What does it mean to be human, really human—in work, at home, and in life? How can we bring our whole selves to everything we do? Left to Our Own Devices is a podcast that explores how to bring our human to work and life. It all boils down to one simple thing: honoring relationships. And it’s not rocket science, but it does take intention.
Each week, workplace strategist, speaker, and bestselling author, Erica Keswin interviews CEOs, founders, philanthropists, thought leaders, and people just like you to find out all the ways they bring their human to their own lives.
Honoring relationships has never mattered more.
Season Finale: A Mental Health Roundtable presented by coaching startup, Terawatt
Mental Health in the workplace is top of mind, especially these days. With all that’s going on in the world, Covid continuing to upend plans, and burnout running rampant through organizations, leaders need practical, tactical solutions to helping their people (and themselves!) deal with mental health challenges. So on this final day of Mental Health Awareness month, Erica moderates a mental health roundtable discussion featuring leading experts in the diversity, inclusion, and belonging space. On this episode we have Daisy Auger-Dominguez, chief people officer at VICE media, Leonora Zilkha Williamson, human capital strategy and executive coach, and Nicholas Griggs-Drane, director of diversity and inclusion at Endeavor. In this episode, the panelists discuss how to recognize mental health matters in the workplace, how leaders and employees alike need to feel psychologically safe in order to be honest and vulnerable (and how to model that from the top), how different generations and geographical regions process mental health matters differently, why having mental health benefits are table stakes now in the recruiting process, and why it’s so important to give people time to unplug and rest in order to combat burnout.
Thanks to Terawatt for presenting this panel—“Because everyone deserves a good coach.”
10 May 2022
Scaling a Fintech Platform to Unicorn Status by Following Immigrant Family Values with Suneera Madhani, Co-founder and CEO of Stax Payments
What does it take to scale a business from an idea to unicorn status? Suneera Madhani would say to look to family values—specifically the ones her Pakistani parents instilled in her. With her brother, Suneera co-founded Stax Payments, a fintech platform now processing $23 billion in payments, so it’s clear that these immigrant family values are working. Suneera speaks with Erica about her three-bucket principle to prioritizing what matters most, Stax’s rituals around shared meals, why they’ve chosen a hybrid model for the office, and how onboarding should be intentionally thought through from the moment a prospective hire receives an offer letter. Suneera also runs the CEO School, a platform dedicated to educating women entrepreneurs on how to scale their businesses and go from founder to CEO. Suneera launched this platform after learning that less than 2% of female founders ever break $1 million in revenue, so now she aims to increase that number. CEO School includes a podcast as well as a membership with monthly classes, community events, fireside chats, and a quarterly curated product box. Additionally, Suneera’s new CEO School Course—an 8-week experience, with workshops on power, pitch, process, product, people, and profit—is open for enrollment May 19th-May 25th, and you can sign up below!
3 May 2022
The Human Way to Disagree with Amy Gallo, Author, Speaker, and Contributing Editor at Harvard Business Review
Contrary to popular belief, the highest performing teams are not necessarily conflict free. In fact, healthy disagreement—or creative friction—leads to more innovation, more trust, better ideas, and higher performance. Amy Gallo, author, podcast host, and contributing editor at Harvard Business Review, sits down with Erica on this week’s episode to discuss how to disagree in a human way. This conversation equips leaders and employees alike to build trust and psychological safety in relationships and teams (the foundation of healthy conflict), navigate difficult conversations, and establish norms around disagreement. They also touch on how and why there are gender differences in disagreement and advocacy, why a hybrid work environment makes conflict more difficult, and how to approach—top down OR bottom up—disagreement on whether employees should return to the office fully or be able to keep a flexible schedule. Anyone who’s ever struggled with conflict in the workplace will find this conversation enlightening and helpful.
Amy’s latest book, Getting Along: How to Work with Anyone, Even Difficult People, is out September 13th and available for pre-order now.
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