Hey, it's Rachel Cook, your modern mentor. I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise, a firm specializing in helping companies to retain, engage, and develop their talent.

Part of my job is helping leaders to understand the employee experience, how it's going, and what specific actions would really enable their teams to deliver bigger results,

to develop new skills and connect more fully with colleagues and purpose, and finally to thrive,

to feel well and whole and recognized. And I do this not by showing up with the right answers,

but the right questions. My job is to help a company's leadership understand not best practices,

but right practices, like the ones defined by and for their employees. What are they experiencing

today? What's not working well? And what changes do they want to see? These are the answers

leadership needs to be looking for. And it's interesting

because as I work across industries from tech to pharma to healthcare and retail and finance,

there are some pretty darn consistent themes. The buzzword of 2023 so far seems to be anxiety,

as in teams are feeling it pretty deeply, and it is having a

not-so-cute drag on their ability to be productive. And this anxiety is stemming largely from the

atmosphere of layoffs, happening all around us. But the main issue isn't that they're happening,

it's how they're happening,

as in people are being completely blindsided. We have all seen stories at this point of people finding out they are one of the unlucky ones by a mass email or a Zoom call or

I cannot believe I have to say this or trying to log into a system only to realize,

surprise, your credentials don't work anymore. Too many companies have been playing fast and loose

with basic humanity. And even if it's only been a few bad players, we have all heard these

horror stories. And it's triggered a real and collective anxiety,

a massive loss of trust at work.

And nobody can do their best work while they are mentally preparing to fight off the old

saber-toothed tiger.

...