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
So you know how to talk about it now, where I didn't know how to talk about it then. And so I do think so much of the population today is about powering through it. And I do think a lot of the population, and I would say more in countries like Korea or Asia, even though mental health is the most approachable it's ever been, like in the States, it's not really approachable there.
And that does make me sad at times when I go back home. My parents moved back to Korea. They live there. I want to talk about these things with them. And it's just not easy for them to talk about, right? I don't know how it was for you. Did you talk about this when you were a kid?
Good for you. I wish I had done that.
Mm-hmm. I mean, you forget that, right? You forget that. You just forget it. I mean, you think about those numbers. Whether it's two-thirds or one-third of all people feeling this way, and you start to realize, well, that's heavy. And if you were in a room and three out of 10 or six out of 10 are feeling a certain way, you start to realize there's more.
This is why with corporations, I think it's so important that they can take leadership positions.
Again, I always go back to the top on some of these things because if we're not comfortable being vulnerable, and if we're not comfortable making sure that our HR teams have the tools to talk about this with employees, that we don't support some of these initiatives. We're kind of in a place where we're saying, oh, we don't believe some of those stats, but the stats are there and growing, right?
And yes, there's life things that are happening, but technology is moving so fast on the other side, right? I mean, we are definitely in an era right now where kids have grown up with their smartphones. They act differently than when I grew up or when you grew up. It's just different, right? And they grew up with this technology. They're very comfortable with it, the speed of it, which is coming.
And then there's the weight of what's happening just in life around them. And so some of these things, even at the company level, which are interesting, and you don't do this, is like, and I found this a little bit with myself, I'll just tell you on a personal front, we're taught to play it very safe. And I think that's an important thing too.
I'll tell you a lot of people miss is that, you know, you don't want to say the wrong thing. So you're not going to talk about your own vulnerability because that's not playing it down the fairway. You kind of want to be boring. I'll be frank with you for a lot of leaders, not all leaders, which we know there's a couple of them that are quite, but for most leaders, when you go out there,
They're media trained to be right down the fairway. And what I love when I listen and watch your podcast, it's so authentic. It's so real. It's so safe for all the people that listen. And then, and it just shows, right? With how many people are tuning in every day, right? And listening to you and doing what I did. It's like, I'll listen to somebody and then I'll go back to that.
I'll be like, oh, I remembered that. I'm going to go back to that. And it's just because we just play it safe in a lot of places today. And you don't want to say the wrong thing. And I think it's okay. Even if I was here with you today and maybe something, and I didn't say the right thing today, I'm in a space where I feel so safe with you right now.
I just want to be myself and not everything's going to be perfect. Absolutely. Right? And that's kind of part of life. And I've started to accept that. And I've become much more vulnerable with my own employees to be like, hey, this is okay. And because of that, in the last couple of years, we're stronger. We're stronger as a company.
We just had a board meeting and they're like, wow, this is great. Everyone's like, yes, we're doing much better. But I think because we're developing and really building on the right culture, we're asking the right questions and we want to lead by example.
Right.
Yeah, in the last one that you were at, I did talk about my smoking as a kid. I talked about me being overweight as a child, dealing with that, that insecurity. I've always had a struggle with food. I love French fries. I'm just going to, I guess I'm telling, I love ice cream. And I think sometimes, and I have a really, no matter what I try to do diet wise.
If you put some fries in front of me, I'm going to eat them. If you put some ice cream in front of me and my kids are having, I'm going to eat some of that too. And my kids are like, dad, I thought you're like full. I was like, I was. So I struggle with that. I know when I'm a little bit stressed, I'm a little bit of a binge eater as well.
I try to obviously develop a lot of healthy habits also around how do you be healthier? And so I do exercise a lot more. But some of those things are hard just to get rid of. You know, it's more like you're going to have to live with it and it's how you live with it. That's like that comment about stress.
You're never going to have a stress-free workplace, but you've got to figure out how you just have more healthy stress, right? How you stress rather than distress.
I think a lot of leaders today struggle with, as I spoke to you about vulnerability and how you gave the story about vulnerability, that story plays over and over again. Wow. You know, leaders struggle with how to be vulnerable. And I think it's generational on a personal level. I think the new leaders that are going to rise, the ones in their 20s, are going to have no problem.
Because when you look at social media today and a lot of the younger generation, they talk about their mental stress and they talk about their mental health and they're very open about it. Now, again, they may overuse it, but at least they're having a conversation around it. I think with other leaders today, when I talk to them, they're just like, hey, is it a sign of weakness like you brought up?
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