Transcript: Your People Aren’t Burned Out—Their Work May Be Draining the Life Out of Them // Jay Bransford, Best Christian Workplaces

Jay: When people are not experiencing life-giving work, they tend to disengage, their energy drops, their creativity stalls, you know people just do enough to get by, and from the outside it can look like a performance issue, but in reality, it’s often a culture or environment issue.

Narrator: This is the Called to Flourish podcast, where leaders and cultures grow.

Robert: Welcome back to the Called to Flourish podcast, where leaders and cultures grow. Today we have our President and CEO, Jay Bransford, on the podcast with us today. Welcome to the podcast, Jay.

Jay: Thanks Rob. Great to be with you again.

Robert: Welcome back. So, we are on a series with Jay where we’re just touching on each of our eight FLOURISH drivers so that we can equip and inspire all of you with just some tools, some insights, to make some adjustments and just grow as a leader and inspire a more engaged, flourishing culture so you can make a greater kingdom impact. So that’s what we’re all about. I’ll kind of set the episode up today. We’re talking about life-giving work. I will say that our research, and Jay, you can attest to this, does show higher levels of engagement across the board than other data out there, such as Gallop and probably some of the others. I think part of that could be life-giving work elements. In other words, leaders – I should say when you work at a Christian-led organization, there is often an alignment of mission and a sense of life-giving work, whether it’s a church or a nonprofit, a mission, something of that nature, whether you’re a teacher, higher ed, it is a sense of, hey, this is what I believe in, this is life-giving work, that’s why I’ve chosen this versus the corporate path. So, we’re drawn to this kind of work. This is what we want to get into, is touch on making sure we’re removing any barriers that would prevent that life-giving work from really flourishing and resulting in the incredible results that we all want to see. So, Jay, how about we just jump right in? We really want to hear from you, an expert in this space, so love for you really to just kind of set the stage for us, if you could, on what we mean at Best Christian Workplaces when we talk about life-giving work, why it’s relevant, take a deep dive with us into that.

Jay: You bet, Rob. That’s a great place to start. Thanks. So yeah, what do we mean by life-giving work and how does that relate to our focus at Best Christian Workplaces to help organizations create engaged, flourishing workplaces? So, yeah, when we use the term life-giving work, we really mean the extent to which an employee feels a sense of energy and purpose and fulfillment in and through their daily work, and maybe another way to think of it more simply, Rob, is to what extent does your work bring you life and energy versus zap you of your life and energy? I know we’ve all been there when things zap us, so.

Robert: Yeah.

Jay: Thankfully, Rob, you know, we’re all unique in that we don’t all enjoy the same things, nor are we all good at the same things. Obviously, we all have unique passions and gifts and skills and interests, so hopefully it makes sense then that people tend to experience life-giving work when there’s a strong alignment with how they are uniquely wired and together with the work they get to do. So, how they’re wired, does it match up with the work they get to do? Basically, if a high percentage of the work you get to do everyday is what you love and what you’re good at, you feel great, but if a high percentage of the work you do every day are things you don’t really enjoy or you don’t feel competent at, then you tend to feel drained and discouraged at the end of the day, and that’s really the power of either the existence of, or the absence of, life-giving work. So, I think the second part of your question there, Rob, was how does life-giving work relate to employee engagement or workplace culture? So, as you know, Rob, and I think as many of our listeners probably know, Best Christian Workplaces is also a research institute, right, so we have over 24 years of experience in collecting and researching and analyzing data about workplace culture and about employee engagement and that research allows us to much better understand the dynamics of organizational culture and what the key drivers of strong employee engagement really are. We’ve summarized much of those findings in our co-founder’s book, Although Lopus’s book, which is titled, Road to Flourishing, Eight Keys to Boost Employee Engagement and Well-Being, and those eight keys in the book’s title, that’s what we’ve discovered are the main drivers behind creating a workplace culture that encourages people to bring the greatest amounts of energy and enthusiasm and passion and commitment to their work. So, again, Rob, you know we use the acronym of the word FLOURISH to more easily remember what those eight drivers of employee engagement are. Today, as you already introduced it, we are narrowing in on the second letter of FLOURISH, the L, which stands for life-giving work. Although all of the eight drivers of employee engagement are significant and are necessary to create a healthy flourishing workplace, according to our research life-giving work is actually the second most powerful driver of employee engagement of our eight drivers. So that, Rob, is how and why life-giving work is as relevant to employee engagement and exactly why we’re talking about it today.

Robert: Yeah, second most powerful driver. It’s really, really important that people in the workplace feel that what they’re doing is, exactly the word, life-giving. I had a preacher once that I was listening to talk about this briefly, and he used this analogy that was just so clear. He said that if there’s somebody that’s playing the piano, for example, like on the worship team, let’s just say, as an example, and they don’t know how to play the piano very well, they’re not naturally gifted by God to do it, they can struggle and sweat and try and they’re nervous and it’s hard. Then you take somebody who’s just so naturally gifted and it’s life-giving, they can play twice as many beautiful notes with half the effort, was the way he described it. That always stuck with me about life-giving work, that it’s just, you feel good and you feel energized because it’s something that you’re wired and gifted to do, and I love the way you said that. That’s why we want to make sure that we’re focusing in on this second most, you know, correlated driver to engagement. On that note, Jay, talk to us about the differences between when you’ve got folks on the team that maybe are energized by their work versus maybe they’re just kind of getting by, surviving, and they’re not energized. What do we see in terms of the signals or differences there with those two contrasts?

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. I don’t think any of this is going to be a surprise to anyone listening, but as you can imagine, the kind of behaviors you tend to see in employees who are experiencing life-giving work can be substantially different, in a better way, than those whose work is not bringing them life. I love that example you just used, Rob, about playing the piano in church and if you are talented at it or not. I love another analogy, a higher-level analogy, of kind of seeing every one of our employees as a seed that has been intentionally planted into our organizations, and that seed has real potential inside of it, but whether it actually grows and flourishes depends almost entirely on the environment around it, right. In this case it depends on the workplace environment around your people. So, if a seed is planted in hard or dry soil with little sunlight and inconsistent watering and no intentional care, it probably won’t grow well, right, but that doesn’t really necessarily mean that the seed was bad. It means the conditions weren’t right for growth, so at best that seed might survive for a little while, but it won’t thrive, it won’t bear good fruit, and really, Rob, the same is true in a workplace environment. When people are not experiencing life-giving work, they tend to disengage, their energy drops, their creativity stalls, you know people just do enough to get by, and from the outside it can look like a performance issue, but in reality, it’s often a culture or environment issue.

Robert: That’s actually encouraging because you’re kind of describing here two sides of a coin. So one side of the coin is this person’s naturally gifted, this is life-giving work, they’re in the right seat per se, but there’s another side to that, that the environment then, that is the responsibility of leadership, can play a part in whether that life-giving work really manifests in a way that God intended. I love the analogy that you mentioned about the seed as well. What a great way for leaders to look at each and every person as a seed with potential, so much potential growth, and far be it for us as leaders to get in the way of that growth that God wants to give. I guess on that note, the natural question then is, where do leaders perhaps unintentionally, I guess, drain the meaning out of the work or prevent that seed from really being cultivated, watered, the way that it needs to. Let’s say they’re aligned with the mission and they’re in the right seat, how do leaders unintentionally – no leaders intentionally out there – let me suppress this life-giving work, but what is happening with leaders when they’re not recognizing that their leadership is unintentionally draining the meaning out of the work of their people?

Jay: Yeah, yeah. Make sure we’re clear that virtually no leaders come to work trying to think of ways to drain the life out of their people, right. Of course, we don’t. We care about our people. But at the same time, none of us are perfect and nor do we always realize the impact on our staff of some of the things that we say or that we do, and of course, I’m not exempt from this either. Rob, as you know, we’re all a work in progress. Yeah. So, what are some of the common, yet generally unintentional mistakes that leaders make that can drain the life and energy of their staff? I’ll share a few examples. I think I’ll start with something that probably most leaders don’t do often enough, which is to talk about the work that people are doing every day and connect that to the mission and the vision of the organization. There’s actually, I think there are several key elements of that statement that are important. It’s not just about leaders failing to talk about the mission and the vision often enough. That is part of it, and we can never really talk about the mission and vision too often, I think, so I always encourage leaders to talk about their mission and their vision every chance you get, but in addition, I think leaders often don’t connect the impact of their people’s work directly to the mission and the vision because that’s also critical, right, because if your staff don’t realize or feel that their contribution matters in a significant way, they’re not going to be as energized to give their all. It makes sense, right, so I think that’s why it’s so important for leaders to frequently share stories with their staff about ways in which their staff have made a difference and really connect those dots on how a team or a person’s actions have supported the mission and vision of the organization. It’s a great way to encourage and to reward great performance and behavior and to tie it all back to the purpose of the organization because people will just be energized when you do so, so that’s one thing. I think another mistake that leaders sometimes make that zaps people’s energy is to underutilize a person’s strengths or giftings. It’s easy for leaders, for us, to assign tasks or projects to the first people they notice that’s available to do it, right, and in the short run, that can be totally fine and even necessary to do, but as time goes by, I think it’s easy for leaders to not realize that we’ve created a workload for a person that is far more based on organizational need and convenience than it is on matching the right person to the right kind of work activities. You know when we passively assign people to work for too long, we may end up finding out that an employee is spending too much of their time on things that aren’t in their sweet spot of their strengths and passions and giftings. For those of our listeners who are familiar with like the Clifton Strengths Finders or Patrick Lencioni’s 6 Working Geniuses (The 6 Types of Working Genius), it’s a similar concept, right. So, I think both Clifton and Lencioni, they recognize the importance of knowing what people’s strengths are, what their passions are, and then giving them opportunities to develop and to shine in those areas, rather than expecting them to flourish in roles that may not be a good match. Now, probably lots more examples I can give, Rob, of ways that leaders unintentionally drain energy or excitement about work, but I’ll give one more example. I’d say maybe not providing a person with a level of decision-making authority that they need, that can be a real life drainer for employees. So, what do I mean by that? Here’s an example. So let’s say, what if I tell a person that I expect them to respond to customer inquiries, but at the same time I tell them that they first have to run all of their proposed responses by me first, and maybe I say, any final resolution of that concern you definitely have to run by me first. You know, obviously there are reasons in life where we need to escalate issues to higher levels of leadership, but if in that kind of situation, if that almost always is happening, there’s a good chance that I haven’t really given that person the decision-making authority that they need to do their job efficiently. It can be a sign that the person hasn’t been trained thoroughly or that they’re not sufficiently competent to do their job or simply that you don’t trust them, but I think the main point is that people get frustrated when we ask them to do something but then we don’t trust them to make the decisions necessary to get the work done. So, we as leaders need to be clear about the boundaries and the expectations of decision making that we’re giving people when we delegate tasks to them because when their decision-making authority is nonexistent or unclear, it has a tendency to really frustrate people and zap them of their excitement and their motivation for the task. By the way, Rob, a quick aside, each of the examples I just shared with you are things that we directly assess and evaluate through our own Employee Engagement Survey at Best Christian Workplaces. If leaders out there want to know what level of life-giving work your workplace has, where you’re doing well, where you can improve it, using an employee engagement survey, such as ours, will give you really helpful input and direction.

Robert: I jotted down a couple of examples that I guess - they come from a church background and pastoring a church for a while, so these examples jumped to mind. I’ll throw them out there just to see if they are meaningful to our listeners. But you mentioned that idea of, hey, tying the work back to overall mission, and I thought of this idea of like you could have somebody who has the gift of helps, which the Bible talks about the gift of helps. You can apply this to any organization, any organization and any role, but just by way of an example. Okay. I’ve got the gift of helps. This person loves helping, right. They get life out of just assisting, helping, doing that kind of work, and you say, “Okay, I want you to go move all those chairs and move them all over here and shift around this whole auditorium and we need it done in 90 minutes, right.” It’s like, okay, they can get to work doing that task, but then if you said something like, “and the reason for that is because Craig Groeschel is coming to speak to our audience tonight. It’s is a surprise visit and he’s going to breathe life into leadership and to our team.” All of a sudden, that task, for the same gifted person, has a lot more meaning to it. It’s a lot more life giving because you understand, ahh, this is how this menial task, which could seem insignificant, is going to produce a great outcome that is so significant and meaningful. I also loved how you are talking about – these are really tangible, practical concepts. This is not rocket science, but the idea of you have to run everything by me, and the example came to mind when David was going to take on Goliath and he had the faith and he had his way that he was going to approach fighting Goliath, and it wasn’t Saul’s armor. It was his approach. He had to have the liberty and the freedom to operate in his giftings in a way that was really unique to his abilities and I just love those. Both of those are just really practical, really key things, and they do zap the life out of people when they’re not afforded those two insights, so really, really good stuff here. I’m really loving this.

Jay: Great examples, Rob. I like it.

Robert: Yeah. No. I love this topic because it is so true and it’s so important to engagement.

Narrator: Leading well starts with listening well. At Best Christian Workplaces, our Employee Engagement Survey helps you collect honest, anonymous feedback from your staff so you can lead with clarity. When you understand what drives team engagement, you retain top talent, increase productivity, reduce turnover, and uncover cost savings. We equip Christian leaders with research-driven insight to strengthen culture and lead with purpose. Because when your people flourish, your mission impact multiples. Visit workplaces.org to learn more today.

Robert: So, another question for you. It talking about some of these examples and the things that you mentioned, those principles, how does the connecting the daily tasks to the deeper calling actually change behavior and engagement? So, we’re talking about these examples, connect that dot for us. How does it actually – how does that happen?

Jay: Yeah, that’s great because this is kind of going to a deeper question, right. So, I think when people consistently see how their daily work connects to a deeper calling, like you were just talking about, those great examples, that doesn’t just change how they feel about their job. It actually fundamentally changes how they show up and how they perform, right. So as we said a minute ago, Rob, when a person’s work is seen as having a strong sense of purpose and meaningful contribution, we call that life-giving work. It’s one of the strongest drivers of engagement, and when the meaning of a person’s work is clear and personal, there are several behavioral shifts that we tend to see. One of those shifts is we see people move from compliance to ownership, right.

Robert: Wow.

Jay: So, this means that instead of people coming to work and asking themselves, “Hmm, what do I have to get done today?” Instead, they begin to think, “How can I make the greatest impact today?” And basically, they take responsibility for significant outcomes, not just for completing tasks, when there is that connection, right, between what they’re doing and the purpose and meaning. So, a second behavioral shift we see is when people see the calling and purpose behind their work, they shift from just clocking in for the required hours to going over and beyond in their effort and in the quality of their effort, and they don’t do it out of pressure. They do it because they care. They know about the impact. They understand it. And I’d say the third thing, another example of what we see behaviorally from when people are energized by the purpose of their work, we see they often move from working in isolation to working more collaboratively as a team because work becomes more relational and people collaborate more willingly because they see themselves as contributing to something bigger than themselves that’s meaningful and important. So, I would say basically, Rob, at the core, when we as leaders connect our staff’s daily tasks to a deeper calling, it really helps to answer that question, why does my work matter? And the answer to that question absolutely can fuel energy and passion and motivation or what we call engagement and that is why leaders play such a critical role, not just in defining the mission, but in continually helping people see how they’re everyday work is part of a much bigger story.

Robert: That is the nuts and bolts of engagement, isn’t it?

Jay: It is.

Robert: Wow, you can see it so clearly how – what engagement actually looks like: Ownership, energy, going above and beyond, all of that. So, I guess that begs the question of the silent killer to this particular driver is, you know, clearly if you’re not in the right seat - they always say, get the right people on the bus and the make sure the people on the bus are in the right seats. We’ve heard that as leaders. I’d love to go deeper in it because I think it warrants conversation and it ties into this important driver. So, what happens, just fundamentally, what happens when someone’s role doesn’t match how God has actually, you know, wired them? What happens to them?

Jay: Yeah. We’ve all seen this happen, Rob. When someone’s role doesn’t align with how God wired them, with their strengths and their passions, you don’t just see a dip in their performance. You actually see kind of a gradual loss of their energy, of their engagement, of their fruitfulness over time. They may end up shifting into survival mode just to make it through each day. They become discouraged. They may lose self-confidence. It’s not surprising that they’re less likely to be creative and bring new innovative thoughts as well, but you know, overall their contribution decreases, collaboration declines, and their risk of burnout goes up and really the bottom line is that people flourish and organizations become more effective when individuals are able to consistently do work that aligns with how they’re uniquely wired.

Robert: Love it. So, I guess then that leads to another question. If I’m a leader and I’m thinking, okay, yeah, that’s my desire. I want to get people in the right seat. I understand. I want to tie their work to the mission. I’m going to make sure they’re empowered. I want to make sure they’re in the right seat. How do I recognize and understand the people I have? How do I understand their strengths and their motivation so that I can ensure that that happens? What have you got for us?

Jay: Yeah. Great question. I think one thing to keep in mind is that I think understanding people’s strengths and their motivation isn’t necessarily something that leaders can fully accomplish by using an assessment or let’s say a one-day team building event where you talk about personality types or enneagrams or strengths or Working Geniuses, for example. But don’t get me wrong. Those are all great tools, but I’d say getting to know people is really about consistently spending time with them, right, through intentional habits that combines things like asking them questions and listening and observing and applying what you’re learning and reflecting and just ongoing dialogue with people. But it’s really about what happens over time after that assessment or after that team building event, right. What happens over time, that is what determines the extent to which we successfully apply what we’re learning about ourselves and about others. It takes time, right, not just to learn about their strengths and motivations but it takes time to figure out how to best apply that in new work situations.

Robert: So good. So it’s more than just a tool. It’s more. It requires getting to know. It requires time. It requires observation, listening, all of those incredible leadership attributes. I love that. And so, let’s just get down to, you know, an example. What’s an example you’ve seen or you’d like to share of how actually moving someone into the right seat changed everything for that person and for the organization?

Jay: Yeah. Yeah. You’ve already mentioned the term a couple times here, putting people in the right seat, that’s – obviously that comes from Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great, well known for that concept of having the right people and having them in the right seats of the bus, which really means it’s not just about hiring good people, but it’s also about making sure you put them in the right position that matches their strengths and passions. That’s what that means. So, I think we’ve probably known of situations in our work life when someone around us has shifted to a very different position in the organization. Sometimes we call that a lateral move or promotion, and usually the most likely reason for that lateral move is that the person or their employer realized that the person was more interested in or passionate about or talented in a very different kind of role or competency within the organization so they made a change, right, and it makes perfect sense why people make lateral moves like that, because the reality is that we’re all getting to know ourselves better as we age and it’s very common for us to discover new hidden talents and interests over time or to discover that what we thought we were great at or loved doing doesn’t feel as true anymore, right. I actually think that shifting people’s roles should probably happen far more often in life than it does because it’s generally a good thing because it usually means that we’ve discovered how to better utilize a person and, in doing so, help them to flourish. So Rob, you know that I spent the first half of my career in corporate consulting and then about 16 years of my life as a missionary in Asia where I provided consulting for mission organizations and Christian nonprofits and churches. During my years on the mission field, I had the privilege of literally meeting thousands of missionaries, and there were many, many times where I saw a missionary make a relatively dramatic change in what they did and in a role, and I think maybe the main reason for that is the mission organization I was with, which is called YWAM, tends to attract young people just out of high school or college who are sensing a calling to missions, and by the way, YWAM stands for Youth With a Mission, so it makes sense that there are a lot of young people in YWAM. So, people start out in YWAM by getting trained and equipped through a five or six-month discipleship training school, which we call DTS, and during that time they usually have opportunities to get exposed to a really wide variety of expressions of Christian ministry. Sometimes, it could be either before, during, or after their DTS school, they excitedly decide to join a particular ministry, just like people decide to join any kind of job in life sometimes, right. But as time goes by, I oftentimes have seen lots of missionaries realize that it wasn’t – what they chose, the ministry they chose to join, or the business, they realize it’s not a great match for how God created them. For example, in the world of missions, some ministries lean more toward evangelism and others lean more toward discipleship and others lean more toward mercy ministries. All those things are incredibly important, but all they all tend to require different skillsets and gifts, so oftentimes I saw missionaries shifting ministries as they learned more about themselves and the type of ministry that fit them best. Even going a step deeper from that, I saw people realize that they might have a very specific skillset or passion, like let’s say for photography or filmmaking or counseling or coffee roasting, for example, and they eventually realize, oh, I could use this skill on the mission field, so they switch to a new ministry in a very different context. But overall, I think it’s just – it’s pretty amazing and exciting when you get to see the lightbulb go off for people as they realize something new about how God’s wired them and then they find a role or a purpose that fits them well.

Robert: Yeah. It’s an exciting time of life as you’re growing up, and you and I are older now, but when you do begin to discover, wow, that’s a gift I have, that’s something that God has given me, and you’re able to align that. I keep thinking about my boys and playing baseball. Both my boys are young. They’re still in the age of playing baseball, like select baseball. They try out for the team every season. I think - these coaches are assessing them, they’re watching them, and trying to figure out like, where do these players go? They’ve never seen them. They’ve never played together before. You’ll see exactly what you described. Put this person over in right field or left field. Put this person back in the infield. We’ll move this. It’s this responsibility of leaders to be good assessors of talent and help shift and move things around, the puzzle pieces, I guess, so that everyone can be in the right seat. What a responsibility that leaders have there. On that same note of using a sports analogy, there are some coaches that are encouraging, more encouraging than others.

Jay: Yeah.

Robert: So, I wanted to touch on this because I think this is baked into kind of our – the way we analyze and survey and how we use industrial and organizational psychology to understand these elements, but you know in terms of recognition and encouragement, I’d love to touch on that because it is part of this, baked into life-giving work. Talk to us about how you – how we see recognition and encouragement and how that too plays into what can drive higher levels of life-giving work.

Jay: Yeah. Yeah. Again, Rob, providing people with recognition and encouragement is incredibly powerful because it reinforces one of the deepest human needs in general, but also at work, which is the need to know that what we do matters and that what we do as people matters, that we matter and the work we do matters. So, and by the way, I’m going to also remind everyone of kind of that general rule of thumb, and this relates to coaching as well, Rob, because I’m sitting here thinking about all the people that I had as coaches throughout the years and the ones that I thought were awesome and the ones that maybe weren’t so much, but there’s kind of a general rule of thumb that for every negative comment you hear from a coach or a leader or from anyone in life, for every negative comment or criticism you hear, we need to hear, you know, positive comments five to seven times more often. I think, for me, 10 times more often. We need to say more positive things way more often, right. So, it’s helpful to keep that in mind with our staff. When our employees consistently receive meaningful recognition and encouragement, a few things tend to happen. So, I probably already said this, but giving recognition connects their efforts to purpose. They’re reminded why their work matters. Recognition affirms a person’s value and identity, rather than just thinking of them as statistics about performance, right, and also when they receive encouragement, it obviously increases their energy and motivation. And I think lastly, when you recognize somebody, it really strengthens your relational connection with them, right, and that sense of belonging to the team or the organization.

Robert: Yeah. I was just making a note on what you just said there because I loved it. When we talk about recognition, it’s not about, hey, let me boost this person’s ego. It’s about ego, you know. I have to - it’s really about people need that affirmation. We tend to really hone in on negative things or mistakes that we make and it’s harder for us as - at least for me, I guess, to hear the good, so we have to say the good more than, you know, more than we might even realize to our people. So, it’s not about, I’m going to recognize this person because it’s about how great they are, right. It’s really about affirming the work you did mattered. It’s making a difference. It’s meaningful. And of course, we do need an affirmation of our – even our identity in a work context as well and the relational piece as well. Really, really great insights and I think I’ve got one more question that I’d like to lean in and get your insights on and that’s a great way, I think maybe, to close out this podcast, this episode today, which is give us just a few leadership habits, and maybe you’ve mentioned some already, but let’s just recap it all. What are some leadership habits that our listeners can take away to consistently turn work into something life giving?

Jay: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. A few things leaders can do that will help ensure their staff are experiencing life-giving work, a great wrap-up question, Rob. I think this can serve as a quick summary of many of the things that we’ve already talked about. Let me go through a few things here. First, I would say, again let’s regularly connect people’s work to the mission. That’s one. Second thing, get to know people personally, not just professionally. Third, align people’s work with their strengths whenever you can, right. Fourth, provide clarity and direction so that staff clearly know what success in their role looks like. Fifth, I would say offer consistent encouragement, like we just said, and recognition. It’s hard to do that too much. I think also we can build trust through frequently asking for input and listening and following through. And then maybe a couple more, empower people, rather than micromanage them, and that’s kind of that decision making, giving them decision-making authority, right. And then lastly, I would say develop people, give them opportunities to learn and to grow into their God-given talents and abilities. Yeah, hopefully those are some – hopefully those are some helpful examples of habits, Rob, that we as leaders can develop and that should support the likelihood of our staff experiencing life-giving work, as again, bottom line, Rob, from a research perspective we know that employees who feel valued and appreciated are consistently more engaged, more resilient, more committed to the organization and in many ways recognition becomes life giving because it breathes meaning back into everyday work. It really helps people see that they are not invisible, their contribution matters, and the work they’re doing is helping move something important forward. So, I think often the difference between somebody feeling drained versus energized is not really the amount of work they’re doing, but whether they feel seen and valued and connected to the impact of their work, and you know, Rob, that is what the concept of life-giving work is all about. So, thanks for giving us a chance to talk about this topic today. I appreciate it.

Robert: Yeah. Amazing. So I think I counted eight, if I’m not mistaken, eight practical leadership habits, so if you’re listening, watching this episode, you probably – maybe you’re in your car or maybe you’re running, maybe you’re doing chores or something and you didn’t have a chance to write those down, but you can go back. That’s the beauty of this digital technology. I’d encourage you to go back and jot those down because those eight tips, habits, can translate into – think about this – the second most important powerful driver in engagement is this topic right here, so this is important. I would encourage you as a listener to subscribe, if you haven’t, to this podcast. You can get more of these incredible insights. Please do share this. Forward it to a friend, a colleague, somebody you think would benefit from the insights that Jay shared today because it can make a huge difference and not only for your organization, because we really want kingdom impact. Kingdom impact is what this is all about. But even in the life of your people, when life-giving work returns to them, it impacts their whole world. They go home from work every day and it changes their environment at home even, and sleep, you know the whole thing, when they’re getting energy and life and your leadership is a huge piece of the puzzle for life-giving work for your people. So, Jay, thanks for being part of this podcast episode. We’ll have Jay back on soon, as you all know, and we’ll see you next time on the Called to Flourish podcast. Be blessed. See you soon.

Jay: Thanks, Rob.