Tad and Dee Edington at the Michigan Wellness Council Conference on September 19, 2019.
Tad Mitchell is a thought leader in habit-based, holistic wellness. He is currently the President and CEO of WellRight, a provider of employee wellness solutions. He is the author of 21 Habits, 101 Challenges, 102 Challenges and 103 Challenges. Prior to joining WellRight, Tad was the president and CEO of Compliance11, a software company that was sold to Charles Schwab in 2011. He also authored the children’s book, Where Is the Sears Tower? Tad completed his B.S. in computer science and MBA at Brigham Young University. Tad’s generally a quiet person, but if you want to get him talking, ask him about baking bread.
What main take-away did you bring back from our last Think Tank meeting?
I don’t think the workplace can truly solve the problem of loneliness. To do this, employers would have to start producing best friends which is beyond the scope of an employer. But an employer should try to make sure everyone feels included. This is trickier than it sounds. When one group successfully achieves this, it makes other groups (who previously felt included) feel like they are missing out. Personally, I think it’s better to focus on collaboration than including people. Collaboration is producing things together that we couldn’t produce by ourselves. This focuses on business goals, not a nebulous, feel-good goal. Ultimately, as we focus on business goals and become unified in purpose, the most frustrating attribute of the workplace, politics, dissipates–because by definition you can’t have politics if you are all trying to accomplish the same thing.
Thinking about the future, what do you believe should be the focus of research in the field of workplace health and well-being?
I think the future of wellness is figuring out how to help employees become better employees as they accomplish organizational goals. Wellness should not be a sideshow. Wellness is the show! After all, better employees make better companies, and wellness is how you make better employees. The linchpin in this equation is managers. Good managers are where companies fall short time and again. We are still living in the shadow of World War II and the military management style it brought into the workplace. Military management is meant for life and death scenarios, not the typical workplace. We need to train managers and employees alike what good leadership looks like. This is the best investment in the world that we could ever make.
What’s on your professional reading list that you’d recommend to fellow HERO members?
The most impactful book I have read in the past several years is Letting Go by David Hawkins. It’s a bit out there. He mixes multiple domains, but it’s full of truth on how we can find happiness as we successfully accomplish our mission on earth.
