Episode 37: Embedding wellbeing in your organisation

Sarah: Welcome to the Revolutionaries of Wellbeing podcast. I’m founder and host Sarah McGuinness. The Revolutionaries of Wellbeing, or ROW, is a community of wellbeing managers from organisations around the globe.

At ROW, we develop you as a wellbeing leader, giving you a powerful support network, professional development and workplace wellbeing solutions so that you can focus on giving your employees the right support at the right time to be stronger, better and faster at improving wellbeing in your workplace. Professional development is key.

These discussions on workplace wellbeing are designed to inspire, share ideas and raise awareness of important issues we can all take action on. The interviews are recorded as part of our monthly wellbeing Wednesday webinars.

In this episode were joined by Natalee Scripp-Hawkins, author, coach and Head of Health, Safety and Wellbeing at Auckland Airport to explore a key issue. And that’s this as well. Being leaders and champions, we’re passionate about driving an organisation’s wellbeing agenda. But what does that look like in reality? We know we need to be influential and drive change.

, 01:07
Sarah: Together we discuss what it means to create a people first organisation and we look at the broad role of wellbeing managers as an influencer, communicator and an agent of change. Because to be successful, we need to drive the change we want to see.

, 01:23
Natalee: Thanks, Sarah, and hi to everyone else. Yeah, I think, like most of us, I fell into the wellbeing space. I did the normal thing of being in an admin role and then someone was like, oh, you’re really organised. Do you want to take over quality safety and training? And I went, okay, sure.

And then from there, I guess I’ve had the benefit that health and safety has been the main vehicle that we’ve tagged on well being to, as we’ve learned how criminal and pivotal they are as three equal entities in an organisation. So that’s kind of how I fell into it and how I got started.

From a personal point of view, I guess my background is that I grew up in lovely Avondale, in Auckland. Back then it was west Auckland. Now it’s kind of more central Auckland as the world’s changed. And I got three older brothers, my mum and dad. My dad was from London, my mum’s from Yorkshire, so I have an English background, but I was born and bred in New Zealand.

And through, I guess, my life, we moved from Avondale because my dad’s job, I went to a new school. And it was the first time that I kind of felt different to all the rest of the kids. I went to a school where I was the 100th student, which was quite interesting. It had a special needs school.

And what it felt like to me, because I was quite different, was I kind of came into the school and immediately felt this need to look after people. So I started looking after the kids. If I didn’t want my lunch, I kind of gave it to other kids that didn’t have any food.

I used to look after the tuck shop, so you’d have to go and put the pies in that people had ordered. And being a little bit cheeky and rebellious as I am, I would always put extra pies in the plywood because if they weren’t allocated, we couldn’t sell them, so we got to eat them.

And I made sure the kids that generally didn’t have lunch got to eat them. So it was kind of naughty but nice type things. And then through school, I just continually kind of felt different. Kind of was an odd bod, didn’t quite fit into the moulds. And then as I got to the teenagers years, started having suicidal thoughts, was a self harmer.

But at the same time, I guess I kind of started getting used to being me, to a point, attracted some other odd bods and we kind of made each other happy by having a laugh and taking the piss out of people and stuff like that. And survived school, which, funny enough, I wrote a book around people first leadership during COVID a couple of years ago. And one of the friends that I had at school, she bought a copy and she read it and she said, you have no idea how much of an impact you had on me at school. Without you, I don’t think I would have survived.

And it was kind of weird because I didn’t know I was doing that. Like the whole time. I’ve kind of grown up, I’ve never actually understood the influence I’ve had on people until I probably got to work. And through work I’ve kind of learnt how big my shadow can be and that influence can be a bad influence because, you know, if I’m in a bad mood, it’s felt by many.

And so I’ve had to learn all of this stuff and I guess that’s kind of took me on the wellbeing journey because I got to do some self awareness, got to understand me a bit more. What was my purpose? What actually am I all about? Get rid of my imposter syndrome as we all kind of get labelled with and used my journey, I guess, of developing and stuff and understanding what habits and rituals and things that are important to me transferred into a workplace. And now I try and help as many people as I can through that process.

, 05:13
Sarah: And actually, before we leave into sort of getting into your work life, I did want to make that observation that. It is quite clear in your book.

, 05:20
Sarah: Here’s your book, that often what we find with leaders is those who’ve had that personal experience with mental health, either because they’ve supported someone or they’ve lived through it themselves, seem to be the leaders who almost in wellbeing that they fall into a woman because they’re passionate about and there’s an experience they bring to it or just by sheer experience, regardless of what leadership role they’re in, they have a real empathy towards what’s involved in actually allowing people to bring their whole selves to work.

, 05:49
Natalee: Yeah, I guess personal experience is actually what makes you up. Like everything that I’ve been through, like my dad got cancer and died at the age of 54. So I had only just turned 20 when that happened and my whole world changed at that point I was playing cricket and I was kind of being serious about it, but I never really thought, you know what?

I need to kick my own ass if I want to play for New Zealand. And because he died, and this is maybe a horrible thing to say, but because he died, I actually ended up playing for New Zealand in cricket. So he kind of was so influential, probably from a. From that bad experience.

But I wouldn’t change it because it’s kind of moulded me that all the things that have happened, all the bad things that have happened in my life, I’ve thankfully been able to translate that into something that I guess becomes a win. And it’s something that I guess if you have personal experience, you can have that empathy, but it’s also, I think you have less judgement.

The core or the root cause for me on lots of things in this world, if we actually stopped judging and we thought best intentions, we would actually be in a better place throughout this world. Because best intentions means that you actually stop to be curious and you ask questions, then you actually learn you’re not setting up to answer or rebut people and things like that.

So I think leaders that have experiences, as long as they are open to sharing that and that’s part of these conversations as well with how powerful storytelling is, then you kind of take the lead and you’re making the change because you’re leading it. So you’re being the example and that has massive influence over anything else.

, 07:36
Sarah: That you might do and taking that leader thing a step further. So yeah, you talked about playing cricket for New Zealand and I’d love to hear more about that.

But I imagine again that’s a really highly visible role as a leader to be in terms of the behaviours that you have, in terms of the influence that you have. So tell us a little bit about what it was like to play for New Zealand and then b again, how that shaped your leadership skills. Because again, this is all leading towards where you are now, isn’t it?

, 08:02
Natalee: Yeah, I guess playing for New Zealand was a total privilege and honour and I will always be proud of it and those that know me as.

I don’t openly talk about it that much because it’s kind of like the thing I did and it’s something that was part of my life. Like it took over my life. However, the experience I got from it is that I was working and I think I’m trying to remember how old I was. I think I was mid twenties when I made the New Zealand team.

Everyone else in the team was at university so they were studying and they were young and it was really weird dynamic because they had been in the team for at least two, three, four years and I was the newbie. But from a life experience point of view, they were coming to me because I guess I’ve been in the world working and trying to play cricket rather than studying.

And that was quite interesting to be seen as that type of person. And once again it’s how you hold yourself. So with cricket, mental routines are really important. Understanding human beings is quite important. And I love the psychology of people, particularly in sport, but you’ve got to balance that with.

It’s something that you don’t have that much control over whether or not you get selected. So you need to be able to take the ups with the downs and sometimes you don’t understand why you’re not being selected. And unfortunately when I was playing it was hugely political. So if you played for Canterbury you kind of got picked more.

If you played for Auckland, you didn’t. And this type of stuff. And I’m quite aware of my environment from an energy point of view, but actually what people say and how they say stuff. So I probably had too much awareness of what was going on and I was vocal about it and that kind of wasn’t good, I guess, for my playing career.

But in the end I had to have knee surgery and New Zealand cricket wasn’t that supportive when I had knee surgery. So when I recovered I actually turned around and said, I don’t want to play for New Zealand anymore. And that was hard because it’s something that I love, but I knew that I couldn’t survive in that environment. It wasn’t for me.

They didn’t show that they cared, they didn’t treat people as people. And that was probably the start of me understanding what I believe is really important, to get high performance out of individuals because of my personal experience.

, 10:34
Sarah: So that is just the most perfect segue to the next question, which is around what does it mean to embed wellbeing organisations? Because what you’ve just provided such a perfect example of what an environment looked like, where well being wasn’t embedded and the impact that that had on you. So when we are talking about it being properly embedded, what does that look like? What does it feel like?

, 10:53
Natalee: Yeah. And for me, it is being strategic about it like this. It is a business aspect to an organisation, whether it’s sport or corporate. So it’s about how you can be strategic about that.

Do you understand the problem statement? So do you actually have a good understanding of how your organisation works? What do the people say? Do you have culture surveys that you can look at the data to see what is consistently reported all the time? Do you feel it and see it for yourself?

Like, how can you work out what the problem statement is for that organisation? So once you understand that, then you can start thinking strategically around what wellbeing should be for that organisation. But then you have to build the current state. So this is once again about storytelling.

It’s how you can get the story across too many layers of the business. And whether or not you’re in a leadership team, which I’ve done before, or currently reporting to a leadership team, which is what I’m doing at the moment, we need to be able to tell those stories. I’ve always said that I have a background in sales and marketing, purely because to sell health and safety and wellbeing, you need to know those skills. And so doing that, from a sales marketing point of view, being strategic, you’ve got a list. What’s your current state? What is the future state?

Tell people what that dream is, get them on board and get them to understand why you’re going there. And then you can work through the stages of what are the steps that you need to be in. It’s also around normalising stuff. So when you talk about wellbeing, for me, that always includes mental health. It should always be a key pillar under wellbeing, and you need to normalise that conversation around mental health. And I talk mental health, so I’m not talking mental illness, which to me is actually quite specific, and it is 4%, 8% of the population is in that mental illness.

What you will do will still help them. But what I’m talking about is the 92% of people that are in the mental health spectrum, where we go from surviving to thriving, and we keep moving. And if people don’t understand this stuff or don’t think it’s normal, then they have massive swings up and down. So it’s around normalising that conversation. It’s about you being the poster girl boy, which is hard.

Like, I’m an introvert, doing stuff like this is not normal for me and it is draining.

But as an introvert, you’ve got to learn to come out and be able to be vulnerable and have the courage to tell your story and explain to people what it’s all about, because the reaction you get is so good, and then that influences the culture of the organisation, which then influences your leaders, which then they get to understand the payback on it, because there is a return on investment, on having wellbeing as a strategic pillar and the information is always available and the leading from the front is just so important for me.

You’ve got to model it, you’ve got to inspire the conversation behind it, and you’ve got to be like a trusted advisor around it, because you will get people telling you stuff, so you’ve got to be prepared for that. And the last thing is around being patient. This stuff does not happen overnight and it never will be.

It is a journey, as people tag it. So you’ve got to have the patience and the roller coaster ride and have some safe people up your sleeve that you can pick up the phone and vent and actually just kind of let it all out so that you can get your head back in the game and understand what the next steps are to demonstrate. This is the strategy. Here’s our plan, and these are the things that we’re going to do, and here’s all the facts and figures behind it.

, 14:28
Sarah: That helps you, because you’re a local airport now, but this is not the first organisation that you’ve gone through this journey. It’s a well worn experience there from having.

, 14:41
Natalee: Yeah. And each one has actually been really different. I’ve learned from each one as well. I guess the other point to this embedding anything, you’re going to make mistakes and you’re going to fall over. It’s just how quickly you can pick yourself up from those. And I guess the first organisation that we attempted to do this was so cool.

But the biggest learning from it was we had a change of leadership team during the journey and it wasn’t set up as an official strategy. It was just something that I picked up, actually, with Richard, who’s on the call, and we went, this is a cool opportunity for us to help. Richard’s got his mental health stories with him and his son. I’ve got mine. How can we actually just start the conversation? And that’s the biggest thing.

So we started with the conversation around mental health. We did have the fruits in yoga plan, so that was kind of there. And we kind of developed it from there and looked at whether or not the company could partner with the mental health foundation. Unfortunately, we were an alcohol company, so they didn’t want to do that, which was disappointing. But I learned that process of, I guess, what people can and cannot do. And then we engaged with mentormea, which is now called groove, and kind of got them on board.

But we also tried a bit of Mike King. We kind of just did things to see what the reaction was because we had a blue collar workforce and it was kind of like, how do we do this? And we were throughout New Zealand, so how can we make this work? What are the technologies? In the end, unfortunately, the leaders couldn’t see past my passion for it, I guess, and they thought that I should focus more on safety. I didn’t think so, so we parted ways. But that’s a learning experience.

And then I went to the next organisation that employed me as my whole person, which was the first time that I could have done that, and then went through a different kind of bigger corporation of, how do we get funding for this? What is the information in the story that they need to know? How do you spell it all out? And then how do we get a business that has spread 70 sites throughout New Zealand, who are generally men who work with their hands every day and generally don’t talk about their feelings?

And it was so rewarding to find those champions in the business or those leaders that just needed that support and, I guess, permission to share their own stories instead of going out to the masses like I did in the first job. I was quite strategic with the group of people that I shared my story with and I had one lady absolutely blow their eyes out during the session and I felt really bad. I was like, oh, shit, I’ve stuffed up here.

Um, I’ve kind of triggered something. But in the end, she was like, that was just so cool. And before I left that organisation, she came to me and said I was the first person ever in her career that had affected her in that way, ever. And it was. And it was such a positive way because then she was able to connect with me but also understand her friends and experiences that she was going through with some other people.

So it is all quite good learnings, but it is different in every organisation. I have a concept, but then you have to kind of test it out and develop it and take feedback and have a lot of frustration, but you eventually kind of get there and you get the outcomes that you’re looking for.

, 18:17
Sarah: And I did want to acknowledge your storytelling and for those who have had the opportunity to see the video, and I see there is a comment there around that, you know, thank you for sharing your story so openly. And I can see, you know, both from. From the reaction here, but also from the stories that we’ve shared between us about the reactions that people have had to that vulnerability, that openness, that chance to actually hear from somebody what that experience has been like.

And I remember in your book you talked about that in one of those organisations, that that storytelling was such a significant way to shift how conversations were had around mental health and around how you’re normalising that. So tell me, what are some of the particular strategies around storytelling that you’ve used to embed wellbeing in your organisation?

, 18:58
Natalee: One of the things I always got taught, and I guess this is because we live in a world that we always do things by PowerPoint, is I had to understand the audience. So I did something called insights, which kind of let people understand.

For me, I’m high green, which means show me you care. And I have a little bit of yellow, which has involved me, but it’s also that creativity kind of stuff in a box. But there’s other people that are really detailed, so they’re like, show me the detail. And then there’s people that are be bright and be gone.

And if you’re presenting, I guess, through a leadership team, you’ve probably got most of those personalities. If not, unfortunately, probably more than red in the blue type thing. So as someone that is so people focused and so easy to talk from a people point of view, I actually had to go right. I need to actually provide some detail for those people, but I also need to have slides that don’t clutter because the be bright, be gone people just want to know the key points. So it is actually, I think they always talk about if you really know something, you should be able to put it onto one slide.

Like, even when you put strategies together. At the moment, my strategy is 54 slides, which is way too much detail for my life, but that was what was required here. I can put that down into three slides because I can pull out for each period. These are the key points. And so that is the one thing from storytelling is you’ve got to know your information so that you can literally just put three points on a slide or three images or whatever it might be, and you can articulate what that means to your different audiences because you can supply the different styles with what.

, 20:44
Sarah: They need, which probably talks really nicely to that next piece around wellbeing leaders or managers or whoever is responsible for wellbeing in the organisation being a change agent, because that’s such a challenging role in organisations, particularly because it’s an emerging role. B, you may or may not have influence depending on where you are in the organisation.

And when we get into things like embedding wellbeing, there are things that we can do. Sure we can bring in initiatives and things, but if you’re trying to say influence work hours or shift rosters or some of these things are way outside the things that you can influence or have change over. But tell me about being a change agent. What’s involved and what have you found has worked?

, 21:28
Natalee: A good change agent is someone that I guess you’re kind of like a key account manager in a way. Cause relationships, particularly in New Zealand, are the number one thing.

Like if you don’t build a relationship with someone, you generally will struggle to make any deal with them. And it doesn’t matter if they’re trying to do a deal with the deal, you just won’t have it because there’s no relationship there. So it’s about proving yourself to a point, but also being trusting.

It’s about, I guess the book is around people first leadership. So it’s kind of looking at those attributes of you need to have self awareness about how you interact and act with people. You need to show vulnerability and courageous so that you can build authentic relationships with people.

If you have authentic relationships with people, you can then have good conversations, but also challenging conversations, so you can be curious and question how they do stuff without them thinking that you’re trying to tell them how to do their job and things like that. So it’s being able to build those relationships and know who your key stakeholders are within your organisation, who your champions are, like that. That is how, I guess it’s half the battle of a change agent. The rest of it is around the storytelling. What is the why? You always have to go back to the why.

If you can’t articulate the why, then people can’t jump on board with what you’re trying to do. You need to understand your barriers. Spend the time to understand what the blockages are and why they’re there, and see if you can basically break them down or at least acknowledge them. So then people understand it. It’s about understanding. People are human as well, so everyone makes mistakes. So being a change agent, you might put a change in place, and people don’t act the way that you expected them to.

Which we should know by now that we can never predict what human beings are going to do, but we still do. But it’s like it’s getting shitty with that individual because they didn’t do what you wanted them to do. Actually, that’s a learning opportunity because that’s what mistakes are. So go seek to understand before being understood. Go and actually be curious and ask questions. How come they ended up making those decisions and getting to that point? What could I have done differently?

And that’s the other thing with change ownership. It’s about your ownership of things. So if something doesn’t work, look at yourself first before you go wider, because you’ll probably find that it is something that you can control. And if it’s not, it’s probably in your circle of information. So then who are the people you need to go and spend some more time with to help that? And the last thing around change is in businesses, we spend far too much time fearing the 1%. So 1% of the time everything goes wrong, 1% of the time it blows up in the public. 1% of the time someone gets really hurt.

Why do we spend so much time and effort on those one percenters and we ignore them 99% of the time that we do it right. So for change, go and understand the 99% 1st, because that’s actually where most of your learnings would be, that you can understand. That’s how they function, that’s how it works. That is the formula that you need for any other change to be put in place. Yeah, that’s kind of the gist of it.

, 24:46
Sarah: And that fairness is an interesting one, because thinking across the levels of leadership, because generally you’re talking about the blockages, it’s often like managers or single leaders, you know, and it’s that fear, that risk of mistake that, you know, that tends to hold people back or that lack of confidence so how as a change agent, how do you influence in those really senior leaders to come forward?

You can’t talk about that in terms of some of the presentation styles, but I’m wondering if there are some other, you know, kind of tactics or ways that you’ve been able to convince them. And then also those, those central leaders and that, and that probably comes back to that real people first leadership. So it’s two questions, but senior leaders.

, 25:24
Natalee: And then middle managers, senior leaders generally, what I found is they are trying to do a good job and they’re trying to do it in the best way that they possibly can and nobody knows everything. So occasionally you get a senior leader that’s got an ego in those people. Unfortunately, if they were so narcissist, you can’t change. And I learned that the hard way.

So there are the old person that you can’t change and unfortunately you just have to walk away from that situation. But for the 99%, which is what I talked about, it’s kind of finding a space where you can get mutual respect for each other. So it’s kind of helping them out. It’s stressing where you’re coming from is that you’re literally here to support them. I think the biggest thing is in health and safety, in HR roles. I think people forget that we are support functions and it’s around business partnering. So how do we partner with them?

And this is where I think the key account management side comes into it. So you’ve got to go and actually spend some time to understand them and if they don’t give you that time, then you’ve got to go work with their direct reports because generally you can probably get them with them to understand how the organisation works and you might get asked to help out with something and so you do it.

And if you kind of, it’s kind of, I’m trying not to kind of say that you have to prove yourself, but it’s kind of like you kind of go and do them a favour and they see it as a favour and you do it really well and they appreciate it, they’ll keep coming back to you and then eventually you kind of will crack them that you understand that where they’re coming from is a really cool place and you just got to keep doing it a little bit on their terms. And that’s what I mean about business partnering.

It’s about understanding their business, their part of the business, how they like to interact and then you can influence them and they can be your biggest champions, which is really cool. And currently here, like, when I first turned up, there were a couple of people that I thought had the biggest egos in the world, but actually one in particular, he is probably the biggest champion around wellbeing in this organisation.

So it was first impressions weren’t the best and sometimes that stays with people. But thankfully, I’m curious enough to give people the benefit of the doubt to keep tapping into how I could help. And, yeah, now I know that he’s a full supporter. He just doesn’t always interact or act the way that I see. So that kind of covers, hopefully, the senior leader’s side with the main leadership group and leaders in general. It’s kind of around people first leadership. People always talk about circle of control, influence and concern.

People first leadership is understanding that quite clearly for you and your team, but then for my roles, it’s also understanding that for everyone else’s team in kind of helping them get there. It’s also around the culture of the organisation. You can’t do any of this if you’ve got a culture that isn’t in aviation. We could talk about just culture. It’s basically psychological safety. It’s the same thing.

It’s allowing people to turn up as their whole self, it’s allowing people to make mistakes, it’s providing a framework, it’s providing clear expectations, it’s holding people accountable so that you, if you have those good relationships, you can have those challenging conversations that no kiwi likes to do because we had confrontation. But it’s that care factor.

It is actually considering people first. It doesn’t mean you don’t make decisions and you still have to make the hard decisions, but it’s people understanding that if you consider people first, the impact your decision is going to have on human beings and that could be your own people. We’ve got guests here, we’ve got tenants, we’ve got lots of contractors.

What is the impact actually going to be on people? Will we actually. This decision mean that it makes it harder for them to do their job and so there’s going to be more disruption. That’s how you kind of help people get on board with what you’re trying to do and speak the language that’s important to them and translate all your stuff and help them on the way. Just don’t make them feel silly or stupid and things like that. It’s just around supporting them and like I said, just treating them like a human being.

Recognition is a huge piece around this. If we don’t recognise the behaviour that we want and this means thanking people for doing their job, which we also struggle with. No one’s ever going to know that they’re doing a good job and so their performance will go up and down the time. So recognition is so important and I have that totally separate to. I don’t believe you need to connect reward to it. I think that creates different chemicals in your brain. The recognition piece by itself will help you from a change point of view as well.

You recognise the stuff you want to see, you keep encouraging that, then people will keep doing it, because as human beings we love that connection, we like that recognition.

, 30:21
Sarah: All I can think of is it’s like Pavlov’s dogs or Skinner’s rats. You know, the old psychology 101 stuff. Yeah, the piece too, that I was really picking up on that, which I guess I haven’t really thought about from this perspective before. But when you’re a change agent, particularly in wellbeing, let’s say you’re a change agent from it, or accounting, everyone knows what it does or generally do. Or accounting. They’re well worn professions. We kind of have a general gist of what they do.

, 30:45
Natalee: If you turned up and said, I’m a lawyer, people kind of know what you do. If you turn up and say, I’m here about wellbeing, people kind of go, what is that? There’s a really huge education part to this too, isn’t this? And then how have you kind of taken people on that education journey? I mean, you talked about sort of connecting with them where they are, but is it as much giving them a definition or connecting them to how are the organisations defining it or what’s kind of worked?

, 31:09
Natalee: I think it’s. I don’t define many things because if you actually do look at the word wellbeing, you get so many different definitions, it just makes life really hard. I think for me, because I am future focused and I’m strategic, it’s about having that strategy and maybe being able to condense that strategy. So under wellbeing we have five pillars, so we’ve got mental health, physical health, financial wellbeing, leadership and support. And under each of those pillars we can then explain what that all kind of means.

And so to me then, to anyone in the business, you can kind of explain well being at the moment. I guess here we’re kind of new doing it in this way. So wellbeing has got more of that mental health focus and I’m not unhappy about that because that’s a cool place to start. So we’re just trying to break down the barriers around mental health to start with and just ways of working. Like, I’d run an ad hoc wellbeing workshop with a group, and what I designed to start with kind of morphed because we kind of flexed with what was worrying the team and I.

They were feeling quite overwhelmed about everything. So it was them understanding that we’re on that spectrum from surviving to thriving. And it’s okay that you do actually go up and down all the time. It was also understanding what their personal rituals or routines were. And one individual talks about the fact they always have poached eggs before, but that’s their breakfast.

They have two poached eggs, and that’s their breakfast. So I said to the team, did you know that was what they have? And they were like, no. And I said, well, there’s a question you can ask them every morning. Have they had their poached eggs? Because I bet you the one morning that they don’t, they’re going to be in a bad mood or something is not quite right.

So, you know, there’s a lot of indicators for getting to know your team, but it was really important that they got to know each other more as individuals to bring that team together. They also had worries about workload and not being able to do stuff and feeling a bit useless, I guess, or helpless. And so we talked about circle of concern, circle of control, and circle of influence, and kind of said, the stuff that’s worrying you, where does that fit? And being quite, I guess, quite black and white, saying, you know, if that’s a circle of concern, then just acknowledge it and move on, because you can’t do anything about it. So don’t use all your energy and brain capacity on stuff that you can’t do anything about. Focus on the stuff in the middle with your control.

Focus on the stuff that you can influence or your boss can. And, yeah, it was quite cool. And then in the end, the team kind of decided what was some of the things that they were going to set up as their own rituals. So making sure they had face to face meetings. I think it was once a fortnight or two out of four meetings or something that they caught up, which is, you know, we’re still living in a hybrid workplace, so that was kind of cool. They’re trying to get out and about and actually go and look at other parts of the business that their people work in.

The physically go there, so it’s just not sitting in the office. So they’re doing a bit of activity. They’re doing a bit of connection, you know, they’re just breathing rather than being stuck in an office, getting a bit stressed out. So all of those things are just full of ways to engage people. But I guess explain well being, which I can’t do, is because it just changes and you need to be fluid with it, you need to be flexible, I guess you need to be well read or at least understand all the different concepts. Like, I’ve got so much influence from all the reading that I’ve done that I pull it through, I have it on tap.

So when something changes, you can actually go to that to say, this will work for this group and if you get good feedback, then, you know, it’s kind of hit the right place and that’s what it’s done for them. Like, they’ve got some stuff they can recognise, they can acknowledge each other, they’re working differently, which is more focused on what’s better for them as a team rather than getting frustrated, which probably goes.

, 35:04
Sarah: To kind of interesting areas. Auckland Airport is a really complex business and we talked about this in some of our early conversations. It’s not just the airport itself, but it’s all the subsidiary organisations, all the suppliers and everyone else that you’re involved with. So can you get your take on what it’s been like in the embedding wellbeing in such a complex environment? Because, yeah, it’s not like it’s just you and 20 people and you’re all in the same office and, hey, you know, I can influence this.

, 35:34
Natalee: Yeah. Auckland Airport’s about around 450 people, so in the scope of the whole airport, we’re quite tiny. But we have so much influence over other organisations, be it contractors that are working on an infrastructure programme, be it airlines or other agencies, government agencies that work here or ground handlers, whatever it might be.

We’ve got like tens of thousands of other people that work here every day and it’s quite interesting trying to build those relationships with those providers and set up things to interact with them so they don’t see Auckland airport as being police officers or wankers and stuff like that. So all of that stuff, it’s been quite interesting and I think that’s where, in my world, health, safety and wellbeing works really well together. So the culture we can create is generally generated from the health and safety side, mainly the safety bit.

And so we look at how we talk to people, the words we use, the interactions that we have, we acknowledge that we care about how they need to work. So what. What’s in our control to help them, because we look after all the facilities and we’ve got the infrastructure, so we have ownership of this stuff. It’s not just relying on people and behaviour. And I think that’s kind of the philosophies I’ve put in the last couple of teams is based off something called the Lewin equation, which basically says behaviour is the outcome of the person in the environment.

So we control the environment, they control the environment for them from a culture point of view, but we’ve got the physical environment, we don’t control all the people and we can never control all the people, but we just keep focusing on behaviour and we keep trying to punish the behaviour and it’s kind of like, well, that’s why it keeps repeating, it’s not being long term focused, it’s not solution focused. So it’s, once again, it’s about relationships, it’s been about strategic, getting the right people in the right room to say, as the whole precinct and the terminal, we want this to be the best airport in the world and we want people to rock up here and see, this is the entry point to New Zealand. So even if we have got lots of infrastructure in place, we want to make sure that that doesn’t impact them. And so we’ve got to articulate that to the contractors, but we also got to support them, that they’ve got to get their job done. So do we understand the time pressures?

Like there’s so many other work factors and considerations that we need to be able to self reflect on and try and change and set people up to be successful, rather than chucking it at a contractor or an agency and saying you’ve got to just cope with it, you sort it out within your own organisation. So once again, everything comes down to leadership. It’s leadership with how you interact with people, it’s the relationships that you build. It’s actually seeking to understand, it’s being curious, it’s continuous improvement, it’s accepting mistakes, but turning those into learnings. Like it’s all of that good stuff.

, 38:42
Sarah: I was actually just going to. My next question was going to be, what do you think the core skills of a great wellbeing leader are? Those things, what are the technical skills would you say are really useful in terms of being able to embed well being in an organisation? Technical skills for the wellbeing leader or person who’s the change agent technical?

, 39:00
Natalee: I probably can’t answer so much because I’m such a people focused person, but for me it’s around self awareness. So understanding self awareness. If you’ve ever done the Google programme, search inside yourself, that stuff’s really cool because it talks about search inside yourself, but it also gives you practical examples of, like, if you have got a conflict with another manager or another leader or an individual, it kind of coaches you through, put yourself in their shoes to try and understand where they’re coming from, because a lot of this is based off fear or lack of knowledge or.

Or unknown or misinterpretation. So if you can diffuse it by your reaction, by being in their shoes, then that means that you can approach it in a much better way than if you just go butt heads with each other and it turns into a big shouting match. Like, it doesn’t kind of work. So self awareness is around the shadow that you cast, like, when you turn up at work, how do you impact others around you? And if you’re a emotional person like me, that’s so people focused. Like, if we’re in a good mood, you know, everyone can see that. If you’re in a bad mood, everyone can see that.

So understand what your triggers are and all that good stuff, so that you don’t have such a big impact in that way, because it’s an unintended one. But understand how you can use that in a positive way. Triggers are a big thing. Like, I get triggered a lot, so you need to understand what those triggers are. I have a little bit of OCD with stuff and it’s kind of like, if things aren’t in the right place, how to cope with that. I also am a recovering perfectionist, so I need to be able to be happy that things are only 80% and I’ve got better over time with that.

So it’s actually letting go of some of these things and being vulnerable to the fact that they may not be perfect, but you’ve got to get going, you’ve got to start stuff. And as long as you’re open to learning and listening to people, then you will develop and grow it into something. Think really amazing. It’s around you, knowing your purpose and your values. My purpose is to make a difference to this world. My values are fun, forgiveness and family. And family is my own family, but also my work family. And these huge debates around calling workplaces families.

Because some people go to the world of hierarchy. That’s not my family. I’ve never had a family like that. It’s about respecting each other. But you can have different views and different decision making and you can fight, but you also really enjoy being with each other. And, you know, it’s a safe place to be. But fun is my biggest thing. I do a serious job. I’m on board 24/7 in most of my jobs, and that means if something does go wrong, it’s my phone ringing. So I need to make sure I have fun and I have fun at work and I create the environment with my team and people I interact with.

But I also have fun at home because that’s what gets my energy going again. So you’ve got to know all of that stuff. You need to understand your non negotiables as well. So something that’s really important for wellbeing people is if something is starting to impact your integrity or go into your non negotiables, that’s when you need to actually make that big call that maybe this isn’t our role for you and this is an organisation for you. The worst thing you can do is basically fight a battle you’re never going to win. It’s not good for your own self. So that’s when you need to be able to pull that back from your self awareness point of view. Empathy is massive for me, and there’s a huge difference between empathy and sympathy. I can never define them, but I always refer people to Brene Brown.

She’s got a really cool video that talks about the difference between it, but she talks about in there that sympathy drives disconnection and empathy fuels connection. And that’s kind of how I look at it. How can you be in someone’s shoes and have that empathy? How can you approach things where you’re trying to connect with human beings? Because that’s actually what we actually need in this world. It’s around staying out of judgement as well. It’s around listening, and it’s not listening to respond, it’s just listening to actually take that stuff on board.

Being vulnerable, being authentic, all of that good stuff is kind of the traits or attributes that you need from a technical point of view. Everyone’s got the skills because most of us come from admin backgrounds. From that side, you know how to do your presentations, you know how to set up spreadsheets, you know how to use systems and technology, like all of that stuff we have every day.

I think it’s these people skills that makes you different and can make such a difference.

, 43:37
Sarah: Thanks again for listening today. It’s been great to have you along. If you’re keen to join the Revolutionaries of Wellbeing, head to row wellbeing. That’s r o w wellbeing.com. and follow the links to sign up if you’re in our community. Thanks again, and we look forward to catching up with you really soon.