EP 43: Intentional Actions for Work-Life Harmony

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Dr. Renee Thompson:
Plants thrive and grow in a peaceful, nourished environment, right? Well, it's the same with human beings. But what if that environment is not so peaceful? What if it's toxic? Welcome to Coffee Break: Breaking the Cycle of Bullying in Healthcare – One Cup at a Time. In this podcast, you'll get practical, evidence-based strategies to help you cultivate and sustain a healthy and respectful work culture by tackling an age-old problem in healthcare: bullying and incivility. I am your host, Dr. Renee Thompson.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Hi, everyone! Welcome back to the Coffee Break podcast. As you know, bullying and incivility happen because they can. And it takes dedicated leaders, like all of you, who are willing to do something about it. However, that requires you to really be in a good space like mentally, physically, emotionally. And that's what we're going to talk about today with our guest, Daniel Hudson, the VP/Associate Chief Nursing executive of Operations at Jefferson Health in Philadelphia, PA, my home state, who will share his recommendations for how leaders can truly care and lead with purpose. So, Daniel, welcome to the show.

Daniel Hudson:
Thanks, Renee. I'm really happy to be here and to share my experiences with you.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Well, I am excited not only for our listeners but for myself, okay? Because when you and I met really not too long ago when I've been doing some work with Jefferson Health, and there was an opportunity to do a little bit more work, and actually, Daniel and I met, and I'll just say it was a sales call. He said, hey, we're interested in having you do some work. So we had that conversation. But then Daniel and I talked about a model that he's using, and after that was the whole call, really is to talk about his, really, ideas on how to have this life that's built on harmony and not just balance. And we're going to talk a little bit about that, but a little bit more about Daniel. He's been practicing nursing for close to 30 years. He's led workforce strategies in both urban and rural communities. And while most of his work is focused on operations, he's truly passionate about harmonizing one's purpose in all aspects of life, because you really can't create a healthy work culture if you're not a healthy leader. Daniel, where I want to start with you is this whole notion of work-life balance, and you have a different approach to it. It's not really balance; it's about harmony. So can you share with us your take on that?

Daniel Hudson:
Yeah, I will. And just the funny thing here real quick, I think it's the harmony that's got me to age so well, not 30 years of nursing, just 20 years. But, I think I'm focusing on the physical aspect. Yeah, so when we got to talking, Renee, and I got to share my story about harmony versus balance and this kind of model; in all transparency, this is a model I've been applying for myself for years and years as a nurse leader, and it continues to evolve. So, it's in the draft phase still, and I'm excited to be able to share a little bit about it. And the piece about harmony versus balance, I think is just so critical to this model. It's been critical for me. It was like I had a breakthrough in my mind and understanding, and the reason that I personally don't like the word balance is because I picture like a seesaw. And if you got two people on a seesaw, they're both fighting to get their balance and to get to the up and down and up and down. And so it's this constant struggle between who's up and who's down. And then maybe even who's on that balance beam and how he's standing straight. And I found personally, in the four kind of key areas or buckets of life that I've created, that it was impossible to balance the four buckets. It was setting up expectations that were just not insurmountable, and so I transitioned from this idea of balance to harmony. And the idea around harmony really is around the concept of, I know I'm going to have to spend ten extra hours at work this week, so how am I going to harmonize that back to one of the other buckets the next week or the week after? Instead of trying to say, oh my gosh, I've got ten hours, let me balance that and try to go do my typical thing with my family where we eat dinner around the table as an example. And so, when I harmonize that and set that expectation for myself and maybe even have a conversation with my wife or my family or another coworker about that harmonization, we're all setting up the right expectations. And so this could extend even beyond your own personal struggle that you might have, and it might even set expectations for other people. You work with other people in your community and your family, and we'll get to those buckets, but that's a little bit about the difference between harmony versus balance.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Talked a lot about employee well-being, okay, and especially over the last four years, it's really top of mind for a lot of leaders. But only recently, I think we've been hearing more about leader wellbeing, and that whole you talk about balance, where's the balance when you're in the middle of a global pandemic? And even beyond that, it's not just situational. We all go through struggles in different seasons of our lives where we feel off balance, but I love your approach. It's not being maybe off balance and maybe it's a season of your life, or maybe it's this week or this month. You have a lot of extra constraints or expectations put upon you. But how do you, then, I love the shift to the inner harmonizing, not balancing, and that it's, I think, communicating to this is going to be a really busy week for me at work. So even though we eat together as a family every day on Thursday, I'm not going to be able to do that and be conscious about that.

Daniel Hudson:
That's right.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
And again, communicate it because I think by doing that, then you don't feel like I don't know, Daniel, there are times where I set myself up, I'm going to get all these things done, and then I don't, and I feel like a failure. And I'm sure you've seen this too, but yes.

Daniel Hudson:
Yeah, and picture this. I'm a very visual person. So we'll get into these buckets here in a second. But let's say you have five buckets, right? So, to get to 100%, you need to be putting 20% into every bucket all the time and balancing that. Is that really attainable? No, it's not attainable. So you're just setting yourself up for failure. You're setting other people's expectations up for failure. I truly believe with all my heart the shift to harmony.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
And before we get into the buckets, I want to find out what, I don't know, what happened that made you sit down one day and say, okay, I need to harmonize a little bit. I'm going to come up with these buckets and this model. So, I want you to tell the story before you actually tell us what they are. So, listeners, I know you're like, what are the buckets? What are the buckets? But hang on. I want to know how this all came about.

Daniel Hudson:
That's a great question. About, I will say 10 to 12 years ago, I had the opportunity to participate in a professional development opportunity when I was at the University of Vermont Medical Center, and it was facilitated by the Center for Creative Leadership, and they had a model that they used as we went through this one week program. And as they were sharing their model, it dawned on me that they were talking about this idea. They had an exercise we had to write down, and they said, okay, there's these, they have their buckets, and they're like, write down the percentages that you've spent in these buckets over the last three weeks. As I was writing those down and looking at them because I'm very visual, I just had this epiphany. I'm like, I'm not balancing anything at all. And this was pre-COVID, right? Because I talked about 10 to 12 years ago. And so life's hard, work's hard, it's not easy. We're on a journey. We're always growing and learning. So it's not like at that time I was struggling as a leader or anything along those lines. I just had an epiphany. Wow, I need to think about this differently. And I think that's how many of us grow and learn, right? We have a moment. It's just a light bulb that goes off in our heads, and it's from that light bulb. Now, for ten years, I've been evolving and growing this idea and this concept. And interestingly enough, I've even changed the name of the bucket over time. Or I've changed the priority of which bucket I think is more important over time. And so we can talk about all that and my journey through these buckets, and that's where it all started.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
You and I are very similar, and I'm sure a lot of people who are listening have also had these experiences where you read something, and it resonates with you, like in your core, okay? Or because a lot of people who know me, I will read something like, right now, I'm obsessed with Radical Candor. Kim Scott's book, Radical Candor. How do you know you care enough about people to tell them the truth? So now that's my obsession. I'm talking about it all the time. There was something else in the Harvard Business Review article about lateral agility. It was about silos, and now I'm obsessed with this. But when I look back at my history as a human being, there have been those moments where I've either listened to something or gone to a conference and heard somebody speak about something that gave me the opportunity to look at my life in a through a very different set of lenses. And I have some of those moments, too, where it created a course correction, maybe, or it just took me on a different path. And the key, I think, is to be open to it, to allow that to happen, but then you took action. Many of us will have that aha moment, but then we get back, and life gets in the way, and we don't take action. All right, Daniel, tell us about your buckets. Tell us what action you took after hearing this, and yeah, I can't wait to hear this from you.

Daniel Hudson:
But before I jump into those buckets as you were talking, I want to share something. I think, again, it's just another practical example. I took my my wife and I and the kids to see Inside Out 2 last week. And, if you haven't seen it, it's a phenomenal movie, but not just for kids. What I was struck by in that movie was the idea that we have emotions, and it's through experiencing those emotions that we formulate our core belief system, and it talks about this in the movie, the core belief system. And the whole point of the movie is to talk about how that core belief system can change and evolve over time and how emotions help it, help evolve over time. And since that epiphany, I had that moment. I have a lot of experiences, as I shared, that have changed my thoughts. And the important piece to this is the intention behind it because we all have core beliefs, whether we want to agree or think about them or be intentional about them. And so I really encourage the audience to think about, well, what are my core beliefs? Because those will form your buckets. These are my buckets. Maybe your buckets might look a little different. You might prioritize your buckets a little differently. I think the most important thing is to have some organization in how you structure your life. You can prioritize them, and you can be intentional about them because, in the end, that's what's going to make you the best person that you can be, whether that's with your family, whether that's with the community, or your purpose, your profession. So there are the buckets, right? We've got you. For me, I'm a spiritual individual, so there's a huge component of that within the self bucket, but there might be people that are more agnostic, and they're just more on the mindful stream of things. And so we can talk about the specifics in that bucket, but self comes first. The second bucket, family, it can be friends. Family can be whoever those most immediate people around you that you go to, you trust. They're the phone call at 3 a.m., those people that are that important. The third bucket is community. A community can be a whole host of things. That can be, if you're involved in professional organizations, your community, you've got your neighborhood, right, practically speaking. If you are on the spiritual side, maybe you go to church or attend mass, so that's a community. And then you've got service or your profession, and I put those in order. I ranked those just now in order of priority. I believe personally, and I've learned over my time in the last 10 or 12 years, that if I don't intentionally focus on myself and how I do that, we can talk about practical ways of how to do that, then there's no way that I can be the person I need to be for my family, and then you can continue to build that out. Okay, I got myself, I got my family, but if I can't focus on my family, and I'm stressed about my family, and there's push and pull going on with my family, then I can't be as engaged as I need to be in community, in my community. And then I believe all three of those build us up to be the best we can be in the service or the purpose we have in our life and the profession we're working in. I've been asked a lot. Wow, you categorize your profession last; that's the least. And it's true, I do, and I think that's a very important piece to be intentional about. Again, we can talk about how you work through those and harmonize them all. But that's the high-level, simple buckets, four buckets. Keep it simple so that you can think about how you.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Well, that's funny, you say, Keep it simple, because I'm sure you could have, and some people might do this, you have buckets, but then you have sub-buckets and maybe sub-buckets for those sub-buckets. It's so funny. With my team, we try to come up with these quarterly rocks. We call them big rocks. And it's a well-known phrase when you're looking at you go to do your big rocks first. So then, here's what we did. And our intent was to not take on too many projects at the same time. Like, you just can't get everything done that you think you can do. And every single quarter, like, we didn't get that that week. So, let's streamline it. We do 3 or 4 big rocks. Then what ended up happening was we added little rocks, and then some added pebbles, and then someone created sand, and then we ended up with 27 things. So I bet, because when you and I talked, and you told me about your buckets, I wrote them down, and I thought, okay, are these the buckets that resonate with me based on my core beliefs? And they were. And I started coming up with some sub.buckets, and I'm like, wait a minute here. So, do people do that? You did say self, so your spirituality is important to you, so that's a sub-bucket. But maybe we can start with self. What are some practical things that you do to make sure that you're taking care of yourself?

Daniel Hudson:
Yeah. You make a great point, Renee. This model is agile and flexible. As I've said, it's growing. It should be what the individual needs it to be. There are some people who, they are just really good at Excel sheets and creating project plans and need organization. There are some people are more like me, who we would call explorers, right? So, if you think about Myers-Briggs, like I'm an explorer. So, when I think about an explorer, what does that practically mean? It means I can put something, say, I can tell Apple Maps, I need to go to Richmond, Virginia, right? I don't care how I get there, just get me to Richmond, Virginia. And as we're going, it's, oh, there's a wreck. Take the off-ramp, go off the highway, and save 20 minutes. I don't have a problem with that. But there are some people, no, staying on, I have a plan, I have my details. So I think the important piece of this is focus on the four buckets, and if you need more categorization underneath that to help you be intentional, go for it. Make sure you're …

Dr. Renee Thompson:
… not complicating it. I think, I don't know what it is with some people, and I guess there are times I'm guilty of this, but not as often as others that people like to complicate things. It's four buckets that are meaningful to you based on your core beliefs, and then you put some things in there that really help you to contribute to, okay, I'm taking care of myself. What does that look like for me? So, Daniel, I'm curious what that looks like for you. So, if you could give us just a couple of practical things that you do, and you already mentioned something about eating together with the family, but for yourself, what do you do to take care of yourself?

Daniel Hudson:
Yeah, for myself, I go back to that Center for Creative Leadership course, and I think about some things that I think you would, Renee, call sub-buckets. I think of my emotional state, my mental state, my physical state, and my social state. Like those are like categories that CCL would say you need to build resiliency in those, right? And I know that word resiliency. It can be touchy these days, but the reality is, whether we like it or not, we have to have resiliency in these buckets. And so when I think about things like practically, what do I do for those buckets? I exercise; I'm intentional about it. It's hard. I'm tired sometimes. And I know we all walk that one out, right? And there are times when I'll be honest, and I'll confess, I don't, I'm not as good, but I do. I try to play basketball two days a week, full court, five-on-five. I get about two and a half, three and a half, and four and a half miles in when I do that. And so I believe focusing physically, whether it's just taking walks, whether it's doing core exercises for 20 minutes a day like you don't have to go like join a gym and be at the gym five days a week. There are little things that can be done to get you where you need to get physically. When I think about mental and emotional, some very practical things I do, I journal. So, I journal a lot. For me, and maybe this is for all of those explorers out there, I have to get it out of my brain and stuck in my brain, and so when I get it out, and I write, it makes sense. And I do take the time intentionally to to journal, whether that's about a situation that might have happened at work or with my family, or how I'm tying that to my spirituality, it all kind of connects. And I write music, so I play guitar, I write music like my outlet, we'll call it. Drives my wife…

Dr. Renee Thompson:
I'm sure she loves it.

Daniel Hudson:
No, I hear it in my head right now. I thought it was, … kids in bed, and I'm like, no, I gotta get my outlet out and play the song I've been working on writing the last two weeks. So, there are just some examples. There's a lot that are out there for adults to practice when it comes to self, but the key point here is to find what works for you, and this will be a recurring theme here.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
You do.

Daniel Hudson:
You have to be intentional. You just have to. Even if it doesn't feel good, you do it.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Perfect example. So I commit to going to our gym so many days a week. There's I love doing Zumba. I used to dance a lot, so I love Zumba. Well, last night, okay, by the time this airs. Just so you all know who we're listening to, I just came back from a vacation. And you know what it's like when you disconnect when you come back, and then you're like, oh, my goodness, like an avalanche of things that I have to do. And the class that I take a strength training class from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. and then a Zumba from 7 to 8. And I had back-to-back meetings all day. And I even said to my husband, you know what? I need to get caught up on my email. I need to get caught up on all these things. And I was considering not going. And then I stopped myself, and I thought, wait a minute, how am I going to show up better the next day if I stayed at home and checked email and answered email for two hours, or if I went to the gym and did something for myself, and I went to the gym, and there have been times I'm like, I don't feel like going. And my husband will even remind me every time you say that, when you come home from the gym, you're like, I'm so glad I went. It was such a great class. But being intentional about it and I don't let other things get in the way, even though sometimes I'm like, I struggle, but I still make that commitment. And so I think the point of all of that.

Daniel Hudson:
Yeah, you have to push through the distractions. There's just distractions everywhere, whether it's the arthritis in the knee or the broken schedule from travel, whatever the distraction is, the email from work that came in at 5:30 p.m. that you think you have the pressure to answer before the sun goes down. That's where this harmony is.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
And that's where I've gotten better. Once I set that intention, I am going because I travel a lot. So when I'm home, I like to make sure that I get those classes in at the gym. Even though we live in Florida, we walk every morning. Florida is flat. There's no incline. So my heart rate's not getting up there when I'm walking. We have a path near our house, so that's why I like to go to the gym and do strength training, but once I set that intention and I look at my week, I commit to it. I don't let anything else get in the way. And I think to your point, it's because it's number one, you cannot be a healthy leader and take care of your people if you're not healthy yourself. So, let's talk about family.

Daniel Hudson:
That's right.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
And you said friends are a part of that.

Daniel Hudson:
Yeah. Friends, really close friends, right? The accountability partners we have in life. I think that they're so important, and you have to be intentional around that as well. I mentioned so my family and I, my wife, my two children, believe it or not, we've been doing this for years and years. We're very intentional about eating dinner around the table without distractions, and we actually talk to each other. I know, go figure. And we will have conversations like what was the best thing that happened today? What was a challenging thing that happened today? And we've been doing this with our kids since they were like three and four years old. And so that's just important family time to be intentional around again and harmonize it. But like you, I travel. So, I have to be thoughtful about that piece. And and then there's the giving the time to to your family. And I'll give you another good practical example because that's the kind of person I am. My son, my eight-year-old, is on the traveling soccer team, and so we harmonize a lot of time to him.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Mhm.

Daniel Hudson:
Especially in the summer. Thankfully, that's now ended. But he got his evaluation recently, and the coach challenged him, work on your skills for 20 minutes a day. And it's the last thing I wanted to do yesterday in 85 degree heat was to go out back after dinner and work with my son for 20 minutes on the soccer skills. But I had to be intentional because one of the coaches challenged him, and I had a conversation with my son about that evaluation every day. And two, my son gave me the look. And I could still get the look and be like, I'm just too tired. But I really believe, and you mentioned it too. Like, once you just get past that distraction, you just take that step.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
It actually becomes decision-making. It's like you make the decision ahead of time, and then you don't allow yourself to go back. I used to keep a little index card, so sometimes I have these index cards set up to remind me of things. And for a while, I had to just do it. Stop thinking about it. If you said you're going to do it, just do it, and you feel better after you've done it. The same thing with soccer for 20 minutes, just go out and do it.

Daniel Hudson:
You just get started, and that's the intention. Just take the first step. And that's actually from a book I saw a keynote speaker. His name is escaping me right now, but he wrote a book on habits.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
James Clear?

Daniel Hudson:
Forming habits.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Yeah, Atomic Habits. Well, actually.

Daniel Hudson:
Thank you, yes. Yeah, Atomic Habits, yes. And so he gives these talks and it's amazing. These Olympians, right? They didn't just snap their finger and become Olympians, right? I love this talk he gives around the cycling team. And like they look at every little thing, right? The pillows, the inflation of the tires on the bike, like so many different variables you can look at, and I really liked that. The story he gave about going to work out just form the habit. Yeah, take the first step. Just drive there. Don't get out and do it. Just drive there for a week if you have to. And I think that's what we need to get good at, whether it's focusing on the bucket of yourself or focusing on your family or community, which we'll talk about and work.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
He said just focus on getting 1% better.

Daniel Hudson:
1% better.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
You know? That's right. No, New Year's resolutions don't work. You say I'm going to start working out five days a week, blah blah, and you get two days, and you're like, heck with this, forget it. But if you can, just maybe just do one push-up. It's interesting. My daughters, I have two grown daughters, and then my husband and I have been doing these challenges each month. We pick a challenge. So, in the first month, we did squats. So we had we start with 25 squats a day. Then we upped it five more. I wanted to go to 50. They're like, that's too many, so we had to compromise. So we did that for a month, and then we did push-ups for a month. We incremental increase, and this month, we're doing crunches. But it's funny because you just you get into the habit of it. Oh, and then we text each other a dime, or we are done doing our, we met the challenge for the day, and you make it fun. But we're not looking at becoming bodybuilders, or it's just getting into the habit of doing some form of exercise every single day, even if it's just 15 push-ups. Although 15 pushups, I'm not good at push-ups, so it was a definite challenge for me. I can do crunches all day long, but push-ups? Oh, not so much.

Daniel Hudson:
Then you bring up, Renee, a good point that I was going to bring up, that there's nothing like a little competition to motivate you, right? And like my wife, speaking of the bucket of community, so you can tie these buckets together, too. So my wife will do step competitions with one of the neighbors, and they go walk around the neighborhood sometimes together where they're relating because that's really about what community is about, and it's about relationships and being intentional around relationships. But then there's the competition, and they're always taking pictures and snapping it. And look, I'm at.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Oh my God, I've actually seen people get up and say, oh my God, they're ahead. Because we used to be in a step competition with my mother, okay. My mother, who's in her late 70s, she had nothing better to do all day. So she would walk around her neighborhood all day long, and she won the competition almost all the time. But we let her, we let her.

Daniel Hudson:
The competitor in me would say, move from steps to calorie burn.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
That's a good one. See that? All right. I will have to revisit that with mom. Okay, all right. You mentioned community.

Daniel Hudson:
Yeah, Yeah.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Community can also be, like your physical community, but it can also be, say, your professional nursing organization. So, talk to us a little bit more about community, especially from the nursing perspective if you work in healthcare.

Daniel Hudson:
Yeah. Community at the local level, of course, is your friends, your neighborhood. I also, for example, one of the two basketball sessions I do per week, I actually facilitate it in partnership with the local rec department for the city. It's supposed to be for 35-year-old and older males, but sometimes they bring their 18-year-old sons. But that's fun, right? So that again, how the buckets like I'm giving back to the community, I'm serving and giving back to the community, not just participant in it, and I think that's important. I get a lot of joy out of that and seeing the guys be able to play in church and have men's groups and things like that. So those are ways to relate within the community, right? Important. That doesn't stop locally. We've got our own professional organizations that we're a part of, and we are not knocking professional organizations. They're important. They set very good position statements, and they provide lots of resources to us as leaders and as just nurses in general, yet it's so interesting when you come together as a community of that organization and the energy that's created. And I truly believe that it's about face-to-face interaction and relationship, and get past the networking and how important that is and whether somebody believes in the Bible or not. Like, we can put that aside. It's still a book. During COVID-19, I was reading this book, and it fascinated me. Something that Paul wrote in one of the books of the Bible, he said, and one of the first chapters of one of the New Testament books. He says, I would love to continue to write to you in pen and paper. However, I long for the day that I can see you face to face because I know the joy that it brings. 2000 years ago, a man wrote that sitting in a prison cell, historically speaking, and he knew the importance of face-to-face interaction, and so that's really what community is about. It's about face-to-face interaction, relating with your community, and not just taking from it.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Wow, That makes me think of all sorts of things. The importance of being with people. And we can get into a whole other conversation about whether you're an extrovert or an introvert: where do you get your energy? You know, you mentioned Myers-Briggs earlier because I have my two daughters. One is an extreme extrovert. She needs to be around people, and the other one needs to be around people. She has to go home and go. She calls it to go into her dryer and shut the door like with the clothes that you forget about for a period of time. But I think as human beings, there is something innately the same in all of us that we need that human connection like we're born as individuals, but we survive and thrive as groups, as teams, as being with other people. And I don't think any of us realize the importance of that as much as we did when we were forced to not be with each other because I have never seen more positive energy in a room full of people than like one of the first live conferences that I attended after the world shut down. Bringing people together, oh my gosh. It was like it was like Christmas morning for a kid. It was the greatest gift just to be with people. And I actually wrote something about this not too long ago. Now that everybody is so used to Zoom and Teams and having these meetings virtually, even though now that we can still meet in person, people are still opting to just hop on their computers and meet. And I said, make the effort, watch, go to the meeting, be there in the same room with other human beings. It's a different experience than just hopping on a, you know, virtual object.

Daniel Hudson:
Absolutely.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
So well-stated.

Daniel Hudson:
Yeah, and I think the giving back I want to emphasize giving back, whether it's a professional organization like AONL or ANA or whatever your specialty organization might be, or even in like giving back to, Habitat for Humanity, for example, like, I really believe all of my heart that there is joy to be found when you're giving instead of receiving. And so I really encourage that when you think about the buckets and the harmonization, you get to that community bucket. Think about where I could go serve somebody.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
There's a lot of science behind this, too, that the positive benefits that the serotonin and oxytocin and all those hormones that.

Daniel Hudson:
Yes.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
You give just as much as the giver, if not more, than the person receiving. And we often don't stop. I think we don't give ourselves the white space to pause and say, okay, how can I serve? Who can I serve? Whether it's you yourself, okay, whether it's someone in your family, it's somebody at work, it's someone in your community. Because even I struggle to harmonize my buckets. And I have my own business, and it's growing and trying to keep up with those demands. But yet, my oldest daughter has two little kids, and she doesn't live near us, and she needs help. Okay, so she and her husband, they both work. They've got the two kids, not as much support where they live, where you know, when I was young, I had my nanny and my aunties, and everybody was around to help. And so she's a little she's apart from her family. So there are times when we go and help her. We'll go there for, like, we're going next week, even though, like, how do I carve out this time? Because I've got a business I need to run, but that's an important bucket of mine, is to serve my daughter and to get to play with my grandkids so that there's going to be three and six in the next month or so. But it's intentional, as you said, Daniel, it's intentional. And that means that week I'm not going to be able to work in my service bucket as much because I'm focused on my family.

Daniel Hudson:
That's right.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Yeah, and I won't get to the gym.

Daniel Hudson:
That's right.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
But there'll be other things that I can do. You run around with two little kids; you can work up quite a sweat.

Daniel Hudson:
Right. But you could be in the best physical shape of your life, but emotionally and mentally, not be in a good place. And so, that's why harmonizing and putting your energy into those buckets intentionally is so important.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
So true, so true. All right, as we start to wrap up, you have a leader who's listening right now who says, oh my gosh, this is resonating with me because I feel that I have no harmony in my life right now, that I don't even know what my buckets are. So somebody wanted to start, they were fresh, they had no buckets listed; certainly, they can adopt yours because that's what I did when you told me, like, okay, I'm going to have a self-portrait, I'm going to have a family of friends. And I did that, and then, I morphed it a little bit to really align with my core beliefs, and, of course, I had some buckets in there, too. But what would you recommend that they do to begin?

Daniel Hudson:
I would say sit down and just be intentional. Grab a piece of paper and a pen, and just start writing. It's all about what we've talked about already: taking that first step. And if anyone out there says I don't need a model, I'm perfectly fine, I would really challenge that. I think we're all challenged in different ways, and being able to have the right intention and the right expectations is the starting point. So don't be afraid to take the first step. Don't be distracted to take by taking the first step. And just take, gosh, 15 minutes. Give yourself 15 minutes. That's all to ask, I would say, is to start and see where your mind takes you and see where your heart takes you. And start with the four buckets of self and family and community and service, or your work profession, and see what you start writing, see what comes out, and maybe you'll morph it. That's totally fine. This is all about making the listeners be intentional about how they can be better, so that they can be better in all the buckets. Because ultimately, if you get to that fourth bucket for us as nurse leaders, it's about being the best nurse leader we can be. And that's about giving and receiving, and there are moments to do all of that. So that would be my encouragement.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
So I'm thinking about that nurse leader who might feel that right now, their service bucket is all-consuming. And we talk a lot about setting boundaries as a leader, especially when it comes to ending their day. Daniel, I'll never forget when I was working as a nurse manager. I had put in so many hours. You know, your salary, you, it's not like I swipe in and swipe out. So, I started tracking. I was putting in 50, 60 hours a week, and that was sometimes at my house doing like that's where I did all my performance evaluations. It used to be on paper back in the day. That's what I would do them all. And I remember the one time my daughter had a softball game, and I had missed enough softball games that I was going to leave early, quote-unquote, early. And I'll never forget walking out; it was, I think, 3:30. And one of my nurses said, must be nice leaving early. It was all I could do … strangle her. I was like, oh. And I felt my, I got really defensive, and I stopped myself from defending myself.

Daniel Hudson:
Yes.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
I wish I could go back. And I'm curious your thoughts on this, if you want to start really harmonizing and you realize that all of your time, emotional, mental energy, everything is spent in that service pocket to let your team know that you're working on this and saying, it's important for me that I'm home for my family, that we eat dinner together as a family, so that means I'm going to be leaving every day at this time, kind of let people know ahead of time, like, I am working on this because I think then it role models that it's important, that it's not just work, that you're a human being, you have family, you have friends, you have your community, and, but to let people know that; what are your thoughts on that is to let people know ahead of time what some of your buckets are, maybe, or what's important to you? You don't have to say, these are all my buckets and some buckets. That's how I do everything, but at least to say I'm leaving or this is what I'm doing because.

Daniel Hudson:
I have several thoughts, and I'll make them quick. The first one is that individual was just a distraction.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
…

Daniel Hudson:
Right. And I think we need to be intentional even about catching the distractions in our mind because the reality is your story is not their story, and their story is not your story. And there's always more information out there, and we're always making up these stories. We're actually we could all be producers and write amazing movies for Hollywood, right? We all know it. So, I just want to call that out. The second thing I would say is, yes, you should organize it. You should tell people. And I would even go as far to say, have your board of directors who are like checking in on you and saying, hey, how's that harmonization going? Did you get to the softball game? Did you get to Friday Night Lights with your family, whatever you've set up? And the third thing I would say is, be the role model so that your own staff see it, live it, and maybe they start thinking about it themselves. And because we need our staff to be the best they can be, and let's just be honest, healthcare is a very challenging place to be working right now. It's very hard. And it's not just because the healthcare environment is hard; it's because the world we live in is very challenging, and there's lots of distraction in all of us all the time. Yeah, lots of distractions, lots of just negative energy all over the place. I mean, just watch the news, or don't. So, yeah, maybe that's a part of your intentional list.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
This was so great. I wish we had another 20 hours to talk about this because, as I said, when you and I first had this conversation, it really prompted me to sit down and really think about how I'm spending my time and who I'm giving my time to and am I being intentional about it because we only have so much time and in the day and the week and in our lives. So how do we want to spend that time? And really considering the whole emotional states and how our emotions actually drive us based on, again, our core beliefs? And I never even saw the first movie that you mentioned, the second one now. Inside out, yes. I haven't even watched the first one. Okay, I'm going to have to put that on my list to watch the first one, and the second one, because I've heard they're really great. So I'm going to definitely do that. And those of you who are listening, I would highly encourage you to really give yourself some space and time, as Daniel said, and just sit without any distractions and really think about your core beliefs and come up with your own buckets. But if you want to start with Daniel's, that's exactly what I did. Then start with Daniel's because they're pretty good, okay? Self, family, and friends, and community, and service. I think it's a great starting place for you. So I hope this was really helpful for all of you who are listening today to help you to be a healthier leader so that you can actually lead your teams, because it really does start with you. And, Daniel, I want to thank you for being a guest on our show. This was such a great conversation. I was looking forward to it because I am absolutely, yes. I addressed workplace bullying and incivility, and that's my passion. It comes from a place of one of my top three core values is kindness, one human to another human. So when I see cruelty, it drives me crazy. I have to do something about it, and that's why one of the reasons why I do this work, but I'm also all about how do I become a better leader. How do I become a better human being, a better friend, a better person of service? How do I take care of myself better? And I think we all are in the same situation where we're just trying to become better. And this was a really great model, great framework for us to then copy from you and implement it. Thank you for being here. This has been great.

Daniel Hudson:
Yeah, it's my pleasure, Renee. And that's my hope that somebody can just, even if one listener takes a nugget from this, and it makes a difference, and they have their own light bulb.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
I have no doubt that somebody's listening right now. This is going to be their aha moment that they're going to talk about on somebody else's podcast 20 years from now, and say, 20 years ago, I was listening to the Coffee Break podcast. Okay, so, Daniel, people want to connect with you. What's the best way of doing that?

Daniel Hudson:
Yeah, I have an active on LinkedIn, and you can go search me up on LinkedIn. I accept everybody that wants to follow me, probably even the robots, and so that, that's out there. And so, let's start with that. If there's individuals who want to go deeper, I'm happy to even connect individually with people. And we can start doing LinkedIn and maybe exchange personal emails, things like that. So always available. Talk about this work and help people navigate.

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Yeah, it's such a great work. So, thank you for your generosity. And we'll have the link to Daniel's LinkedIn profile in the show notes, along with Atomic Habits and anything else that we talked about on the show today. So I want to thank you for listeners who are on the recording, either video or you're listening on the audio. Thank you so much for being here, for doing your part to cultivate a healthy work culture by first being a healthier leader. So, thanks everyone for being here. Don't forget to rate, review, and to share this podcast with others. Take care everyone. Bye!

Dr. Renee Thompson:
Thank you for listening to Coffee Break: Breaking the Cycle of Bullying in Healthcare – One Cup at a Time. If you found this podcast helpful, we invite you to click the Subscribe button and tune in every week. For more information about our show and how we work with healthcare organizations to cultivate and sustain a healthy work culture free from bullying and incivility, visit us at HealthyWorkforceInstitute.com. Until our next cup of coffee, be kind, take care, and stay connected.

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