Team Titans Season 4, Episode 2 - In Conversation with Petra Velzeboer

Ryan Spilken:

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Team Titans. This is the show with stories about people, the people with unique perspectives on work itself and how they define processes, build tools, lead teams, and maybe break all of that stuff that I just said. I am your host Ryan Spilken and joining me today on co-hosting duties is Lucia Scarborough. Lucia, hello.

Lucia Scarborough:

Hey, Ryan. Thanks for having me today.

Ryan Spilken:

Lucia, it is a real pleasure to have you as my co-host today. You are the chief people officer at Adaptavist, but right now you are the chief people grower in your family. Am I right?

Lucia Scarborough:

Yeah, that's right. Rearing and raising the next generation of Adaptavists straight to coding.

Ryan Spilken:

And so you are preparing to give birth to a bouncing baby Adaptavist. Let me ask, do you get in on the referral scheme when the baby comes to work?

Lucia Scarborough:

Well, I mean, if it's not written like that now, it certainly will be by the time he gets here.

Ryan Spilken:

The impending motherhood, the impending journey you're about to go on is just such an adventure and it's really exciting and I think that our guest today has some experience in that and a whole lot more experience about the challenges that face us going through this crazy world. And it is my pleasure to welcome to Team Titans today, clinical psychotherapist, mental health counselor, and the CEO of PVL, Petra Velzeboer. Petra, welcome to Team Titans.

Petra Velzeboer:

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Ryan Spilken:

Now Petra, you mentioned that you have kids and you know about that journey, but right now you are on a journey of fitness. And I got to be honest with you, it sounds pretty hardcore. Tell us about your road down that way.

Petra Velzeboer:

Sure. I mean, for me, working remotely, well, I have a fully remote team, that whole thing, I'm just sitting more than I've ever sat in my life. Now I've got a bit more variety, but I used to just walk everywhere. If I'd get off of the underground and walk two stops or if I was between things, I'd call people between meetings and walk, and there's just much less of that. I feel it in my body, I feel it in my nervous system, so I feel like we've got to be more conscious about exercise. So my partner and I, a gym opened a two minute walk from our house. Now, this was revolutionary because it's the whole get in the car, go somewhere, that was a bit of a barrier. And now, the gym is next to the shop where you buy chocolate. It's just really good for stress levels, but I have a bit of a laugh as well because I'm definitely a beginner amongst experts.

Ryan Spilken:

Are you going to get the chocolate before or after the workout?

Petra Velzeboer:

I mean, I think the gym acts as a guilt device. So when I sometimes still go for the chocolate, because let's face it, we need different ways to look after our wellbeing, I'll go, "Did I hit that gym first?" And you know what this gym has? It has a full body massage chair. So you hit the gym, you do your 300 workout, you feel really sweaty and good about yourself. And then have you ever sat in a full body? You take your shoes off and it envelopes your feet, your shoulders, everything's going at once and I'm like, "I'm just going to stay here for a while," so that's fun, too.

Lucia Scarborough:

I'd be tempted to skip the gym bit and just go straight to the massage chair.

Petra Velzeboer:

It is tempting, it is tempting.

Lucia Scarborough:

That would be my downfall.

Petra Velzeboer:

Well, with babies on the way, I would imagine that would be the right thing to do.

Ryan Spilken:

I'm just scared of the idea of it enveloping my feet because they're so sensitive. Just even looking at them and I'll think I'm being tickled, so this is risky. Now Petra, you mentioned something in what you just told us about wellbeing and that's really what you focus on. So before we really start prodding you, because believe me, we're here for the full examination, can you tell us what brought you to focus on mental health and wellbeing in your life?

Petra Velzeboer:

I've been in that industry, I guess, for 15 years, quite long time. I trained as a psychotherapist so I started in youth mental health and was a counselor and helping people individually. Of course, most people who are in the mental health space have a personal story as well, whether it's their own mental health or somebody close to them, so I certainly have a journey there as well. But the reason I started my business was I kept working in the corporate wellbeing space and for employee assistance programs, different people that were there to support wellbeing, and they were talking a good game, advising other people what to do, and toxic themselves. And having lived a double life in the past, which really was negative for my mental health, I just was like, "I can't do this anymore." So I set out building the business to prove a point, which was, can we build the culture that does what it's advising other people to do? And so now it's about training strategy, supporting people, not just to tick the box of wellbeing. We've got benefits, yay, but what's your psychological safety like? What's your culture like? How do we support way before we get to any kind of crisis?

Ryan Spilken:

That's awesome.

Lucia Scarborough:

So what do you think that leaders can do now to proactively encourage that wellbeing and mental health conversations rather than it getting to the point where it's too late? Whether there's flags that they should see, what can they do to almost stop getting to that point?

Petra Velzeboer:

Long before the flags, there's two key things. One is leading by example, so what are you doing to live a mentally healthy life and to talk about it? That could be something really simple. I'll do keynotes and you'll have 250 leaders and I'll say, "How many of you invest in yourselves?" That's a good sentence because it's not like, "Who has mental health [inaudible 00:06:10]" Do you invest in yourself? They're like, "Ooh, we understand investments." And 90% of people raise their hand. They're like, "Yeah, I go to the gym or I see a coach or I have friends," or whatever they do. And then I'm like, "That's so cool," make everyone right all the time. And I'm like, "How many of your people know that you do those things?" and 20% of the room will raise their hand. This is free. Put it in your calendar, talk about it, say, "I had an early night last night because it's great for my mental health and my focus." Or if I have therapy, it's in my calendar. My team can see I've got therapy on a Monday at 11:00. It's a permission giving tool to support people to know it's their responsibility to invest in themselves, but you're doing it as well and this is part of the culture.

The other piece is around vulnerability. Now, that's a bit of a scary word. I often talk about developing the courage muscle or developing your bravery because that, "Ooh, I want to be brave," that feels a little bit more like a club you want to be part of. That means when you're struggling or no matter what level of the business you're at, it's being open about that because again, that gives permission for other people to normalize conversations about mental health long before the conversation of what are the red flags, how do we notice when someone's struggling?

Ryan Spilken:

We have a little bit of a different perspective, not we, being Adaptavist. This call is featuring members from both the United States and from Great Britain and there's a pretty vast gap in outlook around these things in leadership circles as I can tell, and I've seen this in both British and American companies, is that some leaders don't want to say that they've been wrong and they don't want to show that they are human and vulnerable. What are some ways that we can get to a place where we're ready to behave that way and to really lead by example?

Petra Velzeboer:

I mean, while you were talking about the differences between the UK and the US, people can't see my face, but I was nodding furiously and had so much to say and I was like, "How much time have we got, because I could just talk about that." And there are differences and I think in the US, I would put it down to more fear around legal implications, unfounded often, but fear that if I ask somebody how they really are about their family or about their mental health, that that could become a lawsuit, is essentially the bottom line fear, which is different in the UK. But the leveler was the pandemic because during the pandemic, yes, there were some people who had a garden for example, which was an example of privilege during isolation or there were people who, they lived with people or they had different circumstances, but what we all realized was that it affected everyone. It didn't matter how rich you were or how senior you were. You were affected by isolation, by loneliness, by lack of interaction, a whole host of things, by fear of your personal health and all these sorts of things, so that's an opportunity.

So if we see that not only as an opportunity because it's a leveler, but also as, "Oh, we proved that we can work remotely," basically the whole world of work has been disrupted. There is an opportunity to change how we lead, how show up, how we trust people, our ways of working, flexi-working, globalization, all these sorts of things. And either when we have change, you can back off and hold tighter and micromanage and say nothing about yourself and tell people stuff. I mean, that's a mistake. We're seeing that in the great resignation, people just voting with their feet. They're like, "I'm not doing this." Right? Or you can flip it and go, "What's the opportunity for me to learn and evolve my leadership style alongside how the way it world of work is evolving?" because to not do so does mean you'll be left behind, so just to shift the perspective a little bit. And of course, the first time you do these things, it's scary. You're worried you're going to fail. And I'll say things like, "I might not get this right or I've never been at this stage of leading a business. These are the things I think. What do you guys think?" so it's admitting my limitations and then collaborating with my team to get to the next level.

Ryan Spilken:

Nice.

Lucia Scarborough:

I have so many questions as you're speaking because it's so much that resonates. I think one of the big things, I guess, that I imagine is still a problem is, there's still seems to be a taboo around mental health. And it's not just people being worried about talking about mental health, but I think sometimes people can be scared, actually, that they could ask a question and someone says, "You know what? Mentally, I'm having a really rough day," and they go, "Oh, I don't know how to answer that." How do you think we can progress that conversation, get people feeling more comfortable or talking about it or maybe being exposed to it?

Petra Velzeboer:

So when we do, we have a mental health for leaders course that just helps to support people and train people and there's a couple of fears that come up, which is what you're indicating. One is the fear of, it's Pandora's box and it's going to open this thing that it's like, "Oh my God. There's going to be emotion. This person's going to be falling apart and we got shit to do and how am I going to do this? And then I won't know what to say or how to fix it." And that, for a leader who is meant to know things and fix things, feels super destabilizing. Or the follow on of, "I might say the wrong thing and fuck it up," so lots of fears and so we avoid the topic completely.

And so in our training, first of all, we should talk about the power of listening, simple. The gift of attention is the biggest gift you can give somebody in a world where within 12 to 15 seconds you're distracted these days. To simply give somebody attention and space is already massively useful for their mental health. Secondly, you do not need to know the ins and outs of every mental health diagnoses in order to support someone. Even if you've experienced depression and they're telling you about depression, your experiences will still be different. So saying things like, "Hey, I've experienced depression, but what's it like for you?" Or you're going through a bereavement, "I lost somebody once," so you're connecting, "But what's it like for you?"

The other fear is that people are going to take sick days, especially in the UK. If they talk about this stuff, "Oh my God, now I've got to let everyone have a sick day and nobody's doing the work." People forget that work can be a protective factor. Especially we learned in the pandemic, in these different isolating times, routine, community, purpose, connection, being in flow, because maybe you're good at your job, these are benefits to your mental health. People say, "Okay, do you want to take time off?" It's more like, "What do you need in order to enable you to do your job well?" and collaborating on that. You guys can see I could talk about this all day.

Ryan Spilken:

That's a fantastic change. That's a very subtle shift in the focus of the message, very subtle, tremendously impactful, Just changing the second part of empathizing from, "I've been there," being the first part and the second part being, "And it's rough," but changing that to, "What's it like for you?" ooh, that's fantastic, Petra, thank you. I'm going to try that.

Petra Velzeboer:

And that encourages connection, right?

Ryan Spilken:

It so does in the same way, because this really points to a requirement of psychological safety. We can't open these things unless we feel in our, and I could be wrong so the two of you are welcome to tell me that I'm wrong because I often am, but a team can't really get past the hump of even letting these things out until a baseline of safety has been established. How do you establish that psychological safety baseline with your team?

Petra Velzeboer:

I have lots to say.

Ryan Spilken:

Please.

Petra Velzeboer:

Lucia, do you have anything to say just on building safety, I guess, in a team?

Lucia Scarborough:

I think the big thing for me has always been, like we were saying earlier, leading by example with my team. I've always tried to be very open. I'll say, "You know what? I'm just having a really tough day," or "You know what? I'm taking a mental health day today," because I think leading by example is the biggest thing to show that you are walking the walk as well as talking the talk. That, for me, is really, really important.

Ryan Spilken:

If I may, though, there's so many jobs where if we miss something by a day or if we need to take that day, no one is going to die. No one is going to lose a limb, they're not going to lose any digits, their eyes are still going to work. Okay? Take the day off. Petra, I'm sorry. I just had to put that there.

Petra Velzeboer:

Well, no, you're right. We get so intense about it and everything.

Ryan Spilken:

So intense.

Petra Velzeboer:

But especially when our nervous system is in a fight or flight state, which the pandemic and the news and the war and constant notifications of danger, danger, threat, threat, it's putting our nervous system in this place that's constantly jumpy and thinking, "What's the threat?" And it's really hard to then connect with people because you have more conflict. You're more attack mode and so we're seeing that, especially remotely, then things get misconstrued and a whole host of things happen.

But as you said, psychological safety is small building blocks of trust that build over time. And so it's through vulnerability, but it's also creating space to discuss things like how we work, not just what we do. And for so many people, it's action, action, action, tasks, task. But actually, let's sit back and go, "What works for you? What works for you?" And it's going to be different, but how do we collaborate? We are all making this up as we go along. Nobody's been in this hybrid ... This wasn't a thing before and so we're all figuring it out together. So the people who are acting like they know exactly how it should work, they're lying. I'm a mental health expert, but I'm figuring out hybrid with my team. You know what I mean?

Lucia Scarborough:

Actually, you've mentioned it a couple times, Petra. I think it's a really interesting thing that we've got going on at the moment is actually about the external world and everything that's going on. I mean, goodness me, a couple of weeks ago would've said the world's a bit on fire. We're only 14 days later. And I'm like, "The temperature's gone up a couple of degrees even just from that." And in some ways work, it can help distract from it, but how can we help staff deal with things that are completely out of our control?

Petra Velzeboer:

It's mindset skills, but ultimately the person needs to be open and want to develop them. We can offer skills and tools and we can create safe places in the workplace to practice them like, "Hey, let's do a lunchtime meditation." We'll do things like that with my team, just have mental health check-ins. We don't mean, "Are you depressed?" That's not what a mental health check-in is to us. It's like, "Hey, how's your mental health?" You know how people these days, it's like, "How are you?" That's how we check in. "How are you?" And then the person goes, "Yeah, life's tough." You're matching the question tone because you're like, "Oh, we're all suffering," and to not be suffering is radical and probably going to make you feel bad so let's all suffer together. And I've said this at keynotes and I've had people come up to me after and go, "Petra," whisper, "I'm actually doing really well and I just don't tell anyone," and I'm like, "Oh my God."

The world is actually a balanced place. People have good things and they have tough things. They connect and do enjoyable things and there's wars and things are going on. What are you tuning your frequency into? And that doesn't mean we're saying those things aren't happening, we're acknowledging that they are, and then we're giving people choices. What is in your control? What is out of your control? I don't watch the news ever. I literally never watch the news.

Ryan Spilken:

Why is that?

Petra Velzeboer:

And I'm okay. I'm probably more than okay. Of course, you hear it and my boyfriend will be the bearer of news and I'll be like, "Ooh, tell me more of what you heard," but what I'm doing is I'm protecting my nervous system. I'm protecting my agency, my ability to choose how I feel rather than allowing all the influences to dictate how I run my life. And so it's disruptive in a team meeting to say, "Let's go around. What's one good thing that's happening for you today?" That's radical these days. What's one thing you're grateful for? And what it does in your brain is it's impacting neuroplasticity and developing new thought processes that allow you to focus in different ways. I want to challenge people's mental health thinking to be about that as well as acknowledging when someone's struggling and creating space for that. Both of those things support a mentally healthy culture.

Ryan Spilken:

So much of what you're talking about, it just really, really hearkens back to the mindset work. You have a person, not you, people have to accept that the world itself is growing more VUCA all the time, VUCA being an acronym devised by the US military to say volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, VUCA, so that's just a whole mess of letters that say nothing real and point to a lot of craziness. But really, it does come down to our growing to be able to handle the good and the bad at the same time, look at them with both hands. How do you encourage folks to adopt a mindset that allows them to freely hold the good and the bad together?

Petra Velzeboer:

It's funny, when we're afraid, we attach ourself to a side. We go into black and white thinking. We've seen this with politics, we've seen this with the vax debate, we've seen this with a whole host ... Did you approve of lockdowns or not? And it's pick a side. Pick a side. Everything is, I'm on this side or on this side, I'm on this camp. What we're doing from a primal perspective is we're just trying to belong because when things are scary, we need to belong to a tribe. Otherwise, physically we feel like we're we're under threat. We're not going to survive. It's rarely, if ever, is it black or white, one side or the other. Life is what happens in the middle. It's all the gray, messy, uncertain, this is true and this is true, these things are true. It depends what my perspective is. I bet any of you could be one day, exact same problem, "I feel like I can handle it. Let's go to the gym first and then handle it." And on another day you're like, "The world's going to end," and that's perspective, right?

I think helping people, again, speaking from your own experience, but also helping people way up like, "All right, it's uncertain. We're not all here to fix everything." Sometimes it just is how do you choose to live your day to day. And the more you can set the foundations of classic simple things, sleep, nutrition, movement, meditation, whatever it is, connection, the more you're elevated to a point to be able to make those decisions, so it's like, "What's in our control?"

Lucia Scarborough:

So Petra, obviously, there's lots of different benefits that companies can provide and I think lots of times that can be used as a bit of a blunt instrument, but also when there aren't formal programs that companies feel that they can give or maybe they can't afford it because they're a smaller company, what do you think they can do to help their staff or just keep an eye on staff, keep this in the front of their minds so they can help out their employees?

Petra Velzeboer:

I mean, from my perspective, a mentally healthy culture does not rely on help lines, resources, apps, or anything. I'm not saying those are bad, I'm all for them. They play a function and they can be useful, but what we know from the numbers is that engagement on some of those things has dropped off. People are not engaging with some of these apps, tools, and even help lines and so how is that the whole picture in many businesses, the benefits? So if you don't have those things, that's okay. And if you're a small company, it's easier to create the opportunity for psychological safety, building the foundation blocks of communication, connection.

I mean, recently a team member came to me and talked about her anxiety and some of the stuff she was struggling with. I'm the CEO and she was like, "In any previous job, there is no way I would've gone to the CEO. I would've called someone external to the business." And she said, "But when I call you, I know that you're not going to think, 'Ooh, I don't know if she can handle her role anymore. Let's be careful about that.'" I'm also not saying, "Do we need to take something off your plate?" unless she's asking for that. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just listening, like I said earlier, and I'm empowering personal solutions. How can I help? What do you need to do in order to be able to manage it? So there's things you can do intrinsic to the culture and what I love now is the most junior member of staff will check on the most senior and vice versa and everybody's responsible for the culture because even if you have benefits and resources, many people are not pitching them in a way that's preventative and useful. And by the time you've hit crisis crisis and oh, yay, you've got five or six free sessions, that person might be leaving anyway or might be long term sick or whatever it might be.

Lucia Scarborough:

Yeah, absolutely. I think another challenge that we have within our business, it's not only that we're at the other end of the spectrum, so we've become much bigger. We obviously have the different stereotypical culture, like Ryan was saying, only about the UK versus the US. I would add in also our colleagues in Asia as well, has a very different kind of cultural mindset as well. What we have is also lots of remote workers, there might only be one or two people in one country, and also that we work asynchronously as a business as well. So time zone wise, Ryan in the US won't be awake just at all. His working day won't overlap at all with some of our colleagues in the Kuala Lumpur office. How do you think we can impact how we provide the safe space for our staff?

Petra Velzeboer:

That's more and more a challenge these days, isn't it, with async work, globalization, a whole host of things. So where possible, if there is a crossover, a bit of your time zone ... My COO's in New York, we're in London, there's a guy in Lisbon, we're not in Asia, but we're across quite a few locations, and so we'll make sure that we have crossover hours time, 2:00 PM UK is 9:00 AM over there, and we're really intentional about those connection times. So when you're remote, you have to be more explicit about connection. You can't just, "It's going to happen," so we do a values exercise where we talk about bravery or human connection, one of our values. We'll do something playful, we'll do something fun. We have a Monday morning check-in. We have different ways. Again, collaborate with your people about what works for you.

With async teams, it might be useful if you're a bigger company to have a mental health champion program. We do some of that training, but it's not what some programs are, which is little meerkats looking for signs and symptoms of poor mental health exactly. That's how I picture it because what you look for is what you find, right? But yeah, it's what you see ... Yeah, I said it good the first time, but we want those people to be the proactive champions that support the mentally ill, so they lead by example. They proactively connect. I've just looked at my phone. I've got two members of my team checking in on me going, "How are you feeling, Petra? I know it's been a really long week and you did lots of stuff."

You need to be explicit and intentional about what works for people. And in Asia, from my experience in certain companies, they don't even want to tell you about their family sometimes. It's just not part of the cultural norm to go, "Yeah, and then my brother did this," so there might be other ways. Start where you are and just develop a little bit into something. But mental health champion network, how we work, not just what we do, and if you can have crossover times and create them about intentional connection and fun, then do that.

Lucia Scarborough:

That's fantastic. Thank you. Yeah.

Ryan Spilken:

Great suggestion and for our viewers at home who aren't actually watching this, I did a little meerkat action when Petra mentioned that because we want to look up and we want to look around, but we want a program that is proactive that isn't ... Yeah, I love what you said there because my father used to say, "If you go looking for trouble, you'll find it." And I think the way you put it, you boiled it down one step further and it makes it just a perfect little nugget of wisdom.

One of the big challenges that many of us are facing today, and I'm going to be frank with both of you and anyone who happens to be listening to this, is loneliness at work. It can be extraordinarily difficult across time zones. For me, slack just dies at noon. At noon my time, it's a ghost town. There's a literal tumbleweed that gets its way across my desk. I've just abused the word literally. I won't do it again. Loneliness and that isolation has really crept in. Can you tell us some ways where team members, managers, leaders can start to see those things and ways that they could possibly counteract them?

Petra Velzeboer:

Absolutely. I mean, let's remember that loneliness is an emotion, experience. You can be with people but feel lonely. And so I love, Dr. Brene Brown talks about connection and belonging and she says it's about being seen, heard, and valued. And so if we put that lens on our mental health initiatives or our connection times or whatever that looks like and we ask ourselves, "Within what we've just done, did people feel seen, heard, and valued?" That applies to your one-to-ones. And so that then translates what I was saying earlier about listening, about giving attention and space, because when you do that, somebody goes, "Oh, I matter."

So while I'm all for the games and the fun and the connection and all of that, some people, we've got some introverts on our team, they would despise that. They would despise with all of their being and other people would just be like, "Best thing ever," so it's not a one size fits all. They might love the one to one. What we do is, "Let's do a walk and talk. Let's go away from our desks and just check in." We're in different countries and we'll both be on our headphones and you'll hear people go, "I'm just ordering a coffee. Order a coffee." Other person's like, "All right, I just got my coffee. Okay, I'm walking." Glen, my marketing guy, is in Lisbon, he's on the beach, I'm in the city of London, and that's how we do our marketing meetings. You know what I mean? We're incorporating movement and challenging how we do work together. I mean, isolation is one thing, loneliness is another. So you can put things on the plate of people, but it's up to them, of course, to engage with it.A mentally healthy organization has organizational responsibility, if you were to imagine one half of the circle, and it takes personal responsibility, which is the other half. And for some people, a culture isn't quite the right fit for them or they're going through something really difficult at home, which makes it really difficult to connect into something. It's not bad to feel lonely, but I do believe we are out of practice in knowing how to connect. So in the companies that are hybrid and they come back into the office, everyone's super awkward and "I'm just going to stare at my computer anyway because ugh, what do I say?" And so I think it takes practicing bravery, everyone's responsibility to reach out, say something, go a little bit deeper than the, "How was your weekend?" There's different questions you could ask that are more creative than that.

Ryan Spilken:

Awesome. Lucia, you got anything more we should run by Petra?

Lucia Scarborough:

No, I'm just honestly, everything that you've been saying, Petra, you hear it and you just think that makes sense.

Petra Velzeboer:

Thanks.

Lucia Scarborough:

And it's not until you hear someone else talking about it and you go, "It doesn't have to be really complicated and it doesn't have to be really difficult." And like you said, I think it's so important also to stress on the part, there is some personal responsibility as well. But yeah, I think the thing that just comes across is it's not complicated and it doesn't have to be complicated to be good or to work. I think just taking those little steps in getting to that bigger place can be such a huge thing.

Petra Velzeboer:

If you asked everyone in your team, "What's one small thing you can do today to enhance our culture?" Everyone's responsibility and it could be anything. They're going to reach out to somebody, they're going to work differently. They're going to say, "Let's not have a meeting. Do we need a meeting?" There's loads of things, but it's like, "Oh, everyone can do one small thing." But of course in people teams, because I advise on HR strategy and stuff like that, it's like, "Whoa, how do we please everybody?" Let's be real. There are some people in crisis, there are some people struggling who have plummeted into depression or there's that side of things as well. And so yes, you want that overarching strategy. Yes, you want a variety of initiatives and places and leadership training, these sorts of things but ultimately, it's about human interaction and connection and giving people permission to be human.

Ryan Spilken:

Petra, you participated in the creation of Adaptavist's Digital Etiquette, Reinventing Work Report 2022. We did a huge study with a lot of survey respondents and we picked up a whole lot of information from around the Atlassian ecosystem and our other ecosystems that Adaptavist exists in. Is there one thing in that report that really just set you back?

Petra Velzeboer:

I'd say there's a few things, some of which we probably covered. I think it was 89% of people are longing for some kind of connection and so I think we've highlighted that a little bit. Interesting ones that may be in the UK, attached to cost of living type stuff were around side hustles and extra work and there were some surprises maybe there. For me, maybe the thread was sometimes a side hustle can just be a passion project or something that really lifts you up. So it's not necessarily like, "Oh my God, they're working more hours." That could be the thing that inspires them. But on the flip side, we're seeing a real rise in burnout statistic and I don't think that's just about workload. I think it's about our nervous system being overwhelmed with too much fear, fear, information and workload. And then over time, if we don't release that stress in healthy ways, we're sitting more than ever, we're less connected, then that can build up and stack into burnout. So it was interesting to note from the survey results what people are doing to either leave their jobs, and there was an interesting statistic around people regretting that change, that shocked the hell out of me. I was like, "What? Go live your best life." And people were like, "Oh my God, it's everywhere." Everyone is trying to say-

Ryan Spilken:

They're saying it.

Petra Velzeboer:

I found that interesting as well. But I guess the tips I would draw from that are self-awareness, what's going on for you. Everybody's different. There were some paradoxes in the survey results. But also, if we look at them as, what's the opportunity to evolve our world of work and to take responsibility and have a say, then that becomes quite exciting because I think the world of work was ready for a disruption.

Ryan Spilken:

And that's it for this episode of Team Titans. I want to take a second to thank my co-host, Lucia Scarborough. Lucia, it was amazing talking with you. Thank you so much for being here today.

Lucia Scarborough:

Oh, my pleasure. Thank you, Ryan.

Ryan Spilken:

And the CEO of PVL and mental health consultant, Petra Velzeboer, thank you so much for sharing your insight and wisdom. That was tremendous.

Petra Velzeboer:

Thanks so much for having me. It was fun.

Ryan Spilken:

To all our listeners at home, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Team Titans. We really appreciate you being here. Please make sure that you like, comment, review, and share this episode wherever fine podcasts are liked, reviewed, commented on, and shared. We'll see you next time on Team Titans. Thanks, everyone.