And I'm curious for you, post book tour and upon reflection, what were some of the most memorable pieces or insightful elements that came out from you and speaking to

readers of the book? There's a couple of different ways to look at that.

So obviously, AI is a really hot topic right now.

So when I first came to the US, I did a launch at the PwC offices in New York, which is still a total pinch me moment.

You know, it was absolutely incredible to have the opportunity to do that.

It happened to coincide with episode 300 of the podcast as well.

So we did a live recording of the podcast.

And I wonder if you might just walk our audience through what are the components of it so that we have that fundamental understanding of this framing you're coming from?

Yeah, so go ahead.

You got it, girl.

Slight pivot here, Erica.

So I've changed the name.

I used to call my framework the Happier at Work framework.

And as I was in the process of writing the Thriving Talent book, I was writing about the Happier at Work framework.

And it was like, it makes way more sense to change the name of this framework to Thriving Talent.

seen anything any research about like how to identify like your own toxic traits because i know there are some things i did as a leader that absolutely bug the heck out of people right and i mean i know because i asked for direct feedback but what are your thoughts about that

Me too.

Um, okay, okay.

And sometimes it might be obvious, sometimes it might not.

So, like, first of all, what we can do, like, it's almost all easier, I suppose, initially to look at the physical, like, so what we want to do with emotional eating or binge eating is, like, let's look back.

If that's happening in the evening, can we move back to the start of the day and see, okay, did you skip breakfast? 'Cause usually if you've eaten and consumed a lot of food at night with binge eating, you'll more than likely wake up feeling quite sick.

You'll be like, "I need to pull back today," so you might skip breakfast, have a coffee, maybe have no snack or a light snack, a little skimpy salad or sandwich for lunch, and then maybe go on for hours and not have dinner till late in the evening, and it's just repeating the cycle again.

So what we need to do, which can be so hard, is physically start off and fuel ourselves and give ourselves breakfast, give ourselves a snack, give ourselves lunch, no matter what you consumed the night before.

Social media.

I think that stops us.

Yeah.

So I think we can look at that from two different ways.

So if we think about it from, I've asked for help in the past and it hasn't been forthcoming or it hasn't been useful, then that probably builds this.

And I know we use this term and I love this term before we started recording, learned helplessness.

So therefore I've taught myself not to ask for help because it hasn't been forthcoming in the past or it hasn't been.

I think As individuals, when it comes to asking for help, we need to recognize what do we specifically need help with and how do we assign almost like a task or a subtask to someone else to take care of? And I have a very kind of prominent and personal example here.

We just feel so bad doing it.

And why is that? Why has this been such an issue for such a long time and we can't fix it? Why? I don't understand it.

I think we're trying to often fix the wrong things.

So I come from a data and research background.

And so when I think about fixing things, I think about analysing and figuring out what the problem actually is.

And I know that we've been looking at engagement for a long time.

But what is engagement a result of or what is actually driving that engagement? So we try and fix engagement with engagement type of initiatives, or we try and make work more fun by putting in a pool table or a lounge area or ping pong or whatever it might be, or having free fruit or, you know, coffee get togethers, things like that.

But it's not addressing the underlying issue.

Tell me about how in the world this came to be, where you're at in the journey of writing that book, and what it's all about.

workplace? I'm not sure I've got that quite right.

No, absolutely.

Thriving workplace.

That sounds ideal.

That's where people want to work, isn't it? You know, somewhere that's really thriving.

And so if we take the middle three pillars, because that's how the framework started, I had those middle three pillars.

They came from the research I did as part of my master's.

What can they be doing?

Yeah

... it's like it's gone [laughs] in the blink of an eye.

Um, so the thinking and how it's evolved since then, I suppose my prompt, my original prompt for doing the master's in the first place was because of some, some experiences I had at work, and I wasn't happy, and I asked those difficult questions like what should I have done differently? What should leaders have done differently, and what should HR have done differently? And I think if I think, and I do talk about this in the book, I didn't know any different.

I thought the leadership stuff and the people management is HR's responsibility, and I've since, that's probably a big piece of the thinking that has evolved since I've been working with different organizations, that I understand a bit more about the responsibilities that leaders have specifically in relation to creating these environments.

Like, it doesn't all fall to HR, which is what I previously thought.

When I asked those questions, I looked at it very much from the individual perspective, but also from the organizational perspective.

And probably when we spoke the last time, I was focused on individuals, and as an individual, how do we feel a sense of belonging, or, or as an organization, how do we create a sense of belonging? And through my conversations, like the language has evolved, the, the thinking on it, even the names.

Yeah

[laughs]

... then, you know, the business maybe won't exist anymore.

But I think, you know, putting, putting my adult hat on, it's thinking, "No, it's positive.

How can we actually have people in an organization to make those positive changes?" So for me, like, the first thing is to, to address th- what's going on, to call out the elephant in the room and actually say it out loud.

Um, I have an entire framework within the book, and it focuses first of all on psychological safety, so making sure that we have psychological safety to begin with.

Like, I don't think we can do anything without that because people are not going to feel safe to speak up, to share what's going on, to challenge how we're currently doing things, so having that embedded first before we even think about making any changes to the culture.

I also think that we need to get buy-in from individuals to understand, like, what's not currently working and what perceptions they are.

So maybe just to kick us off on this topic, can you kind of explain some of those different categories or, or factors within the drivers section of your model?