Trust is not a soft skill. It is the foundation of every high performing team.

SEASON 4:

Foundations of Friendship at Work & Cultures of Connection

Part 1: Foundations of Friendship at Work

Episode 2 — The Science of Friendship and Leadership part 2

Listen in as we break down what trust and connection really look like in modern leadership and how they are built through daily, intentional actions, not titles or authority. If you have ever wondered how to move your team from functional to fully engaged, this conversation gives you a clear and practical path forward.

Learn a simple, repeatable three step framework that you can use immediately to strengthen relationships, increase engagement, and create a culture where people feel seen, valued, and motivated to do their best work.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Why authenticity builds trust when it is done with boundaries, not oversharing
• How closing the say do gap directly impacts credibility and leadership effectiveness
• Practical ways to create meaningful connection at work, in person or remote
• Why listening deeply and allowing silence leads to better insight and stronger teams
• How thoughtful recognition, from handwritten notes to moments of fun, drives engagement and loyalty
• A powerful leadership case study showing how connection transformed an entire organization

Through real stories from executive leadership, healthcare, and coaching, this episode challenges the idea that connection just happens. It shows why leaders must design it intentionally and how small actions can create lasting ripple effects across a team.

If you want a team that trusts you, stays engaged, and genuinely wants to follow your lead, this episode gives you a clear, human centered framework to build trust and belonging starting now. Leadership is not just about managing work. It is about building relationships that help people and organizations thrive.

©Friendship Institute 2026

Friendship Matters™ is intended to help improve our Friendship IQ. While this generally signals an improvement in our overall wellbeing, this podcast is not intended in any way to offer specific counseling or medical advice. Please seek help from a trained professional.

What if one of the most powerful leadership tools is also one of the most overlooked? SEASON 4:

Foundations of Friendship at Work & Cultures of Connection

Part 1: Foundations of Friendship at Work

Episode 1 — The Science of Friendship and Leadership

In this episode, we kick off our series by exploring the surprising role friendship plays in effective leadership. Research shows that employees are seven times more engaged when they have a best friend at work, yet many leaders are still taught to keep connection at arm's length.

We unpack why leadership is fundamentally relational, not transactional, and why trust, care, and authenticity are not soft skills but strategic advantages. Through real world stories and lived experience, including powerful examples from executive leader Lisa Grimes, we explore what it looks like to lead with genuine connection without sacrificing performance or accountability.

You will hear why people follow leaders they trust, how consistency and authenticity build loyalty over time, and why knowing your people matters more than surveys, bonuses, or titles. We also examine the hidden costs of disconnection, from loneliness at work to disengagement, retention challenges, and even imposter syndrome among leaders themselves.

This conversation challenges the myth of command and control leadership and reframes friendship as a foundation for trust, engagement, productivity, and belonging. If you want to be the kind of leader people would follow anywhere, not because they have to, but because they want to, this episode sets the stage.

Listen in and rethink what great leadership really looks like.

©Friendship Institute 2026

Friendship Matters™ is intended to help improve our Friendship IQ. While this generally signals an improvement in our overall wellbeing, this podcast is not intended in any way to offer specific counseling or medical advice. Please seek help from a trained professional.

Rituals often look small on the surface, a shared walk, a candle lit in remembrance, a weekly check in text, but they carry enormous power. In this final episode of our holiday series, we explore how rituals anchor connection, create belonging, and help us make meaning during times of transition, uncertainty, and grief.

The conversation unpacks the difference between routines and rituals, highlighting intention as the key distinction. While routines help us function, rituals help us feel. They invite us to pause, reflect, and choose connection with ourselves and with others. Our hosts share personal stories of inherited and newly created rituals, from winter solstice gatherings and New Year traditions to lifelong friendship rituals that have endured for decades.

We also explore the science behind ritual, including how predictability and shared meaning soothe the nervous system, reduce stress, and support deeper connection through oxytocin and parasympathetic activation. The episode challenges the idea that rituals must be religious, rigid, or elaborate, and instead reframes them as flexible, life giving practices that can evolve as our lives do.

Listeners are invited to reflect on whether their current rituals still serve them, and to consider creating or renewing one small ritual that brings grounding, connection, or comfort. Because connection is not accidental. It grows through intention, presence, and the meaning we create together.

©Friendship Institute 2025

Friendship Matters™ is intended to help improve our Friendship IQ. While this generally signals an improvement in our overall wellbeing, this podcast is not intended in any way to offer specific counseling or medical advice. Please seek help from a trained professional.

The holidays are often described as the season of giving, yet for many people they come with pressure, comparison, and exhaustion. In this episode of Friendship Matters, we explore a different question. What if the most meaningful gift is not something you buy, but the presence you bring?

The hosts unpack how holiday stress is driven by social expectations, financial pressure, and the urge to perform generosity rather than experience it. Drawing from personal stories, neuroscience, and research on generosity and well being, the conversation reframes giving as time, attention, empathy, and authenticity.

You will hear why presence is one of the most powerful and scarce resources we have, how generosity activates the brain's reward and empathy networks, and why giving in community amplifies its impact. The episode also offers practical ideas, from asking better questions and listening deeply, to volunteering together, practicing gratitude out loud, and letting go of perfection when hosting or gathering.

This is a thoughtful and grounding conversation for anyone feeling overwhelmed by holiday expectations, or longing for deeper connection. The takeaway is simple but profound. Generosity is not about how much you spend. It is about how fully you show up.

©Friendship Institute 2025

Friendship Matters™ is intended to help improve our Friendship IQ. While this generally signals an improvement in our overall wellbeing, this podcast is not intended in any way to offer specific counseling or medical advice. Please seek help from a trained professional.

During the holidays, the office party can feel like one more box to check, not a place where people actually connect. Yet our sense of belonging at work has a real impact on health, energy, and performance, especially at the end of the year.

In this episode of Friendship Matters, we talk with special guest Jana Boehmer from the Veterans Affairs Office of Patient Centered Care and Cultural Transformation. Jana was tasked with bringing together a fully virtual team of seventy five people for a holiday celebration that was creative, inclusive, and genuinely meaningful. What she designed was so powerful that her colleagues are still talking about it.

You will hear:

• How a virtual holiday party became a shared experience that reduced loneliness and strengthened trust

• Simple prompts and rituals that help people share their real lives without putting anyone on the spot

• Practical ways leaders can model care, curiosity, and transparency so that employees feel heard, not managed

• Ideas to include people who do not celebrate traditional holidays or who may be grieving or isolated

• Why work and life are never completely separate, and what healthy work life integration really looks like

If you want your office holiday gathering to feel like more than awkward small talk, this conversation will give you concrete ideas to create connection, honor diverse stories, and build a workplace where people truly feel they belong.

Jana Boehmer serves in the Veterans Affairs Office of Patient Centered Care and Cultural Transformation, where she leads initiatives that strengthen employee wellbeing, connection, and whole health. With experience across both corporate and federal environments, Jana specializes in designing inclusive, human centered programs that bring people together across distance, roles, and diverse backgrounds. Her work focuses on creating meaningful experiences that support employee engagement, psychological safety, and a culture of belonging throughout the VA's nationwide system.

Connect with her on LinkedIn at Jana Boehmer MSM, RDN

©Friendship Institute 2025

Friendship Matters™ is intended to help improve our Friendship IQ. While this generally signals an improvement in our overall wellbeing, this podcast is not intended in any way to offer specific counseling or medical advice. Please seek help from a trained professional.

Family is not always defined by shared DNA. For many of us, the people who feel most like home are the friends who show up, celebrate with us, and stand beside us through every season. That becomes especially true during the holidays, when family expectations, distance, or loss can stir up complicated emotions and a deep sense of disconnection.

In this episode of Friendship Matters, Donna Brighton, Dr Russell Greenfield, and Lisa Grimes explore how intentional friendships can become your chosen family and offer a grounded sense of belonging. They share real stories and practical ideas for reshaping the holidays in ways that feel authentic, life giving, and kind to your nervous system.

You will hear:

• Why the holidays are so emotionally loaded, even for people who look "fine" on the outside

• How chosen family can expand, not replace, our idea of family and home

• Simple friendship traditions like Friendsgiving, question filled dinners, and shared service that deepen connection

• Ways to support friends who are grieving, alone, or far from home during this season

• How small invitations and intentional questions can transform a gathering from surface level chatter into meaningful connection

Listen if you have ever felt out of place at a holiday table, if you are far from family, or if you simply want your friendships to feel more like home, for you and for the people you love.

©Friendship Institute 2025

Friendship Matters™ is intended to help improve our Friendship IQ. While this generally signals an improvement in our overall wellbeing, this podcast is not intended in any way to offer specific counseling or medical advice. Please seek help from a trained professional.

This episode explains why holiday stress does more than tire you out. It actually disrupts the physiology that makes connection possible. Dr. Dael Waxman shows how small, intentional shifts can recalibrate your energy, reduce reactivity, and bring you back to what you wanted from this season in the first place. If you want to feel less drained and more genuinely connected during the holidays, these insights give you a practical way to get there.

In this episode, you will hear about:

• How chronic holiday stress affects your physiology, mood, and ability to connect, and why that is not a personal failure

• A simple practice of naming what gives you energy and what drains it, then reshaping your season around what truly matters

• Practical ways to reset your nervous system and your social life, from one minute mindfulness to tiny acts of kindness and connection at home, at work, and in your community

In this episode of Friendship Matters, we unpack what all the "overs" of the holidays do to our bodies and brains, why stress makes it harder to feel close to others, and how small, intentional choices can restore energy, connection, and joy. If the holidays tend to take more out of you than they give, this conversation offers realistic ways to reset without pretending the season is calm or simple.

Dael Waxman, MD, PCC is a professionally certified coach who works with individuals, groups, and teams to support leadership, life, and professional well-being. He is also a faculty member at the Healthcare Coaching Institute.

Previously, he served as Professor and Vice Chair of Family Medicine at Atrium Health – Wake Forest School of Medicine, where he also created the role of Medical Director of Physician Well-being for Medical Education.

Drawing on decades of experience in medicine and coaching, Dael helps people strengthen relationships, foster resilience, and build more supportive workplace cultures.

Outside of work, he enjoys travel, kayaking, hiking, cooking, and—most recently—learning barista skills.

You can connect with Dael at https://www.linkedin.com/in/dael-waxman-md-pcc-18917322/

©Friendship Institute 2025

Friendship Matters™ is intended to help improve our Friendship IQ. While this generally signals an improvement in our overall wellbeing, this podcast is not intended in any way to offer specific counseling or medical advice. Please seek help from a trained professional.

The holidays can be a season of connection, but they also stir up old patterns, expectations, and emotional landmines. Many adults find themselves back in their family system, feeling like a younger version of themselves even though they know they have grown.

In this conversation, Donna Brighton welcomes Dr. Allie Taylor, a business psychologist and trusted advisor who draws on her background in marriage and family therapy and internal family systems work. Together, they unpack why we get triggered around family, how to stay in our adult self instead of regressing to that inner twelve year old, and how boundaries can be an act of love rather than rejection.

From journaling before gatherings, to befriending our own inner parts, to having honest conversations about traditions and expectations, Allie offers practical tools that help you design a holiday season that actually works for you. The episode ends with a powerful invitation to define what a successful holiday would look like for you, then make choices that support that vision.

Why Listen?

If you dread certain parts of the holidays or feel yourself shrinking into an old version of you as soon as you see your family, this episode offers language and tools that make sense of that experience. Instead of white knuckling through another season out of obligation, you will learn how to prepare your inner world, set clear and kind boundaries, and define success on purpose.

This is a practical, compassionate guide to showing up as your calm, adult self, so you can protect your energy, enjoy the people you love, and create new traditions that fit who you are now.

©Friendship Institute 2025

Friendship Matters™ is intended to help improve our Friendship IQ. While this generally signals an improvement in our overall wellbeing, this podcast is not intended in any way to offer specific counseling or medical advice. Please seek help from a trained professional.

The lights are twinkling, the calendar is packed, and yet you still feel strangely apart from it all. This episode names that quiet ache, the holiday paradox, and shows how real friendship, small rituals, and a kinder approach to yourself can turn a draining season into one that actually nourishes you.

In this episode you will hear about

• The holiday paradox, why you can feel emotionally disconnected even when you look very social on the outside

• The connection gap between what you wish for and what you actually experience

• What happens in your brain and body when you feel disconnected, and why friendship is a real health protector

• How busyness, social media, and comparison steal the joy from the season, especially for leaders under end of year pressure

• Practical ways to reach out, start simple friendship rituals, and even create connection when you are the new person

• How gratitude, humor, and friending yourself first can soften the season and help you be present instead of just performing

If you have ever felt alone in a crowded room or wondered what is wrong with you while everyone else seems merry, this conversation is for you. You will walk away with language for what you are feeling, reassurance that you are far from the only one, and concrete, doable steps to feel more connected, more grounded, and more like yourself this holiday season.

©Friendship Institute 2025

Friendship Matters™ is intended to help improve our Friendship IQ. While this generally signals an improvement in our overall wellbeing, this podcast is not intended in any way to offer specific counseling or medical advice. Please seek help from a trained professional.

What if the fastest way to build a high-performing culture isn't another strategy deck, but a 60-second, heart-level conversation that starts with "Tell me more"?

Whole Health pioneer Dr. Tracy Gaudet reveals why friendship isn't a "soft skill" but the operating system of well-being and leadership.

You'll learn how to win over skeptical C-suites by giving them an experience (not a lecture), the simple "pause–notice–choose" practice to become a more authentic leader, and a simple cadence for busy people to keep real friendships alive (hello, scheduled, distraction-free check-ins).

She also breaks down the difference between relationships that fuel you vs. drain you, why your spouse doesn't have to be your "everything," and how peer-to-peer connection at scale transformed outcomes in the VA.

This episode stands out because it turns big ideas—trust, vulnerability, purpose—into concrete micro-moves you can use today.

Tracy Gaudet, M.D.

Tracy Gaudet, M.D. is a leader in the development of Whole Health through decades of radically re-envisioning and implementing new approaches to address health outcomes and costs. She is co-founder of a new organization called the Cornerstone Collaboration for Societal Change. Prior to this, she served as the founding Executive Director of the Whole Health Institute. Dr. Gaudet was also the Founding Executive Director of the Veterans Health Administration's National Office of Patient Centered Care and Cultural Transformation. This Office led VHA's transformation to Whole Health, an approach to healthcare that empowers and equips people to take charge of their health and live their most meaningful life. Under her leadership, VA health care delivery has been re-envisioned and is being implemented nationally.

Previously, Dr. Gaudet was with Duke University Health System, where she served as Executive Director of Duke Integrative Medicine until 2010. Under her leadership, Duke Integrative Medicine created a state-of-the-art healthcare facility dedicated to the transformation of medicine through the exploration, demonstration, and research of new models of patient-centered care.

Prior to her work at Duke, Dr. Gaudet was the Founding Executive Director of the University of Arizona Program in Integrative Medicine, leading the design of the country's first comprehensive curriculum in this new field and launching the distant learning fellowship. In addition, Dr. Gaudet co-founded the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health.

Dr. Gaudet has been recognized throughout her career for her contributions in driving the transformation of healthcare. She was featured in the PBS nationally acclaimed special entitled "The New Medicine," and named by Shape magazine as one of the eleven women who shape the world. Dr. Gaudet has been recognized as one of the "Top 25 Women in Healthcare" by Modern Healthcare and featured as a Game Changer in Fortune Magazine. She was honored with the Bravewell Leadership Award for her contributions to advancing the field of medicine, recognized for her significant leadership that benefited our Nation's Veterans with the Exemplary Service Award, and was honored with the Visionary Award from the Academy of Integrative Health & Medicine for her leadership in transformative healthcare. Most recently, she was selected as the 2024 recipient of the Linus Pauling Award in Functional Medicine. Dr. Gaudet is also the author of Consciously Female, a book on integrative medicine and women's health, and Body, Soul, and Baby.

You can connect with Dr. Gaudet at https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracy-gaudet-587a70285.

©Friendship Institute 2025

Friendship Matters™ is intended to help improve our Friendship IQ. While this generally signals an improvement in our overall wellbeing, this podcast is not intended in any way to offer specific counseling or medical advice. Please seek help from a trained professional.