Deconstructing the causes of stress and strain at work is everyone's job with guest expert Adrian Gostick

Adrian Gostick, co-author of Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

Bill Ringle and Adrian Gostick discuss the importance of taking responsibility for day-to-day morale for yourself and your colleagues is what creates a desirable and healthy work culture for small business leaders.

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth. My Quest for the Best is a top-rated small business podcast with over 300 episodes of thought-provoking and insightful interviews with today’s top thought leaders and business experts. Host Bill Ringle’s mission with this show is to provide the strategies, insights, and resources that will unlock the growth potential of your business through these powerful conversations.

Interview Insights

Top 3 Takeaways from this Interview

Anxiety is not exclusive to larger companies. Small and mid-sized business leaders should also take time to make check their employee's mental health and talk discuss anxiety in the workplace.

Stress unattended can lead to anxiety. Leaders must address its cause at the manifestations of early signs such as burnout, and these signs are observable when interacting to them. Leaders should make every meeting meaningful and an opportunity to show support to their teams.

Employees' silence is the loudest alarm that something needs to be adressed, and leaders must attend to this because culture of silence can damage a company.

Read the Show Notes from this Episode

An important person growing up for Adrian was his father, whose work ethic and passion for his work inspired him. [01:36]

After working from one big company to another, Adrian and his co-author Chester Elton decided to take a big leap, left a secured job, and took a risk to pursue a path of ownership and creativity.  [04:48]

Here he gives us a better understanding of what anxiety is. [09:22]

Managers should make meeting more meaningful. [10:42]

Anxiety has a lot of ways to manifest. It is important to identify its early signs. [14:05]

Partnering up is a great way to make employees not feel isolated because they would have someone to check each other with. [17:00]

Adrian talks about David, and the example he set on how to coach younger team members. [19:24]

Cultures do not start with the CEO, it comes down to the individual. Adrian uses Disney and Texas Roadhouse as examples. [22:15]

Adrian talks about Amy Edmondson and the dangers of silence in the workplace. [26:52]

Taking a mental health day is can help relieve anxiety. [30:16]

My Quest for the Best Lightning Round begins [33:17]

Expert Bio

#1 bestselling author Adrian Gostick provides advice to some of the world’s largest organizations on managing change, driving innovation, and leading high-performance teams.

Gostick is a global thought leader in the fields of corporate culture, leadership, and engagement. He is the founder of the workplace assessment company FindMojo.com and author of the #1 New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestsellers All In, The Carrot Principle, Leading with Gratitude, and Anxiety at Work. His award-winning books have been translated into 30 languages and have sold more than 1.5 million copies around the world. Gostick writes weekly on leadership strategy for Forbes, and his work has been called “fascinating,” by Fortune magazine and “creative and refreshing” by the New York Times. He has appeared on NBC’s Today Show, CNN, and CNBC, and is often quoted in The Economist, Financial Times, Newsweek, and Wall Street Journal. In 2021, Adrian was ranked as a top 10 Global Guru in Leadership and Organizational Culture.

As an executive coach, he is a member of Marshall Goldsmith’s MG100 ‘Pay it Forward’ Coaching Cohort. His consulting clients include Danaher, Bank of America, Cisco, Rolls Royce,