Rachel Druckenmiller didn't see it coming: one second she was crossing the street with her husband, and the next she was in a hospital trauma room with a compression fracture in her back.
While the experience eventually changed her life, it was the last thing she needed in the midst of an already difficult year,
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"All of us have had those 'I didn't see it coming' moments," she said. "Moments where you got totally blindsided, personally or professionally, and you had to figure out what to do in response to that. And guess what? These moments are going to keep running for the rest of our lives."
Druckenmiller — a former benefits professional turned speaker, leadership expert, and founder of Unmuted — said these moments can be translated into a leadership strategy she likes to call "getting to know the soul behind a role." This means employees and employers alike are encouraged to bring their best and their worst self to work, and is a critical part of successful recruiting and retention strategies. That's been especially evident after a three-year pandemic and a permanent shift in the way we work.
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"Dealing with all of the stress and strain and the loss, grief and change has been exhausting for all of us," she said. "It's really hard to be purposeful and thoughtful when you're feeling this way. It's hard to think about what you could do to be caring toward people because we just don't have the capacity to do that when we're feeling this depleted."
But
Druckenmiller broke down how leaders can find answers to those questions, and what it means to put it into practice: