Andrea Weiland - Building a Healthy Bottom Line

Jim

Welcome back to People Performance Radio, you are here with Jim Matheson …

Steve

… and Steve Hunt.

Jim

Whew, Steve, I am winded, I just ran over here. I decided to run over to the other building for this podcast, get some exercise on the way over.

Steve

Well, how perfectly a per pro for the interview we did today Jim.

Jim

Yes, I mean I am pumped up about it, I think after this I am going to do like 100 crunches or something, so.

Steve

I am definitely feeling like I need to get up and off my seat, and just for you, and the listening audience, why are we talking about exercise? — because today we interviewed Doctor Andrea Weiland, who is an Olympian, among other things, in field hockey, but she also is the CEO of a company called International Center for Performance & Health and Andrea is working with clients to look at integrating health as a way to increase employee productivity — obviously, decrease health care costs which is a side of it, but really working with senior leaders saying that often things, the personality characteristics that make somebody a very highly driven leader, type A for a classic type A personality, also can lead to a lot of stress where they get to the point of, they stop taking care of their bodies, when they stop taking care of their bodies, their health starts to become a problem, which increases their stress, which they start maybe taking out on employees and just creating a bad environment and, really, has taken a very interesting approach to working with senior leaders in organizations to both create at an individual level, more healthy effective leaders, but also more healthy organizational cultures in general, where people really focus on managing their energy and not managing their time, which is the idea of what's important, is that you have a lot of energy to bring to work, as opposed to being at work with no energy at all which has, I think, probably happened to all of us at one point or another. So, what do you think Jim, should we give it a listen?

Jim

Yes, I think so, I am actually curious. I am a little bit of a podcast junkie myself, and I tend to, when I do go to the gym here and there, or out and about, getting some sort of exercise, I tend to have podcasts on my iPhone and listening to them, so I'm wondering how many people we have out there that are actually listening today while they're exercising.

Steve

So, you are getting healthy while learning about the benefits about being healthy. What can be better than that? — only on People Performance Radio.

Jim

Exactly, okay we will jump to the interview right after these words.

Speaker

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Steve

This is Performance Radio, and today we are very excited to be talking with Doctor Andrea Weiland, who is the CEO of the International Center for Performance & Health. So Andrea, welcome to the show and can you tell us a little bit about what it is that you do?

Andrea

Thank you, really glad to be here and I appreciate the opportunity to talk a little bit about what we do at ICPH, which is focused on leaders, and actually athletes too, where we find that these type A personalities tend to perform at a cost to their health. So, what we try to help them find is a performance/health balance, so we are a multidisciplinary center that really looks at the whole person in terms of their medical issues, their bio—mechanical issues or, you know musculoskeletal, exercise, nutrition and the huge component that is often over missed is the psychological component. So we really have a lot of fun with folks helping them really understand who they are and how they can perform at a higher level without damaging their health.

Steve

Wow, that's fascinating. Can you give an example of how you would work with a typical, if you have a typical client engagement, what it might look like?

Andrea

Of course, I'll just give you a real live example of a president of a construction company who came in and a lot of stress is going on at work. He was coping by not exercising, but using alcohol as a way to suppress the feelings and the emotions that were going on. He was overeating and really felt like his mood was not good with people, and the people around him would agree, he was very unpredictable in terms of whether he was going to have a good day or a bad day so, you could imagine the impact of the people around him where, they are all kind of walking on egg shells, how that affects even their performance, let alone his own.

So, we came in, he had a comprehensive assessment, a full day assessment with us, which consisted of those five areas I mentioned before, the medical, the pain issues, and a lot of people have pain or health issues that are very distracting when they're focused on their energy. We tested him in exercise, we looked at his nutrition and then looked at his stress profile and his preferred thinking and behavioral style, and as a team we come up with a integrated approach for him to manage those areas, and then we work with him consistently on coaching him on the behaviors. The results are that his energy is higher, his people call us and say, "Thank you, I don't know what you are doing but his mood is better, he's more predictable, he's more engaged, he is more fun to be around which affects how we are". So those are some of the results that we achieve and then the person will report that they feel a lot better and feel a lot more engaged.

Steve

Wow, that sounds like really the sort of classic thing here, it's both helping the business by helping the people to be more effective, but you're also helping the individual and the two things are really linked together and, if I could just paraphrase what it sounds like, you deal with that classic problem where, if you have a very high achievement—oriented leader or individual contributor, and they're really under stress, what they tend to do is they get so focused on getting the job done, they say, "I don't have time to take care of myself", but when they don't take care of themselves, it detracts from their ability to put their full resources and get the job done, which becomes a vicious cycle, and you work with them to get them off that vicious cycle to say, "Look, if you want to be fully present at work, you have to keep your body in shape at the same time". Have I sort of captured what you guys do? Is that right?

Andrea

Yes, beautifully stated, that's exactly right and, you know people will give us the excuse of time management and we say, it's not a time management game, it's an energy management game. So, if you invest even an hour in self—care and wellness, and I am not calling wellness, that's such a misunderstood term because it has been defined in lots of different arenas, but we're really talking about, in our context is, like the Olympian has to address lots of different areas to perform at their best, same thing with a leader in terms of managing their stress and their fitness and their focus. So the energy management game, if you put an hour in, you are at least going to get an hour returned, if not a two to three time return, so you become much more efficient, your decisions are better, you are not wasting time with how your mood has affected everybody else, which are really hidden costs that are very very expensive for organizations.

Steve

Yes, I love that phrase you just said about time management, that it's not about time management, it's about energy management. That was sort of like an ‘a—ha' light bulb went off in my head when you said that.

Andrea, so can you tell us a little bit about your own background, and answer what makes you qualified to do this work, and what brought you to doing this work to help people really maximize their health as a way to maximize their performance at work?

Andrea

Sure, happy to do that. I have always had a passion for psychology, my father was a psychiatrist and I think my mother was working on her masters of counseling psychology, I couldn't get away from it! We had it right there in our family, but thankfully I loved it and didn't rebel against it, and as an athlete growing up, I started playing sports when I was five or six years old and the books that I always read were, how can I get better, and a lot of them had to do with the psychological components. So, the passion has been there since I was a kid and I set a pretty big goal at six years old to be an Olympian and then so, 21 years later, was able to achieve that goal with, I think getting cut probably eight different times so perseverance is a big component of who my personality is.

And then always have valued education, a strong family value, and got my PhD in psychology, also got my MBA focused on leadership and organizations, but I would say that the pivotal point of time was in ‘94 when we were kind of struggling along, 11th in the world, and a new coach brought a team around our team in the various disciplines of leadership and the mental game and medical and strength and conditioning as well as strategists in the sport and so we jumped from 11th in the world to 3rd in the world in six months, which was significant, and people started to take a look what is the USA starting to do and so I thought, our model at International Center for Performance & Health is really looking at a team around an individual to perform at a higher level without a cost to their health and, I thought a lot of people could perform better if they too had a team of experts.

Steve

e, so really it sounds like, and you becoming an Olympian, and you said what enabled us to have this great success with this goal was not just the individual athletes, but it was having a team of experts that helped you focus on both your physical athletic ability, but also psychologically how you were working together as a team, having an appropriate balance, and you've just taken that model that works in the Olympics and said, "How can we apply this to people in all endeavors of life, whatever they are trying to achieve you still need to think about your health, your wellbeing, how you interact with others, psychology is for the whole person" — is that right?

Andrea

Exactly, and I think that the corporate environment is a perfect environment for that if you think about them as corporate athletes, a lot of leaders and a lot of organizations are trying to drive their people like, it would be like a marathon or splinting every mile. That doesn't work, so they're not going to get the results, so if people aren't managing their energy and managing their focus effectively in those environments because they're poorly hydrated, they're not getting enough sleep, their nutrition is poor, their exercise which impacts, to me it's not only preventing health issues for exercise, but it's what it does for your brain. There is a terrific research out by Harvard on what are the value that exercises for the brain making people learn faster, retain their memory more effectively, think faster, answer questions more quickly and accurately, so it's incredible that way. So organizations should be invested in making sure their talent is managing their fitness focus and energy effectively because it is going to affect their bottom line organizational results.

Steve

It's interesting hearing you focusing too so much on the fitness. Usually when people talk about employee wellbeing and health, they think about reducing healthcare costs, which I have to imagine is also a result of this, but you are saying, really it's not just about reducing healthcare costs, but also you increase the revenue of the company because people are more fully present, they're more fully engaged, they're managing their energy effectively, as you put it. Can you talk a little bit about how you have seen this play out at an organizational level — is there a difference between a healthy organization and an unhealthy organization?

Andrea

Absolutely, and it really starts with the leaders, and that's what our company focuses on is, creating the culture of an organization through how the leaders role model and support health behaviors in an organization. If it's not happening at the top and there is sort of lip service paid to it, for example, "Sure go have a walk in meeting, or go take a break", and eyebrows are raised, or looks are given when the person says, "I am going to go take a ten minute break", the leaders and the culture are going to conflict and people are not going to participate in the behaviors, but healthcare costs are double digit increases over the past sevenq1 years, it's one of the number one costs that organizations are paying attention to, I mean diabetes just doubled over the past ten years, obesity is a big problem and accounts for at least 20 — 40% of health expenditures. So, yes of course we want to reduce healthcare costs because that affects absolutely the bottom line, but to me, it's also about, I'd rather pay for an hour of really productive, useful, high level decision—making than for somebody to be dragging their feet, taking two hours on something that could have taken them less time, had they been more healthy.

Steve

Well, a question sort of looking at that idea, you say that leadership, that creating a healthy organization that has an environment of people maintaining their health or maintaining appropriate energy levels really starts at the top and I agree, if you walk into an organization, you see some organizations where everyone is planning exercise regimens and balancing their life, so they make sure they keep their energy levels maintained; you have got other organizations where many people may be working long hours, but they are eating terribly and they look more pallid, and you can almost feel it when you walk into a company.

One of the things, I am curious in trying to figure out, if you're an organizational leader that's trying to change to a more healthy environment, I have also seen organizations where you might have people at the top that are almost viewed as super—human, so you have a very fit CEO that runs marathons and does all sorts of other work, and people look at him and go, "Gee, I could never be like that person". Have you worked with leaders to say, in addition to getting yourself healthy, here is the effective way to role model and encourage other people, as opposed to intimidate them?

Andrea

Well. that's a great point and we actually have an award that we just launched called "Colorado's Healthiest Executive" and we are going to start state—wide first and, hopefully, eventually take this nationwide, but our whole thing is, well good for you for having your good numbers, but what are you doing for your organization, and there is a lot of little things that leaders can do that are not that expensive to help produce that culture. You can encourage walking meetings, you can encourage people to take the stairs with various posters or email blasts or healthy newsletter, that doesn't take a lot of expense. You can have the more expensive items in the cafeteria are unhealthy ones, you can help subsidize the cafeteria with healthier choices, what you bring to the various meetings — you don't have to have a bunch of cookies and brownies and croissants and high fatty foods at meetings, you can have the fruits and vegetables and healthy choices there, they are just not very expensive to do those kinds of things, and it really, it takes time if it's not a healthy culture to implement it, but the return on investment has shown repeatedly that it's from about $1 invested leads to a three and a half to seven time return, so there is a high return on investing in health and wellness, not to mention it being a retention strategy for the talent shortage that's coming up in the next five years. It's the great retention strategy to say, "Look, we really care about the wellbeing of our employees, and we are willing to do these things, not only to attract but to retain employees' health.

Steve

Well, not just that, I think as we were joking, it is probably also at employee level, it's a longevity strategy too, you are going to live longer if you get into these things.

I guess, just before we wrap up, I thought wrap up with this last question. Since you have done this, since you have taken what you have learnt from what makes a great Olympic team, and that sort of concept of bringing in a team of experts and looking at the whole person, and apply that to the world of business, what's been your greatest success? What has been the thing you have been most proud of in terms of accomplishments working with clients?

Andrea

Oh, that's a great question and a hard one because I think each client that we improve their energy and they're happier and more optimistic, and they[re more fun to be around personally and professionally, I mean every single one of those clients that we have helped is rewarding in itself. I mean, we really like helping them change their beliefs, to us it's not just about your exercising and you're consistent with your behaviors, but you feel more confident, you set loftier goals for yourself because you feel more in control of yourself. I guess that's a hard question in terms of what's our most important success, I think that "Colorado's Healthiest Executive" has a lot of potential because we are tying it into preventing childhood obesity, by saying healthy leaders today, healthy future tomorrow. So, if we can impact communities, cultures, organizations, have a much widespread effect on people feeling better about themselves and therefore being more productive, then I have definitely served my purpose.

Steve

Cool, and I think that's a great cause, I mean healthy people, healthy societies so, well Andrea, I really appreciate you spending time here on People Performance Radio. I think what you are doing is fascinating and I look forward to seeing how you continue to have continued successes because I think this is an area that is just going to grow and it sounds like you are doing some of the very cutting edge stuff in this area so, again, we have been speaking with Andrea Weiland from the International Center for Performance & Health, so thank you Andrea.

Andrea

Thank you so much Steven, I have really enjoyed it.

Speaker

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