Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I think what we're finding from a lot of students facing futures that are uncertain. So what are the skill sets? What are the learning? What's the critical knowledge bases that they can have so they can be adaptive in diverse and changing futures? We're seeing a lot of students who are saying, I don't know what I'll be doing in five years, in seven years, in 10 years, there's going to be jobs we don't even know about. So how do you get the skills that give you this kind of diverse web of opportunity rather than just sort of pushing people through in a more linear pathway? And I think that's one of the strengths of a university.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Hello, everyone. I am Jess Chapman, and this is Wired to Work, a podcast about making work work better for everyone. My guest today is Dr. Ashley Consolo, who's the Provost and Vice President Academic, where she's responsible for shaping the learning experience of the students. And she's really looked at the intersection of education and community needs and real work. And so I wanted to have Ashley on the program. Well, firstly, because I think she's fascinating and has wonderful opinions on all kinds of things that I want to ask about.
But also to have the conversation about education and how we think about education is not just about content and credentials, but how do we actually prepare people for the world of work today, and how do we ensure that we're not just giving people the technical skills they might need to do the work, but also have the skills they need to navigate the world that we are currently living in. So that was the plan, and Ashley and I are going to chat and we'll see what she has to say. So welcome, Ashley.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Oh, so looking forward to this chat, Jess. Really happy to be here.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: So tell us a bit more about your role now, because people might not know what a provost is or what that actually means. So tell us about what you do and why you do it.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: Yeah. So the Provost and Vice President Academic is the person who runs the academic sector of the university. So that's all the academic programming. It's anything to do with faculty, with staff, with students, with the academic and educational mission of the university.
So I'm second to the president, and we work closely together on supporting what universities are, what they can be, what they should be, what are the changing nature of universities. Right now we're at a critical point, and then really looking inward and working with students, staff and faculty on supporting and designing what they want and need and what they're looking for in a university education so I've been here for about 21 months now and so still relatively new in the position. But it's been wonderful. It's been a wonderful transition to come to Acadia and move into this role and kind of be able to work with such a diverse sector of people that are all looking at the educational futures and how we create better opportunities for students as they move through our system and beyond.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: So you just said that we're at a point of inflection, I guess, for where we are. So tell us a little bit more about that.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting time to be in university education in general. We have so many things that are happening in Canada and around the world, but in Canada we have the changing international student enrollment. So that's really impacted a huge amount of universities across the country, which also impacts budget. We have a lot of fiscal challenges. We have changing demographics. In Nova Scotia we have 10 universities and we're a small province and our demographics are changing. So we face particular issues there. We have changing relationships with governments and governments that are looking for different things from post secondary, both at the college and the university level. And importantly, I think we have a whole cohort of students that are coming in now that are looking for very different experiences from university and are facing a very different world. We also have the challenge of artificial intelligence and all the generative AI models and what that does. That's a huge challenge to post secondary education. And then we have the challenge of. For a lot of universities, they've been here for a very long time. We're almost 200 years old and sort of another decade and a bit. So it's a long time. And they're slower moving institutions than other places. They're very different than sort of being in the private sector. So there's kind of that you need both, you need this sort of the longevity and you need the flexibility and the responsiveness and the nimbleness at the same time.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I never really thought of it like that.
My mother was in. Worked in a university for a long portion of her career and we spent a lot of time talking about the flexibility side of the university dynamic. Right. How do you ensure that you are meeting the needs of industry, creating the skill set for people to have, you know, meaningful careers.
But that idea of the legacy knowledge institution and that may their community anchor, I think that's a really interesting way to think about it. And I saw something, and I can't remember where I saw it the other day around actually is it university's role to produce people who are educated for industry or is it universities role to create people who are educated full stop.
Where do we go with kind of education and what is the relevant of universities? There's really. I'd never, never thought about that longevity base. It's very interesting.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's something that you have to balance all the time.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: Right.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Like you really have to think about it. I think that's one of the critical questions because we are getting a lot of pressure from governments across the country that are focused on job readiness, career readiness, getting people into industries that are important to the country and all of that is really.
But I think what we're finding from a lot of students is what they're looking for more. I mean obviously jobs are important, but they're asking for us to provide the opportunity for them to live and learn and connect and create community and then develop the skills in that learning that make them flexible and adaptable. So like facing futures that are uncertain. Very, very uncertain right now. So what are the skill sets? What are the learning, what's the critical knowledge bases that they can have so they can be adaptive in diverse and changing futures?
So you know, we're seeing a, of students who are saying I don't know what I'll be doing in five years, in seven years, in 10 years. The industry is training so much. My interests are changing. There's going to be jobs we don't even know about. So how do you get the skills that give you this kind of diverse web of opportunity rather than just sort of pushing people through in a more linear pathway? And I think that's one of the strengths of a university.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: I think that actually makes a whole lot of sense because from my perspective, thinking about people and work, teaching you the technical pieces you need to do the job job. Now that might be very different if you're doing a very technical role in something like, you know, construction.
But what I'm looking for is someone who can think. Right. I'm looking for someone who can critically think, who can solve problems, who can look at data and go that makes sense to me. That doesn't. Those two things don't line up. Has initiative, knows how to work across different, like learning agility. So I can take what I learned over here and apply it over there.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: Yeah. And those are the type of skills that people are really asking for.
[00:06:36] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:36] Speaker A: That students who are currently in the system and students who are coming in are saying, how do you set me up for those future ready skills? What's the future Resiliencies, what are the pieces that I need? And a lot of people too are talking about emotional intelligence, emotional regulation, even looking for that in the university system as well. And that's been an interesting challenge for faculty within the universities where you're teaching and you're doing your disciplines or your knowledge or your courses, and then students are asking for the pieces around it as well. And what will that look like? So, yeah, it's an interesting time. And I think we're also facing kind of this inflection where students are even trying to figure out if they want to go to university sometimes, because with everything and how fast it's moving, do you spend four years with housing crisis, with food security, with rising costs, with all of the things happening and global challenges and issues with our neighbors to the south with climate change, there's so many pieces. So then they think, do I spend four years in this critical time going to school or do I spend four years doing something else? And I think that's the responsibility that universities really need to show that we can actually be part of the solutions and we will be responsive to that rather than having students feel it's a choice to just skip us and they'll be okay to develop the skills. So how do we bring ourselves back into that conversation and show that we are actually active and responsible players at this moment in time?
[00:07:59] Speaker B: Well, yeah, and there is so much more to the premise of a university too. Right. So you're almost suggesting we are decoupling to some extent the worlds that our university to do with research and knowledge generation, knowledge mobilization, and then the pieces that are around programming and education and upskilling and that maybe they look completely different in the future than they've looked today.
And rather than picking my course like I'm, I'm identifying the skills that I need generically rather than I'm doing a particular discipline or a particular program. Right. Instead of going and doing business as I did, or going like my son's considering and going, doing welding somewhere, he's actually just learning the skills that he's going to need to survive in a world that's to going consistently uncertain.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think in some ways it's actually the integration of research more tightly in.
So rather than a decoupling, it's actually students bringing that in because they want to learn those skills. They want to know how to discover and develop and then test and then understand knowledge a huge amount around how do you know what misinformation and disinformation is versus what is Research versus discovery. And so all of those pieces I think actually come more in. Like right now they're fairly well integrated, but I think it's actually a time for more, more and then sort of an integration of other pieces in there as well. Around. How do you be like the whole human approach to education that so many people are looking for right now?
[00:09:28] Speaker B: So a small job for you then?
[00:09:30] Speaker A: Yes, yeah, it's great, but it's great. It's an interesting point in time and it's a real privilege actually to be in this sector at this time because you can see how fast things are changing. You can see what students are looking for, you see what's happening in the workforce and you actually get to be part of this really intense and, and uncertain moment. But it's actually a really special place because you can start to support students and you can start to shift systems that slowly over time can actually move. And in many ways we need to move very quickly and that's not something universities are used to doing. So. Yeah, so you can kind of work with people to find a new pathway forward, which is very exciting.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: Yeah. It reminds me of the chaos portion, the middle of change. Right. Like it always feels like it's the messiest, the messy middle. Yeah, exactly. And you get. But that's when the insight comes in and people have the new, new ideas and they play with the concepts and they shape the new thing. So, yeah, very, very interesting time. So where are you on the work in question then? So in terms of prepping, so I'm merely sitting here as someone who runs a business thinking we need to produce people to go and do work. But do we, like, is that, is that the, like, where's the biggest gap that you see between kind of what education currently does and what work currently wants?
[00:10:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it actually goes back to what you were saying. Like there's certain amounts of technical skills or specialized knowledge or disciplinary approaches that people are looking for, but a lot of it is actually the other the pieces. Can you critically think? Can you transfer knowledge? Can you evaluate? Do you understand how to communicate with people? Can you build relationships? Where do you stand in the world? Like, how do you articulate yourselves? Like all of that I think is what people are really looking for and what a lot of professors and faculty are putting in classes. And then of course there's lots, lots of add ons. Like there's lots of student clubs and societies that are set up to support students doing that and work readiness pieces. And most universities have a co op and experiential learning sector. So they do a lot of that. But I think that some of the gap is that some of those skills are actually shifting a little bit.
And when people are trying to figure out who they are in the world, where they belong, what their place is at this moment in time, how do you sense make.
There's so much to make sense of right now. How do you do that? And I think that's some of the pieces that we're shifting my own work within sort of climate change and mental health and ecological grief. We're seeing a ton of students across the country really asking for this to be embedded into curriculum, to be actually in all of their climate change courses and their environmental courses. We're looking at more students asking for things around how do you manage emotional regulation when you're dealing with hard subject areas? A lot of the health programs are changing to include more trauma informed.
So you can see sort of as students shift and change and as society shifts and change, then curriculum that's then preparing people to go into the job market is shifting and changing as well. And then that slowly over time changes the job market as well. And so we are in this sort of cyclical feedback in many ways with what's happening in society, with labor and work and professional areas and then people that changes and then we have to respond and vice versa, while simultaneously keeping this kind of legacy and longevity of what's the critical knowledge generated over generation to pass on while simultaneously what are the things that ebb and flow with societal pieces.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: I want to come back to the CO regulation piece because I think that's a really interesting point. So in my world, much of the research that I see suggests that the younger generations who are coming into the workplace today feel more stressed and more burnt out than the generations that went before them. And I'd be curious to know what your thoughts are on that in terms of do you agree with that and why does it happen? What do we do about it?
[00:13:20] Speaker A: Yeah, we certainly see this in universities across the country and I would say elsewhere as well, but certainly in Canada there's a very clear understanding that students are coming in with a lot more anxiety, stress, a lot more pieces around accessible learning accommodations, pieces that are sometimes, well, oftentimes a lot of universities don't have enough supports to support the people that are coming in. And I think we're really facing a time too where the younger generation and the mental health stigmas have really dissipated compared to say my generation or between myself and My kids generation and I hear them all talking in such a way that it is so normalized and things are so everyone is of their sort of. So I have a 16, a 21 year old and a 19 year old and another 21 year old.
So the way that people are talking about things is so different and then their expectations for education is so different and then their expectations within the structure and the system in terms of support for burnout and depression and anxiety and all those pieces is changing. And then when they enter into the workforce, then you see that as well also a big move towards a different work life balance. And that includes while you're in school. So it's while you're in school and it's when you graduate. And I think there's a really different understanding of people's relationship to school and work than there has been in previous times. And it's going to be interesting to see how that continues to change, both as global, local, national pressures continue, but also with the advent of AI and where things are going and how that will change the nature of work and then the nature of education and how all those pieces will come.
Yeah, it will really change and I think there'll be a real responsiveness in the systems as everyone's kind of grappling with these pieces. But yeah, we do see a very different generational understanding of why they're going to university, what they want out of it, what they want from work life balance, what they want from the emotional regulation pieces, what they want for supports. And then what types of futures do they imagine when they leave?
[00:15:26] Speaker B: Yeah, and I think we then see the tension that happens when they show up in a workplace that isn't led by their generation, but led by the generations that went before them, who have a different understanding of what support for stress, burnout, mental health, et cetera should look like, what work life balance even means, because it's very different from generation to generation and we get some of the generational stereotypes and attitudes and things around them. How do we move the dial? Because I think it's preparing the folks coming into work to know you aren't going to experience quite what you might want. We also need to move the dial over here and say, just because that's how you've done it for the last however many years does not mean that's the right way for doing it going forwards. Do you have thoughts?
[00:16:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, this is an active conversation among students right now too, is looking for how, when they leave the university system, do they have the skills to communicate their particular needs and their particular understandings of the world and why they have that. So as they start to move into different types of sectors and workplaces that they can actually articulate and explain the pieces and explain and actually start to push against systems. But it is really interesting, like we see it within universities too, right? There's a very clear generational change in understanding of how much you work and how much you give to the job. Right. It's always like, what do I give? How much is my life versus how much is work?
So I do think some of it is about students learning to articulate well, first to understand the systems of work in general.
All universities have a lot of different courses that teach you to look at systems and labor and histories and pieces. So where are we fitting in now? Where do they fit in now? And then how do you sort of start to change the system once you're in it, while simultaneously maybe explaining that it won't change super, super quickly? I know a lot of the career development folks are doing that, like, where they'll sort of say, you know, you want to change the system, but here's some of the things to expect.
A lot of the business student societies do things like that, and they have mentors and there'll be open conversations about what to expect when you get in the workforce and what other people's expectations versus your expectations might be, and how do you kind of bring them into alignment and how do you learn to grow and challenge and push yourself. But also, are there certain pieces that you need to actually articulate and how do you do that? So, yeah, it's an interesting.
There's always a generational shift. You know, there's that amazing. I wish I could remember the quote offhand, but it's. People always share it and it's Socrates, but it sounds like it's right now it's like the younger generation is lazy and they're not studying and they're out of touch. And it's like, oh, it's from the now and then it's, you know, thousands of years ago. So, like, I think we have always this kind of generation that the older generation looks at the younger generation in a particular light and vice versa.
But I think now there's this kind of a little bit of an acceleration in certain areas as the two are colliding on some tension areas, particularly around that work life balance.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think some of the tensions, I mean, you think about the hippie generation that was totally pushing back on all the things that went before, and that's how worlds move and things change and we make improvement.
So a lot of that was to do with how the universities and students are tackling it. What are your thoughts for those of us who are in the workplace? How do we make it feel like a more intentional approach so that a student doesn't come out of university and find themselves walking into something that they don't know how to navigate?
[00:19:04] Speaker A: I think part of it is having those.
A lot of the students that are going through now really value kind of the communication and the dialogue and the ability to sort of state where you are and where other people are. I think sometimes. And what I've heard from students, students too often is they'll walk into a workplace and no one sort of. It's like, here's your job, but not here's the expectations of the workplace. So it's like, these are your tasks, this is your role, this is what you'll do. But then there's sort of this like, hidden norm of a community or a hidden sort of part of being in that place. And people are not saying, you know, you might want to think about this, or you might this, or lots of people work through lunch and leave early, like all the things. And so I think that's a part of it as well.
And I think having the space for this generation to also change the workplace, that instead of there sort of being this tension sometimes that could it actually be a generative space where people talk and then find another way that kind of supports different approaches. And also there's that fluidity of, you know, work from home and work remotely and why can't I work and then take six hours off and then work all night long? Like those type of conversations too. So, like, what sort of flexible structures can be set up to accommodate different approaches to the work, but still doing the same thing, thing, still bringing the same productivity, still bringing the same output, but just looks different. And that's not possible all the time in workplaces, but sometimes it is. And so having some of those conversations about changing expectations and then what are the things that you really.
That must be as they are, you know, just being really clear on that,
[00:20:41] Speaker B: not moving the dial on that. So I'm happy.
I mean, that makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, the, the unwritten rules around workplaces. We've talked about that. That's not a this generation thing by any stretch of the imagination. And we actually ended doing a program for technl about how work works, which was for new grads and it talked about like, what exactly does HR do, for example, and what, you know, what's their role in the world? Because everybody assumes you understand what HR is there for, but not everybody does. And we talked about like things like accommodation and what is an accommodation? And accommodation. There's like rules around accommodating and it's not just, okay, well I like to do this thing, so you must accommodate me. But how do we actually do those things? But the language is out there without always the understanding around it do I mean, I would say consistently when I look at all of the organizations we work with, including mine, the one area that I know we don't do a brilliant job on and that is consistent in a gap is onboarding. Right. So we do the. You got your computer, you got your desk, you showed up. There's some pens in the cupboard. This is Frank, if you've got any questions. That's the coffee machine. I'll take you around. Oh, if the fire alarm goes off, go, go stand over there and I'll check in with you in a week's time.
There isn't really still a whole lot of time spent on let's talk about what kind of things will help you thrive here.
Like how do people show up here, what's our culture?
What are the unwritten yeses and the unwritten no's of the organization. And then to your point, are we willing as the people that run the organization to be clear and say this is a written, fixed thing? Because. Assuming it's a because and it's not just a personal preference, these things are up for grabs if you push on back on that. Yes, I'm happy to have the conversation. Happy to talk to you.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And creating sort of those spaces where people can bring those things to bear into the conversation, but also know the parameters under which which the conversations can happen in the first place. But I agree, even in universities, we were doing a whole series of student consultations for the last year over what they're looking for and programs and structures and what we can do better. And a number of students talked about they want a course when you come in on how to student.
Student as an action word. And when you leave, you have a course on how to adult, how to work. Yeah. So first you need to student and then you need to adult. But it was around that. It was like having what are the actual things, less the parameters.
And there is a lot versus like, you know, there's a big focus right now on comfort in general, which I find really interesting. Like, everybody wants to be comfortable. And I was like, it's not real. No. And comfort is not in whose comfort? And like, you know, all of those pieces. But having that conversation explicitly that you were just saying around, just because you might want something or you might prefer something, it doesn't mean that that's going to happen. And that's okay. Like, that it is okay that you are not 100% happy or 100% comfort.
And then actually, when you're uncomfortable, sometimes that's the places where learning and growth happen.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: That bit that I find fascinating. So I see exactly the same thing. There is a prevalence. In fact, I had a conversation maybe two years ago with a client that was getting an inordinate number of complaints around stress and burnout.
And from our perspective, we were looking at it and going, I don't see anything systemically that is off here. Like, your workloads are not high, but you're not doing. Your leadership's pretty decent. Like, no one's willing anybody. And yet people were coming forward saying, like, I'm burnt air and I got to take time off. And I'm like, it can't be. It can't be. Every single person's resilience level is low. There's gotta be something going on here. But there was a cultural piece for them norm that being stressed in any way, shape or form was wrong. And that meant something was wrong with the organization and leadership needed to do something about it. And I was like, okay, we're gonna have to do a cultural reset here.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:24:29] Speaker B: Because you cannot be comfortable 100% of the time. Like, learning means being uncomfortable, growing means being uncomfortable. And in a. In a community, any sort, you are subjugating to some extent your individual preferences and norms to go along with the community preferences. But that lens wasn't there. And they were like, no, I must be comfortable and I must have my individual needs met. And I value both of those wants, but I don't think that's realistic to ask for in a workplace.
[00:24:58] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I do find just sort of in general, like, the conversation around comfort is fascinating. And it's often too, like, the dominant voices want a particular type of comfort. And then there's all but. But the expectation that everybody else would be uncomfortable so that certain voices and certain dominant approaches will be comfortable. But it's okay if everyone else is uncomfortable. And that's just kind of their lot in life.
And I struggle with this movement towards, we have to love our job 100%. We have to love every single Thing we have to find no stress. We have to be comfortable all the time because, well, we know from any type of learning experience or learning theory or personal growth.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: Growth.
[00:25:39] Speaker A: That's not when you grow. That is actually not the conditions for growth and development and thriving and being comfortable doesn't equal thriving.
So yeah, having those conversations and sort of really seeing what people like, you know, shifting it from not like what do you want? It's like, what would make you grow and learn and change and what skills are you looking to develop? And like having those conversations rather than. I find a lot of.
There's a lot of questions around what makes you comfortable? It's like, well, what if we asked that differently? What if it was what makes you interested? What makes you grow? What makes you excited? What makes you curious? You know, asking those questions both educationally and in the workforce. Yeah. Yes.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: The role of adventure. And I have, So I have two kids, I have 14 and a 19 year old.
And I see the comfort thing sometimes and then along with the, as I said to them fairly often. And I think they would probably, probably shake me very hard if I said it to them again now it's, you need to be bored.
You need to be bored. Boredom is good. They'd be like, I'm bored. Great. I'm super glad you're bored. And they'd be like, what? And I'm like, that's. Boredom is good for you. You learn to entertain yourself and figure out a bunch of other things. But I think there are certain things every generation does to their children. Right. That is somewhat helpful and somewhat not. And I think the comfort one is part of that equation. Right. And we need to perhaps adjust things now. I think there's adjustment on both sides. So I think there is absol room for all workplaces to recognize we still do not have enough conversations that take the stigma out of mental health issues. And we just wrapped up recording an episode around being trauma aware and trauma informed. Right. And I think that is a crucial part of building safe and caring workplaces. And I believe safe and caring workplaces are important. Not sure that everyone does in the world, but.
But yes, I think there's, there's definitely room for us to also explain you are going to experience stress when the situation you are in does not match your coping skills. Like if your brain looks at it and goes, this is a big deal and I don't have the skills, you will feel discomfort, but that's okay because you can learn to do the things that stop you from feeling discomfort next Time around. And that's what learning is. Yeah.
[00:27:54] Speaker A: You can do the hard things. It's okay. Like, it is okay. Yeah. I was laughing at the boredom piece because I say that to my kids all the time. I'm like being bored. And that's when the ideas come and that's when. And the thoughts. If you're not filling your brain with all the, you know, the scrolling and the sounds and the airpods and the just being bored sometimes is actually where the best kind of brain ideas and the brain cleanse and the brain rest comes from.
[00:28:16] Speaker B: So, yeah, all of those things. When I did some of my neuroscience stuff, we had to have mind wandering time in lessons. So we would sit in a lesson and they'd be like, okay. We weren't allowed screens because screens were not useful for processing. And then they'd be like, okay, stop. And you'd have to sit for two minutes and you weren't allowed to do anything for two minutes. And everyone was like, in the beginning, everyone was like, this is where. But it's in those moments that your brain is free to connect the dots and have the ideas and all of those things. So I do love some of that. Just need to get more of this into the. Into the world of work.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And then not have that become. I just need two hours to let my mind wander.
[00:28:52] Speaker B: To be three weeks off wandering time. No, that's not right.
Can we talk a little bit about your work in with indigenous peoples, Indigenous community and climate? Climate resilience, Would that be what you would call it?
[00:29:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I actually don't talk about climate resilience because. And this came from doing work in communities, particularly in Northern Labrador, where people would really talk about the problems of resiliency and how it's actually creates sort of hierarchies of privilege.
So when you keep saying to someone, good for you, you're resilient. And so in the climate perspective or in colonial perspectives or residential school, you praise the people who are continuing to survive the bad thing, but you don't fix the bad thing.
So this kind of. In that context, the resiliency narrative is actually. Can be very offensive because it's like, well, instead of praising me for making it through or praising me for being strong, fix the system that created these sort of inequities and problems in the first place.
So what I look at is more the emotional and relational and mental health pieces related to a changing climate. So how we relate to community and to land and to place and then our futures and a lot of Work around that future kind of piece. And then a lot of work around the emotional pieces, the grief pieces, and really thinking through like what does it mean to live in an ever changing world? What does it mean when we know the term that is used all over the world is era of loss and damage. So we have entered into this, we know there's going to be fundamental shifts to the climate and environment. There already is. So how do we live in an era of loss and damage? And then when you tie it into sort of the classroom or the workspace, when we have more and more people who are directly impacted by climate change, so floods, forest fires, hurricanes, like the devastating pieces that impacts work in educational environments, it impacts people's ability to learn and to actually go to work.
And then if you look at some of the slower, the creeping changes, the day to day changes that aren't the major break event but cause significant anxiety or future anxieties. So now we're seeing a lot of the research that's coming out particularly around some of the neuroscience work, the psychology and psychiatric is huge disrupted impacts to people's ability to work, ability to sleep, ability for full cognitive function because you've got all this worry and anxiety, the amplification of other mental health challenges if they're present, the creation of changing family dynamics, even sense of hope for the future.
So if people start to lose that sort of sense that they can dream a future or have the type of future they want, that impacts their choices of going to school, it impacts what they do in the workplace.
And we're seeing a lot of trends now on much higher absence rates from workplaces because people are experiencing all sorts of stress and trauma related to climate change. But if you're in an area where you're suddenly hit with a forest fire or a hurricane like that is changing the whole sector as well. So there's some really interesting pieces around how climate change will continue to impact our workplaces, our educational environments and just individuals, people's ability to cope and adapt and respond and then how that interacts with all of the other emotional regulation pieces and all of the other stressors that are out there. As people are really worried about futures, there's a lot of future worry and future anxiety that's quite heavy and prevalent around this. And so it's climate change, but it's also housing and food and global stability and politics and all of it right? So it's all compiled into one and that one is hitting all generations, but obviously the youngest generation too is really struggling with it.
[00:32:29] Speaker B: Those pieces, I mean, we do. I was having a conversation, well, part of the conversation this morning, but I very much value the reframe on resilience. So in my world, I did a conference session on resilience. And the first thing I said was, I want to be very clear that resilience is not about pulling through or pushing on or getting where you're going.
It is about, for me, that appraisal of the situation and either changing the situation or changing how you can manage in that situation.
But at the. The emphasis does need to be on changing the system. If the system is causing some of those issues, I think that's an important one to underline.
But this era of uncertainty, I hadn't heard the term you used was era of damage and loss.
[00:33:16] Speaker A: And damage. Yeah, that's in the climate change world. And they're in the. It's called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is the global climate summits and all the research. So in the research and policy terminology, it's era of loss and damage. And so even calling it that puts out a particular narrative and frames research in a particular narrative and frames education in a particular narrative and policy.
And I think what it is trying to do is show that we are. Now, we've crossed so many thresholds that it's not about will there be loss, There is loss and there will be loss. And so how do we actually develop the skills and the coping and the learnings to be prepared to be in a constant sense of loss.
So there's an element of it that does actually, actually have this responsibility of we really have to learn these skills as, as humanity.
But the framing of it also causes anxiety for people because it's just so clearly loss and damage.
[00:34:12] Speaker B: It's a very heavy language.
Right. But I. But it represents what people are experiencing too. So you've got to be careful how you talk about those things. And. And then, I mean, there may be some pieces in this.
I spend a lot of my time saying to people, we don't teach people this, Right? When I do the work that I'm doing on people, whether it's interpersonal conflict or someone has an issue with their leader, or they don't know how to have a conversation and put something forwards, or they're working with somebody that they have competing views with and they keep butting heads, we often haven't given people the skills or the language to be able to articulate themselves and to say what they're struggling with and what they're bringing. But Then we put them in work or education systems.
But particularly from my perspective, workplaces tell them that they're a team and that they now should work merrily well together and that everything should be peachy. Right. And the reality is, I don't think that was ever true. But if you're certainly carrying around, if your brain is full with things happening. For me personally, what's happening in the world that my neighbor's house burned down last year, Is my house going to burn down this year? Like, I lost my. Whatever it happens to be. How do you bring your full focus to the world of work? It's just not realistic to expect people to, to do so.
[00:35:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And also they, they use the family narrative all the time. That one really gets me. We're a family and people are like, no, we're not. Or like, my family dynamic is dysfunctional and I don't want that in the workplace.
[00:35:40] Speaker B: Right. I saw that post this morning on LinkedIn and I joke, I laugh because I worked for an organization that described themselves as a family and it never bothered me at all because it was an organization that one, I felt part of. Two, I felt cared for and had a good general dynamic. But I was like, that assumes that your family dynamic is one.
[00:35:57] Speaker A: Yeah. You're like, you a good family dynamic every day.
[00:36:01] Speaker B: No. And you know, there are better, There are probably better way. I understand the intention behind the use of the family word. There are now better ways of us being able to describe that for people.
But all of this is the learning. Right? Like again, we, we're asking students to learn skills, to be in a new world. We also need to ask and think about those of us that are leading in organizations. How are we evolving our skills for today's world? Because we don't often see, well, I create the organization, so you need to fit my mold. No, no, we need to be thinking about what is it to do differently to make work actually work today. Right. In a very different, very different environment.
What is one thing you wish leaders in organizations knew or considered about this era that you've been talking about? Like, what should we be thinking about at work?
[00:36:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think this is such a huge piece that's facing humanity. If you had asked me sort of three years ago, my answer would be quite different because at that point in time, I think the climate crisis awareness was so high and maybe was not the singular because there's always things happening, but it was such a prominent discussion point and it was so clearly the issue that people were worried about. That people, particularly young people, were scared for their features, that it was impacting their how they approach university, how they approach work. All of those pieces, I think now it's still there, but it's in the background because there are these really pressing, immediate pieces. Not that climate change isn't by any means pressing or immediate. It's just kind of now seems to be hidden behind these layers of other acuteness.
But some of. I work with a number of mental health practitioners and psychologists in this area, and a lot of them are still seeing where people will show up for something else. And then as they start to talk, the underlying anxieties, the things that are magnifying the other pieces are actually the fear of the future related to a change in climate and environment. But it's like the individuals themselves don't even realize. Whereas before, it would be something that people would overtly come for a few years ago, because that was so pressing. But now, now it's sort of like everything is so overwhelming, everything's so acute. The news cycle is wild, this is happening, Prices are going up. Is there going to be war? What's the conflict? And so all of that kind of mixes in. But I still think that what we have is as a species now, the ways in which we're going to be challenged as humanity to develop new skill sets, to develop new coping abilities, to develop new emotional capacities, to actually deal with the stress, the anxiety, the uncertainty, the loss, the grief, the sadness. The pieces that go there are not skill sets that a lot of humans are overtly taught.
It's not pieces that are taught. Particularly so in the area that I work in, in grief, like, we don't really do a great job in Canada and North America and a lot of Western societies. We're not teaching people about grief. We're not normalizing grief. We're not showing how grief can show up in different ways. We're not, you know, we have certain types of grief that are recognized. So then you get, you know, your grief package and you have your certain amount of days off, and then it's. And it's all compartmentalized. And, you know, people will show up with the ritual pieces. So people will bring food and you'll have a funeral. And there's those pieces that we societally understand and that work understands. What climate change is actually bringing is that there's all of these other types of grief and emotion and loss that we can't actually recognize in the workplace because there isn't any. There's no structure for it. So we don't have the ability for someone to come in and talk about generalized anxiety related to long term fears of the future. And we don't have something to come in of like I have lost this something in the ecosystem, or I've watched this anticipatory grief, or I see what's happening somewhere else. We don't have those pieces. So instead what we do have are people who are experiencing high levels of climate anxiety and loss and grief without the supports of the understanding and the structures. And the same thing in universities, we don't understand it in as strong a way as we could. But the workplace definitely is not set up for that.
If it's a crisis, it's not too, too bad, but if it isn't a crisis, it's. But yeah, we're just not there yet.
[00:40:13] Speaker B: I don't even know if we're really set up for the reality of the bits that you talk about as being kind of institutionalized into a culture. Because like grief is a great example. Like the workplace handling of grief is this idea that you're going to take two days off work and all of, of a sudden but come back to work magically having handled your grief. Like, I don't know, I mean, I understand obviously the need to figure out practices for equity and everything else in workplaces, but the reality of thinking about something as literally evident as the grief of losing a family member, which is not even conceptually hard for most people to understand, we still don't have that really figured out for most people, I don't think.
And so when you talk about something like the grief associated with climate change, I think there's a lot of people who are going to even conceptually struggle with understanding what that is before they can even have conversations about it. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be having conversations about it. Right? And so awareness only comes when you start. So I was not even aware of any of your work until we met. Like I didn't even know that was a thing. Right now I'm fascinated by the whole concept of it.
So now I'm asking the questions, how do, what does this mean? How do I fit that in? And, and for me, the probably overly simplistic, but I go back to how do I understand who my people are and how do I understand what is affecting them and how do I understand what they need? And to the conversation I had with Ang this morning, how do I get very clear on what I need from them for this organization to work and do my best to Support them when they can't deliver on those things and find ways to accommodate it.
[00:41:52] Speaker A: Absolutely. And that goes for our educational institutions.
People show up in their full selves and with all of the pieces that they carry. And then you put everyone together. Universities are quite large. They're like mini towns. And so you're putting people together with all of their full humanity, their full baggage, and everything that is coming to bear around the world too. And I think you see that in education. You see it in the workplace, where people will show up carrying immense weight that is often very invisible. You have no idea. And then things happen. And it's like that thing then becomes the funnel for all the other things.
So it may seem like an outsized reaction or a surprising. But really when you dig into it and go, oh, okay, I see there's all these other pieces, or it becomes the thing that people can talk about because it's a socially understood thing to talk about. But really the problems are over here, but they don't have the language for it, or there's a lot of shame about talking about certain things.
So I've been almost 20 years working on the sort of climate mental health interface and the ecological grief piece. And one of the things that continues to come up to this day is how people feel shame to admit that that's happening, that they might feel this. And so just kind of doing this work to say it's real. It is of course, rational, like it is a reasonable response to what is happening and it is okay to talk about. But if you feel this here and it's not okay to talk about, then you make it about this sometimes so that you can still find that outlet. And I think that work and universities are not structured to and to provide those spaces. But even our policies, like our HR policies, don't have anything around. How could they.
We don't know what the pieces are. And certainly like when we've done some work around, particularly wildfires in Canada and how it impacts people's ability to go to work and function at work. And like, work themselves doesn't have, like, how do you have fire days? And how do you have, like, people need to be off because their house could be in trouble or they have to leave or they have no. Like, we don't have those structures. So it's a really ad hoc response, which is obviously then different across people and organizations.
[00:44:02] Speaker B: We're experiencing events that are quite unprecedented, I think, for the workplaces that we have today. And we need to just realize that we aren't Going to have the policies to figure it out. And some of this is going to therefore rely on common sense, judgment, decision making and care for people.
[00:44:16] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. The care piece, I think, is what drives us. So even if you don't understand, understand like what is climate grief or why something to have the care for the person that they are going through, something that is making their ability to function at work either diminished or not possible and that fitting it then into the other policies to make it work to accommodate rather than going, well, we don't have a policy on this.
Yeah. So you'll just have to soldier on or whatever the piece is.
Yes. Just really repress it.
[00:44:46] Speaker B: Compartmentalize, as I'm very good at compartmentalize.
[00:44:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
But it does challenge our structures. Huge. And we don't know how to grapple with it yet.
[00:44:55] Speaker B: No. And recognizing that this, you know, for all. For the conversation you had around the academic world needs to change. The corporate world does too. Like, the whole reason that I started Neuroworks is that we are still running organizations based on 1900 management models where people are units of production. That is not the world we are living in today. And I wouldn't have been anywhere near as eloquent as you are obviously around the impact of climate on people's. What they're carrying. But part of my concern has been when you know that people are carrying such a load and whether, whether that comes from what's happening in the world with climate, whether that's from geopolitical concerns, whether you have family in Russia or Ukraine or, you know, Gaza or wherever it happens to be, and you're living that daily, whether you have caring responsibilities and you have elderly parents, whatever it happens to be, people are carrying all of these loads. And then they come to work. And to your point, we somehow assume that they're going to want to leave that stuff at the door, which we all know never happens. But also that their mental capacity, the cognitive load that they are carrying means they do not have the cognitive load to do the role in the. The way that someone would have done it before. And I don't know that we are looking at recovery and workloads and the systemic pieces of a workplace with the lens we need for today. We're still looking at them and going, well, in 1984 someone could do this job. So in 2024, someone can do this job. Actually, the world load is very different today. Now everybody's unique, so each person is different. But I think we also need to be thinking about how are we shaping Roles and structures in recovery. If I am maxed out a way work and my job is cognitively heavy or complex or the emotional load is high and then I go home with that load, but then at home I have no ability to rest, relax, recuperate because I'm carrying a load at home as well, then my brain and my stress response never shuts off. And if we think that people are going to navigate that and suddenly magically get better, like that's, that's not going to happen. So I do think that this, the, the notion of care, I mean we've used the word a lot in the last kind of number of episodes that we've done. And I think sometimes that there a bit of a soft and fluffy view of the word care.
So I say yes, I actually agree with the soft and fluffy version of the word care. But we're also talking about people's literal ability to cope. Right. And supporting people so they can cope. And that has to look different for today's world than it's done in the past.
[00:47:15] Speaker A: And you know what's tied to that too, which is so fascinating is the wearing of the biotrackers. Because most of the bio trackers now, whether it's a watch or the ring or a band, are all tracking your ability to your stress load. And so people are then getting their own data that says you've now hit your stress capacity for the day or you have pushed over your stress capacity, which means tomorrow can you try to do this or can you be more careful? So people are paying attention to that because we know the long term challenges of health and stress and cortisol levels and all of that. But I think too you're seeing more and more focus on the wearable health data, which includes stress data, which then includes how people will interact with work with that. I have seen that play out where people will be like, sorry, like I've hit my stress load for the day, I need to, I need to go and recover. And it's like, oh, fascinating.
[00:48:10] Speaker B: There's an episode we will be releasing next week I think Roz with Dr. Paul Zak. So he's a neuroscientist from California. So he has designed an app. Cause he would argue over the way that the biometric data is used, I think. So he's developed an app that we are using in coaching practice which is called the 6 app. And what it measures is the extent to which you are thriving.
So his view is he doesn't want people to survive, he wants people to thrive. And how do we understand what thriving is from a brain perspective? So what the intent is behind the app, and the app itself is free, but the intent behind the app is that you can understand the conditions in which you are.
Because your heart rate might be racing, your stress level might actually be up, but you're enjoying and valuing the experience that you're having. And so these are moments to not actually take away back to the comfort conversation. Right. These are moments to lean into and to say, I'm actually getting a lot out of this. I feel comfortable. I'm comfortable in myself, even though this experience might be something new and different for me. And so how do I have more of those moments, and what are the trends and what creates those moments for me and how do I do it?
[00:49:12] Speaker A: So I love that. I love that framing more, that sometimes stress can still be the confluence of all of these other really good things that are happening. And you're stressed because you're growing and you're changing and you're learning and you're excited and.
[00:49:26] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And hopefully we can encourage more of that, because I also heard that the fact that this tells you stress can also make you still stress about the fact that you're supposed to be stressed. So that's not.
[00:49:35] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Oh, I. I got one and took it off really quick because my. My days are very stressful and my job is very stressful, but I also find a lot of value and purpose and joy from it. And I did not need data telling me, day in and day out, you are too stressed. You need to relax. I was like, this is actually not helpful for me because I. In. In my current reality, I wouldn't be able to do what the tracker was telling me. And then it's like, it's judging you. Your. Your metabolic age is dry.
I'm like, oh, darn it. So, yeah, it had the opposite effect on me than other people that seem to love it and find a healthier life for me. I started really. It was in my head on it, right? Like, oh, no, I'm past my stress, but I love what I'm doing.
[00:50:17] Speaker B: Yeah. And so, like, their view would be, if you're engrossed in what you're doing, if you're mentally engaged in the work, if you're able to be authentically yourself in that moment, you're not feeling any risk or any threat in that moment.
The stress measure in and of itself isn't valuable. It is. The. What's happening for you is at a kind of engagement level because Valuable.
[00:50:35] Speaker A: I love that reframing. That's great.
[00:50:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
And hopefully kind of that's where we'll end up. I mean, I feel like we're at the very beginning of biometric data world. And as with all things technology, there's a confluence of things that arrive and some of them are useful and some of them are not. And hopefully we will do more useful things with them as time goes on.
[00:50:53] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:50:56] Speaker B: So we're almost the end of our time.
If you could suggest one thing for workplaces that you would like people who run workplaces to do differently, what would it be?
[00:51:10] Speaker A: Well, for me as a climate researcher, I think that's what we really need to grapple with on the work scale. And I will also throw in the universities there too. We need to figure out how to put it in the education system and then we need to figure out how to put it in the workplace. But really thinking through that what people might be bringing in, might be carrying might be the invisible pieces of a stress related to a very uncertain future. And when you bring in young people, because they are the generations and they know they're the generations that are going to face a hugely uncertain world, how they see themselves in the workplace, how they see their longevity, how they see their ability to hope and dream for the future, how they grieve a future they know they're not going to have anymore. All of those pieces are happening as they're entering into work and it can create those cognitive loads where it might change what they can do and when and how. And then also know that we have people that are dealing with very serious climate related crises all, all the time or things like heat waves which are happening more and more frequently. Not a lot of workplaces are necessarily set up as cooling zones, so that changes. But people's cognitive abilities change during heat waves. It just rough sleep. So there's just so many things about understanding how people will be affected by the broader climate and environmental changes and then what that means when they show up to work and how they are able to perform or function or relate to the community that's that's there in the workplace.
[00:52:33] Speaker B: That awareness of everyone's carrying something, you don't know what they're carrying.
[00:52:38] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:52:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:39] Speaker A: Shame, economy.
[00:52:40] Speaker B: Listen, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom with us. I feel like I have so much to learn in the climate space or I will be picking your brains forevermore and would love to have you come back and join us for other episodes, particularly some of the ones we were talking about earlier before we started recording. That would be great.
[00:52:54] Speaker A: Sign me up for those ones. No, this was very delightful. I just loved having this conversation and always had happy for further chats.
[00:53:02] Speaker B: So that's a wrap for today. Thank you very much for joining in and if you liked our conversation today, please do like and subscribe. You can find all of our episodes of the podcast Wired for Work and our previous incarnation Unlocking your people on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. You can also check out our websites E3CA and Neuroworks CA for more information about what we do in the wonderful world of work. So thanks again for joining in and I look forward to seeing you on another episode.
