Trauma is more common in the workplace than usually considered. Kevin Gibbs who combines communication, organizational strategies, and employee wellbeing talks about empathy, IBS, technology, leadership and lots more in a wide-ranging interview. This is part of the TouchBase Reach Out series.
Visit Kevin’s Wellbeing Mastery Academy and follow him on LinkedIn
You can watch the interview here, or read the transcript, lightly edited for clarity.
Yohay Elam (YE): Hi everyone. Thanks for watching or listening. Welcome to another episode of the Reach out series where we explore the intersection of human connection, technology and mental well being. I’m Yohay Elam, founder of Touch Base, an app that tackles loneliness by helping foster meaningful connections. And today I’m glad to have with me Kevin Gibbs, who is a well being specialist for high achievers.
Hi Kevin, how are you doing?
Kevin Gibbs (KG): Thanks for having me here. Hi. I’m doing well, thank you very much. And you?
YE: Good, good. All good. Strong air condition here, can’t complain.
YE: So what you do sounds fascinating, especially as it combines communications, organizational strategies, employee well being. But could you start a bit by telling us a bit about yourself and what drives your passion for empowering individuals and companies?
KG: Sure. So I’m gonna have to go back in history a little bit for this. When I was a small kid, my parents divorced when I was five and that led me to overeating. And then at school I was teased for that and for being British. In Finland, a name like Kevin Gibbs was definitely not heard of when I was a kid.
And my humor was British based in Finland. Only I would say the past 20 years or so has sarcasm, wit and so forth being a thing. So I was not understood. I was a weird kid, as it were. So I really early on experienced a lot of trauma and that led me to developing IBS.
And in the end that became so bad that I was ready to take my own life. And that happened when my kid was half a year old and I shouted at him for accidentally bumping my head. I was in so much pain that I just couldn’t take that anymore.
And that’s when I realized I wasn’t the father I wanted to be. And I’d been. I was 13 when I wanted to become a father. So now as I finally had it, I was ruining it. That was my thought. Basically. I was not sleeping at all well. I wasn’t able to do my work.
I wasn’t the loving husband I wanted to be. I wasn’t the loving son I wanted to be. And I was failing in every way I could in my own opinion. So I was very close to taking my life. And then my half year old kid started laughing when I was crying with my then girlfriend.
And then I realized I have to do something because I have to be here for the boy. He deserves a father. So that basically started me on my well being journey. And I started doing anger management. I started learning emotional freedom techniques, schema therapy. I started learning everything I could from PubMed, that’s published medical journals about IBS, sleep, so forth.
And I trained to be a personal trainer, massage therapist, neurokinetic therapist. I basically fixed myself and now I’m helping others. So that’s my story and that’s my passion because I realized that if you can go from being so badly in shape that you cannot live anymore, that everything that you eat makes you hurt, that you hate yourself as a person, to having virtually no symptoms and being able to help others, being a good father.
I’m in a really good relationship nowadays, different lady but, but still a wonderful relationship. And if you’re able to do that switch, then you’re able to do switches for virtually anyone who has some kind of trauma. I might not always be able to do that for everyone, but it’s possible.
And that really inspired me. So then working from individual basis. So I’ve worked with massage therapists, I’ve coached experts, I worked with parents, high achievers, leaders, semi pro athletes, parents all over the place. From that to realizing that, wait, I can only treat one person at a time, which I love doing.
But how about if I could do more? How about if it could change a company the way they work and that could change all of their employers lives. So if you have like 150 employees and all their lives change, that’s massive.
If you can influence a few people in the company and change the what’s called company DNA then it’s felt everywhere. I see it when companies where the spirit of the founder, even if the founder is not involved in the company, still influences the workers for good or for bad.
And I think that if you can touch few people then you can make a difference.
YE: Definitely. Just look at Richard Branson. I mean that guy is so happy. He’s, if I remember right, dyslexic. And because of that he’s got empathy for people who have difficulties in learning or difficulties reading. And he takes that into account in his work. And what I’ve read about it, what I’ve seen is that he really cares for his workers and that changes company culture.
And is he doing well? Are his companies doing well? Yes, very well.
YE: We had a minor laugh here and I want to circle back to what you mentioned about your child laughing. Is laughter also a part of what you’re doing? I mean, helping people.
KG: Actually not only in terms of helping people. This is a good question by the way, very good question. I wanted to be a stand up comedian at one point. And the only reason I didn’t do that was because of the childhood teasing. So I of course felt that I am no good.
Nobody likes me. Only my family likes my humor. And only later on did I realize, no, actually my humor is university like, it’s just that I went through a bad patch. So maybe I’ll do that later on. But what I have noticed is that when I coach individuals, particularly when I’m dealing with really, really tough traumas from their childhood, and that’s kind of my specialty, dealing with those.
You have to have some humor now. You need to be able to read the situation. You know when to be frivolous. Exactly. But I haven’t had a single client who, when I’ve asked for a testimonial, hasn’t said one of the best things was that we could laugh even when we’re talking about bad stuff.
So I think laughter is definitely a medicine. But you do need to know the dosage and where to put it.
YE: Like with, with every medicine, I guess. Yes. Being the right doses. Okay, let’s talk about communication. You communicate with your clients and have the occasional life as well. Communication is at the heart of what you do. In a world where we have so much miscommunication and it leads to stress and disengagement.
Some of the things you already mentioned. How can companies use communication to empower employees and to foster a more positive work culture?
KG: Well, that actually circles back to mental well being first. So if you think about communication, the communication that most people tend to do is transactional. So I need that, give me that. And we often forget that we need to look at the emotions. I mean, sure, if you want a coffee, it’s not that big of a thing.
That’s a transaction.
But even then you would preferably not say, give me coffee is, could you please give me coffee? Or I would like some coffee. Could you please make me some, you know, something kind. But when you start thinking about communication through emotion and through active listening, then you realize that behind the sentences there’s an actual core issue or want or need.
So let’s take an example of where a colleague, for instance, would say, you still didn’t give me the paper. Right. You realize, okay, they want the paper, that’s the transaction. But the reality is they are feeling anxious about something.
Right. They’re projecting it to you. Perhaps it was your fault, perhaps you were supposed to give it earlier. But let’s say there’s a two week deadline. You’re thinking to yourself, there’s two weeks. What the heck? Why are you shouting at me as two weeks? That’s a defensive attitude that is very easy to go to.
And that stems from them using judgmental tone or language or posture in their body. Right?
YE: Becomes confrontational.
KG: Exactly. So now if that happens to you, then you have to start thinking, okay, what is the actual issue? They know that if I give the paper in two days time, they still have virtually two weeks. There’s not a problem. So that must mean there’s something else. So you can use active listening.
Now, active listening is not only hearing the words, but hearing the emotions. This is something I think every leader needs to understand and every person, basically anyone, should use this if possible. So then you could go like this. Okay, I understand you need the paper, and I hear that you’re anxious.
Is there anything else I can also help you with? Not just the paper. Is there something else that’s giving you a lot of workload and maybe they’ll get a bit defensive, maybe not. You have to deal with that as it goes along. But let’s say they say, well, I’ve got a lot of stuff going on, then okay, you’ve hit the nail on the head.
It’s not necessarily the paper. So then you can try and help them figure out how to deload while at the same time ensuring that they understand you will get the paper to them. Sort of like deescalate the situation instead of going, hey, you’ve got two weeks still, man, give me a break.
Because then you’re getting a fight, you don’t want that. And that’s just between two people. But that works in a team too. If the entire team culture is empathic understanding, active listening and non judgmental and nonviolent in their communication, you will preempt a lot of issues. And if issues do arise, you can de escalate really quickly.
And I think that’s probably the most important thing you have in conversation, no matter your level in the hierarchy.
YE: Got it. It’s even sounds like preventative medicine of trying to de escalate before things escalate further. You said non judgmental. Does it apply always being non judgmental or are there points, I mean a company, for instance, does many companies do retrospectives at the end of the sprint, at the end of a quarter, a month or whatever. They look back, what did we do? What did we do well, and we can repeat and what we didn’t do well. Is that a point to be judgmental or what’s your opinion in general about judgmentalism, if there is such a term?
KG: Well, it works maybe in a real world or not it works. I would say never be judgmental in any case, but always be factual.
A simple example would be if two people are talking with each other and you go, you said this and that did that, that’s a judgment. You know, it is your fault for saying this. A non judgmental way is, and this is still factual, when I heard you say this, it made me feel this.
It’s not that person’s fault. It’s just that this is the feeling I got. It’s the exact same message, but through my feelings. Now if you’re looking at retrospectives of like, okay, past quarter, we’ve done this or whatever, you wouldn’t say, okay, past quarter, everything went well. But John there didn’t do his work. John sucks. No, that’s horrible.
But you could say, for instance, this and this thing went well and we had issues in this department which were caused by this and this and this thing. You’re not telling any particular person that you are bad at this or you’re horrible, this or you did some mistakes, but you can point out that mistakes were made.
Now that doesn’t mean that in one on one you can’t talk about mistakes being made. But even then it’s like, okay, so you did this and this happened, not you are the reason why we failed. It’s small nuances.
YE: Yeah, it makes a difference. Instead of closing the door on them, you open the floor for John to express his case.
KG: Exactly. And that can actually, if the company culture is such that everyone feels safe, which this non judgmentalness will usually help in a lot. But if everyone feels safe, then they can say, well, you know, I had a lot of family issues and I didn’t talk about them. I should have, I should have asked for help.
Then you go, okay, look, John, that’s fine. Just let’s figure out how we can get you to ask for help next time if this happens again. Problem solved basically.
YE: It’s a much better way. In general, I find that stating facts and talking about tasks or things to be done, whatever you want to call it, is better than saying something bad about somebody’s character, which is the most judgmental way.
Just to follow up on that, are there any specific communications frameworks that you can recommend for organizational excellence?
KG: So I mentioned one already, actually, I mentioned both, I think. But we’ll recap here. So active listening, definitely. When you listen to anyone don’t just listen to their words, listen to their emotions and recap what they’ve said.
So for instance, if someone—let’s go again, the paper thing. Someone says that you still haven’t given me the paper, then the recap would be, tell me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like you’re pretty anxious that you haven’t got the paper and you can’t get working on it. Tell me if that’s true and if there’s anything else I can do to help you.
You’re already being empathetic, you’ve heard the actual core issue, most likely, then you move from there. If they say no, actually it’s fine, it’s just that I’ve got this, then you can deal with that.
But another one is—well, I love this one. This is my favorite one: non violent communication. It’s absolutely brilliant. So I’m gonna actually have to go back here for you to understand why I love it so much.
When I was in my first relationship where I got the kids, wonderful lady, we had really good communication for the most part. But both of us had our own traumas, as is usual. And we used words that were sometimes judgmental or sometimes sort of like assuming. And I began reading a book called Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.
YE: I read that as well.
KG: You read it?
YE: Yeah, long time ago.
KG: That taught me so much. Ironically enough, not about women, but about me. I began realizing, I actually do react to that. And I react to that as well. Like, what’s going on? This was like 90% me this book basically. And that’s why I suggest everyone read it. It’s a really good book that got me interested in communication.
So time goes forward and I find a book called Nonviolent Communication. And that explains why I reacted to the things that I reacted. So Men are from Mars gave me the what and Nonviolent Communication gave me the why and the how to deal with it. That is definitely something everyone should try and use.
Now if you follow it word for word and as a script, it can become disingenuous and mechanical. But the basic framework is really clever. You apply active listening, you apply emotional understanding. So you try and figure out is this what you’re feeling. Then you apply non judgmental and that’s okay.
So when you said that thing because you felt this, that made me feel like this and that’s why I reacted like that. And the other person then starts understanding, okay, it wasn’t my fault. This is triggered by something that I’m feeling and his reaction was triggered by something he’s feeling. So it makes it much more logical and actually takes away the emotional defenses.
And it works in personal relationships, in family dynamics, between friends and at work.
YE: Great. Okay, talking about work. So it seems like employee well being is becoming quite a priority in many organizations. What are some of the holistic strategies companies can adopt to genuinely improve well being rather than just ticking a box of “okay we’re doing that as well”?
KG: That’s a very good question and actually it’s maybe a bit more complex than it seems from the get go. A lot of companies do have some well being initiatives. They might have something like a gym at work. They might have some yoga now and again, they might give extra holidays, they might have something like a standing table.
But then they might lack some really core things such as—is our communication clear? If you don’t really know exactly what you’re supposed to do, it’s quite stressful. “What am I exactly supposed to do?” Then you have to start asking for more and more questions to clarify that.
And if the company culture isn’t pro-questions, then you might feel like, I can’t really ask this. So then you just try and do your best and get stressed out whether you’re doing it well or not, and get burned out over time because you’re just thinking too much about what you’re trying to do.
So that’s one thing—make sure your employees know exactly what they’re supposed to do and if they don’t, that they feel safe enough to ask you. And that’s where the non judgmental, nonviolent communication is priority. Because if they come to you and say, “Hey, I tried to do this, but I’m not really sure exactly what I’m supposed to do,” and you go like, “This is your job,” that’s the last time they’ll ever ask you anything.
YE: Fruitful answer.
KG: Exactly. They will never ask you anything again. And then they give you a job that’s either somewhat close to what it was supposed to be, nowhere close, or just half bummed. I’m not going to say the other word. But you know, people burn out. They can’t be bothered to do their job well. And so that’s what’s going to happen very easily.
So that’s one really important thing. Another one is just simply ask people, “What do you need to feel well?” You can have anonymous questionnaires. As simple as that. It works easier if there’s like 10 employees—you can just ask everyone, “Hey Michael, what do you need?” If you got a thousand, it’s a bit more difficult. But then you can have questionnaires that can be anonymous.
Then you get some basic ideas that look, out of a thousand people, 87.7% want better facilities or they want a psychotherapist at work or something like that. If you can provide that, you’ve just provided something for almost all of your workers that they really will enjoy.
And another thing, combining technology and well being at work, not necessarily AI—because AI therapy is a bit iffy in my opinion. You really want to have a human, at least so far. But something like gamification.
So gamification may not be a term for everyone that they’re familiar with. Most people have played some games at some point and they give you a lot of dopamine when you get levels, when you get through whatever task it is you’re supposed to do.
So how about gamifying the tasks, gamifying the health? You have different levels, you get experience points and you get some small perks, whatever. Nothing fancy, maybe. But you can have a leaderboard of like, let’s say YE is the best runner in the company and he gets whatever he gets for that. And hey, Michael has improved his sleep by 50% and his work morale by 20%.
YE: Yeah, so celebrating successes as well.
KG: Exactly.
YE: Part of this gamification.
KG: Or even without gamification, you can do it without. But gamification can be a fun way, particularly when you start having more younger workers. Because let’s face it, the younger workers, they like gaming much more. So why not bring it to work?
YE: Got it. And follow up, how do you measure the success of wellbeing initiatives? You just, I mean, if it’s a big company, you can just run the same survey. Or are there other methods?
KG: Yeah, I mean that’s definitely one way. Particularly if the survey has two different things: what you need and what are you not getting. So in other words, particularly for anonymous questionnaires, it could simply be, how are you feeling at work? What do you like about your work? What do you not like? Do you feel you have the opportunities to do what you really want to do?
All those things will be particularly effective if they’re not anonymous so that you can actually help them. But the problem with non-anonymous is that if the culture really isn’t very open and very safe, people will not feel safe enough to give their innermost thoughts.
YE: Yeah, and the results will be super positive all the time. And like elections in not so democratic countries. And not useful information for improvement.
KG: Exactly. So you could actually have two different questionnaires. You could have an anonymous one and then the one where you put your name. So then you could, you know, see if there’s—let’s say John, I like John as a good name. Let’s say John says in the actual named questionnaire that he would love to work more on social media, for instance.
Well then you have a good hook there you can talk to immediately. Okay, what do you like about social media? Let’s see if you actually know your stuff on that. And then you might go, wow, actually John is way better at social media than he was in accounting. Let’s hire him for that. It’s better. Why not?
But then the anonymous one, maybe John has written there that, otherwise the job is really good. But we’re asked to always come to work at 8 o’clock and I have kids, so it’s a bit difficult. Then the company might go, oh, we didn’t even think about that. Okay, can we somehow give flexibility? Because they’re bound to not be the only person who has kids.
YE: Yeah, yeah, so that’s definitely one way. ADHD moment. Can you ask me the question again so I can answer better for the follow up?
YE: The question: how do you measure the success of well being initiatives?
KG: Thank you. Right, so one way I would actually say do not measure is pure KPIs because you’re not getting the reasons why. And the reasons why can be really important.
So let’s say somebody has had a really good run past year and then the next four months they’ve been doing sort of half and half. Now if you just look at the KPIs you’re thinking, well, they’re not doing well anymore, let’s kick them out or let’s have a really sturdy conversation.
But if you’re measuring workplace well being as well, maybe you can find out that, hey, you know, it’s not to do with the workplace, but their mother has just died and they lost their house or something. There’s too much going on in their life. Okay, how can we help then? You can actually go and talk to them.
“Hey, you know, we know you’ve had a heck of a hard time. How can we help you?”
YE: Yeah, come from a point of empathy which circles back to what we talked about before.
KG: Exactly. Because honestly, if you feel you’ve been empathized with, you want to be better.
YE: Right? That’s a great point.
KG: It’s basic human behavior. Humans will behave for the most part the way you expect them to behave. So if you are blaming them all the time, you’re basically telling them “you suck” and they will start rebelling against that one way or another. One way is okay, you don’t care about me, I don’t care about you.
Or another way is overworking. Then they work really well for a year until they burn themselves out and then you’ve lost a good worker.
YE: Yeah, you want to keep people on that right path between pushing the limits, but not having the limits pushing them. With empathy. It’s a motivating factor.
KG: Yeah. So measure success through not just KPIs, but how successfully have you actually as a leader managed to make your team feel safe around you so that they can share things and how successfully can you navigate their problems to help them become the better workers that they can be.
YE: Yeah, makes perfect sense. Let’s move on to another topic, but still related—well being but around technology. You know technology can be a double-edged sword. It depends on how you use it. When it comes to well being it can connect us or be overwhelming, all those notifications. How can organizations leverage technology to enhance well being without contributing to burnout? I think you already began touching on that.
KG: Yeah. Gamification is definitely one thing because if you feel that you are appreciated for what you’re doing, then that gives you more energy, more motivation and that technology can help you with that. One thing is also clarification.
So I used to work in one company that was actually a really good company but they had one big issue. They had literally about 30 or 40 different communication channels and groups. So you would have like five different video groups, ten different groups for social media, five different announcement communication channels. You’re going like how the heck can I sort this all out?
You have a CRM, you have Telegram based things, you have WhatsApp based things. Discord maybe, they didn’t have that, but you know, you have all of those. At some point you’re just going to get burnt out from the fact that there’s too much information all over the place.
YE: Yeah, you have to jump from one thing to another all the time.
KG: Yeah. And that’s multitasking. And we know multitasking lowers IQ by approximately 15 points and it lowers your focus by—I think, was it 20% if I remember right? Can’t remember for sure. But anyway, it lowers your focus by quite a lot. So simply making sure that the technology you use is there for clarity and purpose and helps in every way possible will do a lot.
So if you have currently, let’s say you have emails, you have an announcement channel, you have different kind of channels for different parts of the work. Try and see which ones you can combine, which ones need to be seen by which people. For instance, somebody who does video work doesn’t really need to be necessarily in the social media part. If they just make the video and the social media people edit it, they don’t need to be there.
So by doing that you can already help your employees focus better and feel better.
KG: Then there is, as we mentioned, the gamification. So you can give them—let’s say workers smoke a lot at your workplace and you know that if they smoke a lot that’s definitely going to affect both their mental and physical well being. So let’s say you make a 30-day challenge that you make a gamified version of with some technology. Every time they manage to have one day where they don’t smoke, or let’s say they reduce from smoking a pack to half a pack, whatever, they get a certain amount of experience points and they get to choose themselves what perk they get at the end.
So it’s really meaningful for them because let’s say your perk at the end is a week’s holiday extra per year. But somebody loves their work so much they don’t really want to go on a holiday. Well, it’s not motivating for them. But if for them it’s like, hey, you can choose that or you could for instance, choose that you could get an extra five therapy sessions for physical therapy because we know your knee hurts or something like that. They go, yeah, fine, this actually will help me, this is nice for me. So something that motivates them. That can really help a lot in motivation, in work well being, particularly if those things also just make them more well being.
You know, if their knee works better, they can walk better at work, they can get to work better. If they get on holidays with their family, then they can have more meaningful time with their family and they can feel more recharged.
YE: Yeah. So it’s something that is personalized to them.
KG: Yeah.
YE: And you mentioned meaningful time and technology. Well, what I’m doing at Touch Base is something to foster meaningful connections. And at the workplace, how can we ensure that technology fosters genuine connections within the teams? We talked about the company and the employees and also the communications with all those endless Slack channels. But how can we foster also better connections within the workers, within teams?
KG: That’s a very interesting question because first you have to define what does better mean in this case? So do we mean more efficient? If that’s it, it’s pretty simple. You can have technology that is so easy to use that people can write some basic stuff there and it writes exactly what they mean. It’s preemptive writing, makes it quick, makes it fast. Or even you can have like LinkedIn has pre-selected things you can just click, makes it really quick. Okay, but that’s emotionless.
So if by better we mean more meaningful conversations that allow for creativity, that allow for team building, that allow for feelings of oneness, of unity, then those communication channels that technology should prompt people to want that. So maybe it could be something like asking mini questionnaires within the chat program itself, like: “Hey, have you remembered to look at the positive things for today and is there anyone you want to tell about these positive things at work?” Or: “You mentioned last week to this employee or your colleague this thing and they answered that. Have you remembered to ask them about it again?” You know, prompting you to remember your colleagues. That can really build a lot of feeling of community at work.
YE: Or if I can paraphrase it and say it’s maybe technology that helps people feel they’re being heard.
KG: Yes, that’s absolutely brilliant.
YE: Thanks. Okay, yeah, let’s talk about—you work with high achievers. Talk a bit about leadership. Great leadership, of course, is key to organizational excellence. How can leaders balance achieving results which they’re judged for, of course, and also foster a culture of trust and collaboration?
KG: Let me think on that for a while.
YE: I think we touched on it.
KG: We did. I’m just thinking of how to word it best. I think you need to build mutual trust and not rely on micromanagement. Because if you rely on micromanagement, people will feel pressured. If people feel pressured, they might be able to give you something really good for some time, but at some point they will start feeling burnt out because they don’t feel they can make any mistakes. They don’t feel that they can relax at all or be creative.
So if you can build a company where the employees trust you and they have free range of how they want to do things and you give them deadlines and what you want to be done, but they can figure out how to do it, and if they feel that they can always ask you for help, for questions, for clarifications, without any judgments from you, then they will usually work far better because they want to be a better worker.
You basically want to be a kind person to that person who’s kind to you. That’s how humans work usually.
YE: So basic. Sometimes forgotten now.
KG: Exactly. I’m not religious, but “Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you.” That is a brilliant quote, because that is how we work.
So if you build a culture of safety, of trust, then you can start trusting your employees better as well. And they will usually deliver on time because they know that they can make mistakes and you won’t shout at them. They’ll feel more at ease.
And if you think about what a leader is versus a boss, I think that kind of explains it pretty well. We have in English a saying: “She’s or he is born bossy.” Right? You don’t say they’re leader-like, they’re bossy, because bossy is negative. So if you’re all the time saying “You have to do that, you do that, you do this,” instead of “Let’s work together to get this done,” and then you micromanage: “Hey, you’re not doing that well, you’re not doing this well,” it’s not going to work. Not for long anyway.
And I can’t remember the company right now—there was a big animation company or maybe a gaming company that I remember reading about a while ago where in the interview they were asked, “Why didn’t this game get done on time?” And the answer was, “We were so badly micromanaged that whatever we did, the leaders told us we had to change it without even consulting us. And we’re the experts. They wanted it in a certain way instead of giving us the main goal. And then we had to redo everything dozens of times. And therefore it was late.”
You know, that’s not leadership. You’re hiring those people because of their expertise. So delegate, let them do the work.
YE: And if you don’t trust them, don’t hire them in the first place or fire them if needed.
KG: Exactly.
YE: Trust is so critical in getting things done or having a good, safe environment.
KG: Exactly.
YE: So I think you mentioned this. Micromanagement is one of the pitfalls. And would you say that also being disengaged—“I don’t know, it’s your job”—such an attitude, I mean, at the other extreme is also negative?
KG: Yeah. So that boils down to what I was talking about earlier, the questions. So if you just tell your employee that it’s your job, you’re supposed to know, and they can’t ask you any questions, well, that’s not going to lead very far. Because if they need to know something and they don’t know it and you don’t answer, then they can’t do their job.
So definitely you also have to be ready to take part in their job, even if you have hired them for that job. It’s basically a question of delegation. If someone can do what you know how to do or what you think needs to be done at, let’s say, 80%, even sometimes 70% as well as much as you need it to be done, that’s a good delegation.
That means you might need to help them with the 20–30% a little bit to guide them, that’s fine. You’ve still delegated 70–80% away from your work and that helps a heck of a lot.
KG: But talking about pitfalls, what you were just saying—I would like to circle back to that because I’ve been talking about empathetic, assertive, but still non-judgmental communication. That can be taken too far. So there’s pitfalls in that too. If we’re talking about emotions and communication, there are several different pitfalls you can have as a leader.
You can be too authoritarian. And that is sort of what you just said: “That’s your job, just do it. I don’t care. You’re supposed to do it.” Or it can be telling everyone what they’re supposed to do and not hearing any counter arguments. That’s a boss. In my opinion, a leader is someone who helps others lead themselves as well. That allows them to ask you questions and even criticize you in a constructive way, because you can make mistakes as well.
So that’s one really important thing. Being too vague—that’s a big pitfall. If you give too vague a goal, particularly if you don’t allow them to ask any questions, that can spiral down really quickly. Once I was given a job at one company to source some information from one group we were in. Then I realized I’m not even in that group. You haven’t let me in. Oh, okay. Then they put me in that group and I realized that the work they gave me was impossible because it was so vague.
There was so much information that I didn’t know what I was supposed to find. So I had to ask them four clarifications until I found out what it was I was supposed to do. That took me about a week with the communication back and forth. It could have just all been done really simply: “Hey, I’ve added you to this group. This and this and this information is what I need you to find out. Please view the group and ask me anything you need to know.” Done. Instead it dragged on. So that’s a big pitfall in communication as a leader.
Too soft—that’s a big one as well. Kindness and empathy are very important. But you have to have your boundaries. You can’t let people walk over you. That’s not leadership anymore. That’s being a walking mat. That’s not good.
YE: That turns the workplace into a social event where, “Okay, I’ll do it at some point. Let’s have another round of beers.”
KG: Exactly. Not getting anything done. So you have to be assertive as well. You have to have the boundaries. You have to be sure that everything gets done that needs to be done without micromanagement.
And this actually ties to workplace well-being in an interesting way, because I don’t think this is talked about enough: teasing at the workplace. It happens a lot. I have seen it, I have experienced it, and I have friends who have experienced it very roughly. And one big thing is the leader not doing anything about it.
So if you don’t have a safe environment, you don’t want to go and tell the leader. Even if you feel that you can tell the leader, if the leader goes, “Oh well, I’m sure it’ll be okay.”
YE: Well, great. Thank you. That was really helpful.
KG: Exactly. If they are like a wet rag, they’re too kind, they don’t act decisively, that is going to cause a lot of problems.
YE: Being disengaged.
KG: Yeah, exactly. You have to be sometimes the boss. Even if you are a leader, sometimes you just have to step in and go, “Hey, this is not okay.”
YE: Yeah.
KG: And I think those are probably the main pitfalls in leadership for me at least.
YE: Okay, thanks. Quite a few. And yeah, we talked about leadership and organizations and all that. Maybe move to a different area. We talk about meaningful connections. Do you see a role for techniques like mindfulness or others?
KG: If I hear you right, you’re asking if techniques like mindfulness will be useful at workplaces? Definitely, if implemented in a good way. But you can also perform mindfulness in a way that defeats the purpose entirely.
Techniques like mindfulness are supposed to be something you do for yourself because you want to. If you are performing mindfulness, you’re not mindful anymore.
Yoga is a good example. Yoga can be just physical exercise, you just go through the motions. But it can also be something called movement meditation, which is where you really do focus on your breathing. You focus on how your thigh feels when you’re putting most of your weight there. You focus on how you feel tensions in your body, can you relax your tensions when you’re in a certain pose that is still demanding. Then it’s meditation.
So you have to use the tools correctly. It’s like asking someone to saw a piece of wood with a knife. It can be done, but it’s going to take a while. So if I ask you to be mindful, to start focusing your breathing, but your focus is “This is so stupid, what the heck am I doing?” it’s not going to work.
Instead, you want to give different options for people. In a broader sense, you want to help your employees feel better, and you want to know what makes them feel better and what makes them feel worse. Do you have anxiety? Do you feel that you move enough? Are you able to switch off from work when you get home?
So if your employee says, “Well, I move a lot, but I think of work even when I go to sleep,” then okay, how could we help you with that? Figuring that out, then using technology and techniques and whatever you have for that.
YE: Right. So don’t try and put the square block through the round hole. Not a good idea.
KG: Exactly.
YE: For me, even if things don’t work well, if I have a bad day at work, but if I have a good relationship with my peers, if I feel this trust we mentioned, then it’s easier for me to disconnect from work. I know that the next day the same issue will still be there, but I can disconnect. Do you also see trust playing a role in how much you can disconnect from work when you go home?
KG: Definitely. Particularly if it is something that you can sort of offload to your peers or your boss. Let’s say you’re my leader at work, and I go to you and say, “Hey, look, I know there’s 10 minutes before I go home, but I just needed to tell you this thing with the client did not work out today, and I’d like to know if you can help me figure out what we can do about this.”
And then the leader says, “Yeah, hey, don’t sweat it. Tomorrow morning when you come here, we’ll work at it together.” That’s it. You’re going to be disconnected from it at home because you know your leader is going to help you. You know you’re going to get help. You’re not going to be thinking at home, “How the heck am I going to do this? My boss is going to be so angry. What do I do?” It helps so much.
KG: But that’s not the only thing that really helps. I’ll give an example of one client that I had. I can’t mention where they work because they asked me to keep them anonymous. But it’s a quite big Finnish company. They had I think €17.4 billion revenue in one year. So it’s quite big. He was a middle–high level boss.
His problem was exactly that—disconnecting at home. He was a wonderful father, wonderful spouse. But he said he had so much difficulty being mindful and present at home because he kept thinking about work. He would wake two or three times up at night, every night, thinking about work.
So what we did was treat some childhood traumas. There was a lot of parent-related trauma there. That made him overperform and overthink. Then we implemented 15-minute breaks at work every now and again. I said, “Don’t necessarily schedule them in because then you’re going to try and perform those breaks. Just allow yourself to have breaks. Tell your peers, your own leaders, and those under you that sometimes you will need a break.”
That gave him accountability. When you do habit changes, accountability is really important. That might be telling your friend, your family member, whoever. In this case, accountability at work. I asked him, “Do you feel safe telling your peers, your bosses, and those under you that you need breaks?” He said yes. So he told them.
At first it was choppy—five-minute break, then no breaks for the rest of the day, no breaks for two days in a row. But slowly he started having 3–4 fifteen-minute breaks. What he noticed was that his communication got better, his time management got better, his organization skills got better, his work stayed just as good and in some cases even better.
When he got home, he disconnected because he felt more at peace already and he knew how to delegate better because of the breaks. Telling his coworkers helped too—they said, “Hey, let us take a little bit of the heat, give us something.” So he delegated more. This gave him freedom.
Then he started doing exercise, which he normally didn’t do much. He had two small kids. I said, “Start doing things like lifting your one-year-old while playing with them, squatting with them, have fun.” He started getting more energy. The kids were laughing, he was having fun.
Then I said, “Take some skin-to-skin contact with your wife, start talking about things.”
It didn’t take long—four months. His work was going better, his family life was going better, his physical health was better, he slept like a log, and his stomach problems were gone too. He really needed breaks.
YE: So taking breaks here was one technique. But what stuck in my head from that story is the trust factor. Do you feel comfortable telling people around you at work that you need breaks? And the answer was yes. So yes, that’s a good place to start.
KG: Exactly.
YE: Yeah.
KG: Sorry, I’m going to add one thing. A lot of people don’t think about childhood traumas or any emotional traumas when thinking about work. Although I help people with nutrition, sleep, exercise, and so forth, it all really boils down to psychological well-being with all my clients—be it at work or individuals, teams or individuals.
Of course you can’t start talking about all your most vulnerable traumas with all of your workmates. That just doesn’t work. But knowing that you have traumas and dealing with them yourself—with my help or somebody else’s—is really important. It helps you perform better in every part of your life.
Also understanding that other people have similar traumas that they’re not talking about helps you be more non-violent in your communication, less judgmental. Because you can understand, “Every time I mention this kind of thing, he gets triggered. There’s probably something behind that. Let’s be kinder, let’s say it differently.” It can help a lot.
YE: Yeah, traumas accompany us all our lives. If we feel somewhat comfortable talking about some of them with people around us, we become more vulnerable, then the connections are much closer.
KG: Yeah, without a doubt.
YE: And also organizations can do something to foster these meaningful connections. Creating space with safety and trust.
KG: For sure.
YE: Let’s talk a bit about the future. There are always new techniques, new studies, new information. How do you see the intersection of well-being, communication, and organizational strategies evolving in the future? Are there any trends or innovations that excite you?
KG: AI is becoming a big thing. Not yet in therapy—it gives very bad advice sometimes. But long term we’re going to see companies “hiring” AI communicators, AI coaches at workplaces. If managed well, taught well, those can be a big help.
For example, let’s say you realize that every time you sit in your chair you have a huge backache. You might not want to bother your boss or maybe your well-being expert is busy. But if you have an AI coach, you can quickly write, “This is my setup, I’m having back pain, what can I do?” and get good answers. That can speed things up.
I think we’ll see that in physical well-being first, and later in psychological well-being when AI becomes more trustworthy. But I don’t think AI will ever fully replace meaningful human-to-human connections.
YE: Yeah. The example with the backache makes sense—it’s very physical. But what about a difficult conversation with a colleague? Would you use AI to prepare? Or is that problematic?
KG: You can, but it depends on how you prompt it. For me, being an expert, I can prompt it to communicate with myself in a useful way. But if you don’t know how, GPT tends to be overly kind. So I’d only use it for general prep—like “I’m going to talk about this issue, how can I prepare?” Not “I know he’s going to say this exact sentence, what do I reply?” Unless you prompt well with non-judgmental conversation techniques, it may not give good answers.
But give it a few years—it will get better and better.
YE: The pace is amazing. Maybe one day you’ll develop such a tool, with everything built in.
KG: No comment.
YE: But eventually, communication needs practice. Most of that practice should be with other people, not just with an overly supportive chatbot.
KG: Exactly. Use AI as a research tool—ask what books or videos to read, what kinds of conversations to practice. But the real work has to be done in person.
YE: Makes sense. Use AI to bring you a few steps forward, but when it comes to communication, it’s up to you to do the work. Okay, we’re getting closer to wrapping up. Do you have any advice for organizations or individuals on achieving excellence while prioritizing well-being—balancing progress without forgetting people?
KG: There’s a company I saw on LinkedIn, Marvel—not the comics, a recruiting company. They now work a four-day week. Their boss said everything improved after the first bumps. People are more engaged, happier, more productive. I think one reason is that they’re motivated to get a free day, so they manage their time better.
Another model is four-to-six-hour workdays. Research shows an eight-hour day is effectively five to six hours anyway. Some companies do Pomodoro-style work: 25 minutes focus, short break, repeat. After five hours, you’re done. Combine that with well-being initiatives, and it’s effective. But you have to plan carefully.
That’s what I do myself. I work from home and avoid multitasking. I’ve compartmentalized my computer—one account for work, one for fun. On one side, no YouTube; on the other, no work tools. So I can’t multitask. When I take a break, it’s a real break. That helps a lot.
YE: Good advice. Maybe I’ll try that divide-and-conquer method myself.
KG: Burn the land behind you.
YE: Right. Anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up?
KG: Yes, circling back to traumas. When workplaces think about well-being, they often focus on physical health: gyms, yoga, massage. That’s good, but clarity is also important—too many choices can burn you out. Even more rarely do workplaces address psychological well-being.
You might have a therapist at work, or an open-door policy, but I haven’t seen a workplace actively give space to deal with childhood traumas or emotional blocks. Probably because they’re considered too personal or non-work-related. But they matter.
Take perfectionism. It can come from parents or teachers telling you you’re never good enough. That drives people to overwork, burn out, or swing to the opposite extreme—“If I can’t be perfect, I won’t do anything.” At work, that looks like minimal effort. A traditional leader might fire them. But a progressive leader might ask, “You have the skills, why aren’t you using them?” If you uncover the trauma and help, that person might become the best worker you’ve ever had.
YE: Right. Triggering that kind of positive transformation is a goal for many leaders. On that optimistic note—Kevin, thank you very much for sharing your insights. This was a fun conversation, and inspiring to see holistic strategies that drive both personal and organizational success. Where can people connect with you?
KG: You can find me on LinkedIn—Kevin Gibbs—or on my website, Well-being Mastery Academy.
YE: Great. Thank you again, Kevin. I had a great time, and I’m sure our listeners will too. That’s it for this episode of the Touchbase Reach Out series. Subscribe on Spotify or YouTube, follow us on social media, and you can download Touchbase from the App Store or Google Play, or visit gettouchbase.com.
KG: Thank you, Yohay.
YE: Thank you, and see you soon.