The dismal Gallup figures about job engagement I cited in Chap. 26 provide ample reason to be concerned about wellness in organizational life. And we are right to be troubled by lack of engagement—it is extremely costly for organizations to have demotivated employees. When people are demotivated, they will not give their best. So, as a countermeasure and attempt to improve morale, many large corporations have introduced wellness programs: the yoga at Goldman Sachs and communal sleep logs at JPMorgan Chase & Company are widely cited. Apple launched medical clinics to better serve the needs of its staff;1 Microsoft, Intuit, and SAP have dedicated wellness programs, while Google’s campus offers a wide range of wellness programs, including onsite healthcare services (medical, chiropractic, physiotherapy, massage), access to fitness centers, classes, and community bikes. The leaders in these organizations have realized that they need to do something to have engaged employees. They take major efforts to prove Gallup wrong. And I agree that for reasons of motivation, it may be much more beneficial to see people happily meditating on a beach rather than hunched over in their cubicles eating fast food.
Our Attraction to Fads
When asked what surprised him most about humanity, the Dalai Lama answered: “Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die and then dies having never lived.”2 This perception explains why the wellness industry is thriving. All these yoga classes, meditation retreats, mindfulness programs, spas, aromatherapy oils, crystals, juice cleanses, and other wellness-focused practices has helped to make the wellness industry a formidable force to be reckoned with around the world. Interestingly enough, in recent years, it has grown a healthy 12.8% in the U.S., becoming a $4.2 trillion market.3 Wellness has become a major global industry that includes wellness tourism, alternative medical treatments, many anti-aging interventions, upscale wellness studios and spas, yoga, and numerous mindfulness programs. Some of the executives in my programs have described high-end programs, like tours proposed as healing and spiritual journeys to the Amazon, where people go in search of psychedelic, hallucinatory insights by sampling ayahuasca4 (a traditional plant medicine), under the guidance of indigenous or self-styled shamans. Some experts, or more accurately pseudo-experts, suggest that these wellness programs not only help individuals manage stress, depression, and anxiety, but also enhance productivity, creativity, and concentration—you name it.
You don’t have to look far to see that many celebrity figures have joined the wellness movement, a good example being Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow, the founder of the highly successful Goop empire that has advocated, at times, questionable products based on pseudoscience.5 This particular wellness company, however, has become a full-blown organization with a podcast, magazine, and shop filled with Goop-branded beauty products and supplements, specifically directed toward the female market. As this example shows, entire industries have popped up around our need to cleanse, detoxify, meditate, be mindful, eat clean, and so much more. Obviously lala land has room for more than the gurus of the helping profession who promise miracle cures.
Faddism
The business community has always been the willing victim of fads. The anxiety of many executives about missing out—of having a competitive disadvantage—makes them gullible. Like the apparently endless streams of books advocating psychological self-help, there is a similar stream of business publications that offer pie-in-the-sky solutions to knotty corporate issues. In reality, however, much of this comes down to a lot of verbal fluff without any grounding in reality. Consultant-speak only adds to the confusion. Consultants pour more oil on the fire of anxiety about whether or not you have done the right thing or are missing out. All in all, it is no surprise that management babble increases executives’ anxiety level, resulting in a propensity to buy the prescribed “medicine” without any scientific evidence that the “cure” will be successful. The result is that many C-suite executives, who otherwise seem to be insightful human beings, turn into idiots when faced with some management fads.
Many of wellness entrepreneurial types have created health-oriented empires without any real proof that their remedies work, especially as many don’t have any serious medical education or nutritional qualifications themselves. More often, their wellness philosophies are purely impressionistic, powered by erroneous assumptions: for instance, that natural products are superior to synthetic ones, and Eastern philosophies better than decadent Western ones. Large numbers of people are naïve enough to fall for this, notwithstanding the large body of empirical or scientific evidence that denounces the claims of these people.
Much of Eastern alternative medicine falls into this category of charlatanism as it lacks biological plausibility and has been untested. Many of its claims about wellness created by esoteric “potions” are based on anecdotal evidence. Of particular concerns are the “wet” or wildlife markets held in many of these countries, tapping animals or their body parts for these kinds of traditional medicines. Unfortunately, numerous diseases, including HIV and Ebola, had their origins in close contact between humans and wild animals. And given its disastrous impact, the present coronavirus pandemic can be seen as an extreme example.
I have learned from many people in the medical profession that they are highly frustrated by the claims made by practitioners of alternative medicine and the wellness movement, given the shady, shallow science behind them. The scientific community has repeatedly expressed its view that much of what is presented in the wellness cult is completely ridiculous, on every level.6 Many medical doctors and other health professionals are adamant that the wellness trend is nothing more than another groundless fad, detrimental to both physical and mental health. Many are concerned that real specialists in the field will have to spend more and more resources disproving snake-oil wellness programs as opposed to testing viable interventions. The most positive commentary is that, at times, all these wellness programs and products show the benefits of the placebo effect. Given all the hype—and given all the money that organizations spend on creating wellness experiences for their employees—I think it is wise to step back and ask yourself: Do these wellness cures make a tangible difference or are they a transient marketing fad? And of course, we can also ask ourselves how will the coronavirus pandemic influence our future outlook on more esoteric wellness treatments, especially the use of animal parts?
Going Beyond the Wellness Illusion
Returning to organizational life, are you really doing yourself a favor pursuing mindfulness training in the evening while being forced to endure daily stress at work? Is it possible that workaholic you, who spends lots of money on “detoxifying” treatments, crystal readings, expensive retreats, and mindfulness programs, are being taken for a gigantic ride?
Don’t get me wrong, it makes sense to strive for wellbeing and a healthier lifestyle, at home or at work. It makes sense to look for some kind of balance in life. However, true wellness is a state of mind. You shouldn’t feel compelled to pursue it in the form of external and often unfounded magical cures. Living a positive and healthy lifestyle should be a given, rather than something packaged and forced-fed to you as a product you need to purchase, experience, and consume. When hard-driving corporations with Darwinian-like cultures where everyone is out for themselves, institute wellness programs, you have to question their real goal. Do they want to change employees’ lives or are they designed to prevent overworked individuals from totally burning out? In companies where people experience real wellness, it is part of the corporate DNA and not just another trend applied to squeeze the most out of their people.
Returning to my concept of the authentizotic organization described in Chap. 26, many things need to be put in place before real wellness prevails. As I suggested before, organizations that truly enable wellness will have flat, organic structures that make it easy to share information, ideas, and feelings between people at all levels. In these places of work, communication flows freely between senior executives and their subordinates, so that the latter feel listened to and empowered. Frequently, flexible work arrangements are a reality, giving people greater control of their personal and professional lives. For wellness to flourish, trust is a key dimension of corporate culture, implying that people treat each other with mutual respect, behave with integrity, and fair process is a given. In my experience, trust and a coaching culture go hand in hand. When a coaching orientation becomes part of the organization’s DNA, wellness is likely to follow. As I have also mentioned before, team coaching can be a highly effective way of creating these authentizotic organizations.
I am not saying that we should throw all wellness programs out the window. However, as a standalone agenda, wellness devoid of the other essential ingredients, such as trust and a coaching culture, will just turn into another management fad. Sadly enough, the world doesn’t need more imagined quick-fix solutions. It’s already full of them. Executives better realize that if the organizational basics are not in place, their expensive wellness programs will just be a waste of time and money. The whole point of wellness should be that it becomes so ubiquitous that you forget about pursuing it; that living a positive and healthy lifestyle is a given rather than something singled out as a phenomenon.