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Welcome to this week’s episode of the HRDQ-U In Review Podcast where we bring you the latest insights and practical tools for enhancing soft skills training in your organization.

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This podcast is brought to you by HRDQU.com, and I am your host, Sarah, Learning Events Manager at HRDQ-U. And today I have Patti Massulo joining me, who presented the webinar, Discover Your Unique Work-Life Balance Recently to Our Community of Learning Professionals. And today Patti will be discussing this topic a little bit more in depth as it is a really important topic today with so many folks working from.

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home and remote work there. think being able to find that balance is extremely important. So thank you so much for joining me today, Patti. Well, thank you, Sarah. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. Now, before we get in to the depths of the webinar content, can you share with our audience a little bit about who you are and what you do and how you got to where you’re at today? Sure, sure. Well, I basically am a speaker and a trainer. I work in professional development.

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Primarily in the areas of communication and leadership skills and things like that with a real emphasis on disc, specifically the Maxwell method of disc, which is a little bit different than the regular disc. It identifies different areas of strengths specifically as it relates to leadership. So I work with schools and companies.

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And I’m also certified in brain health and mental health. So I’ve always been real interested in how people are wired. So the communication piece is huge for me, especially when it comes to disk. And what do you see happening in the LND space right now? What changes do you see? Well, one of the things I see happening is that it used to be you can speak on quote unquote leadership or communication. And that was good enough. It’s not good enough anymore. You really have to carve out a niche, I found.

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in that when companies are hiring you, they want to know what is the benefit to the audience. It’s not just communication. It’s not just leadership. It has to be something. You have to carve out a niche for yourself either with who you help or a particular area of leadership or a particular area of communication. So for me, mine is like strength-based leadership. And that’s where the whole disk.

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portion of it comes in, being able to identify strengths and work within your strengths in a leadership role. Great. And before we get into the content here, this last question I like to ask all of our guests is, what exciting things are you up to next? Well, first of I’m working on a new keynote presentation about knowing yourself and growing yourself. And I’m also doing some more online trainings and a little bit of traveling to Alabama.

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I’m going to Columbia, working with a couple of different organizations, again, helping them identify their strengths and leadership with their teams. Great. And for all those folks who joined us as a recap for them for the webinar, as well as those that weren’t able to attend the webinar that are tuning in today, listening to this podcast, can you share what the key takeaways were for the registrants at our webinar event? Discover your unique work-life balance.

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Sure, I think the key takeaways, Sarah, were first of all, the benefits of what are the benefits of having a healthy work-life balance? Are they, you know, why do I even care? And then recognizing the signs of an unbalanced life because it’s hard to fix something that you can’t identify. And so we talked about that as well as discovering your unique work-life balance, which I can talk a little bit more about that if you want, how that’s different than just regular work-life balance.

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Yeah, let’s get into it. We had a really great audience with us and it was a really interactive webinar and there were some really great content and takeaways and some overall themes of the questions that we had. So let’s kick that off by just sharing what you mean by unique work-life balance. Okay, so basically what I mean by unique work-life balance is that we’re all wired differently, right? So we have different strengths, we have different weaknesses, we have different personalities and all of that comes into play.

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with work-life balance because there are some overriding general things with work-life balance like everybody knows you need to sleep well and eat well and you know have quiet times and times to get away and take a walk and meditate and things like that but depending on how you’re wired like for instance let’s use the disc for example so a de-wired person is that get it done type of person so

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they are going to want to tackle things head on. What do I need to do? And let’s just get it done. Where the eye-wired person, which is what I am, I’m a high eye, you have to incorporate the socialization. Anything that we do when we’re eye-wired, there has to be a social component to it. So we thrive on being around other people and being able to have other people involved in that process.

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And then for the S-wired person, this is a person who has to create and have a very well-defined routine. So their work-life balance is something that they have to have kind of mapped out, so to speak. And then for the C person, this is the organized, accurate, precise, more of a numbers person sometimes. And so that person with their unique work-life balance, they have to have

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things very organized. They have to know what they’re going to do, when they’re going to do it, and that kind of thing. you know, we’re like myself as an eye, I would never, I would go more by the seat of my pants, you know, more than I would have to map out every single step along the way, you know, as long as everybody’s having a good time. That’s basically why the eye person is wired. So, so that’s what I mean by unique work-life balance. Yeah. And, and so why do, why is it important to not try and

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do it all? Well, for one reason, because it’s stressful. will ultimately cause stress. will ultimately cause anxiety. And when we try to do everything, it’s kind that old expression when we think we’re a jack of all trades, we’re a master of none. So by trying to do everything at once, it kind of backfires on us, ultimately. And I know because I’ve done that. I’ve done that in the past because of the way my brain and my mind works.

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I feel like I can do this and do that and be all over the place. And eventually, you know, it just causes burnout and you you end up it’s counterproductive because you end up not getting anything done, much less what you intended to get done to begin with, you know. Yeah, absolutely. Because you’re bouncing all around trying to do too many things at once. And you know, what’s one factor that is more important to employees other than having work life balance? Well, the studies have shown that

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Work-life balance is extremely important, especially in today’s environment, but that there’s only one other factor that is more important than work-life balance to the average employee, and that’s compensation. So we all can agree with that. We want to be able to be compensated well for what we do, but we also want our employers to respect us and give us the room and the opportunity to have a healthy work-life balance. Yeah. And so what are some practical

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tips that employers can do to facilitate a healthy work environment? Well, you know, that’s a good question because there’s a, I’m going to give you a few tips, but the thing is, is that depending on the company, how big the company is, what type of company it is, will, will really depend on whether or not they can really give employees certain things. You know, certain companies will say, we don’t

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We just don’t have the resources for that, or we don’t have the room to do that. So it really depends on the company. But just some practical things are having a suggestion box for employees. What are some things that you’d like to see differently? What makes you thrive here? What makes you enjoy working here? What would make it even better for you? To just get a good feel for how your employees feel. That’s one thing you could do. Having an employee assistance program, a lot of the larger companies have that now.

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They have things available like counseling and other types of services so that their employees are staying mentally healthy and able to do their job well. Because that benefits everybody, right? It doesn’t just benefit the employee, it benefits the employer too because everybody, it’s a win-win situation. And then doing things like rewarding employees for things that they do well.

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And that could be something simple. It doesn’t have to include money necessarily. It can be just a matter of having an employee of the month or rewarding somebody for some great thing they did this week and that kind of thing and letting people know that they’re appreciated. That goes a long way. People really just want to know that they’re being appreciated.

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And what’s your number one tip that you implement into your daily life to ensure that you’re having work-life balance for yourself? For me personally? For you personally? Yeah, because I work pretty much by myself, I have to be aware of that because I’m out with clients, but then I’m in the office a lot. And so I have to do things like make sure that because of my eye personality and because I am tempted to…

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go a little all over the place sometimes. I have to plan my day out the day before. I have to make sure that I allow myself breaks. I have to get up from my desk. I’ll take my dog for a walk. You know, that’s the beauty of working from home. can, you know, I can do that. And I’m always, I’ve always got water on my desk. So I’m drinking water and making sure I’m hydrated. And I mean, these are simple things, but they’re things I’ve learned that when I didn’t do them, I found myself either tired,

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and wanting to go take a nap, which in the middle of your work day, you don’t really want to go take a nap, but sometimes you feel like that if everything’s not working out well. So doing that and just taking breaks and making sure that I’m on target for what I planned for the day. And sometimes things will come up. Sometimes you have to be flexible. And when you work from home, you really have to be flexible because something personal could come up. But I think for me, the key thing is making sure, the other thing is making sure that I get

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a good amount of sleep the night before. I had to really work on that. That was a hard one for me, but making sure that I’m well rested, well hydrated, and getting up and taking walks because it’s not good for you physically to sit for long lengths of time anyway. So those things all kind of helped me with my own personal work-life balance. Well, that’s great. And yeah, it is so easy to find yourself sitting in your chair all day long and forgetting to get up if you’re really zoned into something for sure.

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It’s great to be able to do that. And it’s hard too when it’s the winter for sure. If you’re in a cold spring. Oh yes, yes, yes. For sure. And so Patti, before I let you go today, can you let listeners know where they can go to learn more about your work? Sure, sure. Well, they can go to my website, which is pattimassulo.com, or they can find me on LinkedIn at Patti Massulo. And then on Instagram, I’m Patti Massulo Training.

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So those would be the best three places. That’s where my content is. That’s where they can reach out to me if they have any questions or anything. Yeah, great. Well, make sure that you go check out Patti on all of those platforms over there. And thank you so much, Patti, for your time today. Thank you, Sarah. Appreciate it. And thank you all for tuning into this week’s episode. We hope you enjoy listening to the HRDQ-U In Review podcast available on all major streaming platforms. And if you did enjoy today’s episode, make sure to give us a follow and leave us a review. Catch y’all next week.