Wellness means something different to everyone, but one thing many agree on is that it’s more than the physical; it’s being in good shape emotionally, financially, professionally, spiritually, or any of the other dimensions that make up the human condition. Host Jennie Brooks sits down with Will Healy, a senior VP in Booz Allen’s Chief Technology Office and executive sponsor of the Firm’s Disabilities & Neurodiversity Employee Community to talk about how we can find models of wellness that work, but don’t feel like a second job. Tune in to find out how you can approach wellness in ways that work for you.
Wellness means something different to everyone, but one thing many agree on is that it’s more than the physical; it’s being in good shape emotionally, financially, professionally, spiritually, or any of the other dimensions that make up the human condition. Host Jennie Brooks sits down with Will Healy, a senior VP in Booz Allen’s Chief Technology Office and executive sponsor of the Firm’s Disabilities & Neurodiversity Employee Community to talk about how we can find models of wellness that work, but don’t feel like a second job. Tune in to find out how you can approach wellness in ways that work for you.
Jennie Brooks:
Welcome to Booz Allen Hamilton's Unstoppable Together podcast, a series of stories that unite us and empower each of us to change the world. I'm Jennie Brooks with Booz Allen Hamilton, and I'm passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Please join me in conversation with the diverse group of thought leaders to explore what makes them and all of us unstoppable.
Hello everyone, welcome to the Unstoppable Together podcast. I'm your host, Jennie Brooks, and today I am excited to be joined by Will Healy, senior vice president in Booz Allen's Chief Technology Office, and also the executive sponsor of the firm's disabilities and neurodiversity employee community. Will, welcome to the podcast.
Will Healy:
Thanks, Jennie. Excited to be here.
Jennie:
Excited to have you here. Today we're talking about wellness and what it means in practice, what it means for ourselves, for our teams, for people, and broadly let's start by getting on the same page about how do you define wellness for yourself, Will? And then how do you think about wellness in terms of teams, leadership, et cetera?
Will:
Yeah. For me, wellness is just about creating the life that you want to have and being able to live the life that you want to live. So, for me, it covers a bunch of different dimensions. Principally it's around my health, but it's also around happiness, which is physical wellness, emotional wellness, providing the space to be able to do the things that I want to do, to be able to achieve the things that I want to achieve, to learn, to grow. There are so many dimensions to it, but to me it comes down to trying to be happy every day. Not just to find happiness on weekends, but to find happiness in the small things and be able to do that for a long time. But you also asked about leadership, so I'll stop there, but maybe we'll come back to leadership too.
Jennie:
So, would you mind sharing with us a little bit about what that picture looks like for yourself personally? Because I think many of us get on the hamster wheel and we're just going, going, going and there's an acknowledgement. Yeah, wellness is about sleep hygiene, get your 10,000 steps in, make sure you get your water, but I really love the way you like, what is the life that you want to have for yourself, what makes you happy, what brings you joy? So, what does it look like for you?
Will:
Yeah. You talk about that hamster wheel and routine, and I'm probably not going to make people happy listening because I am a pretty routine guy. I do a lot of things and I measure a lot of things in my life, my fitness, and I'm conscious of my diet. But I don't think wellness is about rules. I don't think it's about restricting yourself from doing things that you love to do. I actually think that it is about intentionally leaning into those things that you love to do. So, I love cycling, I love snowboarding, and those are exercise for me. I also love fly-fishing, which is quiet and focused, and I can hear myself and I'm out in nature and there's beauty and connection and it just makes me feel positive about the world.
I also love walking the dog with my wife and talking to my kids on the phone, and they're both in college by the way, and helping them achieve. I like spending time with friends. I like cooking. I like eating things that I enjoy and reading and learning. So those aren't necessarily about getting the steps or restricting myself to a certain number of drinks per week or something like that, which I do, and I record. I do.
Jennie:
You record and respect your drinks. Okay.
Will:
I've been getting a lot of grief this year because I have a pretty expansive spreadsheet of things that I record every day, but it helps me stay focused. You talked about that hamster wheel, and I want to do things every day that bring me happiness and not just sometimes. And for me, keeping that front of mind with so many pressures that we have at work, and so many demands on our time, I want to make sure that I'm giving myself the time and space to do the things that are priority for me, including work, but also these other things that give me balance in my life.
Jennie:
Okay. Now I have to ask you about this whole sheet. Have you turned it into a pivot table?
Will:
I don't know. I don't have it at a pivot table, but there are formulas, and it tracks how I should be doing day to day. And if I'm doing well, it's green. If I'm not, it's red. So, it's not just a table, it's actually a spreadsheet.
Jennie:
I respect that. I respect it, Will. I respect that.
Will:
I'll send it to you.
Jennie:
Okay. Will, thank you for sharing in all seriousness, as I was listening to you, I was thinking about, I am not really big on playing around of golf. My family members play golf, but I'll go to the driving range. For me that just focusing on hitting some golf balls at the driving range becomes a sort of meditation much like you're fly-fishing. And certainly, I think when I do have little gentle reminders, my Fitbit, letting me know how you really haven't gotten up and moved around and gotten your steps in today, it is something that helps me keep on track a bit. Okay. So, you do you. I totally respect that. Absolutely.
Will:
That's a really important point I think about wellness and if I look at my own wellness throughout my life, when I was 25, it meant one thing, and now both my girls are in college, so I'm home with my wife. We're empty nesters now. It means something completely different. I have more capacity to do certain things. Certain things are a higher priority, and I think wellness is a very individual thing. And that's okay, and it's going to change. And I think if you take the time to take stock of what it means for you and be intentional each day or maybe each year or each month, whatever that is, however that fits as your life changes. And I think that's totally okay.
Jennie:
Did you find your wellness practices or some of the pieces of wellness shifted when both your children were ultimately out of the house?
Will:
I think so, yeah. I think a lot of my time was devoted to getting them started, to getting them on their way. And now my wife and I, I think we find that we are spending more time together and doing things for us, and I'm spending time doing things for myself. I'm spending time with them, but in different ways. So, I make sure that I carve time out, not just to... I don't parent as much anymore. I'm more of a colleague and I'm more of a trusted advisor on certain things as well as a financier at times. But yeah, I mean those relationships change and I think you should expect them to change, and I think the relationship with yourself changes. So yeah, I think that the balance shifts as your life changes, your situation changes. And when you have a crisis, call it at work or a crisis of time or it's going to put different demands on you.
And I think part of wellness is a little bit of forgiveness and to give yourself space to do the things that are within your capacity and doing 10,000 steps a day, it's not going to be right every day. And it's not going to be the right number for everyone. And some people are going to need 20,000 steps because that's what they need to feel happy. Some people are going to need five, and that's great.
Jennie:
Tell me a little bit about how you think about wellness in terms of being a leader or across teams.
Will:
Yeah. I'm going to give a little bit of a plug about why we need wellness. I think there's a lot of emphasis put on fixing and cures, and I think wellness is about prevention. Wellness is about maintaining. So, if you think about your car. You know what, you change the oil in your car, you keep it clean. You want a really nice car when you go out to drive, you don't crash it, you don't, maybe you do, but it's better when it's not filled with trash. I think our bodies and us and our lives are the same way, and I think we're targeting having that car for a long time because our lives are the only ones that we get. So, I think you want to be able to do preventative things that are you going to enable to do that.
I think the firm's approach to wellness and what we've seen over the last few years in the changes and the programs that Booz Allen has put together are with this idea that we don't want to put our effort on fixing things once they're broken. We want to give people the opportunity and the resources to be able to maintain the things when they're good. And I think Booz Allen, if we think about product companies like let's take a car. They're maintaining their car. They're trying to make the best car. Booz Allen's product is people. We want the best people. We want people to be healthy, we want people to be happy. We want them to live long and productive lives. So, I think Booz Allen's wellness program is really geared towards giving people the ability to have the very best life right now and for the longterm, not curative healthcare, preventative healthcare. And that is every dimension of life. Like the financial planning and all of those resources that we have.
So, I think as a leader, we want to encourage people to be able to take advantage of those resources, to encourage them to do now and not just in the future. I think we need to create the space for them to be able to live those lives, which means when somebody's on PTO, you let them be on PTO. If somebody's got something going on at home, I think acknowledging that, recognizing that, supporting that, whatever that may be. It might just be first day of school, it might be as a caregiver, it might be you need to move one of your parents into a different living situation. Understanding that and having compassion for that, be able to create the space so that your team knows that it's okay to live your life.
Jennie:
I love that. We traditionally think about this idea of work-life balance. You have work and then you have outside of work, and the two are disparate. And now today it's all commingled. And we're seeing just in a laying of all of that. As a leader, how do you instill that environment that promotes that what she just said? How do you enable those conversations about promoting this sense of, or this ideal of wellness, which is preventative and not about the cure, and it's really about people finding their version of joy, living the best life they seek to live, people have.
Will:
Yeah. So, a couple of comments. First, you talk about the co-mingling that we have, and I think certainly working at home has created a physical overlap with work and home life. It doesn't necessarily have to create a mental one, and it doesn't have to create a temporal one. You don't need to be at work all the time, even though it might be the same space that you have your home thing. So, I think allowing people to at the end of the day have an end of the day. Just, okay, I'm going to respect your time. So, when I send emails and I work at different times, I start really early. So, if I send an email at 5:00 AM, I don't expect my team to respond at 5:00 AM and they know that, and I'll tell them that, don't. And I think I want them to recognize that they don't need to be on call for me, even if I'm working in the time that is right for me. So, I think that's one way.
I think we spend a lot of time as we are right now on remote calls, and I think it's really good to just familiarize yourself with people and their lives and what's important to them. So, when I start meetings, I try to just have a little bit of time that isn't about the meeting. I don't like jumping in right away. I want to know what people did for the weekend. What made your weekend great? That's the question that I would ask people and I want them to know me. And I think one of the things that I've found easier is that I think in having those conversations, you can show a little bit of vulnerability. And I think that's important. People need to know that their leaders are people, and people first. And I think the leader needs to acknowledge of their team that they are people and that they are not just 100% work.
So, creating that space for us to be people first, I think leads to that wellness. I've also encouraged my team to include wellness and other important issues in our meetings. Just today we did a couple of conversation cards. We did one of the new culture cards. We also did one of the Unstoppable Together cards. We had 50 people on the call. We were just doing a virtual team lunch, and we spent about 10 minutes talking about it. And it was great. I think everybody either joined in or they were thinking about it. A lot of stuff going on in chat and bringing those, let's say non-deliverable things to work, I think is a great way to create the whole of what wellness is about.
Jennie:
I love that. Just the other day, I was in a team meeting with this different team and at the end of their discussion, they went around and did a gratitude circle. And in this case, they were expressing gratitude to one of their colleagues for something that they had done that they wanted to recognize. And it was just a really lovely way of, well actually expressing gratitude in its form of wellness. And I just was reminded of how those simple things with one another can really provide a lot of lift and a sense of happiness and health and joy in the moment. It was really lovely.
Will:
Sometimes Jennie I think when we think about being leaders, we think about how we do things with large groups of people, we do them on mass. But I think if we can also encourage people to do that same type of thing, expressing gratitude, asking a question, showing support, learning about it, even just doing it a one-on-one, it creates connections in a network that's super powerful. So, I think part of being the leader is making those one-on-one connections yourself, but also encouraging people to pay it down or to pay it sideways or to pay it up, whatever it is, so that those connections and that gratitude and that sharing is happening everywhere.
Jennie:
Agreed. Let's talk a little bit about diversity and wellness. I know that there's just so much out there in terms of representation, and yet there's a lot of different layers and angles of diversity and wellness. What are your thoughts?
Will:
Part of wellness I think is creating, like I said, creating the space that you want to live in, which means creating the community that you want to be a part of. Understanding the lived experience of others that are going to be different than yours. I had a very specific upbringing, blue collar family. My father was a fireman. I grew up with three brothers. I had one very masculine household. And I took that away thinking that that was the thing. So, if I think about things like mindfulness and meditation and yoga, that didn't have a big place in our house, if you can believe that.
Jennie:
Wait, so you're four boys.
Will:
Yeah.
Jennie:
Okay. So, my father was a family of four boys as well. The four boys and my Italian grandmother, Claudia, I don't know how she did it. I can't imagine that yoga was going to be the thing that yoga was what she survived on.
Will:
I think relaxation for us was not hitting each other for five minutes. But I think one of the components for me for wellness is personal growth. So, I do a lot of reading, and a lot of my nonfiction is about creating, understanding, understanding others. And my older brother has a daughter. I have two daughters. My youngest brother has two daughters. It's this whole other element of learning that I really hadn't been exposed to. And I am super grateful for the things that my daughters have taught me, and especially as we've become adults or as they've become adults, I'm still working on it. That they are teaching me things about the world that I just really didn't know. And to me, I think that's an important part of wellness.
Wellness for yourself, wellness that I'm creating or space for wellness that I'm creating at work, but also what I'm leaving behind so that others can have the benefit of my experience without having to go through the trials that I went through, or me being able to make everyone that's coming behind me have an easier time and a more enriched experience personally that maybe I didn't create for people when I was in my 20s.
Jennie:
Are there a couple of those areas of growth or lessons learned? Coming from a family of four brothers, what are the biggest aha moments in growth that you mentioned where you've learned if you had to choose?
Will:
Yeah. So, it was a very, like you had to be the he-man. You never admitted weakness in any way. And the idea that I would wear a pink shirt when I was in high school, it would be ridiculous. It'd be absolutely ridiculous. There was no way I would do any... No, nothing. And that's just so narrow and so dumb. And my girls have taught me that there's just other people in the world and they're just like me. But they grew up differently. They lived differently, and they have different needs and desires and different values. And I think in my growing up world in my way was the right way and it isn't my way was my way, that's all, right?
Jennie:
Right.
Will:
And I think that that's the one thing that living with my daughters that just taught me that they want to do different things. They don't want to be the tough guy and they don't always appreciate the tough guy. And that was a big change I think for me. I mean, there's also, I try not to eat competitively anymore just so I can get my fill at the table. I think you had to eat fast or there wouldn't be seconds for everyone. I don't do that anymore. I'm much more of a calm eater than I was growing up.
Jennie:
Will, I really appreciate your sharing with us today. I think you've given us some pretty cool things to think about. At the end of every podcast, we give our guests some free space to share their final thoughts with those listening. What would you like to leave with our audience today?
Will:
Oh, I don't know. I feel like maybe I even overshared a little bit. I guess the other piece we haven't talked about that much is maybe those things that aren't activity based. I think if you can surround yourself with the things that bring you joy and make you happy, create that environment, you'll be more likely to do those things that maybe are a little bit more difficult to do. So maybe it's art, maybe it's wearing the clothes that make you feel fun. Maybe it's picking up the phone and calling a friend and just having that conversation. And maybe you do those things together. Maybe every time you go for a walk, you listen to a book, or you get on the phone, and you call an old friend that you haven't talked to in a year or so.
So, I don't think we're on this journey alone. I think we're on it together. And if you can find that connectedness, I think that makes the whole process easier and better. So that's what I think I'd leave at the end is find somebody to do it with. It's more fun.
Jennie:
Thank you, Will. Thanks for listening. Visit careers.boozallen.com to learn how you can be unstoppable with Booz Allen. Be the future. Work with us. The world can't wait.