We recently connected with Katy O’Farrell and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Katy thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry?
Having worked 15+ Years in Corporate Wellness America before starting my own business this year – the corporate wellness/well-being arena gets wrong that it’s BOTH the leadership of the company and the employee that impact the well-being of the employee-not just the employee. Long gone are the years of employees being loyal to the company they work for who doesn’t treat them right. We have a more educated and empowered workforce that will no longer settle and sacrifice their mental health and best years of their life for a company that does not treat them right. I watch organizations trying to throw all different band-aid solutions to this problem: higher salaries, more days off, well-being coaching (my company), pizza days, etc…. The fact is, if you have a poor leader who has low emotional intelligence, you better have everything else that is perfect (high pay, lots of time off, flexible days/times, work from home, stipends, etc…) otherwise that employee is looking for a new place to go. There has been a lot of time and money spent on bettering the well-being of the employee but more money needs to be placed on building a strong leadership team that practices humility, emotional intelligence and treats people like humans.
Managers Have Major Impact On Mental Health: How To Lead For Wellbeing
Katy, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Born in raised by a single mom of three in San Diego, we were the family on section 8 housing and food stamps. I learned early in life that anything I wanted, I’d have to earn and I may not know what the journey was going to look like, but I had to trust it and keep going. I went to Mesa college for 3 years and then moved with my gf (now wife) and attended Humboldt State for 2 more years to complete my BA degree in Psych. I’ve made my career understanding behavior, learning evidence based techniques to help others to build the life of their dreams. Early on in my career I did a lot of behavioral jobs, working with SED teenagers in a group home setting, training animals and I had a huge privilege of training sea lions and dolphins on the Point Loma base, this was a lifelong dream of mine since a child (you know how you fill out what you want to be in life, mine was always a dolphin trainer).
Funny enough, I applied for a job as a “coach” on Craigslist over 15 years ago, i thought it was mostly fake the first 3 weeks of training, 15 years later I’ve worked my way up the coaching industry and earned my NBH-WV board certification. Starting as a coach and climbing the corporate ladder to manager (trained and managed over 100 coaches) leader, mentor, trainer, director and eventually building a health and wellness coaching program from scratch for a San Diego based start up that was acquired last year. Since the acquisition, my position and all VP/Director level positions were eliminated and that’s when I decided to build a company I believe in, treats people with respect, I’m the CEO and Founder of Breaking Waves Coaching.
Breaking Waves Coaching, we are the coaching experts and on a mission to change lives. My company does work direct to individuals via 1 on 1 health and wellness coaching, as well as direct to employer groups looking to offer this service to their employees as a benefit. Specifically for the employer groups, we not only bring the 1 on 1 health coaching (like the individuals) but two other products that we feel truly impact the employee’s well-being at work: 1 on 1 health, wellness and well-being coaching for individuals, learning and development courses and leadership coaching programs.
1. For our one on one health coaching, this is our bread and butter of our organization. Highly trained, educated and certified coaches work one on one with individuals to support their well-being journey. Coaching is a confidential, judgement free space, that offers the coachee the ability to connect, to be seen, heard, understood and connect. In a space where connection is far and few between, less people are talking and sharing, coaching is the solution to be understood in this world. Our coaching focuses on people living their best lives. We help individuals overcome their physical and mental barriers to success, understand their pain points, empower and customize a plan that works for their life, take a holistic approach to well-being and help support them with things like: stress management, work/life balance, emotional wellness, weight management, exercise, finding purpose/passion, sleep, tobacco cessation, nutrition, life transitions, self-care, etc..
2. learning and development – these are 30-60 minute courses, they serve as a low barrier of entry to wellbeing in the workplace and focus on things like: Stress Management Techniques, Nutrition and Healthy Eating Habits, Building Resilience in the Workplace .Balancing Work and Personal Life, Sleep Hygiene and Better Sleep Habits, Fad Diets vs. Sustainable Lifestyle Changes, Healthy Eating for Weight Management, Mental Health Awareness and Support. We find that not everyone is ready for change (only about 10% of the population is ready to make change) and that these not only serve as a low barrier to entry (typically during a lunch n learn or all staff meeting) but they also help plant the seed of information when the individual is ready for change.
3. Leadership coaching programs – we firmly believe that the leadership within a company profoundly influences the well-being of your employees. Ongoing research indicates backs up our claims and states that a substantial 69% of individuals attribute the greatest impact on their mental health to their managers, a level of influence comparable to that of their partners. We believe that without addressing ineffective and undertrained leaders, the well-being of organizations will never thrive to it’s potential and you’ll continue to be frustrated with the cycle of temporary solutions. Our Leadership Coaching Program works to understand your company’s pain points. We will put together a customized plan to offer an evidence-based proven solution to support the leadership of your organization. We support leaders in both a group coaching setting and one on one setting. The core of our programs focus on providing leaders invaluable tools, fostering empathy, building a coaching mindset, teaching active listening skills, among others. Our 8-week leadership coaching program is our most successful and popular. We dive deep, focus on weekly learning and development courses paired with one on one leadership coaching.
What i’d want readers to know – we care, we genuinely care about people and want to help people live their best healthy happy life. We know that people are struggling, that the answers are inside of them, but we all need support to get there. We are the bridge that helps folks to get from where they are, to where they want to be. If ever you feel like you are stuck, don’t know what to do next but know you are not where you want to be- I can help.
What I’m most proud of. This is pulling it way back but graduating college in 2006. I am the youngest of three kids and the first and only one to graduate from college. For someone like me and the environment I grew up in, no one went to college, no one had a degree, graduating college might as well been like being an astronaut-it was so far fetched. I honestly thought college was for “rich people”, not because of my ability, but i’d never seen it happen before, it was chasing a pipe dream. Even while in college, I never thought i’d get my degree, I just tried to get through life. I was figuring out I was gay, living with my gf’s family, working at Souplantation and playing Softball for mesa college-I was going through the motions and school was one of them. By my junior year, it was time to move to a 4-year degree school, my gf and I packed up and moved to Humboldt-still then, it was like, okay, we will try one semester and if we can’t make it-we will move back home. Support was far away and all I had was to trust the journey, at the top of my weekly planner I started writing, ” I will graduate”, it’s not that i believed it at first, but it would serve as a reminder i was one week closer. It wasn’t until my Senior/5th year that I actually believed i’d graduate – that I could finally see that finish line. This is one of my proud moments because I accomplished something I never thought I would, something that didn’t seem in my reach of possibility. Graduating college allowed me to understand that I am capable of anything and the only limitations are my mindset and if I can dream it – I can be it. It was one of my greatest lessons and I use this in all my life’s accomplishments, my abilities are only limited to my imagination and baby-I have a big imagination!
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
As I’ve been a coach my whole career, I think i’ve been an even better leader. At my last company, I had a 0% turnover, that’s right, now one person on my coaching team quit in 6.5 years, i retained everyone I hired.
The advice i’d give-leave your ego at the door. While the goal of a leader is a balancing act- achieve the goals of the company, keep customers happy and retain top talent- 3 goals that don’t always go together. As a leader, every employee is different, it’s the goal of the leader to understand your employee, what motivates them, encourages them, how they like to receive feedback, and pinpoint what is really important for their success. It’s about treating them as a human, honestly caring about their life, their goals outside of work, that working is simply their avenue to enjoy their life. Understanding that a job is that, just a job, while they may be passionate about the job, it isn’t their life, if they weren’t paid to be there, the employees wouldn’t be there – so while it’s great to believe in the product, it’s completely unreasonable to create fake passion around something the employee doesn’t really care about after work.
As a leader if you can provide an environment that has: honest connection, vulnerability, admitting you made a mistake, empathy and building that team member up. You will have people knocking on your door to work with you, they will work harder for you and your product will be that much better because your employees feel the investment you made in them and they will pay you off.
And have fun, do retreats, make appropriate jokes, don’t take yourself too seriously, it’s just work, and most likely the product/service you are selling isn’t brain surgery-so stop acting like it.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I shared this in an earlier question but from where i started to where I am now. I was raised by a single mom of three, grew up in section 8 housing, food stamps and at times as a teenager experienced homelessness as a family. We weren’t given the best stuff or the most opportunities but what my mom did give to me was belief in myself. I watched as other kids got their cars, phones, clothes paid for, (did you know that people got Christmas gifts from both Santa and their parents?! lol I had no clue) -If I wanted it, I had to pay for it. I didn’t take these life lessons as hardships or “woe is me” (it wasn’t really until my adult later in life did I realize the hardships I actually faced growing up) but rather took from it-if I wanted something, I was the one who was going to make it happen. I’m one of the kids that made it out – that took the lessons I saw and did something different because even though I didn’t know what I wanted or how to get there, I knew what I didn’t want.
It’s hard to pinpoint one exact story of resilience because I feel like it’s a soft skill, just like adaptable, communicative, optimistic, etc…- that life lessons are thrown your way and you can chose to utilize this skill or not. And that with time, effort and energy, you become better at this skill or not. So from childhood, I was given opportunities to use my skill of resiliency, the habit was built and now it’s just what I do.
Contact Info:
- Website: Www.breakingwavescoaching.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/breakingwavescoaching
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100094615223021
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/breaking-waves-coaching
Image Credits
The before and after picture was provided by one of my coaching clients, Jackie Hine.