74: Wellness at work—Fostering Emotional Resilience, with Kamini Wood

Can emotional resilience revolutionize leadership and the workplace?

In the third episode of our series on wellness at work, Kamini Wood discusses the profound impact of emotional intelligence on organizational success--how recognizing and managing emotions can transform leadership and the importance of staying regulated as a leader to create a supportive and productive environment for everyone.

We also talk about the common misconceptions surrounding emotional resilience, address the fear that these practices reduce productivity, and focus on the long-term benefits of fostering mindfulness and emotional awareness at work. We also talk about the critical role community and recognition play in employee well-being and Dan Siegel's four S's—safe, seen, soothed, secure—and how these principles of attachment can be seamlessly integrated into workplace culture.

Whether you're a leader looking to enhance your team's resilience or simply curious about the intersection of emotional intelligence and workplace success, this episode offers valuable insights and actionable tips.

Kamini Wood is CEO and Founder of Live Joy Your Way and AuthenticMe Life Coaching. She empowers high-performing adults and young adults struggling with self-doubt and the need for external validation. Her mission is to help others recognize their true value and stop outsourcing their self-worth.

You can learn more about Kamini on her website, Facebook, and Instagram.

Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.

Transcript

Kamini Wood: 1:13

end of the day, humans need to know they matter, and if they matter, then they feel that they are being seen. They do feel that there is safety and there's security, and they're more likely to feel a part of something versus just feeling like people are taking from them. Right, that's where that burnout comes from. I have to produce, produce, produce, produce, and eventually there's just no more left in the tank.

Manya Chylinski: 1:37

Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, Manya Chylinski, and today we have another episode in our series Wellness at Work Nurturing Resilience. My guest today is Kamini Wood. She's a certified life coach and is passionate about working with high achievers to heal their relationships with themselves. We talked about becoming emotionally resilient as a leader and the impact that can have on the organization. We talked about how to achieve that and some of the barriers to getting there. I think you're really going to enjoy this episode, hi Kamini. I'm so excited that we're really going to enjoy this episode. Hi Kamini, I'm so excited that we're finally getting to record this episode.

Kamini Wood: 2:23

I'm excited to be here. It's going to be good.

Manya Chylinski: 2:26

And before we start talking about wellness at work and resilience, I want to start out with my question If you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be and why?

Kamini Wood: 2:41

Well, there are many historical figures that I would want to have a meal with, just to learn from them and gain knowledge from them. But the person that I actually would love to be able to sit down and have a meal with once again would be my maternal grandfather, because he always would drop these nuggets of wisdom and they I didn't quite understand what they meant, and as I've been getting older and going through my own growth process, so many of those nuggets make more sense and I would love to be able to actually converse with him about them from the place I am today, versus when he dropped them on me to begin with yes, oh, I love that, and I'm already thinking of a bunch of people in my life that would fit that description too.

Manya Chylinski: 3:26

I wish I could make it happen. I say that every time, but I so wish I could make these happen because I can see the value they would bring to your life, to everyone's life, as we talk about this question. So thank you for sharing that. I wish I could make it happen for you. So we are here to talk about wellness at work and how that fits in with resilience, and you and I were talking about how leaders can become emotionally resilient as the topic for our conversation. So just big picture what would that look like and why would that be a value to an organization for a leader to be emotionally resilient?

Kamini Wood: 4:08

So what does it look like? It looks like really building up one's first of all, their emotional intelligence understanding what's happening for me in terms of what I'm feeling and what I'm experiencing from an emotional standpoint. Emotional intelligence also allows room to understand what other people might be feeling or experiencing, and the reason why emotional resilience is so important in terms of leadership and to companies is because we are going to go through so many different stressors and challenges as we're trying to run our companies, lead our teams, whatever the situation may be, because, at the end of the day, businesses are in it for profitability. However, the reason why this is so important is because, if we don't pay attention to what's happening to us as leaders emotionally, it makes it more difficult to then be able to lead because we don't know what's coming up for us. So therefore, we're not able to maybe handle the stress that we're undergoing or experiencing and therefore we're going to show up in a less than ideal way trying to lead our teams.

Kamini Wood: 5:10

The best example I can give is even of a parent. Right, when a parent is completely overstimulated by something that is stressing them out, the way that they communicate to their children is completely different than if they're regulated and they know what they're feeling. Right and the same thing applies in leadership roles in a company is we have to start asking our leaders to pay attention to what's going on emotionally, build up that resilience so that they can then lead their teams from that place of emotional intelligence, because, at the end of the day and you and I talked about this we aren't human doings, we're human beings, and if we can see our team members as a human being, that is what will actually allow our teams to be successful and to move companies forward.

Manya Chylinski: 5:54

Yes, I love that phrase that we aren't human doings, we are human beings and, as you were saying that, I'm so curious. This is something that I feel like organizations are starting to pay more attention to, whether it was the pandemic that kind of brought out mental health, or we're just slowly moving in this direction, or we're just slowly moving in this direction. What is preventing organizations from moving in this direction, to really having leaders be resilient and think about the mental wellness of themselves and their teams?

Kamini Wood: 6:29

I think it could be a couple of different things, like, first of all, it's been normalized, not to right, it's kind of the state of how it's always been, and going against what's been normalized or what we've been conditioned to, that can be difficult because it's changed, it's different.

Kamini Wood: 6:43

But I also think that in our effort to do, to be productive, to produce, there might also be a fear of if I take the time to slow down and pay attention to this, I'm going to lose time, I'm not going to be as productive, and I've had this in conversations with people where, if they have two hours and you're asking them to take 10 minutes to practice mindfulness or practice breathing in order to regulate their nervous system, the response has been that I'm losing 10 minutes and I'm going to lose that productivity time.

Kamini Wood: 7:13

And so I think that's the challenge that we're facing is recognizing, though, as businesses and companies, taking that 10 minutes will actually allow for the rest of the 50 minutes, whatever the time is to be more productive, because if we don't take that 10 minutes, we're actually it's an opportunity cost at the end of the day, but I do think that companies have to get that shift has to happen where they're seeing this as an investment that will actually have. They'll have a return on the investment versus if they don't put the investment in, they're spinning their wheels, they're not getting as much out of it as they could.

Manya Chylinski: 7:46

Yes, and listeners. What you could not see, since this is an audio only podcast, is I was jumping up and down when she was saying this that sometimes taking the time to step away, go for a walk, quick walk, do mindfulness, whatever the practice is, but just take yourself out of that environment is actually the most productive thing you can do. Why is it so hard for us sometimes to recognize that or actually do it?

Kamini Wood: 8:13

I do think that it's again we go back to, like conditioned behavior. Nope, I got to just do this, I got to figure it out. It's like the math problem that we couldn't solve, and we just kept sitting there pulling our hair out, scratching the paper. No, no, no, no, I can't. I'm going to figure this out. I'm not going to give up until I figure it out. I'm going to push through this. But instead, though, had we given ourselves permission to step up, maybe go for a walk or go pet the dog or feed the cat, whatever the thing may have been and then come back and sat down, we would have had a fresh mindset, we would have been able to sit down and I know this, being a parent.

Kamini Wood: 8:44

I have often seen this happen with my kids, where they're getting so stressed out and I actually encourage them to step away from it and, 10 minutes later, whatever it is that they were struggling with makes so much more sense. But we fight it. We fight it because fear of lost time, fear of not being productive, and then fear of, like you know, just, I need to figure this out, I can figure this out, I need to just push through it. That's a big mentality that we've got to shift to Instead of pushing through. That's part of this emotional resilience. Instead of pushing through, name the emotions, pay attention to what's coming up and then the really important question is okay, now that I know that I'm feeling this way, what do I need? Figure out what you need. When that gets dealt with. Now we can shift and deal with whatever the challenge or stress is.

Manya Chylinski: 9:27

Yes, yes, yes, yes is what I want to say to that. So you know, when we're talking about leaders needing to be emotionally resilient, how does that trickle down to the team, or even to the bottom line?

Kamini Wood: 9:46

well as leaders become emotionally resilient. A couple things are happening. One they're showing up in a more grounded place as they're leading their team, because they're aware of what's going on for them emotionally. They're able to access what is at the need. They address it and then they can communicate from that place to their team. As they're showing up and doing that, they're creating space for their team to also do the same thing. Right, Because they're now making it safe to recognize that emotions actually matter. We pay attention to them, we make room for them. We don't let them drive the bus, but we allow them to be information packets to give us information on what it is that we need. And as we do that, we're empowering the team members.

Kamini Wood: 10:25

All of that allows for less burnout, more commitment to actually the work that they're doing, more investment in terms of time and energy. All of that is going to contribute to a better bottom line, because everybody's invested versus being completely burnt out. People are going to tap out, they're not going to. We see turnover so high in the areas where we're not paying attention to things like this. Right, Because at some point people tap out. They can't. They can't consistently keep pushing forward. And pushing forward Because at some point people tap out. They can't consistently keep pushing forward and pushing forward.

Manya Chylinski: 10:55

Yes, I have been reading about burnout recently that's just been on my as the keyword on my mind recently and how organizations are thinking actively about ways how to prevent burnout, minimize its impact. All of that stuff prevent burnout, minimize its impact, all of that stuff. I like thinking the connection between having a resilient leader and resiliency in general and preventing burnout, because I think you're right, you mentioned earlier we're sort of that go, go, go human doing and we have expected ourselves in the work environment to be different people than we are outside of the work environment.

Kamini Wood: 11:41

I think yeah, in the work environment it's almost as if we're expected to never feel and to just continue to push through. I do think some of us struggle right. We might take that out into our personal world, where we don't really give ourselves permission to feel. But for the most part, I think we go into work and we put on that mask of I am a human, doing I need to go produce, this is my job. But we know that burnout isn't just having too much on our plate. It includes things like lack of community, not feeling like you're part of that group of people, not feeling like you're rewarded or seen.

Kamini Wood: 12:13

Dan Siegel talks about the four S's in terms of parenting, in terms of being able to soothe, see, create security and safety. Right, that's true in all relationships. I find that that's even true in the work environment, as our leaders are able to provide those four S's for their team members. Those are the qualities that go into fighting against things like burnout, because, at the end of the day, humans need to know they matter and if they matter, then they feel that they are being seen. They do feel that there is safety and there's security and they're more likely to feel a part of something versus just feeling like people are taking from them. Right, that's where that burnout comes from. I have to produce, produce, produce, produce, and eventually there's just no more left in it.

Manya Chylinski: 13:01

Right, you know, I had somebody that I know say to me my company doesn't care about this stuff, they don't think about mental health in the workplace, they just want you know they're never going to invest in something like that workplace. They just want you know they're never going to invest in something like that. And that really scares me as a place for all of those, that community, where all of those people are now seen as somehow disposable or I'm not even sure what the term is Replaceable, almost.

Kamini Wood: 13:29

Yeah, yeah, it is. It's actually quite scary that there are companies and individuals who don't see the importance of things like this, because, at the end of the day, if we don't pay attention to these things, what we're expecting from those employees just can't happen. It's eventually they run out of the steam in order to produce what we want them to produce Right.

Manya Chylinski: 13:54

And what role do you think the stigma about mental health issues plays in these companies or individuals who don't want to be thinking about resilience and emotional health?

Kamini Wood: 14:07

I love that question. I and I hate to make generalizations However, I do think that we're starting to see a generation situation happening here, right Like the generations are. We're seeing where different generations are treating it differently, and what I mean by that is, I know that, my children's generation. There's still a stigma attached to some of it. However, it is far less than what I dealt with when I was their age, and I do think that we're seeing that in companies too.

Kamini Wood: 14:36

The companies that are steadfast and not wanting to talk about this tend to be more of that coming from an older generation. Perhaps in terms of these are things that we don't talk about, these are things kept behind closed doors. We keep these things, you know, we don't air our dirty laundry versus, you know, versus people who, maybe younger type companies, maybe companies that have emerged more recently, might have a different viewpoint on what it means and why it is so important to be paying attention to mental health, why we need to be talking about these things and that it's not a bad thing to talk about. So, while, again, I don't like to make generalizations, because I also do think that there are plenty of people who might be part of an older generation that are also working really hard to reduce the stigma.

Kamini Wood: 15:20

However, I think that's where the divide. We're still seeing it in companies, based on what I've seen and the conversations I've been having, because I know I go in and do speaking engagements for different companies on exactly these topics like emotional resilience, and it's very interesting to see which companies are really embracing it and which companies kind of say no, we don't really want to talk on that. Instead, we want to talk on productivity and time management, which is not bad. It's not bad at all to talk about those things, but it's. Can we make room for both to be in the room Right?

Manya Chylinski: 15:50

You know we're talking about leaders within organizations and pretty broadly defined. What role does the organization itself have in helping leaders become resilient and in building that culture and environment that's supportive of that?

Kamini Wood: 16:10

I think that organizations have a really important role in that because, again, as leaders become emotionally resilient and they affect their team members, organizations affect the leaders right, creating space to build, like I said, workshops on emotional resilience, providing an environment where we're encouraging leaders to learn about these things and to talk about these things, and reducing the stigma. That's the role that the organization plays in it, because it's encouraging their leaders and their emerging leaders to make this a priority, and make this a priority not just for the profit and the bottom line of the company, but for the wellness of the entire organization, because that's what's going to keep the organization going for the long term.

Manya Chylinski: 16:51

Right, and I feel like often we're kind of caught between that short-term and long-term thinking Feels good right now, or what do we just need to deal with right now, versus making small perhaps or big changes for reward in the future.

Kamini Wood: 17:09

No, and such a great point because I do think also this goes back to what we were talking about before, where it's well I don't want to take these 10 minutes of the day because they won't be productive.

Kamini Wood: 17:18

But it's short-term, right. But long-term gain, it's kind of the same thing. You know, making these smaller changes, they'll compound to make the larger changes over the long haul. And that's really what we're looking towards. It's not like you have to go in and make this huge, sweeping change, but starting to have these conversations, starting to encourage people to allow room for building emotional resilience, paying attention to what is your stress level today, how, what are you feeling? What do you need? Just even small things like that in our leadership. Now we're building that with our leaders and then they're going to take that. It's going to trickle down towards all the teams as well, right, Absolutely.

Manya Chylinski: 18:00

And going back to what you were saying about the generations which of course, is a generalization and we know that generations aren't even a real demographic group but as we're thinking about different age groups, I do see it as well that younger folks are sort of just assuming that we're going to be paying attention to mental health in the organization, that we're going to be paying attention to mental health in the organization, and not that I want to say that young people are going to save us. But I do appreciate that we are making enough change that there are people who expect it as the norm.

Kamini Wood: 18:36

Yes, yeah, it's shifting the normalized conditioned behavior. Right, yeah, which?

Manya Chylinski: 18:41

is what I wanted when I started this, so I know we're moving in that direction. So you know, thinking about the organization as a whole and the leader's role in the organization, what are some steps to do to really make sure they're building a culture of wellness and mental health in the organization, you know, in a way that feels right for them?

Kamini Wood: 19:07

I think that's such a great question because what you just said right there is, it has to feel right for them.

Kamini Wood: 19:12

So I don't think that there's a one size fits all for this. I think that there's many different ways that organizations can implement these things and to offer pathways to start bringing this into their culture. Some of it, for some individuals and for some individual corporations, it is about bringing in and talking about through workshops or lunch and learns about certain topics which, again, at the beginning may not have a huge showing but as you start to make that more normalized, people will start to buy into it. But that's a great way to not individualize or make, not to pull somebody out as, like you need to work on your emotional resilience, but it's more of a culturally wide thing that we're talking about. That can be done through, again, workshops, presentations, lunch and learns.

Kamini Wood: 19:59

I know many corporations started instituting wellness newsletters for their employees and so you're starting to bring in topics just around wellness and emotional health and mental wellbeing. So it's not just the conversation moves from, not just about productivity and bottom line and profitability, which are all important I'm not disputing that, but we're expanding the conversation across the board and really ultimately, if I were to sort of give like the what could they do? It is, start talking about it, start conversing, start bringing these things into the forefront.

Manya Chylinski: 20:33

Yes, it just made me think. I think a lot of us have had this experience, especially when we're younger professionals, having this idea and you say it out loud and no one in the room thinks it's a good idea. They either literally don't even respond to you or they sort of poo-poo you and then two months later somebody of a probably different demographic than you says the exact same thing and everyone says that's the greatest idea we have ever heard. And I, what I'm hearing. What you're saying is we're a little bit just building that in. We're having those conversations so the more times you hear it, it starts to be then. Then somebody will say the idea and you've heard it enough that it feels like a good idea.

Kamini Wood: 21:20

Yes, yes, because it doesn't feel so't feel so different or so off the mark, right. Yeah, it's sort of like when you tell your children something over and over and over again and then suddenly they repeat it back to you like it was just their idea and you think to yourself where did you get that from, right? It's kind of the same concept.

Manya Chylinski: 21:41

Whether it's kids or whether it's in your organization, you have to be communicating. That is a great idea, Not? Are you kidding me? Exactly, I told you this two months ago.

Kamini Wood: 21:53

Exactly, I love that idea Wonderful. How do we go about implementing it?

Manya Chylinski: 22:01

Just picturing the kids in my life. Yes, I know so, as we are, we're getting close to the time to end, but you know I wanted to. I was recently reading about employee assistance programs and how they're not actually very well used People. It's very small percentage I want to say almost less than 10% of utilization for a lot of these and that's a generalization. And organizations have a lot of programs like the EAPs and others, and I'm curious how do you see those fitting in or not fitting in to leaders being resilient and the organization being resilient?

Kamini Wood: 22:43

I think that those could actually be really, really beneficial. I think the ones that I've had experience with, and I'm actually utilizing my experience. What I'm saying experience with is talking to my own clients about the employee programs that their employers offer, and their reflection to me is it's too small, meaning it's almost taken like a checkbox approach, where it's like we have this employee assistance program but there hasn't been enough put into it. For instance, they might have like one person that they can contact for assistance with, maybe working through some mental health slash, emotional health things, right. Versus having maybe a directory of people so the employees feel empowered to find somebody that actually matches what it is that they need and it's a good fit.

Kamini Wood: 23:33

So that would be an example of, yes, the concept is great, but instead of it just being more of a checkbox, like we have this, it's put the time and effort into actually offering it on a wider range, right? So if you're going to have somebody that people can talk to, have a few different people within that group so that people can really get to know who's there and find the fit for them. If you're going to have workshops, allow for different types of workshops, right, not just one or two, and I know that that takes an investment of time and effort and money at the end of the day. But those are the things that we're talking about, like, if we're going to put an employee assistance program in place, make it count, right. I know Personal opinion on that one.

Manya Chylinski: 24:16

No, I appreciate it, and I think what might seem like a challenge to folks is something we've kind of been talking through this whole thread is that the real way to build this culture and be supportive is individual. So we're not all going to want to talk to the same type of person in your example of the EAP and so, as you said, having the checkbox of we have this person to talk to, that might work for you, it might not work for me, and I'm wondering, if there's fear, well, how big does this program or service or thing that we're offering have to be if everybody has a different idea of what's useful?

Kamini Wood: 25:00

Right To that point, though you're not going to be able to maybe make everybody happy, right. But it's. How do you find the middle ground versus? So instead, like to my example, instead of having one person that everybody contacts, have a directory of people or at least refer them to. Here are some people that you potentially could contact. Or this is a program that we've heard. It's about partnering partnering and figuring out who are the best partners. But to your original point too, I do think that fear plays a part in this, is I'm scared that this is going to get too big and I don't want my whole business to be around running an EAP, for example, right. And so it is about this balance of finding what works for the business, first of all, and also having some boundaries around it. Like it can't be a boundary list opportunity, like we have an employee assistance program. We're just going to keep adding stuff, but having some idea of what is the purpose of it and then making sure that you're at least offering things within that purpose.

Manya Chylinski: 25:55

Absolutely Well, Kamini. We're getting close to the end of our time and, just to wrap up, what is giving you hope when you're thinking about leaders and resilience and organizations?

Kamini Wood: 26:08

The thing that's giving me hope and this goes to your question about the stigma is I'm very hopeful based on the fact that people seem much more willing to talk about these things, much more willing to start a conversation, Because I do believe that the more we talk about it you know, I talk about this even in my coaching is the way we work through shame is we have to start talking about the thing that we've been shaming ourselves with. It's the way we get to that unshaming process. I believe this is another example of this, is something we need to start talking about, and the more we talk about it, that's how we're going to shift and change some of these conditioned behaviors.

Manya Chylinski: 26:43

Right, Absolutely All right. You heard it here first. Everyone, Kamini, thank you so much. Tell our listeners how they can reach you if they want to learn more about you and your work.

Kamini Wood: 26:53

I am on the web at kaminiwoodcom, and then Facebook and Instagram with the handle. It's Authentic Me oh.

Manya Chylinski: 27:01

I love it. I will put links to those in the show notes so to make it easier for people to find you. And thank you so much for this conversation. It's been eye-opening.

Kamini Wood: 27:13

Thank you for having me.

Manya Chylinski: 27:20

Thank you for listening. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I did. So if you'd like to learn more about me, Manya Chylinski, I work with organizations to help understand how to create environments where people can thrive after difficult life experiences, and I do this through talks and consulting. I'm a survivor of mass violence and I use my experience to help leaders learn about resiliency, compassion and trauma-sensitive leadership to build strategies to enable teams to thrive and be engaged amidst difficulty and turmoil. If this is something you want to learn more about, visit my website, www. manyachylinski. com, email me at manya@manyachylinski. com or stop by my social media on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thanks so much.