Episode 097 – The 5 Areas of Wellbeing Backed By 80+ Years of Research | Ben Wigert & Mike Ritz from Gallup – Transcript
Dean Pohlman: Hey guys, it’s Dean. Welcome back to the Better Man podcast. Today’s episode, I have two very special guest. actually, we’ve never had two guests before, so this is really exciting for me. but, we’ve got two people from the Gallup institution. Gallup nonprofit. I don’t know what to call it. but I’m going to be talking about the fact we’re going to give you get into some statistics on topics that we cover very often in the Better Man podcast.
Dean Pohlman: Things like work life balance. we’re going to talk about men at home, family life, happiness, and we’re actually going to look at some of the data on this. we’re also going to talk about loneliness and depression within this context. And then we’re going to get really brave and talk about gender differences and considerations based on actual data.
Dean Pohlman: So I’m really excited for this conversation. I think you guys will be too. So, Mike and Ben, thanks for joining me.
Mike Ritz: Hey, thanks for having us .
Dean Pohlman: Yeah. So, Mike is, has been a member of Man Flow Yoga for a couple of years now.
Mike Ritz: I’m a lifer. I’m like.
Dean Pohlman: I’m gonna he’s going to be doing workouts with me until he’s 90, and I. And I’m well into my 60s.
Mike Ritz: just. Oh, nice. all all.
Dean Pohlman: White hair at that point. Oh, by the way, here in like, six years, based on my based on my dad’s genetics. So, so, yeah, that’s how we, set this up. And then, Ben, what is your role at, Gallup?
Ben Wigert: Hi Dean. Thanks for having me. I’m director of research and strategy, Gallup. So I have the very cool job of getting the study how people work and live. a few of my favorite job responsibilities. Our team, creates a lot of the workplace articles, reports that come from Gallup that, talk about what’s happening in the workplace and how workplaces can be improved.
Ben Wigert: And I’m also heavily involved in our research and development as well as our advisory service. So I appreciate you inviting us to talk to the.
Dean Pohlman: Yeah. So, let’s just start with what is what is Gallup?
Ben Wigert: Being or like what? Like what is Gallup?
Mike Ritz: What is Gallup. So it’s a nearly 90 year old, company that studies human behavior, data analytics, basically everything that would be important to humankind that’s on our agenda. and has been for a really long time. so as a result of that, studies that started maybe 80 years ago, you can see the longitudinal data all the way from 80 years, all the way to the present in some cases.
Mike Ritz: So you really can see, you know, how people’s opinions have changed, how people’s behaviors have changed in the context of how we’re living now versus how we lived then and then. Hopefully leaders and people that are interested in this can make better decisions for the greater good based on the evidence.
Dean Pohlman: Wow. That’s amazing. So what are some of the most well known studies or most well known research that have that’s come out of Gallup that that satisfies that very long longitude longitudinal, criteria here?
Mike Ritz: I’m looking at my scientists over here.
Ben Wigert: And it’s like picking from your children, right.
Mike Ritz: Okay.
Ben Wigert: You know, I have to start by saying that whenever I say Gallup, people say, yeah, you guys used to call me and interrupt my family dinner all the time and ask me, like, who’s going to win the election?
Mike Ritz: So.
Ben Wigert: Yeah, that’s usually where our conversations start. But I’m a workplace scientist, so I don’t spend a lot of, a lot of time on the.
Dean Pohlman: You know, I call it calling people.
Mike Ritz: Yeah.
Ben Wigert: Not anymore. Not anymore. graduates.
Mike Ritz: It’s worth mentioning we don’t do political polling. So that’s something that is in the past, that that we no longer do. And people still consider us as that even because it’s just such a big deal. Yep.
Ben Wigert: Yep. Yeah. You know I think maybe what’s most pertinent today is one of the things we’re famous for is the World Happiness Report. we do that research in collaboration with Oxford University in the United Nations. Then we have some really good data relevant to our conversation today about how people evaluate the quality of their life, their positive emotional experiences, their negative emotional experiences.
Ben Wigert: we’re able to study, really, the 99% of the of the globe in that study that includes over 160 countries. We looked at how people’s life evaluations and those emotions fared against things like age. This year is one way we calibrated it. So we studied, people’s life evaluations and emotions for a long time. But this year we really want to understand the, the growth curve on that really throughout your life stages.
Ben Wigert: so we found things like when you look at, life span across the globe, people’s happiness tends to decline as you age. And a lot of that has to do with physical health, mental health, depression. as you get older, dementia becomes a much bigger risk, is becoming an increasingly larger risk. We studied things like that, help, provide insights not just to the psyche of the world, but also how are, environmental factors affecting them?
Ben Wigert: Because in the United States, for example, that relationship looks very different, rather than, happiness declining throughout your life. It actually takes more of a U-shaped. So when you’re younger, you’re optimally happy as you age, have family, kids, get some responsibilities, happiness tends to decline, and then it starts to increase again at a point. and we’ve also been able to study some interesting trends that starts to pull apart, generation versus live stage a little bit.
Ben Wigert: So in that same study, we found that, life evaluations were getting worse for young people, at a faster rate in the United States. So, for example, today, young people have about the same level of happiness as elderly folks. And that used to not be true. Young people used to be much happier. So that starts to help us understand that.
Ben Wigert: You might just look at the data and say, hey, young people are happy. But then when you start to understand that their happiness is decreasing at an increasing rate, you start to look at that and you look at things like how social media affecting them, how our social norms affecting them, what’s happening in the world. So, you know, that’s one example of something that we studied for many, many years, but we’re able to freshen and get on the edge of each year.
Ben Wigert: And those trends allow you to understand really what’s truly changing, because like I said, you could just look at that data and say, hey, younger people are happier than older people. That’s not really what’s happening because we can look at the trend.
Mike Ritz:
Dean Pohlman: Yeah. I mean that brings up you know obviously we we would look at what role does technology play on on that. And we can make I’m assuming you can make a hypothesis based on you know based on okay why are kids less happy. Have you done that or what have you. What what have you what have you found.
Ben Wigert: Absolutely. So we followed that, we followed that breadcrumb turning into some rabbit holes, of course. but some of the things that drive these changes would be things like loneliness, for example. So recently we’ve seen increases in negative emotions that what’s interesting is you can have negative and positive emotions throughout the same day, right? They’re not necessarily the same thing.
Ben Wigert: So if I look at things like negative things like stress, worry, anger, sadness, loneliness, we’ve seen those globally increase. recently we have not seen as much change in the positive emotions. and we start to dig into what emotions are changing. We worry about things like loneliness right now or in our data for really everyone, but also young people.
Ben Wigert: So when you start thinking about technology, social media, actually video games for young boys as that usage increase and people spend more time alone, we see more loneliness. right now I think about 15% of people feel a lot of loneliness, on a daily basis. And while 15% may not seem like a huge number, those are associated with really bad things like depression and mental health issues.
Ben Wigert: so when we see a metric like that changing, we know the outcomes are bad. and we have to dig deeper and is, like you said, we start to worry about the technology piece. And but you also worry about the other end of it. We also look at things like social support. we look at people’s ability to make their own choices and their freedoms.
Ben Wigert: we look at their income, all those things play into how people are experiencing life. So, you know, while technology is, enabled around a challenge, it’s really how we handle technology within our society. So that starts to pull you in the parenting community and things like that.
Dean Pohlman: Got it.
Mike Ritz: Ben, I was you know, when you’re talking about these factors and these root causes that contribute to people being happier or unhappy, I’m interested in this idea right now, in social determination theory and sort of just to my this is just my kind of definition of it seems to me that this idea that it’s this, that contentment.
Mike Ritz: To be content, you need a sense of purpose. You need to be able to be authentic and and you need to, you know, have a sense of belonging. Is there any connection between what Gallup’s find in the data? And does that connect up to this theory and application.
Ben Wigert: That, you know, it really does the number one correlate in our happy are composite happiness metric. In that report I was talking about, it actually is someone’s ability to have freedom over their decision making autonomy. As we as we might say. Right. that’s not the only correlate, but it was one of the highest correlates in that place, right, in the self determination theory.
Ben Wigert: And you also had an another important point there, Mike. It’s also Amy. It’s something so we know purpose. Purpose is really important. So they can aim it. And when we look at our broader well-being data outside of this study, there’s five elements of well-being that Gallup studies career well-being, physical well-being, social well-being, financial well-being, and community. The one that tends to be most strongly correlated with people’s life evaluations.
Ben Wigert: how good of life they think they have is is actually career. And that’s because you spend so much of your time at work. Or if you’re in school building toward a career and work. Yeah, there’s a lot of purpose, especially for men derive from that, because you want to aim your life at something and be able to evaluate your progress.
Ben Wigert: So, yes, absolutely. Social determination theory plays in there. And it’s a combination of having that autonomy to to take control of your life, but also have something that you can pointed out that’s meaningful to you. And that’s when you can start setting goals, learning from other people, investing in yourself. Right. But without that direction, it’s hard the your energy.
Ben Wigert: Right?
Mike Ritz: Yeah, yeah. Dean. The the when he’s talking about this idea of work and everybody needs a job is was a saying that Gallup was saying for quite a while everybody needs a good job. That’s what they need most, to turn themselves around and, I heard that first. And the reason I’m at Gallup today, and I’ve only been here for, less than two years now, is because I was running an organization called Leadership Rhode Island that oversaw leadership in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors in the state and had been doing it since 81.
Mike Ritz: And this report came out that Gallup put out that compare state by state and showed that Rhode Island had the most actively disengaged workforce in the entire country. So 1 in 5 working Rhode Islanders were miserable in their jobs. And Gallup can, you know, has further, been able to define that. What does that really mean, even in dollars and cents?
Mike Ritz: What does that mean for the economy and turns out, and actively disengaged person on average costs $3,400 out of every $10,000 earned and sort of wasted, you might say. So say you’re a $50,000, you know, annual wage earner, 17 grand is out the window for that business, that agency, however you want to look at that because they’re not happy.
Mike Ritz: They’re, you know, they’re maybe, not treating customers well or they’re causing management rifts with internally and so on. So in that came to my attention. I was like, wow, you know, we oversee leadership in the state. We had we were the first in the recession and we were the last out as a state. So everybody was focused on unemployment numbers.
Mike Ritz: But here I’m like, okay, we’ve got unemployment numbers that are high. And the governor and the business community really cared about them. But here we have 1 in 5 that are working that are totally miserable, and they’re costing employers money and they’re just plain unhappy. And what does that do to society? So I started researching that, and that’s how I found Gallup and found the research and the data.
Mike Ritz: And, you know, the company had been doing all this amazing work and fortune 500 companies that were was traceable and, and, has all this great metrics on what does it mean to to turn and actively disengaged person. Can you do that? What does it mean to having a fully engaged workforce? And then how does that, how do those ripple effects, hit society at large?
Mike Ritz: So we decided after about a year of planning and talking to people at Gallup, that we were going to go down that direction. And in three years, we went from the most actively disengaged state in the country to number 15 in the country. and on this, this engagement question that says I get to do what I do best every day at work.
Mike Ritz: We were 49th in the country and went to number one. So, you know, this thing, we look at it, it, you know, you can look at it at work where we spend on average, I think I’m correct me if I’m wrong bad. But I think Americans spend on average, somewhere over 81,000 hours at work in their lifetime. And it’s the only other place you spend more time sleeping.
Mike Ritz: So think about how that affects you. If your work life isn’t good, if you’re not engaged, if you’re only having that sense of like emotional connectivity or belonging to your workplace, then what are you taking home with you? And then how is that? How is that connecting to your family life, your children, your community at large? Are you disconnected there too?
Mike Ritz: So you got further, you know, amplifying loneliness. So I’m so interested in how do we create these solutions in the workplace where we’ve got a bit of a captive audience? I mean, people are going to work, so you’ve got an opportunity as a leader to make a positive influence with them at work, that then we’ll go home with it, that that will change all of society.
Mike Ritz: So about, a couple of years ago, I’ve got two and a half year.
Dean Pohlman: Mike, I want to yeah, I want to jump in for a second. Yeah. This question came up.
Mike Ritz: So yeah.
Dean Pohlman: The 81,000 hours working. So this is for I’m assuming this is for the United States.
Mike Ritz: Yeah okay. It’s an American statistic, right. Ben.
Dean Pohlman: Do you know how that compares to you know, how does that compare to, how does that compare to the UK? How does that compare to more how does that compare to France? which, you know, France, UK and US difference. Pretty pretty pretty significant differences in work work life balance. So I’m just curious how does that number, that those figures of how much do people work in the United States, how does that compare to other countries?
Ben Wigert: Yeah, that’s a great question. on average in the US, it’s around 42 hours on average with a great range, huge range depending on job. So, you know, off the top of my head, if you look at people who work like 50 hours plus a week in the US, that’s maybe 10 or 15% of the US population.
Ben Wigert: So when you think about how that compares globally, you know, knowing that the average is about 42 hours a week, you just simply would look at that, based against other countries averages, which I don’t have in front of me. But let’s take an extreme example like France, let’s say they and let’s say they count them at 30 for example, you know, so you could do the delta between, 40 hours a week and 30 hours a week.
Ben Wigert: And that would that percentage difference would be about about your most extreme difference. So even in the most extreme situation like France, you know, that’s a ten hour difference a week, right. Like that, that it’s not as much as you’d think. Right. It matters. And those hours are important. And obviously you’re also setting boundaries within that different schedule.
Ben Wigert: but even in France, they’re still spending the vast majority of their life at work too. Right.
Mike Ritz: And when we do the happiness report been how do they fare. How do those compare. You know, is there a correlation there.
Ben Wigert: They think how many factors are involved in that. I can tell you from a life evaluation standpoint they still have that trend where their life evaluations that happiness decline with age, and they’re having the same issue where they are still seeing like it increase in negative emotions across the country. So, it doesn’t that’s not the silver bullet.
Ben Wigert: I guess you could say. It’s just working. Working less is the main takeaway. It’s quality of life, right? Is how we how we spend our time. It’s our experiences. this is us data. But if I look at our US data here in front of me, only 15% of people strongly agree that they felt active and productive every day.
Ben Wigert: Right. So the bars.
Mike Ritz: Wow.
Ben Wigert: Pretty low. Right? The bar is pretty low. and I don’t have the global number in front of me, but I do have the global employee engagement number in front of me. and I can tell you that only about a third of us employees are fully engaged at work. And then, globally, it’s less than that. So globally, it’s in the 20s, 20, 23% are engaged at work.
Ben Wigert: Right. So you can see that disparity. So if I just kind of jump right at the heart of the question like is less time working? Make your life better and work better. No, no it actually factually does not. It’s the quality of the experience. Let me let me play that out a little bit more too. So what does, sound like?
Ben Wigert: Doom and gloom statistics. They’re not true for everybody. That’s the average. So there’s a lot of organizations, that have employee engagement rates at twice that rate. So instead of 30% of their employees being engaged, 70% of them are engaged because people invest in their engagement, their well-being, their development. so when organizations, teams, managers, people work on how they experience work in life together, it gets a lot better, right?
Ben Wigert: So when you work on that, you can have a great life, but if you leave it unmanaged, that’s that’s the trouble, right? work life balance is even an interesting term. Right. So you might just sit back and say you’re feeling tired, stressed, burnt out. You might just say, hey, I just I need a vacation. I need a day off.
Ben Wigert: You probably do. Right? Like supporting the manager. I’ll do that. But if you come back to the same exact scenario that got you there, you might actually come back more upset, right? Because now you’re coming back and you’ve done nothing about the root causes of your, dissatisfaction. the hits on your well-being. Next time you take a vacation, maybe you don’t come back, right?
Ben Wigert: Maybe you really rethink what you’re doing. So I guess my point there is, yes, there’s variance in, norms of how people work globally, amount of time they work. But a universal human truth is we spend the majority of our our day at work. and we have a long ways to improve. And you really can’t separate your personal well-being and your work well-being like it’s not.
Ben Wigert: I mean, I’m not saying don’t create a clean separation and compartmentalize in your day, right? Like we’ve actually if I play that out, we study that too. We look at what we call blenders versus splitters. There’s people who prefer to blend their day throughout the day working life. There’s people who prefer to split their day and compartmentalize it.
Ben Wigert: That split is actually 5050.
Mike Ritz: So. Right. 5050.
Ben Wigert: Right. and then most importantly, what we find is that when people work in the rhythm of life, they prefer with a blender gets to be a blender and the splitter gets to be a splitter. they’re more engaged at work. They have higher well-being or less turnover, better health outcomes. So it’s actually that alignment between how you work best, and how you really work the matters more than just sheerly numbers of hours work, for example.
Dean Pohlman: So are you saying that the blenders have a better experience, or is it just depends on what you ability to choose?
Ben Wigert: It’s there’s no right or wrong. It’s the ability to choose. Yeah. Simply choose.
Mike Ritz: It’s not always intuitive. I mean, one of the reasons I started doing manual yoga, Dean, besides seeing Joe Bernier in in Rhode Island become like, amazing. What what are you doing? besides two ways to. Yeah, I know he’s a Shazam. Yeah. but besides, that is, you know, I had taken this this role here, at Gallup, and I was traveling to DC, because I oversee the federal government stuff.
Mike Ritz: And so I’m coming from Rhode Island to DC, and I’m not used to that commuter life. I’m not used to being away Monday through Thursday. So, I’ve been doing, man flow for, a little over a year now. Not the full two years. And I was exhausted. I was, I was, you know, I ran on fumes.
Mike Ritz: I’m tired and I’m feeling what is called classic burnout at a, at a new role where I need energy because I’m doing something new, I’m building a new initiative, I need energy. And so, I walk into, my neighborhood bar in Providence after a week where I’m just feeling, you know, and, my bartender, who I also consider maybe a therapist at times.
Mike Ritz: Arthur, he’s like, it’s like he could tell I was upset, and he’s like, what’s going on? Sort of explain to him, Stephanie, is, you know what I do? You know, he’s a real big guy. He’s he goes, you know what I do when I feel like you? You know, I just, I just do, like, I work out, I go to the gym, I run, I play a sport, I do something that I can control because you can’t control everything.
Mike Ritz: But I can control, like, right here. Yeah. And I said, That’s interesting. So, you know, I talked to Joe. What are you doing? And next thing you know, I’m connected over here, with man flow. But then about a maybe a month later, I’m learning about burnout at Gallup, and I’m seeing this data. So we have this assessment called Cliftonstrengths, where you can determine what your top strengths are and talents.
Mike Ritz: And there’s a lot of science behind this thing. We could talk about that later if you want, but essentially comes to find out that with my combination of strengths, which are high influencing sort of strengths, there’s data on what you should do when you when you’re burnout. And it’s not necessarily intuitive. So for example, the instinct for a guy like me during burnout is to spend more time with family and friends outside of work, and that can increase my burnout.
Mike Ritz: We found by 34%. But here’s the thing that is the best thing I could do, and it wouldn’t have come to me if it weren’t for art. I mean, I’ve exercised and passed in my life, but have been doing it for quite a long time. The number one thing I can, I can reduce my burnout by 48% if I do physical activity.
Mike Ritz: So I took, you know, I start doing your program and all of a sudden I’m starting to like feel differently. You would think and I would think honestly because I remember even when I told Joe I was going to do it, he’s like you don’t have time for that. Like you’re already doing so much. How can you do that?
Mike Ritz: Turns out it was like, the best thing I could ever do is move my body and do something like that. And it focused. My mind focused, my head gave me more energy. so the interesting thing I think about Gallup and the great research that Gallup does is we have like these hunches, I know I do. I’ve got like gut instinct.
Mike Ritz: And then all of a sudden it’s like, well, here’s proof, here’s the real evidence. We know this works. And then what do you do about that? So I love the idea of, finding those kinds of and of course I went back to art and I’m like, you don’t even know it, but you’re practically a scientist here. It’s besides the mythology.
Dean Pohlman: Nice. That’s really cool. So now I have a question. What does the data say about what is their data about exercise statistics like what percent of people exercise regularly. And, for me, a question that I think of is like, what is the most common type of exercise? Like how many people are going to the gym and and using the exercise machines, how many people are going to Pilates or yoga or bar studios, how many people are running?
Dean Pohlman: How many people are doing like bootcamp classes do you have? You know, I didn’t we didn’t talk about this ahead of time. I don’t have the stat in front of you that so that’s okay. But, I’m just curious, what are some of the is there data about exercise statistics?
Mike Ritz: Well.
Ben Wigert: There’s the there’s data. I was, I was not that good a memory was that crisp on it. I spent most of my time.
Mike Ritz: Looking at our, our.
Ben Wigert: Workplace data. you know, there’s probably questions about treadmills and ping pong tables at work somewhere in there. I can I can dig up. I think the most relevant ones, one I just kind of mentioned a little bit ago, is that only 15% of people strongly agree that they’re active and productive every day. period. I’m not just saying that work like across the board.
Ben Wigert: Right. So like if you combine work and life. Yeah, that’s that’s a pretty low number, right. also, as I’m saying, you’re looking across our well-being data, and our five elements of well-being. This struck me as interesting. men tend to score a little bit higher on their financial well-being and their community.
Mike Ritz: Well-being.
Ben Wigert: Than women, but no better on physical, as you’re talking about social or career. So it’s interesting, kind of connecting that, to maybe exercise. They really worry about their finances and their in their community, and they really put a lot of time and effort into that too. So when I think about exercise, I think about both sides of it.
Ben Wigert: let me add one more state in there for you. 44% of men experience a lot of stress every day. So you’re also going to be thinking about like what’s what’s causing that stress and where does it go. Right? So if we look at that we’re like, okay, we have some challenges here for men. They worry about money.
Ben Wigert: They focus on money. They focus on, building their community. They have a lot of stress. Right. So I start to think about what that translates to. part of that is that stress needs to go somewhere. So then you kind of need to exercise, right. and in whatever way it is to your point, there’s many different ways.
Ben Wigert: On the flip side, you have to have energy to exercise and that there well enough balanced life to exercise. So it is that interesting combination of when your will be in the priority of your employer. Because is this theory I know I know what workplaces do with this. When your well-being and, priority of your employer and when they invest in those elements of well-being, including your physical well-being, not only are you encouraged, and provided time to get those exercises in because they know it’ll make you more productive at work, you have a better workday, so the energy to go workout after or spend it with your family and things like that.
Ben Wigert: So I do have I do have data on that that really makes that linkage between, physical health, mental health and then, how you experience work.
Dean Pohlman: Where are these 56% of men who are not stressed?
Mike Ritz: How long are they? Where are they? I experienced a.
Ben Wigert: Lot of stress yesterday.
Mike Ritz: Here.
Ben Wigert: This one’s kind of fun to bump up against other people’s data outside of Gallup. So we look at that and we’re like, oh my gosh. You know half half are extremely stressed. Extremely right. Like but then when you study like biological data and I’m sure you guys probably know this better than anybody, if you wear any sort of wearable devices that track track your body throughout the day, there’s these diurnal cycles right where you have energy peaks at different points in the day.
Ben Wigert: So a lot of the game, if you look at how you spend your day, is spending that energy efficiently and well so that it’s building, you know, as it’s increasing, you’re using it in the right ways, that gives you energy. You’re also taking breaks to maintain your energy. And then after work and after your workout, you’re looking at your recovery cycles.
Ben Wigert: Right? So it’s sometimes it can be a mistake just to look at the average of what is happening across the day, because there’s the ebbs and flows. So the question is how do you manage those ebbs and flows? How do I make sure I have a good level of energy when I’m working or working out? Because I invested the right rest in the right nutrition, I’m using my energy appropriately.
Ben Wigert: I’m not trying to go full send all day, right? That’s not going to work. And then also, where’s my recovery time? And, these, health psychologists will look at things like, at what point do you need to start to shut it down at the end of the day? Like if you go to bed at too high rate of, I’ll call it trauma, what’s that going to do to you the next day?
Dean Pohlman: Sometimes it does feel like trauma when you’re going to bed and you’re still stressed.
Mike Ritz: Yeah.
Ben Wigert: The, a five year old, an eight, eight, eight month old. but yes, they’re pretty good at inducing trauma in the evenings.
Mike Ritz: Yeah.
Dean Pohlman: But I’ve got some similar ages to that in my house.
Mike Ritz: Yeah, well, when you talk about it, you could have been right where you’re happier when you’re young and it declines. And I think it’s like around the age of like 52, it starts to go up or something. You know, our children related there. I mean, isn’t really parenting that is is it really sucking the life out of you?
Mike Ritz: Like, is is that related? It is. It is.
Ben Wigert: No, no. It genuinely I don’t know how to say it any more plainly than yes. And if you like to hear a lot of anecdotes of how they do it, I have stories today, yesterday, and we did ear tubes yesterday, and there was a tornado while we were getting ear tubes for the shelter in place. You know, it rained the night before, so I didn’t get to sleep for it.
Ben Wigert: I mean, if you want me to give you a lot of examples in nature where, you’re always working and living, I don’t think you’re doing one or the other. Right.
Mike Ritz: Yeah, yeah.
Dean Pohlman: So I’m, I’m glad that’s. I’m glad you you you say that and I’m assuming there’s data behind this. So we’re absolutely we’re not just speaking from our own personal experiences, but you know, I think this is something that is, I think this is something that social media has, has done, has propagated, but it’s the idea that parenting is beautiful.
Dean Pohlman: And here, look, we’re at the beach and everyone’s smiling for this photo, and, and now we’re at home and the kids are sitting in their chairs and eating the food that we made them. And my wife and I, we’re like, no, this is not what parenting is. Parenting is like 10% of it’s great. And most of it is just really, really stressful.
Dean Pohlman: It’s like, why wouldn’t you want to live your life and fight, flight or freeze while you’re at home, like, join us? It’s great. And so we every time that we have conversations with people who are, you know, good example. We went to London last week and I met up with a friend of mine, and she is getting married, met up with her and her fiancé, and she’s getting married couple months from now.
Dean Pohlman: And, you know, we said to her and we were talking about parenting because she’s, you know, they’re talking about their lives. They’re like, well, we’ll, you know, we live in London. And I was like, what do you guys do for fun? And they said, well, we like to go out to eat. We go to, we go out eat.
Dean Pohlman: We go hang out with our friends. You know, we have a dog that we take care of, and, you know, and I’m like, wow, it’s really hard. I can’t even relate to you like I’m trying to, you know, I’m trying to share similar experiences and say, oh, I kind of get that. But it, you know, parenting makes things so different that it’s, it’s it’s almost like you need different.
Dean Pohlman: You need different conversation topics. You’re like, okay, you’re over here and you have this life experience right now, and I’m over here and there’s so little overlap. And so we’re also telling them as we’re, you know, having this conversation, we’re like, parenting is not you know, this parenting is difficult. Parenting is hard. Having a baby is really hard.
Dean Pohlman: and social media in particular, I think creates this idea that it’s all, you know, beautiful. And it’s it’s really it’s really great. And honestly, for the most part, it’s not it’s really hard.
Mike Ritz: So yeah, I was thinking though, maybe on the back side of life on that upswing side band, maybe having those kids and they’re grown and there’s someone there for you that’s got your back and that kind of thing. Maybe that’s part of it. It’s part of the positive happiness for those that have had kids versus those who haven’t, I would think.
Mike Ritz: And so I don’t know if there’s data to show that. But yeah.
Ben Wigert: Yeah, I mean you’re starting to catch the back swing if you have that fulfilled and you’re also getting some of that autonomy back, right? You’re able to reinvest in you a little bit. So was the best best of both worlds because you can be proud of, you know, the family you’ve grown and developed and who they’re becoming. And you can spend more time with them and do more things.
Ben Wigert: you probably have more money later in life. I’ve been told that by a lot of dads. They’re like, jeez, I can finally, you know, before I was investing just purely my time in the my kids. But now I can take a lot of satisfaction in sending them to do things and watching watching them grow, too. so, yeah, I mean, that’s that’s absolutely related.
Ben Wigert: well, you know what’s interesting to me, if you want to know the numbers behind it, the commiserate a little bit. A third of working Americans have kids 18 years old or younger. That’s that’s a lot. Right. And if I take it from the employer’s standpoint, you know, that that’s a lot of people that I need to be engaging in a different way and supporting in a different way.
Ben Wigert: ill let me rest that up a little bit. If you look at people between the ages of 34 and 44, 60% of American workers have kids 18 years or younger. Right. And that those are the years that are harder on you as a human being. There’s just more on your plate. You don’t have time to recover. You’re responsible for so much more.
Ben Wigert: Right? So like to me, I, you know, I always try to, getting players to really think about that, like those are also your mid-career professionals who are carrying a heavy load in your business, right? They tend to be more senior and working their way in the leadership. I think of the gender roles in this. Right. generally speaking, guys make a little more money.
Ben Wigert: There’s the traditional breadwinner mentality that we have, right? So they shoulder a lot of that weight.
Mike Ritz: both.
Ben Wigert: Helping their employer run a successful business and run a successful family at the same time. So it does create an interesting challenge for me. They can lean into those strengths, but at the same time, that’s a that’s a fast path of burnout two, right? When you’re trying to shoulder everything kind of on both ends, men also tend to work longer hours.
Ben Wigert: We talked about hours earlier. They’re more likely to be in that 50 hour a week plus category, right? They’re less likely to take time for themselves, and make sure they’re getting in that mental work that that, that workout, that meditation that they’re eating. Well, you know, and they’re also I think we all kind of know they’re less likely to ask for help, too.
Ben Wigert: Right? So it’s interesting to put that together. I think as, as, as a male, you want to be strong for your family, right? But sometimes being strong for your family is also investing in yourself. and there’s the flip side of that that we all, we all know that we, you know, maybe justifiably so keep some of the stuff quiet to ourselves for a gender role standpoint.
Ben Wigert: I mean, women do, shoulder so much more of the, childcare load. We ask men and women who their primary childcare provider is. 60 to 60% of women say it’s them, and only 20% of men say it’s them. So, I mean, you know, women actually are four times more likely to be the caregiver. and I think we see this with their own spouses, it affects their careers.
Ben Wigert: Like, there’s just no doubt about it. When we study this, we know that, about 40% of women are likely to say that their childcare responsibilities has reduced their work hours. it’s cost them information or made them decide to not try for a promotion. And about 40% have even thought about, pausing or stopping their job to take care of family.
Ben Wigert: I don’t want to, you know, I’m not one to get into what’s right for your family beliefs, right? I’m probably one of the worst perpetrators at watching my wife make dinner, and, and she runs her own business, you know, works really hard. But it’s an interesting balance. If you’re a guy, because you are shouldering a lot.
Ben Wigert: So as your wife, you want to be strong for your family. But if you don’t, figure out how to do that as a team, like Dean was saying earlier and what you value and how you work together like it’s impossible, for one person to do alone, let alone two people to try to do it separately. Right?
Mike Ritz: yeah.
Ben Wigert: So I just think it’s interesting how what you two are talking about ties to, what people are experiencing in both working life and these challenges, they just factually conflict. They conflict. They. But up against each other, they create gender role. discussion. Right.
Mike Ritz: Yeah. I mean, there’s been so much written about, well, now you can work remotely and isn’t this great? Because now women can basically take care of the kids and work at the same time. I remember during the pandemic when we were all remote, for the lockdown and, the director of programs in my organization was conducting, you know, an online forum with a big audience of university presidents as, like a panel kind of thing.
Mike Ritz: And, at the end, I said, wow, you did really great. And she goes, you have no idea. In the middle of when I asked the real zinger of the question to the the sort of highest status, president of that university. And we’re all, like, with bated breath waiting for the response. She’s like, my daughter ran in and said, can you open this fruit cup for me?
Mike Ritz: And so she’s like in the background, trying to not look like she’s opening a fruit cup. I mean, this is sort of the situation we’re putting people in, right? No, no, totally.
Ben Wigert: It’s absolutely that like and then hybrid has its own variety. Like you’re saying that’s that’s that fruit cups more likely to happen to your wife than you. And then you think about like look at the basics like transportation, right. Like to and from school beginning of the end of the day. And if the kid forget something, right, like, like the woman’s more likely to do that.
Ben Wigert: And you know that that is one of the, the challenges. But I think us as guys see that and then we’re also then, you know, we want we want to be helpful. You’re always know how to be helpful. And sometimes you then you pour yourself even more into your work or like lesson to yourself. Right. So is that balance of like how do we do this equitably as a family in the ways that work best for us?
Ben Wigert: and it it really is about making sure we’re investing in the whole family, ourselves included. because factually, we’re really busy. Yeah.
Dean Pohlman: I mean, my personal experience with this and I’m sure you guys can probably relate to this, and you guys listening can probably relate as well. But, you know, there’s there’s so many conflicting ideas about how do I fit into my family unit because I grew up with my dad going to work at 5:00 and he came home at 730 every day like there was, I think we had one.
Dean Pohlman: He had one day per week where he stayed home, and he would stand at the kitchen island with his laptop, and he would be working while getting my, you know, my brother and I ready for school. But aside from that, he was at work at 5:00. I used to get in trouble for going to work too early, like he said, like they don’t like me going to work too early.
Dean Pohlman: So. But that’s just he’s always done that. And so for me, you know, when we first had our son in 2020, right, pandemic, it was very difficult for me to be restricted to working between like nine and four because my wife was, you know, I don’t know if if you’ve had, you know, if you’ve had your spouse go through, giving birth and then taking care of a small child by herself.
Dean Pohlman: If you’ve had a spouse who hasn’t gone crazy during that process, you’re a unicorn.
Mike Ritz:
Dean Pohlman: There’s it’s an extremely difficult process. And if, you know, one of the things I was thinking about as you were talking about, stressed statistics, is how different parenting is now versus when we lived in more traditional communities where it wasn’t just mom playing with baby and then, you know, going off to dad playing with baby, it was, hey, here’s a three year old, take care of this baby.
Dean Pohlman: And when you get sick of that, there’s a five year old who lives next door. There’s a five year old who lives in the the hut next door, like, whatever it was, you know, like, so I think of how that and how we didn’t evolve biologically to live in these structures that we do now. But anyways, to go back to what I was talking about with the, you know, with my wife postpartum and, and, and my ideas about, my experience growing up with my family was I felt like I should be allowed to go to work for a longer time.
Dean Pohlman: And it was really struck. It was really difficult for me to be able to accept that, you know, I didn’t have as much time to work as I wanted to. And, you know, you’re you’re you’re comparing that ideal to, well, it’s different now. And women also have a right to work and pursue their careers versus. But the other consideration there is like, well, like what’s the you know, how am I biologically wired?
Dean Pohlman: Because it looks like my wife is much better at taking care of small children than I am. And I don’t always want to be taking care of small children. So there’s a lot of conflicting ideas about, you know, how do I fit into my family unit and how much time should I get to myself in order to career in order to pursue my career, my professional goals?
Dean Pohlman: And, you know, so anyways, there’s a there’s a lot that goes into that is a is my point.
Ben Wigert: Well, and even building to that, I think how that just connects everyday to our presenteeism with our family too. I think of your story about your dad in those long hours. You know, our our data very clearly show that, men are more likely to be a manager, much more likely to be a senior leader. women hear that in they’re like, that is a gender equity problem right there.
Ben Wigert: Yes. They first say like, well, that’s that’s not right. Especially considering that women are more educated than men on average. Right? So they’re going to look at that and be like, what the heck? But at the same time, us, you know, put yourself in your own shoes. And that long workday late it those responsibilities, especially later in your career, look really different, right?
Ben Wigert: Like you can’t just turn them off when you go home, you know, responsible for a team, a budget, a company. Right? So like, you are responsible for that at work, you’re using it as it should be, and it doesn’t just stop at the door, you know. So a big problem too, is even if we figure out a little bit of equity in childcare handoffs and work hours, I think a big problem in today’s society.
Ben Wigert: Is your mind still on it or your where’s my phone? Your phone? Right. It’s following you to bed and it’s following you on vacation. I can also speak for myself like my own kids tell me to pay attention and focus when I’m out playing with them, the driveway, them checking an email or a text. Right? So like when you look at men’s jobs, gender roles and things like that, I mean, those jobs can be really demanding outside of working hours.
Ben Wigert: even when your company’s not making you beyond right at that point because your, your mind’s there. So I think that brings up some other interesting challenges also presenteeism for when we are together. Right.
Mike Ritz: it’s interesting too, because we know, Dean, that the 70% variance as to whether someone’s engaged at their, at their work or not is directly related to their supervisor or manager. So now when you’re running the data on this age group, these men, they’re managing, whether the employees are engaged and being productive and having a positive well-being at work.
Mike Ritz: And all of that is also on those that see those same shoulders in many cases. Right. to make sure that they’re having those meaningful conversations with their employee that, helps them balance all their components of well-being in the workplace. Yeah.
Dean Pohlman: So getting getting more into that, that topic of, what does work look like now and how has the pandemic changed that. So we talked you know, we’ve touched on this topic a lot, but how does working remotely working hybrid working in person, how does how has that affected our our mental our emotional well-being, our sense of community, sense of purpose?
Dean Pohlman: what consideration should we be aware of? What does the data say?
Mike Ritz: You mean happened to your sound?
Ben Wigert: Been unmuted myself, I thought one of you two muted me like you.
Dean Pohlman: Yeah, it was a power of mike to talk. Well, yeah.
Mike Ritz: Well well played.
Ben Wigert: The first thing I think you can’t gloss over is just, all of the stress, concern, burnout that was churned up at the beginning of the pandemic. I mean, for a lot of reasons, whether it was health related, money related, job related, you name it. And then we’ve just seen a lot of change sets. So, we saw record drops in wellbeing early on in the pandemic.
Ben Wigert: Businesses have never been more disrupted. So we had this extreme disruption phase. And then as that, smoke started to clear a little bit there, we saw the great resignation, where people started changing jobs because there were a lot of job opportunities out there. Businesses were growing. there were salary increase opportunities out there. So we saw this kind of growth change periods.
Ben Wigert: And then over the last two years, I would say we’ve had what I would call a stabilization period, where people settled more into the new normal. That looks very different. into your question about how does like fully remote work hybrid? you know, how does work arrangements affect today? Well, you first look at how much they’ve changed.
Ben Wigert: prior to the pandemic, only about 9% of U.S. employees, had a job that was fully remote. Today, that’s up just over 20, so that’s doubled. and, if I look at remote capable jobs, jobs that can’t be done remotely, the that increase for maybe 30% of jobs being flexible in some way prior to the pandemic, to 54% being hybrid and not just hybrid, but a lot more of those days spent at home than before.
Ben Wigert: So there’s a lot of, remote work flexibility out there. big picture eight and ten remote capable workers now have some degree of flexibility. Only 2 in 10, though, so that’s a real flip from what it was prior to the pandemic. So that creates both opportunity and challenge is what I would say. It creates opportunity to work more efficiently, to balance your week more efficiently, to work in the way that works best for you.
Ben Wigert: that tends to be good for people’s well-being. But there’s also these countervailing forces. So if I look at one group like fully remote people, for example, their biggest challenge is going to be becoming detached. So what we see in our data for people are fully remote is, their connection to their company, their mission and purpose has declined.
Ben Wigert: The most of everyone we studied there. and then, we’ve also seen an increase in loneliness among those folks. I’m not saying everyone’s feeling lonely who works remotely, but you are actually spending less interpersonal time in person with, your colleagues and, and and like Mike said earlier, you spend the majority of your day at work.
Ben Wigert: So that is a challenge. Like where are you getting that interpersonal connection? that creates an interesting challenge for fully remote folks. There’s also some potential career limiters or trailers for some people. If you’re not with your boss or leaders or a mentor as much, if not with your team as much. If you’re not part of the culture, you become more and more detached over time.
Ben Wigert: Or at least you can’t be. don’t hear me wrong on this. I’m not saying you can’t do fully remote work. Well, I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying it creates some headwinds. On the flip side, look at like hybrid, which is ideally supposed to be, the right blend, right? You’re supposed to find the right blend of being in person and remote flexibility.
Ben Wigert: that kind of creates a situation for what hypothetically be optimal productivity. But it has its own unique challenges. You have people that are on different schedules, and it creates this thing that I like to call coordination, chaos. But I don’t necessarily know what my coworkers are doing all the time. Right. you know, what? Are they available?
Ben Wigert: When are we supposed to come together? It creates some inefficiencies, to say the least. so I put that.
Dean Pohlman: There with my mom saying, I remember my mom saying her secretary went remote, to work from home, and she called her once, and she’s like, hey, I need your help. Something. And she said, oh, I’m at the grocery store right now. And she was really upset about it. And she’s like, your work. That’s not what working remote means.
Ben Wigert: Totally.
Mike Ritz: Yes.
Ben Wigert: Yeah, well, that creates some inequities. That too. Right. Like where you need something and someone’s not available, where there’s someone who is on site all the time and they don’t have that flexibility, that can create some resentment and frustration, too. So, you kind of put that all together. There’s always a trade off, right? With autonomy. comes the ability to engage in your work, engage in your well-being, take some control.
Ben Wigert: But it also creates some challenges around what I would call the forces connection, collaboration, creativity and culture. Those things are just a little bit more difficult to do when we’re apart. Right. So point there being like, we have to be more intentional about those things when we’re working either fully remote or hybrid, like how are we creating those connections with other people?
Ben Wigert: How are we getting together to collaborate on the right cadence at the right times? When are we creating space to just be creative and bounce ideas back and forth? what are we doing to build a shared sense of culture? So in the end, that’s really how you manage it, right? It’s how you manage it for your organization, for yourself, your team.
Ben Wigert: So the potential is there to live a better life and work more effectively. But left unmanaged and on lead, it actually creates chaos and detachment. So it’s interesting. It’s the my classic example is if you think about, the best coach you ever had, the best teacher, they always push you a little bit more than you normally would.
Ben Wigert: They push you to be a little bit more structured. They push you to be part of the team in a community. Right. So without that coach in your life, our, our human nature is we do the thing that’s easiest for us, you know, that’s just heads down what we want to do on our own schedule. So you need those leaders, those coaches to make this all work together.
Ben Wigert: and that is the point of leadership. And systems and structures in organizations is to get people to do their best work and work together more effectively. so it’s not an either or type situation. We’ve hit this beautiful thing where we have flexibility in our lives, but it can also lead to some new problems if left unmanaged.
Dean Pohlman: yeah, that makes me, that makes me think a lot about, my own, you know, work structure and, you know, we, you know, you can you can see right now, you know, this is this is my empty office where I this is my empty office. There is no watercooler. There is no, you know, our, our videographer will come in if I ask him to, to be here and there’s, you know, some sense of community then, but otherwise, it’s just me, you know, talking with this, is this is social for me.
Dean Pohlman: Like, you’re pixels on my screen. This is this is like my social interaction. we’ve got one guy in new Jersey, we’ve got a guy in California, we’ve got a guy in Chicago. so we’re all, you know, that’s the core team. We’re we’re all over the place. So, you know, for me, there is definitely the sense of purpose, right?
Dean Pohlman: Definitely the idea that I’m doing meaningful work, that I have autonomy over, my life. But I am not in, you know, I’m not around people enough to have a sense of community. So when I go out and I buy coffee, it’s sometimes I’m like, how do I be a human? I’m like, what do I say? Or they say something and then I’m like, oh, I don’t know what the I don’t know how to I don’t know how to act with you because I haven’t, the only person I’ve talked with today is, my wife and my children.
Dean Pohlman: So, you know, makes me think a lot about the, deficiencies that I have in, in, an actual, you know, proximity connection with people on the team. But also, you know, we we tend to operate in silos a lot. And how does how can we, how can we really have how can we create this, you know, this life for the people who work with us, that that satisfies those forces, that helps them, you know, to be happy and helps me be happier.
Dean Pohlman: so, brings up a lot of thoughts for me.
Mike Ritz: I, you know, in working in leadership for so many years, I was constantly faced with senior leaders that had given it all up to work. Right? All they doing is working. They’re just working. They might have families, but they’re working. and then at some point during the course of their year with me, because there were these cohorts, they’d come up and start talking to me about a different way.
Mike Ritz: And they usually it was interesting. They would usually say, especially like the private sector folks, they’d say, I’m thinking about moving into the nonprofit sector and they’d go, well, why? And they go, because it has such great purpose, and it’s like a community. And it’s really interesting to be in nonprofits. And then I’d say, well, have you thought about the money, you know, and how much money you need?
Mike Ritz: And then they realize, well, I can’t afford to work in the nonprofit sector at this point, usually. But what I think they were all looking for was a sense of community and being being involved in something that wasn’t just home and it wasn’t work. So we say work life balance, which turns into home life and work life, but where’s community at?
Mike Ritz: And it seems to me that community matters so much and I don’t know, been if you have, you know, data or statistics around that because I know it’s a core component of overall well-being is community, but I feel like it just gets overlooked at times. Younger people seem that they value it. I feel like I look at my daughter, she’s 25.
Mike Ritz: It seems like she values community, but I’m not sure and she gets it. But I’m not sure she’s actually engaging either. Right? Volunteerism tends to be down across the country, things like that. Right? Right.
Ben Wigert: Yeah. I think you should look at the practicality of that too, of where you’d find it. Right? Like like you just like you just said like, well, this is also my social time and social well-being and sense of community right now. Right. are shopping malls even a thing anymore? I’m not sure. I don’t I don’t go to the grocery store.
Ben Wigert: I order all my groceries. Right? I mean, like.
Dean Pohlman: My parents went to a mall recently and they described it as tired.
Mike Ritz: So yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a.
Ben Wigert: Friend, from small town Nebraska originally. I have a friend, who will always tell me anytime having a bad day or I’m getting too fired up about something. He’s like, do you ever just go, like, outside and talk to 5 or 10 people? Because I just used to be part of your day. Like to get through the day.
Ben Wigert: You probably talk to 30 people. He’s like, the world’s a good place. You know, the world’s a good place. Like, look outside, go to the store, go to the mall, go talk to ten people. I bet you most of them are pretty happy. And, the problems that you’re making, problems probably are not as big as big as you think, you know, but there is that, like, forced reckoning you do when you, interact with other people, right?
Mike Ritz:
Ben Wigert: I said, that’s interesting. Another. Yeah, another. This is, this is on the management leadership front. What’s kind of amazing right now, too, is we have all these elevated concepts and new things we’re trying to balance. Right. what’s incredible is that the thing it’s made made most difficult in our lives, both at work and home in a lot of ways, is actually clarity of expectations and priorities.
Ben Wigert: Because because there’s been so much change happening. and in a new world, you’re not fully you have not fully adapted to how to deal with it like we did before. Right? Like organizations are changing a lot. 56% of employees say they’ve experienced a lot of disruption in their organization, including that even the, demands of their customers have changed.
Ben Wigert: so it really is a lot of priority chaos, a lot of change fatigue out there. I think that’s true at home as well. so I think it’s fascinating that we’re dealing with all these unique challenges. And a lot of it comes down to like finding a home base again, clarified our expectations and our priorities. one of our coaches likes to always preach to me, this this model she likes she likes to talk about it.
Ben Wigert: How do you focus me? How do you free me from the unnecessary stress? And how do you know me? It sounds so easy, but it really is, whether we’re talking about it.
Dean Pohlman: So that. One more time for sure.
Ben Wigert: Yep. You bet. Focus me, free me from unnecessary stress and know me. Those three things. When she’s coaching people, she always works on those three. Because if we can get down to the priorities were aligned on, I have I have clarity. We have an aligned effort. if I think about freeing me or freeing you, I’m looking for what support you need.
Ben Wigert: I’m looking for what you can offload that you shouldn’t be doing or someone else should. and then also, it’s just as important to know me, who I am, who I am, how I work, what my strengths are. Now I’m pulling together what we’re doing, how we’re doing it. And there’s also that personal connection. Those three things are always so interesting to me.
Ben Wigert: I get frazzled by all the, you know, crazy things that are going on or the speed of the day when you can slow down and focus on those three things. You can almost find a sense of ground each time you you work on that. And of course, you move to the next meeting and it’s all disrupted again. But, it’s just interesting how all these things really largely do come down to expectations, investment.
Ben Wigert: And what’s my path like? Where where am I going to take this? How are we going to do this together?
Mike Ritz: When I when I was an interrogator in the Army, you know, we learned that, the most stress a person could ever have was uncertainty. Fear of uncertainty was the mode that was shut people right down. They make bad judgment. They do things they wouldn’t normally do if they had this fear of uncertainty. And so I’ve spent, you know, I was in long time ago.
Mike Ritz: I spent decades of my life looking at that in society at large. And who is coping with this fear of uncertainty and how does that negatively affect them? And then, of course, as a manager or we like to use that term coach with us to Dean, because we look at managers as coaches, it’s sort of a a different style of how you would manage a person.
Mike Ritz: You know, I start to think about how do I like you’re saying remove those things, how can I make it? And setting those right expectations so the person knows what’s expected of them at work matters so much. And in this new environment, I mean, we’ve got people going straight out of college, work in a job. They’ve never even seen people in person.
Mike Ritz: They’re doing all of that here. Imagine what that’s like. And then how do you manage that person or coach that person in that work environment when they’ve not even they’ve never even seen you in the same room together? They just see a flat screen every day. And the importance that it puts on those of us in more senior roles to focus in on how do we set, how do we do those things.
Mike Ritz: You talked about being with these younger folks coming into the workplace, because a lot of us that have been doing the job for a while, we feel like, well, I could do this remotely, no problem. I know my job. I know what I’m doing. I can handle this. Okay, fine. But what about this next generation that needs you?
Mike Ritz: They need some of that wisdom and some some of that institutional knowledge. What are you doing for them? What are you doing for the overall mission that you know you’re supporting?
Dean Pohlman: I mean, this for me, this just brings up how important managers are in terms of their employees, their team members, just overall happiness with life. there’s a guy who’s come to, multiple be the better You retreats and, weekend workshops that I’ve done here in Austin. His name is Donald, and he I might be getting this slightly wrong, but he was a clinical psychologist, or a psychiatrist.
Dean Pohlman: And after realizing that so many of his, you know, his clients, his patients that he was working with were experiencing significant stress or, you know, depression, anxiety symptoms as a result of their managers. He actually got into executive coaching. And, now he has this, you know, I don’t know, 100 acres of ranch in, in Colorado and collects, you know, collects some nice checks every month from his business and is extremely happy, and meditates a lot and, does a lot of these retreats type things.
Dean Pohlman: but, it, you know, it just illustrates how not just that we have that, that managers have a responsibility to, to to be good managers, to coach their people and it also strikes me that, you know, this, this new way of working for a lot of us where we aren’t in person enough, where we don’t have enough interaction with people.
Dean Pohlman: not only are those employees not doing as much as they could for their company, but they’re also not growing personally as much as they could because they don’t have that coach is there to help push them. so.
Mike Ritz: Yeah. Dean, Dean, we that’s a big part of Gallup’s business, is executive coaching, coaching at all levels, coaching managers. And we have a engagement survey that we put out in the workplace called Q12, where we ask, questions that give us a sense of what’s going on in that workplace and where could you know, where could managers, where could leaders apply more emphasis and focus to improve that workplace?
Mike Ritz: And it really looks like a lot like Maslow’s, pyramid, that sort of hierarchy of needs. When you really look at it, you know, at the base of it is all these, these basic needs, which is you know, one of them which we’re talking about is I know what’s expected me at work. I mean, if you think about it, if you don’t know what’s expected of you at work, then nothing else really matters.
Mike Ritz: That’s sort of like the base of the job. Like, if I don’t know that and you can recognize me for what I did right now, you know, it just doesn’t. I need to have a sense of that. And then it goes into management support. You know, and then it goes into teamwork and then it goes into growth. And so when you look at that pyramid and it’s not, you know, it’s not a linear thing, it’s a you’re doing all those things.
Mike Ritz: Although if you don’t get that base right, if you don’t get that, I know it’s expected of me at work. I have the materials and equipment to do my job. If you don’t get that part right, then the other things, you know, they’re hard to achieve. but we go into companies, we measure that, we go in and nonprofits, we measure that.
Mike Ritz: And then that gives managers and leaders this view on what can we do and what steps can we take to make sure that people are engaging better, which translates into, you know, they’re better well-being in the process?
Dean Pohlman: Well, we’ve touched on a lot of topics that we’ve, we talked about doing. but one thing I really want to get into is, you know, this being the Better Man podcast, I would love to discuss, gender differences. And, you know, we talked about this before we had the call, but, I think today it’s difficult to have conversations about gender differences.
Dean Pohlman: yeah. I mean, it is, right. You’ve got you’ve got fear of being, oh, this guy’s a misogynist because he said this or guy is, you know, whatever. but it’s gotten to the point where you can’t say, you know, you can’t say anything. You can’t say that, that any differences exist, because it’s, you know.
Mike Ritz: But.
Dean Pohlman: There have to be differences. so I’d love it if we can, talk about, some of what does the data say right.
Ben Wigert: That’s a great question on data. the data shows that there are far fewer gender differences in how, men and women experience work and well-being than you would think. It’s like a gender is a variable is the least differentiating or predicting among all the variables I study. That doesn’t mean there’s not differences that just means there’s more common ground.
Ben Wigert: And a lot of the differences you see or interpersonal relate to other things your personality, your circumstance. Right. I’m not saying there’s not gender role differences. There obviously are. But my point is it’s important to have a conversation about these things in the same way that 50% of people are splitters and 50% are blenders, right? It’s about figuring out, what these important topics about your life in your work mean to you.
Ben Wigert: now, we do see some things in the data that I mentioned before where, men tend to have stronger financial well-being, community well-being, work longer hours, for example. that aligns with gender roles, right? On the flip side, women do tend to be the caregiver four times over exponentially. So, caregiving does tend to be a challenger directly to their careers, right.
Ben Wigert: but what that means is we have to have a conversation about it. I think just personally, I think it’s good to always ask people how they’re feeling about it first so that you can be authentic in sharing your responses, but also calibrated a little bit with some sensitivity. Right. I think it’s really important that you’re open about what you need for your well-being, your development.
Ben Wigert: You know, what you believe in, where you want to go in life and discuss that with your partner, and your community. at the same time, I think it’s always good. listen, first to hear what they’re saying, because you might frame your message a little bit differently. And I think that’s where you can avoid the misogynistic type comments.
Ben Wigert: Right. Of like, you can explain what you mean by action in some cases. I like my gender role. I do like to mow the yard right? My wife hates mowing the yard. I’m a terrible cook. She loves to cook. Like those are some easy ones, right? The childcare ones I think are more difficult for me anyway. But like that’s just me and my wife finding center for us.
Ben Wigert: I think a lot.
Mike Ritz: About happiness and well-being been. And has there been a change in this new remote environment, you know, based on gender?
Ben Wigert: Yeah. gender, I’d say lean people, in remote capable jobs that could have some flexibility across the board. One, it, men tend to gravitate a little more toward hybrid work. A combination of remote in an office, but a little bit. Not a lot. men are less likely to want to work fully remote by a little bit.
Ben Wigert: they want to be in person a little more, and they’re a little bit more likely to want fully on site work if that’s for them. so, you know, they like a little bit more of the combination. women are the opposite. They want a little bit more flexibility. And that’s often going to translate to those childcare responsibilities.
Ben Wigert: I don’t mean it’s just for moms, right? I’m not saying that. but they do tend to want a little bit more, but not like a lot more like, wow, women want this and want that. It’s same with you brought up, generation young people. And you could mix this in with the gender roles to young people. are struggling a little bit at work in terms of finding good mentors, understanding how things work around these places because they’re coming into a highly disrupted environment.
Ben Wigert: So they need a little more support in the same way they like flexibility, but they’re less likely to want the fully remote version because they need more time together. So you could cross that by gender too, right? so I think you have to think about really those staging those things in combination. you know, I don’t have I don’t this isn’t data in front of me that you do start for.
Ben Wigert: You said to worry about things for men like, children too much to load right shoulder into much of the load, doubling down on their careers because they can control that when maybe they need to balance things a little bit better. maybe.
Dean Pohlman: I can control my career. I can’t control my home.
Mike Ritz: I wish you was.
Ben Wigert: Say that I. I can’t go on record, saying that and go home. Okay.
Mike Ritz: Yeah.
Ben Wigert: That’s it. Right? I mean, it’s that, like, you know, you know, how to.
Mike Ritz: Work.
Ben Wigert: Right? You know how to work. Maybe you’re, later in your career, you’re in a leadership management position. So the the stakes are high, right? So it’s like it’s like a magnet. You’re going to you’re going to gravitate towards that. women are going to gravitate towards making it work for everybody, including us guys. Right.
Mike Ritz: But you’ve also flex that muscle more right now, like as you’re saying, right? I was one of those early programs. I was on your, like, strength. Plus, flexibility equals mobility. A I put that in a lot of contexts in my life. Yes. Yeah. Where does that fit in other parts of my life. But you flex that muscle more, so working becomes more natural.
Mike Ritz: The kids are pretty new.
Ben Wigert: Are you saying my negative tends to sit and reach carries over to the workplace? That we, as I said.
Dean Pohlman: No, definitely not a same.
Mike Ritz: So I’ve got.
Dean Pohlman: I’ve got some questions that I ask people at the end of this. And I think this is going to be interesting because I’m going to ask you these questions, but I want you to, instead of replying with your personal opinion, I want you to reply with, based on your knowledge of the data, what would you say? So these are rapid fire questions.
Dean Pohlman: Just keep it to like 1 or 2 sentences. All right. So first question here is what do you think is one habit, belief or mindset that is most important when it comes to overall happiness?
Ben Wigert: Self-reflection and feedback.
Dean Pohlman: Me analyzing the data.
Mike Ritz:
Ben Wigert: The you know, it’s, data. Data isn’t always truthful as, where you get it from, right? So get a look at problems from different perspectives and really think about what that means for you. as Mike mentioned, 70% of our decision making is emotional, even though we think it’s rational. So you have the look at what you’re doing from different perspectives.
Mike Ritz: and in the management standpoint and coaching others, it’s, it’s looking at that person as an individual and recognizing their uniqueness and not applying the same to all, which is, you know, we take these shortcuts in life and we apply the same treatment policy. We keep applying the same to all. And the reality is each person is very unique and very much an individual.
Mike Ritz: And what works for one doesn’t necessarily work for another.
Dean Pohlman: what’s your answer, Mike?
Mike Ritz: I’m caught up on this. This, Ben may or may not say it. You know, I’m not the data guy. I’m not the scientist in that. I’m, applying applying theory and applying data in real world and seeing how it works and, going in and and working with people to do that. and I’m really hung up on this, this idea of contentment being this idea of, purpose, authenticity and belonging and how critical those are.
Mike Ritz: you know, I, I really got turned on to this conceptually, from Sebastian Younger’s book tribe when he was embedded with, a unit in, Afghanistan. And they came back, from Afghanistan, and he met with them a year later and, to see how they were doing, and they all wanted to be back in Afghanistan.
Mike Ritz: He says, what’s wrong with our society if they’d rather be back in this really difficult? It’s very remote place. Fear of death, like on a regular basis. What is it about that that’s so much better than being back home in a, in a, in this, you know, first world country. And that’s sort of the concept of that whole book.
Mike Ritz: And that’s stuck in my head for a long time. You know, I’m a vet myself. And what are those components. And, and he sort of dissects that in a really short book. What are those components that, make them feel that way, that they’d rather be there than here? And I think it really comes down to this idea of purpose, authenticity, and belonging.
Mike Ritz: but I don’t have data for that. I’m just going by what? Okay, we got.
Dean Pohlman: One guy with the desk, got one guy sleeping normally, normally, and it’s not there. So this is this will be interesting. All right. Second question is, what is one thing that is often, overlooked or undervalued by others when it comes to overall health and well-being?
Dean Pohlman: So what is one aspect of our overall health and well-being that is often overlooked by most?
Ben Wigert: I’m going to cheat a little bit and say it’s actually balance across the elements of well-being. We study. So we we study five elements of well-being, that I mentioned. And it’s actually finding balance across all five. we find that when you just lean into 1 or 2 and neglect others, that affects your overall life valuation and health.
Dean Pohlman: And those five things.
Mike Ritz: What are the five?
Ben Wigert: Make me remember what I said before.
Mike Ritz: so we study.
Ben Wigert: Five, five elements of well-being, career well-being, physical well-being, social well-being, financial well-being, and community well-being. And the key is actually attending to each of those five and finding balance across them. We overload on 1 or 2 things, usually our favorite thing. Right? I’m a financial nerd, so I lean into our finances. Or, I used to be a tennis player and a tennis coach and a former life.
Dean Pohlman: Can you manage my money for me? I don’t I don’t get it.
Ben Wigert: I, I need more is I can manage money if I have more of it is what I’ve learned.
Dean Pohlman: Okay. And if I tell you in ten years.
Ben Wigert: I manage it really.
Mike Ritz: Well. Yeah.
Mike Ritz: All right.
Dean Pohlman: Mike, did you want to answer that?
Mike Ritz: I, I, I agree entirely with Ben on that one. I’m a believer. I’m a believer of those five. And, how do I how do I do that in my own life? And how do I help others, achieve that? Okay.
Dean Pohlman: What is the most important activity that one can regularly do for overall stress management?
Ben Wigert: Well, I know that it varies by the individual for sure.
Dean Pohlman: Perhaps a category by categories stress management. So instead of saying yoga would be exercise.
Mike Ritz: Or well, I can tell you I gave that data earlier. Right. And my instinct is, to actually do more. and I’ve learned this by working on teams where they’re like, what the hell are you? Well, I’m feeling like totally stressed out. I create new stuff and and people go, why are you doing that? Now? There’s more to do.
Mike Ritz: And I think I figured it out. It’s because I’m really good at starting things. And when I start things, I. It gives me a sense of control. I’m good at it. I get energized by it. And so I start more. But it’s not the right thing to do. And the the data, the Gallup data shows. And now I’ve applied this, I have to move.
Mike Ritz: I have to do something kinetic. I have to do exercise. This yoga thing’s been good for me for the last year or so. but I have to do that. And that that proves out in the data for a person like me. But we’ve we’ve defined this in sort of four different categories and different people, should manage that stress and that burnout in different ways.
Mike Ritz: Not not what works for me will work for everyone. in fact, if, someone is hi, relationship building type of person, and is driven and has strengths around relationship built building, doing the exercise isn’t their number one thing to reduce stress. For example, we know that in the data. So it really does depend on the person.
Dean Pohlman: What are the four categories.
Mike Ritz: So quite a long time ago, Doctor Donald Clifton, when he was trying to examine what’s best in people, he determined that we all have these, these talents. And, now Gallup has an assessment that can they can you can take it online and get your talents in one through 34. And they’re they’re in rank order based on intensity.
Mike Ritz: And those talents for me, for example, just to get a sense of like the vocabulary, my top five is communicate an activator, futuristic strategic maximizer. and when we look at ourselves through the lens of those talents, we look at ourselves, and then we look at those around us with the science shows is when we apply our strengths, if you will, our talents that become strengths with application, when we apply them toward our objectives, that’s where we we have the highest aptitude for excellence.
Mike Ritz: That’s where we get our energy. That’s where we have a higher sense of well-being. Those those workplace environments where, the people use their strengths every day and managers are helping to coach them toward their strengths. They have a 3% higher quality of life life, not just work life. They’re 8% more productive in the workplace. I might be wrong on that.
Mike Ritz: That 8%. Then you’ll correct me, I know, but so after that, they, Doctor Clifton identified these 34. He started to see that they operate similarly. And so they’re clustered into four categories of relationship building influence seeing, strategic thinking and executing. And so and it also has come out that if for you and I to have the same top five in the same order, which is based on intensity is one and 33 million.
Mike Ritz: So now I’m a person and you’re a person. We’re not like a label. We’re not a bucket. This is how we tend to naturally behave. And the science says if we’re deliberate about how we would naturally behave and point them toward our objectives, that’s where we can have the highest level of development. That’s where we can achieve our goals.
Mike Ritz: And so knowing that about each other can also help us look at how to manage through, like I was talking about burnout, that’s how I knew, right? That’s how I knew in the data that the best thing for me to do is to move is because I’m I’m a natural influencer. Those are my strengths. That’s how they’re sort of clustered.
Mike Ritz: For the most part. I’m basically influencing a strategic thinking, almost in a lopsided way. some people have a little bit of everything kind of kind of blended nicely and evenly. I do not. And so taking that assessment, becoming self-aware and then also thinking about how you relate to others around you and what kind of bias you may have based on the strengths I have.
Mike Ritz: That becomes this very enlightening experience. And to manage people or coach people or raise children. There’s a parenting book about this, it’s a whole new world of like, here’s a blueprint with with real, you know, evidence and real science behind it. On if we focused on this, this is how our lives can get better. that’s what strength, space, development is.
Mike Ritz: And that’s, largely what, I used when I helped transform the state of Rhode Island for work, force engagement. But it’s also, you know, what you can use at home with your relationships with your spouse and all of that.
Dean Pohlman: So there’s. So, I want to come back to the the question I asked. So there’s four. So for you, it was exercise. Are there three other main activities? Yes three.
Mike Ritz: Things. Let me look them up so I don’t tell you wrong. Okay. yep I can look them up right now I got them. So for relationship building folks, people that tend to have deeper relationships, intimate relationships, not necessarily like influencers, like lots of people. Like everybody’s my friend. These are people like my daughter, who has really close friendships and gets really deep with people and has high empathy and so forth.
Mike Ritz: The instinct when you’re feeling burned out, we’ve learned, for people with relationship building is to, to, think about how if they think about how their work affects others because their relationship builders, they tend to do that. That’s like a compulsion. They’ll decrease their, burnout by 13%. But if they think about how they approached similar situations before, it decreases 43%.
Mike Ritz: to me, these things aren’t intuitive. It’s something that I have to think about. So when I’m if I see one of,
Dean Pohlman: Hey, Mike, I’m going to I’m going to I’m going to cut right here. So these this section is much more this section is much more a question to answer. Question answer. And yeah, I think we’ve been on this one for 3 or 4 minutes. So. Yeah.
Mike Ritz: It’s a it’s a tough one to do. Yeah. Sound bite I can’t really yeah.
Dean Pohlman: It was, it was good. It was just just in that context, I think people are people are already complaining about how long my episodes are. So at this point they were asking like.
Mike Ritz: I was I was just asking around. So, yeah, it’s like just.
Ben Wigert: Playing your strengths, right? Like the short answer is like the top correlate of reducing stress is spending more time in your day with your day reconstructions. That is, spending more time in your day playing to your strengths, whatever or whatever that be.
Dean Pohlman: Yeah. So if you can say the there’s four categories, one of them is relationship building. One of them is influencing. One of them specifically build executing for relationship building. This is what you should do for this. This is what you should do. so I’m going to ask the question again, and then we’ll just and then we’ll go over to, to Ben with his answer.
Dean Pohlman: After that. Okay. all right. So one more. Okay. Next question I have here is what is the most important activity that one can regularly do for overall stress management.
Mike Ritz: Yeah. So you should play to your strengths as the number one answer. But there are four categories of folks and how their strengths cluster. So for people with high relationship building strengths, the number one thing they should do is think about how they approach that situation before a similar situation before I will reduce burnout by 43%. Wow. Yeah.
Mike Ritz: For strategic thinking, domain folks, the number one thing you can do is think about like, think about your current situation as a challenge to find a way to succeed that will reduce burnout by 42%. That’s for strategic thinkers, for executing people. People that like, like to get things done, task list oriented people. The number one thing is stop and take time to think through the situation, not just get more done.
Mike Ritz: Think through the situation. It reduces it by 48%. That’s huge. And then for for folks like me, it’s exercise. It’s do something physical that’ll reduce my burnout by 48%. We found wow.
Dean Pohlman: That’s that’s totally new information to me. That is awesome. That’s really great to know. And there’s a, and there’s a test that people can take to figure out which of these four categories they fit into. That’s called the.
Mike Ritz: Clifton’s Clifton Strengths. Yet Clifton Strengths is an assessment. You do online 35 45 minutes timed. And it gives you your strengths and rank order from 1 to 34 based on intensity.
Dean Pohlman: Okay. All right. I’ll put this on my to do list, but I’ll stop and take time to think about it before I do it.
Mike Ritz:
Dean Pohlman: Then what’s your answer?
Ben Wigert: Oh, Mike. Mike took the silver bullet answer. from a research standpoint, the more time you spend during your day playing your strengths, the better you tend to manage your stress. So I’ll answer it a little bit different way. I’ll look at burnout at work specifically. so about a quarter of men are highly burnt out at work, and about a third of women.
Ben Wigert: what this tends to look like is fatigue, feelings of detachment and reduced professional efficacy or effectiveness. and the top predictors of being burned out at work are, first of all, being treated unfairly at work. Second of all, having, too heavy workload, third, ineffective manager communication for lack of manager support. And then fifth, the speed, or velocity at which work is happening.
Ben Wigert: So from that perspective, it’s important that you, if you feel like you’re not being treated fairly or respected at work, that you talk to somebody about it and address that, naturally you would think about your workload, imagine your workload. you know, what are the things that you should be prioritizing and you should be uniquely doing, versus where you might get partnership.
Ben Wigert: And then from the manager’s standpoint, if your manager’s not given you the communication and support you need, you have to get comfortable with asking for that support and communication and, or at least starting the conversation, to find a way forward. And then the speed of works challenge. Some jobs just happen in very high velocity. Other times, we create that velocity and urgency through, lack of planning and efficient use of time.
Ben Wigert: Or it’s related to that work overload. but those are five factors I always try to keep in mind if I can, keep control of those five factors, I’m going to be I’m going to be in good shape.
Mike Ritz:
Dean Pohlman: All right. Those are those are really good to know. what is generally the most stressful part of people’s day to day lives?
Ben Wigert: What’s interesting is that ebbs and flows throughout the day, and it’s likely to be interpersonal conflict. So it could be different for everybody. But what tends to be universal is a really negative experience with another person. the good news is that positive experience is can easily outweigh the negative experiences and positive experiences, will help you have a better day and better life so they can make up for a lot.
Ben Wigert: but those negative interpersonal interactions relationships can really wear on you.
Mike Ritz: you know, this idea that that the 70% variance to engagement is based on the manager or the supervisor sort of goes to that old cliche, you don’t quit your job, you quit your boss. So sort of the contract to me, the contrary is your boss can make all the difference. Your manager can make all the difference in the workplace for you one way or the other.
Mike Ritz: Positive or negative.
Dean Pohlman: I’m feeling a lot more pressure as, as a manager now than I did before I started this episode.
Mike Ritz: We’re hirable. Okay. All right.
Dean Pohlman: Good to know. That’s helpful. All right. what do you think is the biggest challenge facing men in their well-being right now?
Ben Wigert: I think the biggest challenge, for men is, is being proactive and taking the first step towards managing it. I think, based on our data, when men take action on their physical and mental health, they do tend to get better at it. our world happiness Report shows that when you proactively manage your well-being earlier in life, it makes you less likely to have things like dementia, depression, substance abuse later.
Ben Wigert: So I think it’s about forming the habits, and getting started. my personal belief is that when you find community around that, you’re more likely to stay committed and accountable to it.
Mike Ritz: I think of that study from Harvard that’s been going on with boys starting in the 1930s, and then they follow these boys as they’ve grown up, both boys with privilege and boys with little privilege. And one of the big conclusions in that study, you know, some with privilege did poorly, some without privilege did amazing. and there was a lot of very variation there.
Mike Ritz: But the one thing that they did see, where the person was healthier and, lived longer was when they had someone in their life that had their back. Just one person, somebody that you knew had your back and you had theirs. That made all the difference. You’ll live longer. There’s been a reduced cases. according to Harvard and Alzheimer’s and dementia with those folks.
Mike Ritz: So it’s an interesting thing to think about. You know, we need another person. Just one really, according to that study, just want and we can bicker with that person. But we need to know at the end of the day, they got, you got my back and I’ve got yours. So important.
Dean Pohlman: All right. So got a lot of really good information in that episode. And one thing that I really liked about it, compared to some of the previous episodes that I’ve done, is that we really focused on the data. And we for most of it, we just pointed out here is what the data says. and we didn’t spend as much time going into the problem solving aspect of it.
Dean Pohlman: So I think that makes this episode unique. And it was cool for that reason. So, I want to thank you guys. again, Mike, Ben, thank you for coming on and doing this episode.
Mike Ritz: Thanks for having us. And thanks for what you do. Dean. Yeah.
Dean Pohlman: Well thank you. thanks for being part of it, Mike. and,
Mike Ritz: I’m sucked in at this point the second week that we made you.
Dean Pohlman: Have no choice in the matter. and so just to clarify. So. So, Mike, what’s your role with Gallup again?
Mike Ritz: So I’m the executive director that oversees the federal government initiative. So all this discussion around workforce and how we make a better workforce for everyone, for their well-being and productivity, I oversee that, for the federal government at Gallup. Cool. And Ben and.
Ben Wigert: I’m director of research and strategy for our workplace practice. So I get to study how people work and live and how we can improve the lives of employees and organizations across the world.
Dean Pohlman: And they’re hirable, right. We’re hirable. Great. Okay. Coming to a man for yoga office near you. more. We don’t have an office, so just just going to be a lot of remote calls.
Mike Ritz: But, we do a lot of virtual nowadays. Yeah.
Dean Pohlman: All right, guys, well, I want to thank you again, for coming on. It was a really great episode. but you guys listening? I hope you, got a lot out of this. I hope you got some useful information. And, you’re ready to implement some of those, that that that data into your life somehow.
Dean Pohlman: So I hope it inspires you to be a better man. I’ll see you on the next episode.
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