Getting Unstuck: Nurturing Your Inner Circle – an Interview with Kevin Strauss
“I help people connect authentically with those who matter most to them.”
Kevin Strauss is the CEO of Uchi, which is a new social app for connecting with others authentically and privately. Kevin was trained as a biomedical engineer and spent many years inventing next-generation medical devices for improving people’s lives. As he rose in corporate America, he became more and more aware that a key element in whether individuals and teams could innovate successfully had more to do with soft-side human skills than their hard-side technical skills. He came to be fascinated by the relationship between emotional health and high performance in employees. Kevin turned this passion for connection and emotional wellness into a consulting practice, working with leaders and organizations to improve emotional wellness in their workplaces. His launch of Uchi promises to take that work to a whole new level.
(click the image to enlarge it.) Sample questions that appear in the Uchi app.
As you listen
• According to Kevin, what are the two critical elements of connection?
• What does emotional health / well-being look like in the workplace?
• How does Kevin define mental health versus emotional health? What’s the impact of experiencing poor emotional health?
• How might a leader or colleague make some feel valued in the workplace?
• What factors prevent us from being vulnerable, and why do those factors exist?
“Behaviors are a symptom of a deeper issue, which is more often than not a factor of emotional health.”
“When you understand the root of a problem, the solutions are typically so simple.”
Making it personal
On a scale of 0-10 where zero equals none, how much of your real, vulnerable self do you typically share with co-workers, family and friends? What might be responsible if your “share” is low in any one area?