Resilience, oxygen masks and ‘flearning’: It’s the Build Brand You podcast

By Verizon Media national sales director Rachel Page | Sponsored
 

Arianna Huffington is refreshingly frank when she lays out a key tenet for building harmonious teams: “No brilliant jerks”. 

Huffington is of course the global media entrepreneur and founder of The Huffington Post. In 2016, she abruptly resigned her commission to found Thrive Global, an initiative with the goal of helping us all beat workplace burnout.

Her sentiment here is counterintuitive perhaps in a world where most senior business leaders are occupied in the relentless pursuit of profit. But as she explains: “In many hyper growth cultures, if somebody is bringing great results - no matter how toxic they are, no matter how much they're misbehaving, there has been a great reluctance to let them go.

“I think we need to move to this ‘no brilliant jerks’ culture because ultimately they end up affecting the whole culture and having a negative impact on business.”

Bold insights like these build environments where the wellbeing of the individual comes first. Her quest to help us take care of both our physical and mental health has also never been more timely than in the challenge-ridden year of 2020.

Which is why we are taking the current moment to launch the Build Brand You podcast series. Rounding up the best lessons from Verizon Media’s Masterclass series (plus a bonus episode with Arianna), this podcast is the distillation of the soft skills you need to excel at work, no matter what industry you’re in.

Huffington is a most fitting subject for episode one, as she outlines the microsteps we can all take to avoid burnout. She’s expertly supported by four other workplace health and wellbeing advocates, each of whom provides a fresh perspective on subjects that we intrinsically know are important, but often neglect.

Future episodes deal with some of the most vexing challenges facing individuals and workplaces in 2020, including this year’s most integral balancing act: working remotely.

On hand to address this issue is Chloe Hamman, director of people science at Culture Amp. With our colleagues separated more than ever before, she describes her Holy Trinity for effective teams working remotely during COVID-19 as “roles, goals and soul”.

A focus on maintaining well defined roles, committing to business goals and looking after an individual’s needs, Hamman explains, is the balance that employers should be trying to strike currently.

Check out the Build Brand You podcast here.

The upending of our daily lives since the start of the year has also given us the opportunity to work out what’s really important to us, according to executive coach Leigh Morrison, who takes the lead in an episode focusing on optimising new boundaries for work and life.

Above all, she explains, we are now presented with an opportunity to pause, reset our values, learn and grow. In my role at Verizon Media, and at home in Melbourne while living through extended periods of isolation in recent months, this advice has been eye-opening.

Morrison recommends we reassess our own values as a first step to mentally resetting, or as she memorably puts it, “fit your own oxygen mask first”.

“Values are like holding out a compass for your life,” Morrison adds. “They direct you, keep you on course and guide the choices that you make.”

Taking a similar approach is Kate Hall, Head of Mental Health and Wellbeing at the AFL. Kate joins us for an episode that discusses why mental fitness is just as essential as physical fitness when striving for high performance.

While Kate spends her time dealing with elite athletes her words resonate to anyone who strives for high performance in different areas of their lives.

Most reassuring to hear was her sage advice for when life and work combine to deplete us of headspace: “The main premise of being mentally fit is not someone that never gets stressed.”

Amen to that. It’s an important reminder that being stressed is part of life sometimes, and the key is how we manage it. She’s got a wealth of tips here too.

And then there’s Nicole Hatherley, who is a Leadership Strategist at Happiness Concierge, which is as good a business name as I’ve ever heard. Our episode with Nicole hones in on resilience and the innovative mindset.

Part of being resilient, she explains, is understanding that there will be times we fail in life as in business. But she has a positive spin that is worth remembering: “We're all going to fail and so we should, it's the way that we learn.”

I’m also grateful to Nicole for teaching me a lovely new term to help embrace and encourage failure - “Flearning”, or learning through failure.

And that’s not a bad way to sum things up in a year that’s thrown everything at us. Amid all the challenges there can be triumph through adversity. There are always opportunities to grow personally and professionally. Reminding us of that and helping make it a reality is the greatest gift this podcast series has to give.

If you like the sound of this, subscribe to the Build Brand You series to stay up to date. It’s free! And why not give us a comment or rating while you’re there.

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