David Ko
speaker
161 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
David Ko’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And so that becomes a very vicious cycle, especially in the workplace. And that leads to a lot of unproductivity. What I found with the two is you really have to find that right balance and understand there will be, and just talk about it. There's a push. We're all going to make a push. We did it recently as a company at Calm around the elections.
And we treated the elections like our Super Bowl moment because we knew and we saw the data that people's stress was rising every day as that day, November 5, got closer and closer. We saw it in the App Store. We saw it in comments. We saw it on social. So we really came together as a company to do different types of things around that. Take a breath, 30 seconds or 15 seconds of silence.
We showed animals from the San Diego Zoo on Instagram. And we got so many people commenting that day that said, hey, thank you for the silence. Thank you for my 15 seconds in this world where so many things are happening. Now, people were dialing in from work because they were stressed at work. Stress doesn't just mean it's at home.
It was like people were like during the elections coming in from work. And so we wanted to give them a little bit so they had a release so they could be more productive. So there's a lot of things around stuff that I look at for good stress and bad stress and recognize there's always going to be a push-pull. But that's the part where you can't do it alone. You got to have a good team.
You got to talk about it. You do this so well. and make sure that becomes part of your fabric, your culture, your DNA. And I think it's shifting, but it's slow. I think the conversation around mental health in everyday life It's the most approachable it's ever been, right? I talk about things with my own kids today around mental health.
When I was a child coming, I'd be curious for you, like immigrant family, we didn't talk about our mental health in my household, right? We talked more about powering through things. And I can talk about that later, but we didn't really talk about it. My kids talk about it. They may overuse it at times, not use it the right way. It's okay. They're having the conversation.
Their friends are having the conversation. I think that's great. But when you go to the workplace, it kind of stops. And I go to so many places and I'm like, do you talk about your mental health at work? And they're like, no. And I'm like, well, let's change that dialogue. Let's make it as approachable as it is in everyday life. And how do we start to do that?
Let's give you the tools and we'll start at the top. Yeah, you're so right.
And be transparent in that journey. You know, I speak to many CEOs in the Valley and over the world. And, you know, a lot of times I'll ask them, how do you prioritize things with your employees? How transparent are you? And I'll tell you, many of them are not that transparent. Or they'll be like, these are the most important things. And then they'll add five more and then five more, right?
And I'll be like, oh, okay. What did you take away? And they're like, what are you talking about? I mean, what did you take away? And they're like, nothing. And I'm like, well, how do you think that's affecting your employees? And they're like, I never really thought about that. So I've just compounded and stacked the problem as a leader and And you didn't take anything away.
And it cascades down like a megaphone. Think about what that employee is going through and walk in their shoes for a minute. We at the top have the luxury of having more control over our schedules. but that person may not have as much control over their schedule. They're just ticking through things.
And if you just keep adding and not taking certain things away and saying, this is important, this isn't important, here's how I think about it, here's how I'm being transparent, you're adding more stress to your company.
It was interesting for me, my first day at Comm. I walk in and they're Michael and Alex, who you know well, the founders, right? Yeah, I love them. And they love you and they talk about you all the time and how you all first met. And they introduced me to the company. Warm, welcome, so inviting. And they started the whole All Hands Off with a meditation. And I wasn't really used to that.
And I was kind of sitting there and I kind of noticed everyone. And normally we listen to someone like yourself. We'll turn you on or we'll turn one of our other kind of narrators on. They do great. And everyone just kind of sat there in the moment. And whether it was sometimes it's really quick, 30 seconds, sometimes it's five, six minutes, sometimes three minutes.
And they listened and it was, and I kind of was peeking at times looking, I'm like, is everyone kind of closing their eyes, you know, around here, you know, looking there. And they were just in the moment. It was a moment for me that showed me how much they cared. And I was like, wow, this company cares. This isn't forced. You don't have to be here. You don't have to do this.
And they were there and they were present and they were in the moment. So that's like some of this, that was one of the ways I knew this company was going to be different. And then I watched as the company did things around gratitude, where we end every all hands with gratitude. We read things that have come into us and it's a reminder of the impact we're having.
And I think that's why sometimes I'm so stressed because I feel this weight of responsibility where every second of every day, someone is using the product. And I just feel like if we're not answering them, We're not helping them in the moment. Someone's not getting something that they need. And I feel that stress. And I feel the response. It's really responsibility.
And I talk about that with the employees. And I think it's really important to talk about that. So we do the gratitude piece at the end. We have Zoom-free days where I talk to employees about, hey, if you're in a moment where you find yourself in five Zooms, take a beat. You don't need to do that.
And if there's meetings that don't make sense, just like you did tonight, which was great, just say, no, it's okay. We'll figure it out. And I do that too. And I try to be a lot more purposeful now because it helps me then be more present in the meetings that I need to be in. And rather than saying, it's not the quantity of meetings that I'm in, it's those quality of meeting moments that I'm in.
And I think people sometimes... like misinterpret like quantity for productivity versus like value. And I'm much more like, okay, I'm going to do, I'm going to focus on quality and it may mean less. And that doesn't have to sacrifice my impact.
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