-
- Welcome to Balancing Life's Issues, the podcast.
My name is Kai. I'm your host today,
and I'm here with, as always, CEO, balancing life's issues.
Wendy Wollner, how are you? Good, thank
- You.
How are you?
- I'm good. And today we're going to do a little bit
of a preview of a free live webinar
that you're gonna do this Friday,
January 26th at one Eastern.
And you can register for that by going
to bli info.com/free webinars.
But before we jump into the five buckets, Wendy,
I know you're fired up about something.
Damn. Can you, can you tell me about what's going on?
- I mean, we've got a lot going on in the world,
but let's just stop for a second
and say, you know, you get a call as a CEO
and it's from an employee saying that your brand new baby
that happens to be adopted,
which I don't really even know is relevant.
But, you know, I think there's an extra layer maybe
of anxiety, um, that we wanna be mindful about.
Mm-Hmm. and they need
to spend some time in the, uh, in the hospital.
And would it be okay if you work from the hospital?
To me, I would put this in the no brainer.
Um, sure. No brainer. Right?
- Yeah. As a mother, um, as someone,
brand new father over here.
Right. There's certainly a lot of empathy around that.
- Yeah. And, and one would assume,
and this is where I think we're gonna learn that
that isn't something we have to be trained to answer.
But as we learn today, the CEO said no.
And of course there's tremendous backlash.
But one thing that it reminds me of my mission is that, um,
we can't assume that people understand
right and wrong choices.
Um Mm-Hmm. . And they, we need to teach it.
We need to delve into it. Yeah. We need to learn it.
Harvard Business School, you always get a case study.
So here's the case study,
- Here's the case study, and just if our listeners just get
'em caught up real quick, it was the CEO of Kite baby,
which is a clothing company that denied
the work from home request for the mother, uh, who wanted
to take care of their adopted baby in the nicu
that was nine hours away from their home.
And that's the reason for the remote request. Right.
And so there was a lot of backlash,
and then there was a lot of fumbling apologies.
And it's just kind of like, uh, just leaves you
with a sick feeling in your stomach.
And to me, and I don't know if you speak
to this a little bit, it's this idea of like,
brand not walking the walk.
This is a baby company, you know? Um, I
- Think it goes to really at the core that we should,
and I'm not looking to the government,
by the way, just to be clear.
I know people are all over. Well,
that's a parental leave issue.
And, and, and, um, you know, I I, I try not
to get too political, but I'm not looking
for the government to solve this problem.
Mm-Hmm. , I'm looking for corporate
America to step up to the plate.
Right? I, I'm really looking for us to say, what,
how do we make our world?
And, and I think one of the things that's interesting is
that the CEO, um, needs to work.
They need to take our classes.
And I mean that as, as, right.
They need to understand that they are not trained to think
of what do I need in order to keep the employee happy,
to keep the baby happy,
because by the way, uh, you know, this, you,
you saw the separation miles feels, I mean, that baby needs
a parent caregiver.
- Absolutely. And, and I think what, what you're speaking
to is that the denial
of the request wasn't technically illegal.
Oh, right. And you're, we're not, we're not asking,
you know, but, so it is this idea of, of morality ethics,
what's right, what is wrong,
and this feels like pretty black and white.
You gotta, you gotta let that request go
through, you know, what are we
- Learning?
That's even more the reason.
If you haven't taken a work-life balance class,
certainly I hope you take ours, but take one,
because clearly we need it.
- Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we're gonna get there.
And I know your time is limited, but quick fire.
What should the CEO done?
- You know, look, I'd like to say
that it would be instinct, right?
And it would've been, of course, no problem.
What else do you need?
And then let's send a basket
of stuff along the way so you have food, right?
Mm-Hmm, , that's the right answer.
That's the platinum answer.
But I think for some people, it might be okay to say,
I need a minute to process this.
Maybe that EO that was so out of their comfort zone
that they really didn't know the right thing to do.
And sometimes that's okay, let me hit a pause button
and let me phone a friend.
Let me have my advisor. Right? I I would be okay with that.
Sure. Maybe he really, he, they did not know the right thing
to do, but you don't do what they did.
- Yeah, absolutely.
So, you know, insert balancing life's issues here.
Take a class CEO so that you have the tools Yep.
To be able to react appropriately, even if
that tool is take a second.
Yep. And, and sit on it. Okay.
So let's move to the other side of the coin.
What should, what does the employee do in that moment?
- So, you know, we had this pretty big debate about this,
and, and I know what I'm about
to say is a little bit shocking,
but, um, I am, I, I feel very strongly that we have choices.
And the minute that you crack a foundational value,
the minute you work for a company
that is clearly not allowed, aligned in values, right?
This is not a family friendly, um, Mm-Hmm. .
And I would say, you know, even as shocking as is if my dog,
uh, you know, needed to have treatment, I love my dog,
you know, I would want to be supported by that.
Um, and so I believe that the employee
and all the employees should find other employment.
I think we need to step up to the plate
and we work for companies
that are ethically value no matter what.
- Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
And it kind of goes back to this idea of,
of value-based work, um, value-based day-to-Day.
And, you know, speaking of this idea,
it's your flagship program that we're delivering
for free on Friday that I'll be hosting, um, to once again,
uh, bring this discussion to the table.
But it's this idea of the five buckets
that you've trademarked, and really,
you say it all the time, we can have it all.
So how can we have it all?
- We can have it all. We're having it all right now.
So there's a lot of messiness.
So it's really valuing the idea that every day of our lives
we're valuing our work bucket, our brain,
we're valuing the people in our lives, um, our family,
our friends, our neighbors.
Mm-Hmm. , we're valuing our financial, right?
We're, we're taking care of, you know,
our financial literacy.
We're taking care of our health.
We've gone for the meditation, the run.
I know you do a mindful journal, um, yoga.
And the last one is that we're being a good person
and we're not doing it once in a while.
That's my to-do list every day, every
- Day, every day.
And the challenge is how can we,
how can we throughout the day just fill up those buckets
every once in a while, right?
Or, or is it all about let's do all my health in the morning
and then I'm gonna do all my finance in the afternoon
and then at night as family?
Or like, how should we be thinking about
- That?
Know, I again, I, I think that sounds nice.
Um, and, and that always sounds orderly, especially
for someone like you who's a little bit more
of the perfectionist, and I wanna check it off and,
but as you'll see, as your family grows
and life gets very messy,
they often do come at the same moment.
And, you know. Right.
So that idea of, I just did a, a meeting with a client
who hadn't gotten their exercise in,
so they took me on their walking
meeting. 'cause that's real world.
- Yeah. Absolute. I - Wanna normalize that.
Bring your baby to work, not just once a year all the time.
Bring your dog right. Let it bark. Like, you know. Mm-Hmm.
. I, I think there's a way
to be perfectly imperfect and it's a mess. Yes.
- Yeah. Yeah. And, you know,
and I think it's gonna encourage, um, you know, the,
these different generations of workforce
that we're in right now, um,
as one workforce is leaving into retirement, uh,
another one is taking the realm
or taking the reins and leadership.
And then you have a younger generation coming in who kind
of, I feel like they want to
see those kinds of things, right.
They wanna see that flexibility.
They wanna see, see the, the importance that you
as a CEO is putting on these buckets, you know?
And then you can show up to work as yourself,
not somebody who's at work
and then at somebody who's at home. Right?
- Yeah. And, and you know, I think one
of the things is going back to is the job getting done
because that's super important.
Um, you know Mm-Hmm.
, we run a real serious company
and we work with Fortune five clients
and you know, we get our jobs done
and we don't do it on time, we do it early
and we deliver stellar service.
Um, so it's not about compromising that piece of it,
but at the, at the same token, it's being very mindful
that we are not missing out on things that are key to
who we are and who and who we should be.
And we're also not lying about it.
You know, quick thing is, years
and years ago, everybody took Thanksgiving the
day after Thanksgiving off. Really?
- Those were all - Like me. Everyone did.
But they lied. Well,
- They were sick. Yeah,
- They were sick.
They were just sick on that.
- Like the day after your birthday, you're sick. Yeah.
- We said, let's just give everybody the day off.
- Let's move. Oh, that's how that came about. ,
- Stop - The lying.
- Fair enough, fair enough.
Stop the lion and come to the free webinar on Friday,
January 26th at one Eastern.
And you can get registration info for that at bli
info.com/free webinars.
Was there anything else you wanted to preview
for us before we hang up? Just
- Love partnering with you, Kai. Thanks for all your help.
- Absolutely. So listeners, check it out
and we'll see you next time.
This has been a production of Balancing Life's issues
with your hosts, Kai Sorenson
and Wendy Wallner, produced by me Kai Rate.
Leave a review and subscribe to the podcast
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Got an idea for the show. Email me,
KI at balancing life's issues.com.
Anything to add? Miles? No.