How can we make workplaces better places to be?
for employees, for leaders.
How can we make companies better for the world?
Today's guest, Jess Stuart, describes herself as a former high
functioning, burned out executive.
She worked in HR and climbing the corporate ladder, being high
achievement, looking for external validation for her work led her
to physical, mental, emotional, spiritual burnout at the age of 31.
After which she got her life back together by traveling around the world, studying
with Buddhists, with practicing Buddhist monks and nuns all over the world, and
came back with a renewed sense of what needs to happen in Western business
world in order to create sustainability.
Now I love this conversation because about eight years ago, I helped co
found a digital wellness company, WellStart Health, and we came into
organization saying we're gonna basically help you improve your economics by
helping your people, uh, engage in lifestyle habits, diet, exercise,
stress management, breathing, all the cool stuff, uh, sleep hygiene, so that
they Healthier and require, you know, fewer days of, uh, of absenteeism
and, uh, less medical care, which was going to help companies save money.
We didn't make it.
We were not able to articulate.
A message that that really spoke to the needs of the business as
they understood it at that time.
And one of the things I love about the work of today's guest, Jess Stuart,
is that she manages to do this.
She can speak.
If you go to her website, which I'll, I'll, I'll say it now,
Jess Stuart, s t u a r t dot co dot n z or n z from New Zealand.
Uh, and it's in the show notes as well.
You'll see that she talks about making the world a better place in
very clear, passionate language.
And at the same time, talks about the business needs and how the work she
does to help specifically women leaders, but all leaders and all employees.
not burnout, be more sustainable, um, focus on the quality of their
work and their lives rather than the quantity of their productivity.
Um, I think it's a message that is very, very valuable and she does
a great job of, of bridging this, you know, altruistic vision with.
The language that is going to get business people to pay attention and pay
for it and get once it's paid for, get people to actually engage and implement.
So this is a conversation that was really valuable for me as
someone who's in the same space and who's learning how to do this.
I hope it'll be valuable for you too, whether you're a leader in organization
or whether you're just dealing with those modern epidemic of more and more
work with less and less to show for it.
So without further ado.
Jess Stuart, welcome to the Plant Yourself Podcast.
Thanks, Howie.
Nice to be here.
It is gonna be a fun conversation for people, for, for people who
are not, uh, watching on video, you have the most amazing, uh, shirt.
I dunno if it's a shirt or a blouse.
I'm not into fashion, but, uh, you've got, it says love and motion, all these,
all these words, and it feels like you're already, um, sort of ex expressing a lot
of what we're gonna be talking about.
Yeah, I love this shirt.
Um, and I often get a lot of comments on it, even when I'm just studying cues.
People will comment on it when I'm wearing it.
Uh, and, you know, and, and, and it matches your smile.
So I feel like, I feel like there's a, there's a lot of positivity
coming everybody's way today.
Um, I, I wanna start by, um, asking you to, to talk a little bit about a,
the sentence that you, you start your biography in the networking group in
which, in which we met, which is you, you apply ancient wisdom to modern problems.
And can you say a couple words about that?
Yeah, sure.
I guess it was through my own lived experience that I realized that a lot
of our modern problems and certainly the problems I'd experienced, um,
particularly around burnout and this very kind of always on culture that we live
in, um, the solutions to these problems have been around for many, many years.
We've just lost touch with them and I went off in search of some of those solutions
and I guess my passion has always been.
My background been in human resources and a very western people psychology basis
to my career has always been, where does that meet with some of our ancient Eastern
wisdom that has stood the test of time for a reason that can still be applied
in a way that makes sense to the modern
Hmm.
So, um, maybe let's unpack a little bit of the backstory.
So you're doing traditional right, hr, so in, in a Western way, and I, I
assume part of that is the language of that, that people are, are resources,
right?
So, um, tell, tell me about that, that world and, and what, what led
to your, uh, your break with it.
Yeah, and you're exactly right.
You know, we do treat humans as resources and for me.
The thing I didn't realize is that I was my most precious resource
and I was wasting that resource.
So I was flying around the country.
I was at all different offices in the car all the time in meetings.
Never any time for me, never any time to rest, to recover.
But I also didn't think I needed that.
It was never something anybody had pitched as part of peak performance.
And eventually I hit burnout, and that caused me to take a step away
from my career and think about.
There's gotta be another way to do this.
There's gotta be another way to perform at our peak and not have
to self-sacrifice in the process.
And so that took me across the world, uh, to train with Buddhist monks and nuns in
various different countries, and obviously witnessed probably what you would call.
The opposite end of the extreme.
And of course, living on a hilltop as a monk, you know, if, if you are
up in the Himalayas and you've got no company car or credit card statement
or relationship or job, there's, it's probably quite easy to be a bit more zen.
And so for me, the passion was, well, where do you take those
two ends of the extreme and put them together in the middle and
do it in a way that's useful for
everybody?
Was, was there a moment of, of clarity about the burnout?
Sort of, you know, like if we were making the movie, like
there would there be a scene.
Yes, definitely.
There's always, I think with, with any of these experiences, there's always a
dropping to the floor scene in the movies.
Um, that was certainly my experience too.
So it was, um, a very physical hitting of the wall, uh, in the middle of a gym
class, oddly enough on my 31st birthday.
Um.
But it was the emotional crashing down of everything else around that that
made me realize what was happening.
And I think in hindsight.
The signs had been there for a while, but I was too busy to notice them.
And so recovering from burnout gave me a lot of time and space to think
about what I'd learned and how to do things differently and to get curious
about another way of doing things.
Because everywhere I looked in the corporate world and throughout my peers
and the industry I was in, everybody seemed to be doing the same thing and
therefore repeating the same mistakes.
And I was surrounded by other colleagues who had also hit burnout and were
struggling.
But now, now for you, you could hit burnout and, and stop.
I, I mean, when I look around, I don't see a lot of 31 year olds stopping.
I see them doing other things to keep going, whether it is, you
know, self-destructive behaviors, drugs, throwing themselves into
climbing the corporate ladder.
Like I can see like the, you know, there's still, there's still a functioning.
Something inside the shell, but there's a lot of misery.
What, what, what do you think made you decide like, I'm not gonna keep
going even though that's, you know, maybe the programming that I received
culturally or familiarly, I don't know.
Oh, and I to, and I'd definitely done that for the years prior to that, I was a
high functioning, burnt out executive, and it was, I, I didn't choose to step away.
It was a forced choice in that my health, it had taken its toll on my health to
the point where I couldn't work anymore.
And so I, I had to have some time off with this physical injury that I'd
sustained, but the emotional injury that unfolded at that same time was the one
that really forced me into having to make a plan B. Um, and so I don't know, had
I not have been forced by my health, I dunno if I would've had the awareness.
Or given myself the permission to step away voluntarily, because
I think that's the problem with a lot of us in this position.
We feel like it's a sign of weakness.
We can't
stop.
We need this job to pay our bills.
We also need to prove ourselves, and we're driven by the achievement.
And so I don't think many of us choose to step away sensibly.
We're often forced to step
away because we've gone too far.
Now, in, in the movie, the, the protagonist who has
this would, would go off.
But trying to solve the, the problem at kind of a lower
level of consciousness, right.
Was that you like, I need to figure out how to get my mojo
back so I can keep climbing.
Or were like, when you went to look for this other wisdom,
I think initially it started that way.
It, it initially, it started as a bit of therapy.
I need something
to help me recover.
I'll go straight to the source and find the most peaceful, calm people I've
ever seen and find out how they do it.
That I think is how it started, but it quickly changed into something different.
It quickly changed into me understanding.
Oh, okay.
There's another way.
There's another way of doing things.
There's, it doesn't have to be this way.
And from that point, which was very early on in the journey, it became a curiosity
to learn more and share more about this with others so that we could redefine
what that landscape looked like and, and what peak performance could be in a way
that made it more sustainable for people.
I love, I love the, uh, the pun of like peak performance in
the west and peak performance.
Like the guy in the mountaintop in, uh, on a, in a Buddhist monastery.
They're obviously very different peaks.
Um, I mean, how, how do you, and this is like I wrote, this is what I wrote
to you in the email when we were talking about having this conversation.
How do you reconcile.
Like the idea of using this, you know, Buddhism or using this ancient wisdom,
which is really, you know, far more encompassing than just success, but,
but sort of the way it's been packaged or commercialized in the west is,
you know, meditate for 20 minutes.
Not for enlightenment, but for focus.
But you know, how, how, how, how did you begin to navigate that and,
and how, how, how has that evolved?
Yeah, I think it's evolved significantly, certainly over the time that I've been
involved in this, and I think it started out as yes, mindfulness and meditation
to give you some reprieve so that you could come back to work less stressed.
I think that was kind of where it started when, when I was sort of a
decade ago embarking on this journey.
I think now it's gotten to a point, particularly with the sporting world,
using this techno technology as well.
It's gotten to the point now where we're talking about this from a performance
perspective rather than a wellness one.
So when we talk about peak performance, Buddhist monks and nuns will talk about
peak performance of our mind from a cognitive perspective in exactly the same
way that we talk about peak performance from a productivity and delivery
perspective in our corporate worlds.
And so I think for me.
It's that middle ground, and I think you're right, it can be mis or misused
in the same way that when we had a big run on building resilience in our
organizations, it was used in a way to then be able to get more out of people.
And I think slowly we're starting to understand that if we are to
get the most out of our resources.
Um, and our people, the return on investment in that is to actually
allow them the space and the time, rather than this being time
away from work to decompress.
It actually becomes part of the work because if we are not integrating this
stuff in our daily life, then we are not gonna be able to come back day
after day and, and perform at our peak.
So I think it's less about getting more out of people and more about focusing on
the quality of what we get out of people.
And I think for me, that's the big difference here.
Between how we've run our organizations and what sustainability looks
like, and that's the difference between quality and quantity.
Hmm.
So when, when you came back with these new understandings,
what was different in your work?
Um, you know, if someone, someone hung out with you or you led a, a
workshop or something, what would they, what would they notice?
I think the biggest difference for me has been my mindset and my approach to this.
So for me, taking space from work was always a luxury item, and
it was something you did as a reward when all the hard work had
been done.
It was a bit of a
self-indulgence as well.
I. And that's why I burnt out.
I think, and this relationship has totally flipped in this space, that
this now becomes the non-negotiable stuff that I do, so that I can
deliver on everything else.
And I'll often talk to organizations I'm working with and say, look, this
space and self-care and investing in ourselves as humans, it's not on
any of your job descriptions, but it probably should be because it.
Literally powers everything else that is on those job descriptions.
And I think that's been the biggest change for me.
It's seeing this as part of my work, not space away from work.
It's not a break, it's part of the work because it enables
me to show up and be my best.
And what I've noticed is this whole less is more concept that I think is
so important in this space because we feel like this is gonna cost us time.
But my experience has been this.
Saves me time.
The time I spend doing this stuff, even in my workday, saves me time because of
the effectiveness then I have and, and the sharpness and the energy and, and
yeah, sometimes even the focus as well.
But this is done not to get more out of me, but to get a better quality from me.
So it's.
Quality rather than quantity.
And I think that's where we've gone wrong in our corporate landscapes.
A lot of the time we focus on qua quantity hours worked rather
than quality, value and impact.
And I think that's been the biggest turning point
for me.
So when you say this stuff, what, what, what are the, what are the practices
that you incorporate every day?
So for me, and I think this is personal preference, you know,
everybody is different in terms of how they approach this, but for me.
My go-tos have always been meditation, yoga.
Opportunity to move.
So whether that's a walk on the beach, a kayak, I love to surf.
It's generally something that's by the ocean.
I find the ocean have a, has a really calming effect on me.
Um, mentally and physically.
It's time with people I love.
And that includes the dog as well.
A bit of pet therapy.
Uh, and it's time in nature as well, just being out, um,
walking in, in the forest and.
Having, having that time to re-energize.
And that's my personal preference in terms of the stuff I do.
But I'm often saying to people, it's less about what you do.
'cause we're all different and more about how we prioritize it and our
mindset towards whether we feel like this is an indulgence or a
necessity.
So, so for me, there's, um, like a lot of the things that you just
mentioned feel like there's a, there's a little bit of a hump I have to
get over to get into them, right?
Like, like there's a difference between, let's say meditating and.
Watching some crap on tv.
Right.
The, like, it's easier to go to the crap on tv, which feels like self care,
except by the end it, it, it isn't.
Did you, did you get to a point where the meditation was like, oh
boy, I can't wait the same way.
You know, like, does that, does that shift as you, as you do it?
Yeah, and I think that's the difference for me and I think it's something
I'm often advising other people.
This has to be stuff you enjoy.
If it's another thing on your to-do list that you feel pressured to do, then it
just becomes hard work and it doesn't have then the intended effect it should.
So for me, the practices I have, I've done long enough to not only form a habit
around, but also to notice the benefits.
And I know for me, the benefits of meditating far outweigh the benefits of.
Binge watching Netflix.
So I'm more inclined to want to do that because I know it feels better and it
does me much more.
Good.
I think you're right.
In the early days, it takes a lot of effort to do this stuff, especially when
it's new and we're having to learn it.
But I think like any good habit, you do it often enough.
Once you start to see the benefits, that's the motivation to continue to return.
So for me, these things are not a chore.
They're things that I look forward to because of the way they make me feel.
So what, what do you tell people who work in sort of corporate
environments, big offices, fluorescent lights, windows that don't open?
You know, la last night as I was relaxing, my wife and I started watching severance.
I. And the, the opening scene, you know, he, he enters the building
and it's like a, like a one minute camera shot of just him walking
through like white, bright corridors.
And, you know, it was very evocative of, of kind of like, not
in nature, not, you know, stuck in this, um, rectangular world.
Um, how can you know.
What, uh, when you work with organizations, do you work just on
the people, like somehow managing to do things or do you also work
on like the, the, the culture, the physical culture, the environment
in which we we're, we're existing.
Yeah.
Yeah, you're, you're so right.
I think the environment makes it probably more challenging and.
The environment is often something we can't control as well.
I think we probably have more control over that these days.
With flexible working and hybrid working, we spend more time out
of the office than we used to.
And I'm a, I'm a big believer of focus on what you can control.
And for some people the only thing they can control is what they do on their
lunch break or if they take a lunch break.
So it's starting small, it's getting out of that office.
To get some fresh air and some natural sunlight.
It's taking a walk around the block so you're moving.
If you're sat at a desk all day, it's walking meetings.
It's going to a class at lunchtime or starting your day differently.
And I think sometimes we can't control what we do at at those hours
that we're in the office, but we can control what we do either side of that.
And you know, there's all sorts of schools of thought out there around,
well if you get up at this time, you can do X amount of things before you
even get into that, that set environment that will set you up for success.
But I'm a big believer in small steps make a big difference.
And so I think that makes it more doable as well.
So I don't tend to work on the environment.
I work with the people so that they can navigate the environments they find
themselves in.
Hmm And when you're, when you're doing that work, um, I mean, you know,
from from your website, you have such a, a beautiful and holistic vision.
It's not about business, it's about like human life and the planet.
And yet you're working in these very constricted constrained environments.
I'm asking for myself as someone like I, you know, I see what business could be
and the gap between what it is and where, you know, where, where, where I want it
to go and I can find myself hamstrung.
Like I just, you know, I just kind of wanna blow it all up and start over.
How, how do you, I'm assuming that you have, you know, similar impulses, like
what, what, what human society could be and what we could grow for each other.
How do you navigate, like internally this, is there frustration, like, you know,
the small steps that you mentioned, sort of a, a consolation prize or how, how do
you keep your head straight around that?
Because I, I have difficulty.
Yeah, yeah, no, I totally get, get what you're saying.
Um, and I'm in the same boat, so one of the reasons I focused on how do
I support the individuals is from that frustration trying to change the
systems and the way we approach work.
Felt a little bit of a fruitless task.
So my work became how do I support the people in the
environments they find themselves?
And I think we're starting to see a shift in that space on a bigger scale.
You know, with trials of the four day work week and things like
that happening, more flexible, hybrid working, walking meetings.
There is an opportunity now for people to, I'll often say in my workshop.
You know, when was the last time you have had your best idea?
And people are generally not at work when that happens.
They're outside doing something or they're in the shower or their,
their brain is in a different space.
And so I think we're cottoning onto that fact that being trapped in a
windowless room with air con switched to 18 and uh, UV lights is, is perhaps
not conducive to our best performance.
Having said that, though, our businesses are stuck on an old model that we've used.
Pretty much ever since the Industrial Revolution, right?
When we paid people by the hour to work in factories and we are still paying
people a salary to do a job in a, in a small cubicle, which feels quite soulless
and expecting them to, you know, be at peak performance at the same time.
And I reckon that if we, for me, work and life is not.
Separate.
I don't believe that life starts when work stops.
I believe it's all the same.
It's all life and work is part of that life.
So I think when we start to see it holistically and we start
to take control as, as a human, what do I do to make this better?
And for some people it is stepping away from the office where they can.
So it's actually, I'm only going into the office one or two days a week.
Because it is that kind of environment and I do my best work away from the office,
or actually I've set myself up a beautiful space in the corner of the office full
of plants and all the other things that I love and that helps me through.
So it's taking those little things that can make a difference and often it's
getting away from that environment that makes the biggest difference where we can
even for that, even if it's just for half an hour as we walk around the block at
lunchtime.
that's it.
So you mentioned that things are shifting a little bit.
Can you talk about some of the, the best trends you've seen, like the best news
since, since you've been doing this work?
Um.
Yeah, I think it's interesting because we, when I first started
doing this work, we were having this conversation very much as.
This is a wellness conversation.
It's, it's nice to have, it's sort of individual accountability.
We'll put some free fruit in the staff room and we'll maybe do a few yoga
classes around mental health Awareness week and, and that was kind of it.
Whereas I think now the conversation has moved more towards this being
a sustainability conversation, a resource management conversation.
We are seeing people the same as we see.
Our, our most precious resources, I guess, and the return on investment therefore
needs to be how do we treat these people?
Not to get more out of them, but to get the best out of them.
And we're also seeing this change because our, the current generation entering
the workforce have very different ideas and opinions in terms of how they work,
when they work, how they're motivated.
And I think that's helping organizations shift their
assumptions to attract talent from.
Gen Z and and the generations that that will come after.
Because things are different now and the four day work week, obviously I've
mentioned that was another, um, example of how we might sort of play with some of
this stuff and trial some of this stuff.
And we do a lot more of our work now out of an office than we ever used to.
Um, there are, you know, particularly the tech companies, there are offices
look very different now than they used to as well in terms of the
pictures we've got on the wall, the table tennis or football, soccer, uh,
the table football, all the little things that we have to make it more.
Playful and hopefully as a result more innovative as
well.
Hmm, I'm, I'm, uh, um, cluing onto the, the terms sort of like value in terms
of like the value that people provide.
And is, has that changed at all in terms of like, is it, is it all still.
Like totally sort of bottom line based economic.
Are there, are there, you know, are there organizations that are
looking at other things besides the, the, you know, profitability of the
bottom line in terms of what, what constitutes value for the organization?
Yeah, it's really hard to measure, right?
I think that's one of the things, right from my days in hr, one
of the things that's always been challenging is it's really hard to
measure in a tangible, numerical way.
Anything to do with people.
We can measure lost time from absences, but in terms of productivity, it's so
hard for us to put a number around someone performing at their best and what that
looks like, or innovation and ideas.
So the closest I've come to that is, is my own lived experience
and describing this in a way.
Um, the difference between quality and quantity.
So when I first started my business, because it was new and because I wanted
to succeed, and obviously because of all of my background and being a
high achiever and all the stuff that led me to burnout, um, I went in both
feet and I was working all hours.
And then I real realized, hang on a minute.
You started this business because you wanted freedom from the corporate
structure and the overwork, and now you are replaying exactly the same
patterns, trying to do this by yourself, and you've got all this freedom to
be able to decide your own hours.
And that was the aha for me, between quantity and quality.
And so for example, now one of the best ideas I've had all month happened
when I was out on a kayak on the ocean.
So for all intents and purposes it looked like.
was off work, but I was mulling over a problem.
I was thinking about the title of my next book, and sometimes the best ideas in
terms of that quality, the best ideas that are worth millions of dollars happen when
we're not in the office, and that's the difference between quality and quantity.
If you can produce one thing a week that is worth a million dollars.
That's gonna probably out earn all the other 50 things on your to-do list that
you were gonna sit down and bash out, um, and work 80 hours that week to get done.
And I think that when we start to see it that way, it
incredibly difficult to measure.
But when we start to see it that way, we start to then detach from, I've
just gotta work harder and do more, because that's not always us at our
best.
I've, um, I've coached a lot of people around this idea of like, you know, not
just trying to get more and more done.
And when I coach entrepreneurs or founders, it's pretty easy be,
but, but when I coach people in organizations, there's a lot of.
Pushback and I as a coach, not never having worked in one of those
big organizations, I pushed back against the pushback and I was wrong
because the culture does demand, you know, you be available from
six to 9:00 PM for handling these.
I. Daily emergencies that there are these meetings you have to like, like I'm, I
was coaching this guy who's like, you know, almost at the C level in a very
large company and like there was, we could not figure out a way for him to
step away that didn't look like it was going to, you know, really undermine.
His authority, his credibility and his promotion, um, possibilities.
And what if he ever got that promotion, he'd be twice as busy.
Hmm.
Yeah.
And it's, it's so common, right?
It's so common, and I think.
The way I'll often talk about this is slowing down to speed up.
And it doesn't always have to be in our workday either.
Sometimes it's what we do outside of work that prepares us for work days like that.
But even work days like that have to be the exception rather than the rule,
because from a sustainability perspective, we can't keep up with that all the time.
And this concept of slowing down to speed up that I often talk about, I
like to describe in terms of waves.
And when we're at the peak of our wave, that should be ours at our best.
But whenever you're near the ocean, waves come in, sets.
Right?
You're not, it's not just all one big wave and the waves are different sizes
and often there's that period between sets where the water's just still, and I liken
that to our approach to performance or a more effective approach to performance.
'cause we think if we're on the peak wave for as long as we
can be, that's us at our best.
Eventually we fall off that peak wave because it's not sustainable.
And so when you look at the rolling waves and the peaks and troughs, each
trough helps us hit the next peak.
And it's in those troughs that we need.
Our rest and recovery time and the sporting world are really good at this.
Athletes are really good at knowing this.
They know to hit, whether it's game day or race day, they need to have that trough
the other side and before to help prepare.
To help rest and recover, and then they're ready to hit the next peak.
And that's why we play our sport in seasons to allow for that to happen.
We don't have the same methodology towards our corporate lives.
We are just on constantly all the time, and we're expected to be at that peak.
But from a sustainability perspective, if we slow down, what ends up
happening is we become sharper, more focused, more energized.
We get better ideas, we solve problems quicker.
So.
Often, I'll put this in an example so it makes more sense.
Often I'll use the lunch break as an example.
When we are really busy, we feel like we don't have time to take a lunch break.
But if we take half an hour away from the office, get some fresh air, stretch
our legs, eat something, that five hour workload that we might've been looking at
in the afternoon now only becomes four.
Because things don't take as long.
We make less mistakes, so we're not going back redoing things.
We're fresher, sharper, quicker, more innovative.
We solve problems easier, we make decisions more accurately,
and we're probably more tolerant with those around us.
So we don't cause as much conflict in, in when we are doing this stuff.
So when we look at all that stuff, that half an hour that we thought
we couldn't afford for our lunch break rather than costing us time.
Has saved us an hour on the workload because of how we're able to perform,
and that's that wave approach.
When we're utilizing the trough and we're taking that time to slow down, we
then become more effective and speed up.
And of course, on the craziest days in our office, we might not get that opportunity.
But we do get that opportunity either end of the day when we go home.
So it's what we do when we go to sleep, what time we go to bed,
whether we've watched Netflix or not.
What we do in the morning when we wake up.
Sometimes the only control we have over that workday is the stuff that happens
outside of the office when we're at
home, but that again, is that trough of the wave that helps
us then hit the next peak.
So one thing that's occurring to me as you're talking about, and I love the, the
metaphor of athletics to business because it's so clear in athletics, you know,
that's, you know, coaching has happened in sports well before Anyone in the business
world thought about getting a coach.
And there's, I think there's a, there's a difference in that.
If we're, if, if we're bringing the athletic metaphor, then everybody's,
everybody at the office is an athlete.
Whereas a lot of people who are sort of, even managers and leaders are more
like the physical trainers or, you know, the coaches, the, the, the therapists.
So like I, you know, there are days at which I'm at my best when I'm at
because I'm supporting other people.
Emotionally, cognitively, and, and it has nothing to do with
what I'm doing on the field.
It's what I allow other people to do on the field.
Yeah.
That's a really good analogy, particularly for a leader, right?
Because your role should be to step back and allow the team to deliver
on the day, and it's everything you've done before that that gives
them the opportunity to perform.
And I think for leaders it's incredibly difficult
' cause we really only have two leavers to pull.
As a leader.
We either have less coming in, so we say no to work.
Or we delegate that work because otherwise we become the bottleneck.
And I think that's so true of so many leaders that are too busy.
They've either taken on too much or they've not had the choice, they've
been landed with too much, or they haven't been able to pull that other
lever, which is get more resource, delegate some of this Get help support.
Because that's the only two options.
It's either control what's coming in or increase what's going out.
Otherwise, you do become the bottleneck.
And I think there's far too many leaders who are too busy.
And when we're too busy as a leader, there's a massive part
of our job we are not doing.
And that's the strategic thinking, the planning for the future, the
vision, the mulling over problems, the innovation, the stuff that requires
space in our schedule and time.
And most leaders don't have enough of that, and yet it's
such a critical part of the role.
Yeah.
Um, do you have stories about, excuse me, about leaders who
were able to, whom you've helped to kind of create that space?
Because it's, it sounds so good in theory, and yet when, you know, when
we're in it, it almost feels impossible.
Like, do you have a, like, good, you know, good po po positive tales for us?
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I work mostly with women leaders, so a lot of that it's, it's
not just the stuff that's happening in work, it's the stuff that's
happening outside of work as well.
So a lot of the family demands and how you juggle everything.
And one of the things that's helped the women I've worked with has been presence.
Being able to be present wherever you are and knowing that you
won't always get it perfect.
So when you're at home being present with family and not worrying about
work and not logging onto emails.
And then when you're at work, being present at work and being able to do
the job, knowing that you perhaps won't do all of it before you have to leave.
Particularly if you've got kids to pick up and you're leaving early as as an example.
And one of the, um, one of the clients I was recently coaching, we had a bit
of a breakthrough when we were talking through this notion of priorities.
And different priorities, and I think it comes from Greg McKeown's book
Essentialism.
He talks about the origins of the word priority, and apparently in the English
language you can find it dated back to the 14 hundreds, but only as a singular.
So it was always priority and it, it means the one thing that is more
important than anything else, and it's only since the 19 hundreds and the
roundabout, the industrial revolution, that it became a plural, and we
started to talk about priorities.
So the fact that we can have 30 priorities now and be spread too thin
and wondering why we're not achieving.
Is because we don't focus on the one thing that's most important
and that I, granted, not all of us have only got one priority a day.
That would be a lovely dream to have, but probably unrealistic.
But we always have one priority for now.
One priority for the next hour, one priority for after lunch,
one priority for after work.
And so each time we're focusing all of our energy and attention on one priority.
And with this client, we were talking about digging for
water, so digging a well.
And if you stand in one place and dig for water, it's probably
the most productive thing to do.
But if you are dotting around, digging lots of holes looking
for water, you're never gonna get deep enough to find the water.
And I think that's true with our energy and attention on our priority.
What's the priority for now?
And for this particular client, she was saying that she can approach her work and
her family life with through that lens of what is my one priority right now.
And sometimes that changes because sometimes you have a priority at work.
And then a crisis happens, and that becomes the priority.
But knowing that we can never do it all and knowing that we're just
focusing on the thing in front of us, and then there'll be another thing and
another thing that can reduce some of the overwhelm, and that was certainly
useful for her in terms of managing the many demands of not just, um,
a busy, uh, C-suite job, but family
as well.
So I, I have a client who has been struggling with the idea of prioritizing
in that when they make their plan.
They then have to, they then discover that the plan gets thrown out the
window because exigencies emergencies the unexpected and they feel a little
bit like, was the planning time wasted?
And you know, I don't think it is, but I'm a coach, so I don't, you
know, I don't hammer home my opinions.
I help them kind of explore the value of the planning, even when
the planning gets thrown out.
What are your thoughts?
Yeah, it's an interesting one.
I think we always have to have a plan, but I think we also can't be too
attached to the plan because as you say, quite often the plan changes and
often our plans are out of our control.
We like to think they're in our control.
That's why we do planning, right?
To give some level of certainty.
And yet I feel like we need to be disattach, uh, detached from that
so that if the worst happens and the plans fall away, we can still carry on.
And I feel like planning is never wasted because whatever was, whatever
was realized through that process of planning, I. It's gonna help you for the
future, even when the plan falls apart.
So I think the plan is, it might be off the table right now if there's
a crisis that's happened and come over the top of it, and that happens
to most of our plans to be fair.
But the plan's still there, so there'll be parts of that plan you can
revisit and parts of that plan there.
There's that whole adage that there's always enough time if it's
important.
And whilst crises tend to be the most important things that
overlay our plans, if there are important things on that plan.
You come back to it
or it features it the in the next plan.
So I feel like a plan is never wasted.
It's something you build on.
And so we can plan, but we also need to plan for the plan, not
going to plan, if that makes
Yeah, and I think there's, and this is something I've been having difficulty
articulating with my client, but there, there's, there's some sort,
there's a meta value in planning.
That like you have to be thinking certain things in certain ways in order
to engage in the planning process.
Right?
And those, those principles are, are still going to be valuable.
Right.
A hundred percent.
Yeah, a hundred percent.
And I think going through that process of planning does something to your brain.
That means the next time you sit to plan things are different in a positive way.
And I think, you know, when I think about my own planning, there are
things that have been on my plan for five years that I don't get to
because of other things that happen.
But the fact they're on my plan means that they keep coming
back around.
So it never goes away because it's almost like a memo and a constant reminder that
remember, this was something you were keen on making happen, and now might not
be the right time, or I might have run out of time, but it's still on the plan.
So it still keeps popping
up and featuring.
And I think you're right that pla, that mental process that we go through
when we plan it sets wheels in motion that may not be realized right now.
And we might not feel that the plan's gone to plan, but in the future, that
process will serve as dividends in terms of how it impacts what we then
plan to do or do without planning.
Because of the planning we did
previously, I.
Gotcha.
Great.
That's helpful.
So I'm, I'm trying to, um, seeing in my mind sort of the, the peak, uh, C-suite
women that you work with, and then the peak monks and nuns from these, you know,
and I guess I'm, you know, like, I'm imagining like supernatural powers, right?
Whether, whether it's by location or levitation or simply like this presence.
That you feel like this person has just, you know, they're just so good at this
thing, you know, like the, you know, the Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan Right.
Um, of, of presence.
And I'm wondering what you, you know, have you seen or, or helped or
worked with leaders who developed it to at least, uh, such an extent that
it became like noticeable, it had a tangible impact on their organizations?
Mm, a hundred percent.
Where I've seen it work well with leaders is the self-awareness, the
being able to sit in a room and absorb everything that's going on around
you, to be able to listen intently and understand and be open and curious.
It's something that I'll often talk about as self-mastery, and we see that
in whether it's Zen master monks or martial artists, it's this discipline,
this grounded confidence, this inner knowing, this self-awareness, this
ability to have empathy towards others, kindness and compassion because you
are social sure about who you are.
This innate sharpness and focus and almost an energy that they emit.
So I love that you talked about presence, because that's exactly what that is.
Then when you translate that into the boardroom, we talk
about influence and impact.
That all comes from presence and a lot of the time, particularly in times of
change and crisis, a lot of the time you just walking into a room as a leader.
Has a massive impact, positively or negatively on those around
you, just from that presence and your state and how you show up.
And I think that's something that we've underrated in our leadership training.
Um, to date.
You know, we've been, been very much focused on our technical skills
and the ability of being a leader as opposed to how you show up.
And I believe, you know, we're seeing a shift in that space over
the last decade, but leadership is so much more about who you are.
Than what you do these days.
And yet so many leaders are still stuck in the, what am I doing, space and
continually doing rather than working on who they are being and that ripple effect
then that they have on people around them.
So that discipline around their own needs, that self-awareness,
that inner state energy, um, the awareness not just of themselves, but
others and the energy in the room.
And I think in times of crisis and change when people are looking to us.
To lead.
That's what they're looking for.
And so often that can be something we haven't prioritized in terms of our
own development and, and nobody's told us is important, but that's certainly
been the transferable skills I've seen and the stuff that's worked well,
particularly from a presence perspective and an impact and influence perspective.
How we translate from, from the mountaintop, if you like, into
the boardroom.
Which leads me to, uh, you mentioned, um, AI in your website
and I don't know if it's something you sort of threw in in passing or
whether you think a lot about it.
Um, I had a conversation a couple days ago with a guy who.
Is is always got his finger on trends and is very interested
in like where things are going.
And his view is that AI is really changing everything rapidly and it's going to
significantly shift the human experience and especially around work and whose
work is gonna be needed and whose isn't.
What are, what are your thoughts about the, the intersection of, of you helping
to create better humans and this tidal wave of, of innovation and change
that's, uh, that, you know, could, could lift us all or could drown us?
Yeah.
You're so right Howie, and I think for many of us, we're
scared about that, right?
We're scared about the uncertain future and what does that mean, and
will I still have a job and can I keep up with the pace of change?
Because we know that AI has already changed things dramatically and will
continue to do so at quite a rapid rate.
My perspective on this is that our humanness.
Becomes our point of difference.
So AI is, uh, is gonna bring huge change and positive ones as well.
I'm quite excited about what the future looks like.
I'm sure there'll be some unintended consequences like there are with
any kind of large scale change.
I. But what remains throughout that is that our, our humanness as leaders and
how we lead and how we show up and how we treat others, how we make people feel,
that becomes our point of difference.
Because when you look at what we've staked our career claim on, for most
leaders, it's been the decades we've spent studying all of the technical
skills and abilities that we have that.
Often is what gets us the leadership role in the first place.
And of course, that's the stuff that AI will be able to replicate and replace.
So the only point of difference we have then is our human ability, is our
emotional intelligence, is our humanness.
And when we lead from a human centered perspective and when we, when we are
more concerned about how we make people feel and that the, the state and how
we show up and how we guide others through this change in uncertainty.
For now.
At least that's the stuff that AI is not doing.
And so for leaders, I think that's our point of difference.
And if we can upskill in that space, I think we future proof ourselves
for a world that will be vastly different with with AI on board,
Hmm
I.
Hmm.
And another intersection that I'm curious about is sort of,
you know, the work you do.
I. AI and specifically women in leadership positions.
You, you write that women feel like they often don't fit in,
in male dominated environments.
AI could go either way.
I suspect, you know, I most AI appears to be.
I'll be a little crude.
It's, it's sort of like, you know, the, the Silicon Valley Tech bros
built their own intellectual sex doll.
Like,
Yes.
like I, I don't, I don't see it as necessarily favoring equality and
equity and, and diversity thoughts.
Yeah, it's a really interesting one because I. AI will be a product of
the people that train it, right?
And so it's gathering information from all different sources to, to learn.
And I heard someone talk about it the other day as, as a think of it
as a toddler that's being parented by multiple different parents, not all
of whom are perhaps great parents.
And there's an opportunity, I think, for women.
So the statistics show that women are.
Not taking up AI at the same rate as their male counterparts that we are.
We are sort of standing back and waiting to see what's happening and, and
that might be for that reason, right?
If this is a product of a very male dominated environment and,
and the tech industry being how it is, then potentially that's.
Not gonna encourage women to get involved.
However, if women are not at the table and are not having a voice
in these discussions, if we are not using AI and responsible therefore
for training it, then of course that's gonna be a huge part of the
population that AI doesn't represent.
So it's almost a double-edged sword.
Women don't feel like they can get involved and not all women,
many are, but if we don't.
We run the risk of AI being more biased and not fit for purpose, for
where, where women are concerned.
So I feel like there's an opportunity here for us to embrace this
and to be part of the journey.
It'll be a really interesting discussion in the future to see
how all this turns out because we know that humans are biased.
And if humans are building ai, that would suggest that AI is too.
However, AI appears to be slightly more clever than humans, so potentially
it might train itself out of that.
I mean, wouldn't, wouldn't that be amazing if it developed the capability
to be fairer and more just, um, and less discriminatory then it's, than it's human
modelers.
Yeah.
Well if, if, you know, if it had, if it had an algorithm that said like, how can
this organization be its best, you know, I was, I was talking with, uh, with our,
our friend Keith Edwards, who's, who does diversity equity inclusion work.
And, you know, the, the, one of the things he said was like, over the past.
Month and a half since the Trump administration took over
and, um, forbade language like inclusion and gender and equity.
So the, the same work he's doing, he has to call it by different names, and
he said instead of calling it equity leadership, he's calling it leadership.
Instead of calling it diversity, he's calling it, you know, performance.
And I said like, I actually like those better because they're what they are.
And, and so like if, if AI were to say like, how can we have, what
could we do to have this organization really be great in the world?
Hopefully it would do those things to include and empower women, uh, and other
groups that have, uh, traditionally not been at the, at the top of the food chain.
Yeah.
Oh, a hundred percent.
And I think, I think you're so right and, and Keith as well, it's, I think
it was the Shakespeare line, wasn't it?
A rose by any other name still smells as sweet.
And I think this is true in this case.
I think when you ask what makes a great leader, so you, you ask your AI.
Tool what makes a great leader, it will spit out some of the very things
that we're not allowed to say anymore.
It'll spit out, you know, different words that mean the same thing.
It'll be how we treat others and how we are curious and open, how we leave ego
at the door, how we involve everybody in the conversation, how we can get
a diverse set of experience in our team so that we get a better idea.
And I think when we have this conversation around our tables these
days, and we talk about things like.
Hey, I just want a culture where everyone can be included or I just want
an environment, um, in my workplace where everyone belongs regardless of
what they look like and sound like.
There's not many people in the world that say no to that,
that that's not a good idea.
And I think sometimes when we take some of those.
So we say heated conversations outta the mix.
We're all still talking about exactly the same thing, and I think maybe that's
where AI will perhaps help because it will cut through all the language
and go, well, this is what you mean.
This is what you need.
Regardless of what we call it, a fair and equitable world
for everyone can't be a bad
thing, right?
Yeah.
So one, one of the things I've struggled with, and I have.
You know, is, is like two um, flavors of feminism as they apply to the workplace.
And one of them was like, I would say like early stage like feminism saying like,
we need more femininity, we need more feminine energy in the world to balance.
Right, and, and then there was like the second wave of professional
women, which was feminism.
Like be like a man.
Right.
And there's, and there's some echoes of this in your, in your, you know, learning
outcomes for, for women around like, build confidence to apply for promotions.
And I've gotta say like, I would like to build unconfidence in men to ask
for like, like, you know, instead of saying like, women should be just like
men, like to apply for things you're completely unqualified for, which I see
in men all the time applying and getting.
Um, you know, to not having self-doubt, to, you know, to
drowning the inner critic somehow.
How, how do you navigate those, those tensions?
Yeah.
Um, again, it's coming back to the focus on what you can control, and most of the
time, unfortunately, we can't control.
Overconfident men who apply for promotions and sometimes get promotions
that they're perhaps not cut out for.
The one thing we can control as women is we know that there's a tendency for
women to underestimate their skills and ability or to look for more security.
So because of the societies we've grown up in and the inequities that exist,
women will often think they need more experience, more skills, more assurity.
That they can do the job before they apply for it.
And I think
that's the big difference here.
So it's not becoming overconfident, it's getting rid of the self-doubt
and all of the cultural norms and baggage that we often carry into that
moment to be able to do what everybody else seems to be doing around us.
And I think particularly for women, one of the things I'm often saying
is this is not about having to change something about yourself.
And quite often for women it has been about that.
So women will feel like they have to be less empathetic to be taken seriously
or to behave more like a man so that they're seen as an assertive leader.
And that's often where we go wrong and some of the very things that make
us different to a lot of the role models that are around us, which for
many years, particularly people as old as me, um, have been male leaders.
That's been our, you know, I didn't know any female leaders
until I was perhaps in my.
Fourth or fifth role.
And so we look at that masculinity in approach.
And of course from an energy perspective, regardless of gender, we've all got
masculine and feminine energies.
But when more of one is on show, it tends to be the thing we think, well, I need to
have more of that to be a serious leader.
And that takes us away from the very point of difference we have
as a woman stepping into that role.
So I'm very big on rather than trying to change something about ourselves.
To fit in.
How do we leverage our difference to stand out or to be the difference around that
table?
Yeah.
Is it, I mean, when women show more empathy and inclusion, does that
sometimes backfire in that you know, that, that, that men will, will
apply a stereotypical lens to it.
Oh look, I think women are often, particularly women in the media
in the spotlight are, or in senior leadership roles are often damned
if they do, damned if they don't.
So if you act more assertive so that people take you seriously, you get called
a bully or aggressive often as a woman, if you embrace what makes you feminine.
Then you get called too weak or soft.
And so there's this very fine line because at the same time, everybody's
telling you just be your authentic self.
And so this very fine line that women often find, they tread and you know,
we, we know this from the comments that the media have, whether it's a sporting
professional or a leader, particularly in the political space, it's very different.
Women are judged very differently to their male counterparts.
You know, they're judged about whether they have children or not,
and the impact that's gonna have on their role, what they wear, what they
look like, whether they're aging.
And that's very different.
And so there's a lot of.
You know, again, I'm always saying to the women I work with,
focus on what you can control.
And a lot of the time that is not other people's perceptions.
It does, however, make it incredibly more difficult.
These are the headwinds that we talk about that female leaders often face into.
And unless you've been a female leader, it's.
Often difficult to appreciate what those headwinds look and sound and feel like.
And then when you're asked the question, well, what should I do for the best?
I'm always saying, do the only thing you can do.
Show up as yourself, leverage your strengths, and do your job.
You may still end up being judged unfairly because of the society
that we live in, but again, we can't always control that part of things.
We can only control ourselves and and how we show up.
Mm-hmm.
Gotcha.
Now you have a, you have a link on your website that goes to actually
a different website, men as Allies.
Right.
So, so tell, can you talk a little bit about that work?
Yeah, so it is been an interesting, um, journey for me.
So I've spent a decade working in the women in leadership space and
um, it was about 18 months ago, I started to partner with a male
colleague to run male allies sessions.
And this came from a place of if I really wanna change the world.
Yes, I'm supporting women to navigate the world, but I've also gotta support
the systems that those women exist in.
And it's a system I've experienced myself as a woman, and the majority
of our leaders are still male.
So it makes sense that if we are to make any systematic change in this space, men
have to be involved in the conversation.
And yet, quite often when we think about women's rights or underrepresented
groups getting more representation.
It tends to fall on the shoulders of the very groups.
It's designed to support these initiatives to, to, for them to run.
And so my work in this space, um, with my collaboration colleague has become around
how we engage men in this conversation.
And I reckon that's super important because my experience has been most men
want to be part of this conversation.
They also want to a better world.
Many of them have got daughters, wives, people that they care about, that
they wanna see a different world for.
And yet.
They're a little bit unsure about how to navigate this space.
Should I be in this space?
Am I taking up space?
How do I help and support without being offensive?
Um, what if I'm taking up too much space or mansplaining?
So having a space where they can have that conversation and start to understand
and learn about the experiences of women and their role in that.
And not, not just from a gender perspective, but just an equity one.
Right.
How do we start to understand experiences different to our own?
And how do we open the door so that everybody gets a seat at the table in
a way that means no one is losing out?
Because I think that's the other thing in this conversation.
Um, there's a lot of fear and scarcity, and we we're seeing that
play out on a global scale with a, with a lot of our male leaders.
If I open the door to others, I'm gonna lose out.
So how do we make this a better place for everyone where no one loses out?
And that's how the Men as Allies program was born.
Uh, and it's been super popular, certainly over this side of the
world where I am in, in Australasia.
Um, and I think the conversation is starting to happen more often
in organizations now around, Hey, this is everyone's job.
And if we engage the majority in the conversation, we make more
progress.
Beautiful.
Hey, before, before we go, how can people find you, follow
your work, learn more about you?
Do you, do you, um, travel outside Australasia, or do you.
Yes, I love to travel, so my family is scattered across the globe, so
I'm often trotting between Europe and I actually live in New Zealand,
so, um, New Zealand and, and Europe.
And I, um, the website's the best place to.
Just stuart.co nz.
Uh, LinkedIn is also a good space as well to connect.
Um, Jess Stuart on
Okay.
Since, since, since they're ambi ambiguous spellings of Stuart,
could you spell out the URL.
Yes, it is S-T-U-A-R-T.
So J-E-S-S-T-U-A-R t.co nz
it.
And, and for, for my American listeners, that's nz.
It is, you're right.
Great.
And do you have, um, newsletter or YouTube, any, anything
where people can cons, consume,
I.
do, yes.
So there's a, there's a YouTube channel.
All of this is accessible from the website.
There's a resources page on the website.
Um, there is also a u um, Instagram, uh, and you'll be able to contact
me through the website as well.
So there's a contact page for anyone that is, um, wanting
to continue the conversation.
Fantastic.
I don't, I don't know why I'm gonna ask you this, but, um, you have any,
um, exciting books or music that you're into right now that you care to share?
I,
Um, I'm actually taking a break from consuming at
the moment, so I've done a lot of that over the summer break because obviously
we've just had summer here in the southern hemisphere and I've actually wanted
to create more space in my brain for.
Other things that might arise from within me in terms of ideas and creativity.
Um, so I've, yeah, I, I love reading and I, and podcasts and I, I play music
as well and I love to write and I've trialing something different this year
by actually cutting that off for a while and seeing what else emerges when I
just leave my brain to its own devices.
So we'll see how that goes.
It may be a failed experiment
that quickly reverse, but it's something new
and
Sounds, sounds like a very Buddhist answer to consumption.
Cool.
Well, Jess Stuart, thank you so much for, for all of the work you're doing
in the world and for taking the time to have this conversation today.
I really enjoyed it.
Pleasure.
Okay.
Take care.