Blog!

I recently sat down with executive coach Ellen Whitlock Baker; she coaches leaders on workplace well-being. But let’s be honest—the principles she offered apply to life well-being too.

She made a point that I’m not hearing very often:

Don’t tell people to simply bring your best self to work. You first have to make it possible.

Here’s the context: Telling your employees to “bring their best self to work” is hollow if you haven’t cultivated a setting where it actually feels safe to do that. 🔓

How do you know if your workplace isn’t safe?

People are quiet in your meetings. Employees say “I’m fine” in every one-on-one. They’re not disengaged; they’re protecting themselves.

👉The real work of leadership at the office and in life isn’t your open-door policy. It’s the slower, quieter work of earning trust, and it happens in the asking, not the telling.

According to Ellen, when you give people real space to answer real questions, things surface that never would have if you’d handed them the answer first.

I recognized myself in that immediately. When something isn’t working with my staff or, honestly, my own inner monologue, my instinct is to reach for a solution before the problem has finished introducing itself. If that sounds familiar to you, keep reading.

1. Shine a light on barriers. Asking people to bring their best selves to work before the environment has earned their trust isn’t an invitation—it’s a pressure. Ellen recommends collectively building safety.

For instance, ask people what roadblocks they’re hitting rather than waiting for them to volunteer it. I do this in my own practice, and what surprises me every time is how much people already know about what they need. They just need someone to ask and mean it.

2. Don’t take the suitcase; help others unpack it.

The most powerful shift Ellen made in her coaching practice was learning to stop solving. When someone brings you a problem, your first move doesn’t have to be an answer.

Open-ended questions—such as “What feels hardest about this?” or “What would it look like if that changed?”—create space for people to find their own clarity. As a single mom of three, I can tell you this works just as well in life as it does in a staff meeting. The goal isn’t to have the best answer. It’s to ask the question that helps someone else find their answer.

3. Recognize that small steps are real progress.

We tend to believe that if we can’t do the big thing—the full reset, the complete overhaul, the boundary we’ve been rehearsing for a week—then it’s not worth doing anything. Ellen pushes back on that directly, and I’ll second it.

A one-minute breathing exercise matters. One honest conversation matters. Saying out loud that the workload isn’t sustainable matters. I’ve learned that waiting for the perfect moment to make a change is usually just a very organized way of not making one.

Ellen and I kept coming back to this idea in our conversation: The workplaces, families, and lives that actually feel good weren’t built in a single moment. They were cultivated in the small, consistent choices to show up curious instead of certain.