Greatest Hits: Why Mental Health is Every Leader's Superpower

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Summary

A greatest-hits cut on why mental health is a leadership tool, not an indulgence. The strongest ideas: managers who release people to handle a crisis get back loyalty and better work than those who insist they stay, ten phone-free minutes outside delivers a real cognitive reset, and brilliant work in a silo can't compete with imperfect work that's shared and built on.

Guest

Raina Rusnak — Head of Market Research and Business Intelligence, StarKist · Brand-side

From this episode — top claims

• Over the next 5–10 years, technology will continue accelerating the consumer-feedback loop — from mail surveys 25 years ago to in-app five-question surveys today, the next leg compresses the loop further so brands can fix pain points and delight customers in near-real-time. — Ep. 21 · 34:10, Raina Rusnak

aytm's take on this conversation

As AI compresses weeks of transcript-coding into minutes, the constraint shifts to the rested human reading the signal. Treat cognitive capacity as research infrastructure: schedule the daily white space and release people to handle life before deadlines, not after burnout.

aytm's perspective, voiced by Molly.

Full transcript

0:01 Raina As you start to collaborate with people, it becomes clear that you can make a better, more creative product when you bring all of your talents and skills together.

0:12 Stephanie Welcome to the Curiosity Current, the podcast where we dive deep into what's shaping today's trends and tomorrow's consumers. I'm your host, Stephanie, and I'm so glad you're joining me. Each episode, we tap into the minds of researchers, innovators, and insights professionals to explore how curiosity drives discovery and how discovery drives better decisions in an ever changing market landscape. Whether you're a data enthusiast, a strategy pro, or like me just endlessly fascinated by human behavior, this is the place for you. So get ready to challenge your assumptions, spark some fresh thinking, and have some fun along the way. Let's see where curiosity takes us next with this brand new episode. Well, we are gonna jump right in. Before we do that, actually, and dive into, like, your current work at Starkist, I would love for our listeners just to get to know you a bit better. You've had this dynamic career in consumer insights. How did your journey in the field begin, and what sparked your interest in becoming one of us?

1:18 Raina Yeah, I will tell you that my journey is somewhat similar to how a lot of people get into the field, and that's by stumbling into it.

1:22 Stephanie You've also... I wanted to talk about just another aspect of your life before we jump into the guide. You are a passionate mountaineer, which is fascinating. I'm curious, what has mountaineering taught you about resilience, determination, and leadership that you've applied to your insights career? In that same vein, do you have a moment to talk to us about a memorable mountaineering experience? I'm sure you have a few.

1:52 Raina The first is teamwork—the power of teamwork. When you're going through your academic career, it's often more comfortable to only work by yourself and to demonstrate what you're producing independently. But as you start to collaborate with people, it becomes clear that you can make a better, more creative product when you bring all of your talents and skills together. Similarly, on the mountain, you can go farther with people. Sure, you can do it by yourself in a lot of cases, but it's more fun. You often have better success and better results when you leverage the power of teamwork. The second thing I will say, and it kind of feeds off of the teamwork aspect, is communication. If I am climbing up a glacier and I start falling, it's not enough for me to self-arrest and stop myself from falling. I need to also communicate that to my team. First, so they don't get taken down the mountain as well, but second, so they can help mitigate my risk and they can help stop my fall. And together, we can do that. Bringing that same principle into the working world, you know, if I'm just operating in a silo and I'm doing things—it could be brilliant things—but if I'm not communicating that and bringing other people along for that journey, it's not nearly as powerful. Then, I would say the third thing is a growth mindset.

3:26 Stephanie That makes so much sense, and I can think of so many things that are like that. For me, it's endurance running, and it's not nearly as cool as mountaineering, but it's the exact same thing, right? It's like teaching you that endurance and that growth mindset and all those things that keep you plugged in when things get hard. So, I love that. To jump into some of your current work, interestingly enough, I think you are the first sensory researcher that we've had on the podcast, and I've always really loved sensory research. I don't do it myself, but I love to talk about it. Could you walk us through how you approach integrating sensory research and consumer feedback into flavor development, and in particular, how these insights shape what products make it to market? Because I feel like sensory research is an aspect of consumer insights that a lot of people are less familiar with.

4:21 Raina Yes, and certainly, before I was in CPG, it wasn't anything I ever had the opportunity to do. So I very quickly raised my hand and got involved in this, and it's a lot of fun. It keeps the energy high, but it also makes you feel very connected with the customer. So, I will say, backing up a little bit, our process is, internally, we start developing flavors that we think might be good, and we'll do an internal sort of sensory—it's not what it is, but it's an internal tasting—to offer direction on where we might go. So we look at all of the different aspects that go into our tuna pouches, for instance, and develop what we think, and what the customers tell us, will be the best flavor that we should then bring to market. And if all of our customers fail it, we won't pursue it. But if there's one clear winner or even two clear winners, we'll keep working on that until we get it right and then bring it to market.

6:01 Stephanie Absolutely. So, in a similar vein, I would love to talk to you about qualitative research more generally, and I'd love to hear how you think about both the value as well as the challenges that qualitative techniques can bring to identifying those deeper emotional and sensory connections that consumers have, first with products, but then ultimately with brands.

6:22 Raina For some reason, I grew up really mostly on quantitative with a little bit of qualitative, and now that's shifting because, depending on the industry you're in, there's a time to pull out certain tools. And leveraging qualitative is so powerful to understand things that you won't see with numbers. You will be able to probe and ask, "Well, what is it about that flavor?" Or, "How are you feeling having just eaten that? Is the aftertaste what you expect? And tell us more about that." So these are things that you wouldn't necessarily get with a traditional quantitative approach just asking people to type it out. Having the ability, with a moderator, to probe and to dig in and to see the person, to meet people where they are, that can help businesses drive forward, that ultimately, at the end of the day, delivers the product that customers want, and you're seeing them. That's a fun experience as a researcher.

7:26 Stephanie Your book, Sampling Life: 100 Ways to Find Joy in Unemployment, is this wonderful blend of personal development and research methodology. And before we get into it, I kind of just wanted to say, I love that you wrote this book because I have often thought, you know, in the context of my own periods of unemployment, and with unemployed friends and family members, that this could be this most amazing time of your life: a time of personal development, self-care, and recharge. But it's often not because people are so uncomfortable with uncertainty, and we're so focused on getting to the security of that next gig. So for you, what was the impetus to write the book?

8:14 Raina Well, so first of all, the financial pressures are very real, and that can absolutely affect your mindset. You have an emotional runway, you have a financial runway, and you've got to figure out the balance between those. But what inspired the book was, I was just talking to as many people as I could. I realized I did have this gift of time, and as you're talking to all of these other mostly unemployed people in your networking, you start to think... yeah, I was doing 20 or more people per week, having one-on-ones, and my daughter said to me, "It's like you're employed, you're just not getting paid." One of the people that I connected with during my time of unemployment said to me at the end of our discussion, "I almost canceled today because I was feeling so depressed, and this just didn't seem worth it." And at a certain point, you know, you're talking to all these unemployed people, and it's like, "Well, what can they do for me? What can I do for them? I can't offer them a job. They can't offer me a job." And it starts to feel useless, and it starts to feel like you're just beating your head against the wall. But, ultimately, I landed my current role through two unemployed connections. So you're sowing these seeds, and you don't really know what's going to take. So it's hard to keep up that energy and that grit. So when that person said that to me, "You know, I almost canceled," I thought, "Well, that makes me feel really good, one, that I was able to bring some positive energy and to help turn around someone's day." But then I started to hear that echoed back to me. When that number got to double digits, I paused. I reflected. I went for a walk, and I thought, "There's got to be a way.

10:03 Stephanie How did you translate the findings from all of this research that you were doing into what is ultimately, like, really practical advice and missions that kind of guide your readers through that unemployment process?

10:17 Raina A lot of that was a qualitative experience. It was from being an in-depth interviewer, being a moderator, and it translated rather naturally for me. Like I said, the book flowed out of me, and I started seeing the themes right away. Some of the ideas that I put forward, they truly are not mine, and they are with proper attribution. But I'll give you one example that never would have made it in the absence of connecting with someone else, and that is donating blood. I've personally had an experience—I donated blood in the past, I passed out from donating blood—and so that never would have entered my consideration set of, "Let me encourage people to do this." That just wasn't top of mind for me. But when I connected with another peer who was also unemployed, she said to me, "This, quote-unquote, 'gift of time' that I have is not something I would have asked for, but since it's here, this is something that I can do to help give back to my community." Not only is she donating blood, she's donating platelets, which is a far more involved process, and it's supporting local cancer patients. It has a very short shelf life, so as often as she can, she's there donating platelets. And that, to me, that was really powerful.

11:40 Stephanie Amazing. Yeah.

11:40 Raina "I think, you know, I'm in this situation that's pretty rough emotionally. How can I help someone else in my community and then, in turn, feel good?" So a lot of this, it's kind of comfort food for the soul. It's comfort food for your mental state.

11:58 Stephanie Oh, sure. And it also feels like a sense of agency, right? Because I think that's the another part of unemployment is that there's a sense of almost powerlessness. And so to be able to retake some of your power and your agency and say, "There are productive ways that I can use this time that do give back to my community or whatever," is such a balm for the soul. You know?

12:20 Raina Yes, and so much of our identity is tied to our jobs. So we feel a sense of a separation from who we are as people, and it takes a little bit of grounding and figuring that back out: "Who am I? What am I doing? And how can I maximize my time right now?" It truly is a time period where we are time-rich. And if we can keep focused on the positive…

12:46 Stephanie Yeah, it will be a good time. Makes a lot of sense. Another thing in your book, you talk about using qualitative techniques to find the collective voice of people experiencing unemployment. As I've said, I love this application of research to addressing this deeply emotional and often overlooked topic. How did you ensure in that process that your research was representative of more diverse experiences? Was it just a matter of going broad and doing as many as you could, or were you intentional in thinking about, "I want this to be reflective of the population, not just people I know or people who I can easily access?"

13:28 Raina I interviewed as many people as I could, and I will say as a researcher, it was not a truly unbiased sample. It was not a random sample.

13:39 Stephanie Of course.

13:39 Raina So there's some of that that comes into play. But as you think about, I mean, there are constantly new people flowing into the various networking groups, and I always made it an objective to walk away with at least three new in-person connections set up from each of those meetings. And once this book started taking shape, I charged forward with it, and people who felt supportive of it—and most did, I will tell you—they gave permission to share their ideas and were really happy to support the initiative.

14:16 Stephanie To stay with the topic of mental health a little bit, it's going to be a theme in this one, which I love. You know, working in the research industry, like a lot of industries, it can be mentally taxing, as we know, especially in leadership roles. How have you personally navigated the pressures of high-stakes research and decision-making environments, and how do you maintain a healthy balance while staying productive in a field that often requires constant innovation, of course, but also critical and quick decision-making—decisions that have implications for, you know, product roadmaps and what ends up on the shelf, things like that?

14:54 Raina It's about recognizing your mental capacity and your boundaries, and it's also a daily reminder to do something for yourself, to take that self-care into account. And for me, that is walking. I make sure that I get outside, and walking on the treadmill is okay, but I much prefer, even in the heat or the extreme cold, the extreme temperatures, I try to get outside when possible. There are extensive research studies out there that you can look up, and one of them took a look at the minimum amount of time that people need to be outdoors each day in order to reap the benefits. And that number is 10.

15:47 Stephanie More is better. Yeah.

15:48 Raina But if you can leave your phone inside, that's a key piece of this, too. Get... it's a screen time break. Get outside, walk around, take a look at nature and what's happening around you, and that will serve to reset your brain, recharge. Walking activates both sides of the brain, so it gives you the white space to help process through challenges that you've just faced in the day, upcoming hurdles that might be headed your way, and it helps you to be a little bit more nimble. So, you have the benefit of moving around, you get the physical exercise, and you're just away from the screens, away from the distractions. As an example, just last week, I had a very high-stress, high-adrenaline day. It was one of those days where you're just vibrating at this high frequency, with a very real deadline that couldn't move, with high visibility, that had to be met. It was one of those where I didn't know if this was going to happen, if this was going to come together. So, from the time I walked in the door until 3 p.m., it was "go." And then at 3 p.m., I met the deadline, and I crashed. I said, "I can dumbly stare at my computer and just be a shell of a person, but that's not going to serve anyone." So I walked out of the building, and I said, "You know, I'm just going to go for a walk." I left my phone inside. But by the time I came back in, I felt reset and recharged, and I was able to still be productive for the remainder of the day. So, it's setting those boundaries for yourself. It's giving your... it doesn't have to be walking—that's what it is for me. Some people... one of my friends is a therapist, and I asked her, "How do you reset during your day? You know, you're... all these people are telling you their problems and their challenges, and you're probably holding a lot of that." And her response to me was gardening. She comes home, and she has the most beautiful gardens. So she comes home, and that's her way of shedding it, and it's something physical. So I'm seeing two themes here, right? Being outside, doing something physical, and a separation from screen time to help increase that balance and to help support mental health.

18:07 Stephanie In the same vein, your leadership approach, I would love to talk about that a little bit. I've read that you emphasize the importance of collaboration, of course, and really connecting with your team. How do you think about and ensure that your team's mental health and well-being remain a priority amongst all these other priorities that you have? Do you have any specific strategies that you've implemented to create that sort of culture of support?

18:32 Raina Yes, yes. My personal feeling is, be a person first. The work will always be here for you. Like, that will always be here. But if you have some kind of personal emergency, personal crisis, or just something you need to deal with in life, go. Go do it. Because if you think about it as a manager, if you're holding that person back and saying, "No, I really need you to be here," they might physically be there, but they're not going to give you their all, and their morale is going to plummet, and the project will suffer. But if you give them that space to be a person, to go take care of life, to clear the deck on what's on their mind, to shed that, they will find a way to meet the deadline, and they will come back with higher morale and ready to walk through fire for you. It's, you know, see them, meet them where they're at, and they will come back and have the drive and knock the project out of the park. So that's always... and the other thing as a manager, I will ask is, "How can I support..." if somebody's leaving in an emergency, "What can I do to support you?"

19:46 Stephanie 100%.

19:47 Raina That throws people on their heels because they're not expecting that from their manager, but they appreciate it. And be completely genuine. As a manager, be genuine. If you're going to offer that, your people likely won't take you up on it, but if they do, you'll find a way to make it happen. Support them, they support you.

20:05 Stephanie In your opinion, how do organizations in the insights space and beyond need to evolve to better support the mental health of their employees in the workplace? And are there any particular changes that you would like to see in the industry to help people avoid burnout?

20:23 Raina Yeah, I would say flexibility is key, and the pandemic did wonders for most companies in that regard in demonstrating that it is okay to have people work remotely, that employees will get the job done, and we don't have to be staring right at you in order to verify that that is, in fact, what's happening. But I would say, beyond flexibility, it's paying attention. It's reading the room. It's seeing where morale is and being ready with maybe a surprise morale boost. Bring in frozen treats for your people. Clowns, just kidding. Or, in wintertime, bring in some hot chocolate.

21:05 Raina But something unexpected. I mean, if it's a regular... there's somebody in our... who brings in bagels every Wednesday for employees, which is nice. Employees start to expect that. So bring in the unexpected. Bring in the special treat that employees haven't gotten used to as part of their routine. Or surprise and say, "Take an hour off on Friday," you know, "come in later, leave early," and just be there ready to support the needs of the employee. Especially in companies where there are ebbs and flows, sometimes you're charging forward to meet a deadline, and you're working around the clock to make that happen. Allow for that space once you've met the deadline for employees to recharge. So it's reading the room, it's paying attention to morale, and then giving employees morale boosts and support to recharge along the way.

22:08 Stephanie Yep. Makes a lot of sense. I'm going to just switch topics on you now to a question that we on this podcast tend to... we just like to get a pulse from basically everyone we talk to. So you are someone who has spent your career in insights, and you've had a front-row seat to how the industry has evolved over that time. Thinking about the integration of new technologies, how do you see the role of advanced technologies like AI automation in the future of qualitative research? Do you think it's going to replace human insight? Will these be complementary—sort of "human-in-the-loop" always to create the best product? How do you think about AI when you think about the work that you do and that your team does?

22:53 Raina Well, from a qualitative perspective, AI can be a blessing. Things that used to take weeks to achieve now can be done in minutes. So I just think back to 25 years ago, having hundreds of pages of focus group transcripts to sift through.

23:12 Raina Coding and trying to pull together the story from eight different focus groups and tell that to the client, give them a strategic roadmap based on all of this volume of information. Those days are a thing of the past, but it also... that kind of foundational work does prepare you. It helps you to understand how to pull it all together and how to think through the story. So it's good training to know how to do that, but we don't always have to be doing that grunt work. To the extent that we can leverage technology to do that for us, that's a fantastic thing. And blending quantitative and qualitative together into the same platform is also something that our industry will benefit from greatly.

23:57 Stephanie Well, Raina, this has been an absolutely joyful conversation for me. There's a lot that I'm going to take away, I think, especially in terms of showing up as my best self at work and also as a leader at work and a team lead. So, I really appreciate this time with you today. It's been great.

24:14 Raina Thank you so much for having me.

24:16 Stephanie Thank you. The Curiosity Current is brought to you by AYTM. To find out how AYTM helps brands connect with consumers and bring insights to life, visit aytm.com. And to make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe to the Curiosity Current on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time.

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