Bringing Work to Life with Dr. Tracy Brower, PhD, MM, MCRW

In this episode of Design for an Agile World, host Joe Walker sits down with Dr. Tracy Brower, PhD, MM, MCRW,  VP of Workplace Insights. Steelcase is known for its innovative workplace design ideas that go beyond furniture and focus on how the environment can move the needle.

Dr. Brower emphasizes the significance of designing places that create the conditions for people to do their best. Her research highlights the importance of work in people's lives and how the work environment can affect and influence them. 

Joe and Dr. Brower discuss the importance of providing employees with choice and control over their workspaces to increase engagement and discretionary effort. They suggest that adaptable spaces can help remove friction and make it easier for employees to flow between collaborative and individual work. The conversation also touches on the importance of creating a culture of choice that allows employees to work in a variety of spaces that suit their needs. 

Highlights:

2:49 – Designing workplaces for people

11:23 – Importance of dimensionality, identity, and well-being in workplace design

12:58 – Exploring agile design in a post-Covid era

16:32 – The relationship between workplace design and employee well-being

20:21 – Workspaces for psychological safety and innovation

25:48 – Stress and learning in the work community

32:55 – Create a culture of empathy in the workplace

34:33 – Work/Life blending

Connect with Dr. Tracy Brower

 Dr. Tracy Brower is a Ph.D. sociologist and vice president of workplace insights for Steelcase. She is the author of The Secrets to Happiness at Work and Bring Work to Life, as well as a contributor to Forbes and Fast Company. Her work has been translated into 18 languages, and you can find her at tracybrower.com, LinkedIn, or any of the usual social channels.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracybrowerphd/

Steelcase - https://www.steelcase.com/

Tracy’s Website: https://tracybrower.com/

Connect with Joe Walker 

Walker Architects: https://walker-arch.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/walker_architects_/

Transcript

[00:00:00] Joe Walker: Hello. Welcome to Design for an Agile World, a podcast about agile design, brought to you by Walker Architects. I'm your host, Joe Walker, and over the past several years, my team and I at Walker have developed an agile design methodology that prioritizes people first. Our process enables all stakeholders from the boardroom to the classroom to be heard and represented in the final design solution.

Overall, our approach has proven to make the whole process of design more inclusive, efficient, and frankly fun. I hope to share some of those stories with you through this podcast as we aim to make the world a more agile place. 

Welcome to this episode of Design for an Agile World podcast.

Today I'm speaking with Dr. Tracy Brower, Vice President of Workplace Insights for Steelcase. Steelcase is a global leader in furniture and furniture manufacturing, but more than that, it's really about furniture thinking and how can your environment really move the needle beyond just the chairs we sit in, but really how things come together, which is kind of the heart of what I'm excited to talk about today.

And you're a two-time published author with books, the Secrets to Happiness at Work and Bring Work to Life by Bringing Life to Work. So, thanks for joining me today, Tracy, and please say hello to the audience out here. 

[00:01:26] Tracy Brower: Yay. Thank you for having me. I super appreciate it. Really, really appreciate all the work that you do and all the things that we're focused on together, so thanks for having me. 

[00:01:34] Joe Walker: Absolutely. I really want to share with the audience how I came to know you a little bit, which was really exciting for us. We took our office up to Steelcase University and asked beyond just the typical visit with one of our clients, which is really focused on what finish looks like.

Our visit was more focused on what's the thinking behind what finish looks like. So, we had an opportunity to have lunch, or was that breakfast? I think it was breakfast or lunch. It was a meal. It was really good.

[00:02:08] Tracy Brower: It was a meal. 

[00:02:09] Joe Walker: Yeah. And just sharing kind of the thinking behind what you do and just to kind of tee it off, I think I shared with you in person that a lot of our design solutions are actually a genesis from a lot of Steelcase thinking, and we took getting to know folks and building trust and, and that idea, and amped it up to the full built environment beyond just furniture solutions and different combinations of spaces. So, I'm really curious about your career journey that got you to Steelcase and turned you into an expert with all that you do for all of us today.

[00:02:48] Tracy Brower: Oh, great. Yeah. Oh, and I just think this is such an interesting time, right? Like the work that we do is all about people. It's not just about furniture or place or design, but it's about the design process for places that create the conditions for people to do their best. So, it's a cool world that we get to be part of.

So, yeah, I actually started my journey in HR. I was super interested in people, and how they work, and how they work within organizations. And so, I got started in organizational culture and organizational dynamics and got my Masters in Organizational Culture. And then, I really looked at consulting with customers, and how we could help customers think about the experiences that they were creating. Along the road there, I got my PhD in the Sociology of Work, how we affect our work and how it affects us.

I've spent time at first tier automotive supplier looking at process improvement and agile work approaches, and then spent some time in the furniture industry and also spent some time in a consumer goods organization. But the thing that I think is the most interesting about the work that we do that keeps me coming back is that we influence so much of people's lives, and work has a really important role to play in that research about how people work and their relationship to their work and our relationship to people as organizations and teams and leaders is all so interesting and so important for the ways that we affect people's lives, not just their work lives, but their lives overall. 

[00:04:23] Joe Walker: Fantastic. Yeah, it's a really interesting connection with your PhD in Sociology, right? And, how that led you to Steelcase and what attracted you to Steelcase and what got you excited about the work that you're able to do. 

[00:04:38] Tracy Brower: Yeah, I love this company. I have zero objectivity, so, I see that right away with no apology. But, the really interesting thing about this industry is the extent to which furniture or designing places affects so much of an organization, right?

Like, I don't know, we could be selling copy machines or vending machines, or you name it, right? But, when you think about place and delivering place. It affects all of the ways that we work, that we perform, that we learn from others, that we feel connected to a sense of purpose, that we feel connected to our customers.

And, so that's the thing that gets me excited. So, I just think Steelcase does so much, right? In terms of starting with people, and not just from our old cultural perspective, but from the perspective of all of our research. So, it's not just about, gosh, this might be a good idea. We should give this a try.

It's really about research and evidence and deep dives that lead us to the right kinds of solutions, and also an emphasis on design thinking that says, let's wonder about where this goes. Let's test new things. Let's try new things and let's look at the effects on people and on business and really try to make some good decisions from there.

So, we have our awards. We're no perfect company. Nobody is, right? And we're always learning and so humble about, oh, we have not got this all figured out. But that's part of what I love about it too, is what we think we have figured out a bit, and what we are still wondering about. Those together end up being a really, really great experience.

[00:06:19] Joe Walker: That's pretty fantastic. Yeah. When I talk to a lot of people and they're always, their first filter when they hear Steelcase is they're making me chairs, right? And I love the approach that you really bring to the table with, it's really about the people. And when I think about that more deeply, the thing that really jumps to mind is, the furniture is actually a first contact with like, just this intimate level of people interacting with their space, right? It's how comfortable am I? How protected am I? How social am I? How easy is it to get the things that I need? And we just got really excited about that the more that we learned about the research that you guys put into it, which is really kind of summed up pretty nicely in the books that you've written, so maybe you could share just a little bit about the research behind the books and kind of the content that's in there, and maybe how we can all learn from that.

[00:07:17] Tracy Brower: Yeah. Absolutely. I'm so happy to share that. And I love your points too, like the, the furniture and the place, the design of the place are so much about the cues that we send to people, right? To what extent can you feel protected and psychologically safe here in addition to physical safety, right?

To what extent is this a place where you can connect with your colleagues? To what extent do we value you in. In your experience in all the ways, right? And those might be small ways, which are big, or they might be big ways, which are big. So, I love your points. I think that's so right on. And I think sometimes that those messages about place will speak to us consciously, depending on our level of workplace literacy or how much we are educated to think about this kind of stuff or they might speak to us subconsciously, like I just have what I need and you've removed friction and made it easier, and that's a really big part of my first book really looked at work life. And, you know, it's all about the, the narrative is about balance. And so it was more like, how do we think beyond balance, how do we think about work, life, navigation and integration work is a really important part of life? So, how do we not have to make tradeoffs between work and life and how is work just a really important part of how we express our talents and how we contribute to our community. And then the secrets to happiness at work was a really natural outgrowths. I kind of looked around and said, gosh, I almost feel like there's an assault on work, like somehow work is about the salt mines or the grind or the negative part of life. And if we can just get through the week to the weekend, then you know, we can have a good life. But really work can be a source of joy, and we can create the conditions for happiness, and we have the ability to do that for ourselves.

And leaders have the ability to do that, and teammates, and organizational cultures as well. So, it was really about how do we empower ourselves and others to create the conditions for happiness through work, which is a really important part of our overall experience. 

[00:09:23] Joe Walker: Yeah. And I think that's really inspiring. So, I'm so happy that you wrote both of these books because most people define themselves through their career, right?

And most of your waking hours are somehow tied to the work that we do, and the social connections that we make, and the spouses that we ultimately marry and, and things like that. So, these relationships have very wide reaching influence and to spend time to really take it apart and say, okay, what is it about the environment that we're in?

That's such an exciting topic. So, thank you for writing all this and really applying your research and expertise to a company where we can see that in the built environment. 

[00:10:13] Tracy Brower: And yes, exactly. And I love your point. This is so interesting to me right now. The extent to which we get a sense of identity through our work, right? And, and they actually started during the industrial revolution. And there was a lot that was terrible about the Industrial Revolution, but the interesting dynamic that occurred was we moved from an agrarian life where we were churning butter with our family. And we were tilling the fields with our neighbors.

We moved into cities, and then we were a baker among bakers, or we were putting horseshoes on horses among inferiors. And so, our identity started to come from our work and over-identifying with our work isn't so helpful. But a healthy sense of identity with what we do is a great thing.

Dimensionality is a concept that I like here. Like the more we have different things that are giving us meaning in our life, the more dimensionality we have, often the happier we are, but especially in the field of design and workplace and even like engineering or STEM careers, a lot of time of careers, we think about ourselves in our work.

Oh, I'm a designer, or I'm a researcher, or I'm a teacher. And the other thing that I think is so interesting about that, is when we talk about belonging and our experience of community within an environment, belonging doesn't come from just being with other people, like being in the same vicinity.

Belonging comes from a shared sense of social identity. And so, the workplace, the experience of place can be really important to that too. Like we've all shown up together virtually or in person and we're here for a common purpose, or we see in our space our customers represented or we see in our space the outcomes and metrics that we're paying attention to in terms of the experiences we're creating for our customers, whatever those might be. So, I really like this idea of identity and how identity can link us to the importance of our work as well, and the place sending messages about that.

[00:12:12] Joe Walker: That's fantastic. Yeah. And it all comes back to that personal wellbeing, right? And folks having their basic needs met. And when we think about that, like we take this genesis of an idea of focusing on people and we apply that to the furniture that they're interacting with and the different scales, and then we apply that to the space design and giving folks flexibility and choice, access to daylight and sound control, and how social they are and how private they are, and having them work kind of hand in glove is really critical.

So that agile approach to design is really just about meeting people's fundamental needs as people, so they can have conversations that are inspiring, conversations that are hard, conversations that are scary, and take that down a notch and make it more comfortable so you can let your environment kind of help remove the armor, right?

And have some of those good chats to kind of lean on Brene Brown a little bit with that. It's really fantastic. I'm curious also about today's workplace culture and how it's changed, especially coming out of COVID, and we got this great experiment where we're all forced to go virtual like we are today, and what was really missing and being together as a group.

I know Steelcase struggled with this just like the rest of the world, so maybe you could talk about that and changes on workplace culture. 

[00:13:45] Tracy Brower: Yeah, absolutely. I think that what's really been interesting is this is almost like a reset, and we have the moment to kind of reimagine how we think about the work experience.

And one of the shifts that we're seeing is in the expectations and demands that people have because we're thinking so consciously about what we do and why we work and with whom and for whom we work. And I was so in awe of the design profession because you all are thinking about things so holistically, and we have so many customers who ask us, well, when should we come back?

And how should we come back? And how many days a week? And who and which jobs? And those are all the right questions. But the even more important questions are why, and not just why for the organization, speed to market innovation, serving the customer, collaborating, but also why for people, so you can feel connected with your colleagues, so you have more of a boundary between work and life. So, you feel like you can learn more, so you can grow your career, right? And I always think about design really is about the why, right? Like why would we be here in the first place and as a result of that business, why, and people, why, how do we create settings that really catalyze and foster and nurture those right kinds of experiences. And we're hearing that people are saying culturally, I want to really, really rely on leaders who give me a great sense of direction and motivate and inspire me. I want to really clear sense of purpose. I want an experience of work that connects me with colleagues in meaningful ways.

I want to have input in my experience and involvement, and I want to do the survey on the setting, and I want to give you feedback about what's working, and I want to be able to adapt and learn and grow over time. And those priorities are increasing for people and we're seeing, I love your point, like one of the elements of research that we really see is that people want stimulating and inspiring environments.

They want environments where they can connect. They also want environments where they have privacy, and they can do heads-down work and get away. Because they can't always do that away from the office. And they want access to leaders and they want to feel like leaders know who they are, and they want to feel like they're on the radar screen, and like they can get excited about where leaders are going and where the organization is going.

So, all of those are an outgrowth of the experience we have in place. Just like you were saying, right? I get a sense of psychological safety. I get the places I need to perform. Well, places that adapt to my needs. I get places that are braiding the digital and the physical. So, we can work in lots of new ways.

So, I love your points. And, it is about well-being too, right? Like people who are fed effectively through their work experience and therefore, we're increasing their well-being through that experience of work.

[00:16:46] Joe Walker: What I take away from when you're describing that is this big shift around a hyper-focus on productivity and a bigger focus on, okay, let's focus on getting people their fundamental needs met, right? And having a sense of control over outcomes. And when we’re walking around the newest installations that you guys have at Steelcase University, we talked a bit about this, that folks can manipulate things and customize it to their specific needs. So, a workplace environment that is changeable and adaptable to, on a really small scale, to make it a little more comfortable for folks and the productivity kind of becomes a side effect of just meeting those fundamental needs and having a space that can bend and flex with you and kind of get things out of the way that are slowing down either conversations or relationships. Like you said, the blend between the virtual and the physical environment is sometimes I need a quiet space that doesn't have a lot of distractions, that I can go jump on a Zoom call and have those conversations or meet my team that may not be co-located with me. So, what are your thoughts on that? 

[00:18:01] Tracy Brower: Yeah, I love this topic. Choice is so relevant, and we've done some amazing research on the greater people have choice and control, the more likely they are to feel engaged and give discretionary effort and all of that kind of thing. And so when we have lots of variety in the space, that's more the physical element, but also when we have choice, a culture of choice that allows us to go work in the work café, or go work in an enclave, or sit in a workstation or sit in a neighborhood. Those cultural elements are really important. And I love your point, that choice and control of my environment is related to fundamental human needs. Like neurologically, we shy away from ambiguity. We prefer more certainty. We shy away from uncertainty, and when we kind of know what to expect, it actually helps remove friction. So some of our research says that people prefer some amounts of reservable spaces, right? if I've got a Zoom call, I don't want to come in and wander around the building looking for a quiet place, or if I have a meeting or project work, I want to know what I can count on. And there's the fluidity of work. So, I want to be able to flow between collaborative work and then some heads-down work and then some coordinating work that I need to do in email, and if I can flow between spaces I can flow between the work, and that's also so helpful.

So, there's that sort of macro level of control and choice that I get. But also to your point, that more almost like a neighborhood level, like , I'm going to move a boundary from one place to another because today we have a bigger meeting versus a smaller meeting, or I'm going to pull a work surface next to me because we're going to sit together and look at the screen together and you're going to teach me some new thing that I need to learn, right? Or I've got areas where I can pull over display so that that can be part of a standup that we're doing together. Or we can pull over a screen so that the person who's maybe remote today can be part of our meeting. Those levels of just being able to control our environments and have a really easy way to do that without a lot of friction or difficulty that I think is so much related to fundamental human needs, and then also related to, oh my gosh, I can perform better. I can be more productive. I can just do what I need to do without a bunch of other things. Getting in the way to your point.

[00:20:20] Joe Walker: Absolutely. Yeah. And as I think about all of that, and kind of a side topic is again, how those conversations happen. And then we think about the traditional approach of like a C-suite versus, you know, my worker bees and you know, here's my one break room in the corner, and we're trying to create environments coming out of COVID that people want to hang out in. And so much is driven by fear and intimidation, and we start to look at ways in the space, in the way that we put space together. To take away some of that fear and create that feeling of, again, wellbeing and kind of deconstructing those social norms to allow folks to have these conversations that lead to real innovation and real exciting breakthroughs, and hey creating a culture where someone isn't afraid to give input on something that may move the needle for the whole company. And it could be something really simple like the way that I walk from A to B or how easy it is to go talk to my supervisor or go have an issue with HR without it being a thing, right? So, we're kind of balancing like the overall design of our space with the more intimate design of the furniture and the things that we interact with. And I'm curious if you're seeing some of those same things and trends with really disarming folks and being able to live their best life and not have work be so stressful.

[00:21:58] Tracy Brower: Yeah. Oh my gosh. And I love your language about deconstructing our social norms. That's like a quotable quote, right? Everything's up for grabs, and we almost have to rethink how we're interacting. I also think, rethink how we are giving people options in the way that they work, and a really big part of people's wellbeing, A psychological safety. And I would love your point about risk taking and innovation. A lot of times we think about safety as a monolithic concept. And, I like to think about the differences between safety and comfort and discomfort. So, we want high levels of psychological safety. I feel like I can make a mistake. I feel like you're going to have my back. I feel like I can bring my goofy sense of humor, and that's okay. Comfort and discomfort is a different thing. Comfort and discomfort have to do with how comfortable we are pushing each other, pushing for great ideas, disagreeing in a really constructive way that will bring us to the next thing.

Putting crazy ideas on the table that might be risky ideas in a good way. And we want to be able to have a high level of discomfort as well. Not every second of the day, but that high, right? I feel psychological safety, which helps me to innovate and take appropriate risks and all that kind of thing, and place is a really big part of that. We have an enclave, and we can talk through a really difficult topic. We have places that are private close to places that are maybe more open or community oriented, and we can flow between those. We can just zoom in, into a quiet area and talk about that really tough customer challenge that we're struggling with.

We have senses of prospect and refuge. I think about the olden days. Walk into a cafeteria and it would just be a sea of tables and chairs, right? 

[00:23:41] Joe Walker: Like plastic trays. Yeah.

[00:23:42] Tracy Brower: Life sucking, right? Like the walls were bright colors and matte was the best. But today we've got these really great work cafes with like a booth seating over here, or biophilic elements that separate little areas where we can get away together.

And that sense of choices about where we can sit and interact and get our work done, and choices about how we connect with leaders, how we connect with colleagues, how we solve problems, and the place that supports that, I think gives us that sense of psychological safety. It gives us that sense of feeling that the organization is paying attention to us and our needs, our work needs, and maybe what might be our individual preferences for how we get work done. And I think all of that sends such a powerful message. And those are the kinds of things that bring people in, right? It makes the commute worthwhile. Cause I get to connect, and I get to do good work, and I have places that enable that good work.

[00:24:40] Joe Walker: Yeah, that's fantastic. As you were talking, what came to mind was someone could walk away from this conversation and have the impression that, hey, we go to work, and it's all a big kumbaya and everybody smiles, happy people all the time. And I don't think that's the core of what we're trying to communicate, like there's a healthy way to be really into what you're doing and let stress motivate you. And so, there's a balance between like this tension of sharing ideas and coming in with just a smile on your face all the time. And what are your thoughts on that? 

[00:25:16] Tracy Brower: Oh my gosh, absolutely. When I talk about happiness, one of the myths of happiness is if we're doing it right, if we made all the right choices, we'll be happy all the time.

Bad and buns and butterflies. Like every day you can hear the angels singing and that's just not true. Happiness ebbs and flows. And you can still have an overall sense of joy and contentment and an overall sense of great work experiences. And oh my gosh, you can be stressed sometimes, and you can have down days sometimes, and you'll have problems that you're facing. In fact, one of the number one ways that people bond and create great, strong communities is through working on tasks together. You know, let's do our ax throwing, or our like habitat build or our community gardening stuff, like that's all really, really great stuff to do as a team, and we can do those social things, but an even more powerful way that we come together is through task. And that's because we're rolling up sleeves together. We're solving problems together; we're pushing ourselves and there is absolutely that Goldilocks research about stress. If we have overwhelming stress, we will absolutely have trouble moving forward, but if we have not enough stress, if we have an absence of that stimulation, then we will also tend to disengage and kind of tend to lose energy. The other thing that's true is that when we stretch and learn new things, that is significantly correlated with happiness. Of course, we need time on our back porch reading our favorite book on a Saturday afternoon, or we need the things in our work that are easy, and we can kind of do without thinking so hard about it, but it's a big deal when we are learning, when we're trying something new, when we have that next opportunity, when we see the problem, and we work really hard to solve it, we're reminded of our own capabilities. We're reminded of how much we can do as a team.

And so, this is not about sort of the Mary Poppins approach where we're, singing and dancing our way through every day. But it is about creating conditions where people can solve tough problems, disagree, innovate based on different ways of thinking, learn from each other, push each other, be in a place where we're stretching and learning and growing.

So, I think that's really a big part of it is how do we use stress, how do we create the conditions where people have enough stress that they're excited and interested in solving the next problem? 

[00:27:42] Joe Walker: And really the idea of stress, and I love that you identified two different kinds of stress, right? There's interpersonal stress, like I'm having a difficult time communicating with you, and we can break through that. And there's a stress about I really want to solve this problem, and I'm really invested in the solution, and I need to rely on my team to have clear conversations and effective conversations to motivate us to move the needle on whatever that topic might be. Whether it's something from a research component or a teaching component, or advanced manufacturing, anything, healthcare especially, right?

All these different industry types where stress leads to a better outcome and stress is the indicator that you care, right? That, I'm invested in this, I have a physical reaction because I care about the outcome, and I'm really motivated by that. It's a really exciting topic. I think we could probably have a whole other podcast on just that one stress and results, but as you're kind of backing up from how folks are interacting on a daily basis and moving back into these reimagined environments that are constantly changing. Do you guys see any return on investment from owners as they, uh, move into these new environments? Have you gotten some data back that says, hey, this actually really moved the needle for our company?

[00:29:11] Tracy Brower: Yeah, absolutely. There's so much data right now about organizational outcomes and the extent to which those are connected with people's experiences of work. Like there's some really great data on flexibility and how much, when we give people flexibility and choice, that's tied to things like effort, engagement, performance outcomes. I did an article in Forbes about flexibility in a new study on flexibility. There's also some really great data on choice and control, and when people feel like they have more choice and control, when they feel like they're being treated like grownups, that absolutely matters.

There is some really powerful data. Spillover effect of both productivity and engagement when people are together. So absolutely, there are some things that we can do by ourselves just fine in our home offices or our remote offices. But there are still incredible benefits to coming together face-to-face.

And this has been demonstrated in a couple of different peer reviewed academic studies where when we're sitting next to people, or proximity to people who are engaged and really committed and demonstrating dedication that will spill over to us. And productivity is similar when we're sitting next to you or in proximity to people who are really, really performing well and really cranking it out.

That also tends to spill over to other people on the team. I think it's also worth mentioning the connections that we make. Like when we feel more connected to the people around us, whether we're introverts or extroverts, we will have a greater level of wellbeing. We tend to perform better. We tend to be more engaged in our own work.

When we're happy at work, we tend to be happier in our home life as well, obviously. But all of this is demonstrated through evidence. And so, hybrid is surely the future. But, I think it's a both. And I really think that this is about how we, the work that we do best together in proximity to each other.

And then, there's other work that we might be able to do alone. But your point is such a good one around sort of the interpersonal stress and the task stress. And we want the stimulation in lots of parts of our lives, and we can get that remotely, we can get that face-to-face and we need to embrace those and embrace the way that we're creating experiences for people. 

[00:31:30] Joe Walker: Yeah. Its really fun to hear you talk about that connection between your work life and your personal life. And I love thats really the core of your books, right, and, what you're sharing with the world. And it doesn't have to be such a hard line.

There’s skills that we learn in both environments that can actually help us in the other. And so, blending those and really paying attention to people's whole life is really great. Maybe you can talk about, just briefly interjecting your personal life into your work experience. I know you guys at Steelcase are very passionate about that and giving folks options to do that, so maybe you could talk about that for a second.

[00:32:13] Tracy Brower: Yeah, this is a really big part of people's happiness. Again, there's some wonderful research on when we feel like we can be ourselves in our workplace and in our work environment. We will tend to be happier, have a greater sense of wellbeing, have less depression, less anxiety, that kind of thing. And so, I think this is really about the cultures that we create.

I just did a series in Forbes on mental health. And there is some really amazing data that 70% of people say their manager affects their mental health. More than their therapist or their doctor and on par with their partner, right?

[00:32:52] Joe Walker: Oh my goodness. Yeah. 

[00:32:53] Tracy Brower: Leaders have a big responsibility and a big opportunity.

 And it's true for us as colleagues and coworkers as well, but a really big part of our mental health is feeling seen, feeling levels of gratitude, feeling levels of friendship. And so, we really can create the conditions for that in a culture where we tune in to people, and we ask questions, and we set our device aside and really listen when we really understand how does somebody want to progress through their career, maybe not in the usual way, but in the way that works best for them. What are the projects that will get them excited? How can we navigate that right balance between meeting individual needs and then meeting team and organizational needs as well?

And so, a big part of people bringing their whole selves is a culture that allows us to be ourselves through respecting and appreciating through asking questions, through attending to each other, and through levels of just empathy. The other thing that I think is really empowering about this is the number one way we learn, is through watching other people, listening to other people, experiencing other people. So, leaders have an outsized impact, but also, we all have an impact no matter what our roles are. And the place provides context for that, right? Like, we have a cool work café, and I run into a friend that I haven't seen in a while and I check in with her, or we've got a big thing that is going on in our team and we can pull off into a project area and just really roll up our sleeves and get that done. So, the place creates context from that being seen, feeling seen, feeling like we can bring our whole selves to work. 

[00:34:36] Joe Walker: Yeah, that's another exciting topic, right? Because then you get to engage your coworkers on a level that recognizes them as people, not just as others, right?

You're just someone that's doing this task for me, or I'm doing this task for this mythical other person, and it's really I care about Tracy. I care about her daily life, and I care about the outcomes that we can achieve together, and it always starts with, I'm really interested in you as a person.

I see that picture of your pet on the desk, and I have a pet too. I have my cat, right? And let's bond over that for a moment. And we have a shared experience, which kind of leads into the natural progression of the conversation about whatever world problem you're trying to solve or whatever affects the company and things like that, that you have that shared background and camaraderie, and now it becomes us instead of them, right? And that's a pretty exciting topic too. So maybe we can do another podcast and just talk about that because I love that. 

[00:35:43] Tracy Brower: Great idea. I love it. Yes. It becomes about us not about them. So well said. Couldn't agree more. 

[00:35:49] Joe Walker: Yeah. So that's pretty awesome. So, I do want to be respectful of your time, and I appreciate your generosity and being able to share some time with me and the listeners today and really just kind of wrapping up that blend between work and life and bringing your whole self is a really important topic that folks need to pay attention to. I would love to give you the opportunity to share with the listeners how they can connect with you and get your books and get access to the multiple podcasts that you've done and articles that you've written.

And there's such a volume of information out there, and I found you so accessible and excited about having these conversations that I think there's a lot of people that would enjoy that level of contact as well.

[00:36:40] Tracy Brower: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. And people can feel free to work out. Yeah, we can do that too. Exercise is good. Reach out. I'm on LinkedIn. Tracy Brower, PhD. Steelcase.com is an amazing reference and resource in terms of our research. and then I'm at tracybrower.com. All my publications are there. And you can also follow me on Forbes.com, so you can look at all of that. But yeah, please reach out.

Like, I think we're just all trying to figure it out. None of us have it figured out. And part of the fun is, being curious about what we're each thinking about and wondering about and where we go from here. And it's such a moment, for a bright future, right? When we go through really challenging times, we have this wonderful new opportunity.

So, thank you. Thank you. I love our conversation. I'm so glad we've connected and really, really appreciate it. 

[00:37:29] Joe Walker: Yeah. Awesome. And again, just to, to wrap it up, understanding that data is always flowing, and it's always new information. And having the flexibility to bend and flex and stay agile is really the key to success as we move forward in our work and personal lives.

So again, thank you so much for the time, and we look forward to having another conversation about one of these subtopics, and we can take a deep dive into that. So until next time, I appreciate it. 

[00:38:00] Tracy Brower: Thank you. 

[00:38:02] Joe Walker: Thanks for listening to the Design for an Agile World podcast. I hope you enjoyed the discussion and are leaving inspired.

If you're looking for resources related to agile design or if you want to suggest future topics and guests for our show, please visit our webpage at www.walker-arch.com. And if you enjoyed the episode, please let us know. Leave a review and subscribe to the show. See you next time.