loudly talking
about shrinking the workforcebecause AI is going to come in.
(17:16):
Do we care if AI is not in the officeor in the office?
I mean, when we talk about that, beinga coworker, you know, AI is our coworker.
And then on the other hand,we're talking about morale.
It has to bewhere you're working together.
It doesn't compute.
Then when we're bringing AIinto the conversation
because they're in the cloud,
we are never going to interactwith them in an in-person way.
(17:38):
So we're even.
Trying to call it a day,and it's not a day.
It's a it's.
Yeah, exactly.
It's and this is the thing that I feel
seems very hypocritical, this ideawe're going to have AI as our teammates
and yet we all need to be in personso that we can be more productive.
It's just very contradictory.
I think the really important thing
(17:59):
you're saying here,and I've been saying this for
ever sincepeople started coming back to the office,
right when they were ableto come back to the office was,
if you're going to work in the office,the days you're going to work
in the office,those need to be different days.
And to create the third place,they have to be different days.
We can't be goingand doing exactly the same thing.
Any leader who's had someone say to them,
(18:21):
why am I coming to the officeto do exactly what I did at home
should be answering.
You're right, you shouldn't be.
We need to.
But that's not that's not an indictmentof the employee or of the work.
It's an indictment of whatthe expectations are of when we gather.
And how can we create the gatheringto create the things
(18:43):
that we want and need,both individually and organizationally?
Right.
I completely agree with that.
And I know, you know,you've been advocating for this too.
And I think there's more of usin the data,
data backed, you know, research
that has come to this conversation
(19:05):
lately, just not understanding why
the data is not being followed.
You know, we the lot of CEOs, a lot oforganizations and leadership, they talk.
About,oh, they're cherry picking the data.
Let's be there cherry picking the data.
And this is the thing is that, you know,they taught some of these organizations,
these large organizations tout being datathat they make data back decisions.
(19:30):
They guide other organizationsto make data back decisions.
And yet this is datathat they're not following.
And for me, that feels like there'sthere's something behind that in it.
And a lot of it has to do with the factthat their mode of leading for very many
yearshas been to see people to show that, like,
if you're in the officeand I know you're working,
(19:52):
and that's how I am comfortableleading and
and so I think that that's been a big,a big problem,
you know, in, in, in and frustration,I think for a lot of us.
There's a chapter in this book, youopen it up, you won't be able to see it.
But I've got a little marker rightnext to it.
There's a chapter here in a bookabout work titled Freedom.
(20:15):
And there are some leaders heresay freedom.
Jennifer, what are you talking about?
Like, there's athere's a level of control.
There's a set of boundaries here that arerequired in order for work to happen.
Like, what are you talking about hereas it relates to freedom?
I felt like from my discoveringthat this was
(20:35):
maybe one of my favorite chapters,was this idea of under it was an for me
because I was feeling this sense of,you know, that people were resisting.
And I kept, you know, I kept seeing,
and having more conversationswith employees talking about making
these really dramatic turnsand deciding to opt out of work.
(20:57):
I was noting that or noticing that we wereat the thinnest executive pipeline
for women that we've been in decades,women are making these choices.
And I started to follow that.
And I found that, you know, women havereally increased their startup activity.
Number of patentsthat women having have built in the last
several years has doubled.
(21:18):
You know,they're they're moving into part time now.
And there's there's obviously
a major concern inhow do we maintain this talent base.
But what we're finding iswomen are just saying, I need flexibility.
I need the things that you promised meand you betrayed me by pulling those back.
I'm going to take my careerand my plan in my own hands.
(21:42):
And that really brought me againinto the science of of freedom.
And our our sense of freedomis so deeply wired.
It's so baked in that it'svery subconscious.
When we're given somethingand we have autonomy
and then that is stripped from us, it'sclawed back.
Our response is to fighteven to our own personal peril, to get it.
(22:07):
And this is a big part of where,you know, policies are coming in
and trust is declined because there'sa subconscious part of our brain
that's saying you took my freedomand you took my agency.
And so now I'mnot going to give it back to you,
because I don't trust that you're goingto do good things with it.
And hence the highest levelof active disengagement
(22:27):
in a decade, people,you know, not being as productive.
We see people rage applying and quietquitting.
And, you know,we see all the these responses, on TikTok
and from Gen Z's that are saying,I'm not going to opt into that model.
And so we burned a lot of bridges in thosepolicies being given and taken away.
And that's where leaders
(22:48):
need to come in and understandthat freedom is a fundamental right.
And how do we rebuild that trust?
By making sure that we're not overpromising,
and under deliveringand also giving people what they need,
which is focus on well-being, which isflexibility, which is agency and autonomy.
Those are all things that leadto higher performance.
(23:10):
And the idea of goingeven doubling down further on taking away
freedom,I think, is a very ineffective strategy.
I was on the other side of the micyesterday.
I was being interviewed for a podcastand the radio show, and the question
that I was asked had
was framed around, what if?
(23:30):
What if people get their job donein less than 40 hours?
What should you do?
And I would say, well,
I should rejoice.
Like why not? If there.
The reason for I'm making bringing this upis that as long as we as
leaders are framing this around the hoursnow, I know that
in some caseswe're paying people by the hour.
(23:52):
But take that out of this.
If our conversation in our own headis all about
are they workingrather than are they accomplishing
the expected actions at theat the quality level we require,
then we're
as long as we're focusing on the time,we're focused on the wrong question.
If someone's getting their workdone for me,
(24:12):
that's everything that I could dream of.
And they're doing it in half of the time.
Then one of two things eitherrejoice for everyone
or help them find ways to use more of thattime to serve both of them
and the organization like thatshould not be a problem.
That should be an opportunityall the way around.
This is good that way better than I saidyesterday.
(24:34):
Oh, by the way.
That was I was just going to say like,that is so perfectly articulated.
This is exactly how I feel.
It should be goals, not ours.
We should be completely changedthe way that we measure GDP.
We should be thinking about unpaid labor.
I mean, there's so many thingsthat we need to be thinking about
when it comes to measuring success.
(24:56):
It should be goals, not ours.
And when we think about what you justsaid, I think is really critical is
if someone finishes earlyand they get their work done in less time,
talk to them aboutwhat would be exciting for them
to be working on, you know, careerpath thing, what could be,
you know, something meaningfulthat they want to engage in.
(25:16):
How can they be, you know, using thiswhatever they're
they're basically giving themselves now50% time to go
and do, you know, really cool thingsand work on projects that they love.
And and it's also to the promise ofI was to save us time.
That was the promise of AI.
It's going to take care of all of that,that work
that is just tedious and boringand takes up a whole bunch of time.
(25:39):
Well, what I keep hearing now,and there was great research
that just came out, a studythat found that
now people are finding that with AI,they're actually working more
because they're getting more workpiled on after
they're using this technology to be,you know, more efficient.
And they're also having to work withAI that isn't quite there yet.
(26:00):
And here's the thing.
So ifyou're finding that in your organization,
if you're if you're a leaderand you're sensing that,
then what you need to dois have a conversation
with your team, like,is that what they're feeling?
How are how is this playing out for us?
Because, you know, and there's
throughout the history of time,
as we've gotten things that have allowedus to be more productive,
(26:22):
there's always been new stuff,like we shouldn't be surprised by that,
but hopefully what we're addingare things that can add greater value
to the world, to the customer,to the team, to the individual.
And so as a leader,
we can be impacting thatby having a conversation with our folks.
Yes. No.
This is something that I, I agreewith as well.
(26:42):
And we talked about this earlier,but I believe culture can be changed
in 20 minutes or less.
It's really just havingthat these types of conversations
and being open to hearinghow people feel about their own role
and how successful they feel likethey are in it, and what are the things
that they would liketo, you know, to do to try to improve it?
(27:04):
And is I actually helping them or has it
taken away all that mundane work?
And yet the promise again,was to build up their creativity
or be able to upskill them.
Have they been upskill this is anotherbig problem, is that people that you know
are now just kind of afraidto put their hand up to say,
(27:24):
I really don't have work to do.
And so then this idea of seeing peoplework, they'll just create, you know,
busy work.
Task masking iswhat's happening a lot now, too,
because managers aren't really asking.
And we gather data.
The best way for us to gatherdata is for managers
and their direct reportsto have weekly ideation conversations
(27:47):
that are non-work related,and then also bring in
what's stressing us out, what's making us,you know, excited this week
and being able to have rapportso you can build trust.
And then over time,you can really learn what motivates people
and what holds them backfrom being successful.
And that's where managers,I think are really squeezed right now.
(28:08):
They're also highly burned outbecause they have this pressure,
but that 20 minutescan be the most effective for you
to hit your revenue numbers for you to hitgrowth goals, for you to hit, you know,
productivity goals.
All of that can be measured
and tracked back to having these kindsof relationships with your team.
We're having a conversation
with Jennifer Moss about her new book,Why Are We Here?
(28:32):
Creating a Work Culture that works, workculture that everyone wants.
And before we wrap up
and let you tell us
where they can get the bookand all those good things,
I have a couple of other questionsfor you, and I want to know,
Jennifer, what you do for fun.
That's
such a great question, especiallybecause it changes all the time.
(28:53):
But right now,what I do for fun has been going out
with my teen daughter in the morningand she's 15, going to be 16.
So this is precious time right now.
We get up every morningand we go for this walk up to this place
called Poppy's Bagels,and we go and get a very specific bagel.
Bagel.
And we sit, we take the dog for a walk,
(29:15):
and I talk with herabout what's going on in her life.
It takes about an hour every daythis summer,
and I have to tell youthat that for me, is not just fun.
And I feel goodbecause I'm going to be physical,
but I'm really gettingto spend precious time with my my soon
to be 16 year old, daughter,which I know is going to be fleeting.
(29:35):
And listen.
Feedback says not every 16 year oldwants to spend time with mom like that. So
you're doing something right, and that'scertainly helping with it, I'm sure.
Every day you'rehoping for one more of those days, right?
Who knows?
Listen, I want to know to Jenniferwhat you're reading these days.
(29:55):
So I have just put this book up,I will, I'm loving it.
It's called The Tell by Amy Griffin,and it's an excellent book.
It's a memoir.
And, she's a perfectionistthat, you know, has worked in New York.
She owns this venture capital company.
And and she later in life finally decided
(30:15):
to tell herand share the secret of childhood trauma.
And so she writes about that perfectionismand how,
you know, how it really drove her,why she became a, long distance runner.
She just ran and ran, but she was runningaway from a secret about her life.
And I think it's a really it'sa vulnerable book, but it's a book
that shows that,you know, things that we've dealt with
(30:38):
can be overcome by by communicating itand sharing it with other people
and getting that kind of supportfrom people around you.
The title, again, is the the tell.
The tell Amy Griffin.
We will have that in the shownotes. The tell.
I just couldn'thear that second word. Right.
I wanted to make sure I got it rightand we will have it in the show notes
(31:00):
for everybody.
So, Jennifer, the question you've mostwanted me to ask from the very
beginning ishow can people connect with you?
Learn more about what you're doing.
Where can they get the book,all those kinds of things.
So you can get the book anywhere.
You know,
you can get in your library to Amazon to,you know, to wherever books are sold.
But if you want to find outjust more about stuff, I have a lot of,
(31:22):
articles that I've shared on the siteand resources.
It's jennifer-moss.com.
Jennifer Dash Moscone that will also be,of course, in the show notes.
Now, I have a question for all of youwho are watching or listening,
whether it's with me live right nowor whether it's later, it doesn't matter.
The question is the same now what?
(31:44):
What actionare you going to take as a result?
And I can look at my notesand, and share with you
what I'm going to do as a result of this?
One of those things I want to sharewith Jennifer after we're done,
but it doesn't matterwhat I'm going to do.
It only matters that matters to me,but only matters to you.
What you're going to do. And you.
(32:05):
If you take this as a way to collect
knowledge, it has a has a value.
It has a much greater value.
If you say, I'm going to take that insight
and apply it in this question helpsyou do that.
Now what?
Now that I've got this information,what will I do next?
(32:25):
I hope that you willtake that question seriously.
Because I'm going to keep
asking you every weekand I hope that you'll do that.
Jennifer, thanks so much for coming back.
I've been looking forwe had a bit of a delay to get this done.
So glad we finally didand so good to see you.
Thanks for being with you.Thank you. Kevin.
And so everybody, if you enjoyed this,make sure you're subscribed
(32:46):
wherever you're watchingbecause you don't want to miss another.
And there will be another livein just a couple of days.
But every single week,there'll be another one of these
great conversationsat the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.
So wherever it is that you are watching,make sure you subscribe.
Make sure you tell someone elseso you can come back next week
for another episodeof the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.
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