Burnout is as much of a leadership problem as it is a personal problem. My mission is to show leaders and team members how to build a powerful wave of purpose and hope throughout organizations to re-energize and re-engage to help resolve burnout.

Over the last few years, I have spoken to organizations across the world – a quarter of a million people – I have spoken at the fastest growing company in world history, at the bio tech company that developed the first treatment for Covid, schools, universities, inmates, people in recovery, PTSD survivors and community groups.

My process focuses on purpose – a committed intention to realize aims that are meaningful to oneself and the broader world – an on hope, a desire and a commitment to a better life.

Along with activating hope and purpose, the desired results of my open source method are higher levels of engagement, wellbeing, unity, and improved performance.

My method cannot help with Exhaustion, but let me show how I may be able to assist with mental distance, negativity and powerlessness.

I like to think of my Code Method like a Swiss army knife – multi use and multipurpose – a tool for many problems.

My approach is popular in business because our 81,396 hours of lifetime work occupy more time for us than any other activity (except sleeping) and some work is creating great misery across our land.

In the latest Gallup State of the Global Workplace Report, a study of 112,312 business units across the world, they discovered that for most people work sucks.

• 60% of people are emotionally detached at work and 19% are miserable.
• Gallup’s businessese for work suckiness and work misery is active disengagement.
• Work wellbeing and thriving is engagement.
• They also discovered that only 21% of employees are engaged at work and only 33% of employees are thriving in their overall wellbeing.

A disturbing state of affairs – it seems a malaise of unhappiness has settled across the planet. Active Disengagement and Burnout are closely related – very close – kinda like brother and sister.

How to get employees engaged?

• Less Negativity.
• Less mental distance.
• More personal power.

The Code Method is one intervention among many – it is open source Code so it can be used in any way that any of you wish. Here is the Code Method – in 15 minutes one can change life trajectory through activating purpose and igniting hope.

The Code Method

Download Worksheet

• Find a quiet spot and do the exercise solo, or with your family or colleagues at work.
• Set aside 15 minutes.
• Write 12 lines, each beginning with “I will…”
• If you are with a group, then once all are complete, each person gets up and reads their 12 lines out loud to each other.
• If you are solo, read it to yourself and feel proud.

These words are poetry of the soul – words of passion, power and purpose.

My approach with the Method is deeply personal.

For 17 years, since a personal tragedy changed my life course, my approach has been to tell stories and illustrate a simple, quick and low-cost intervention to activate purpose and hope in individuals in organizations…

I tell stories across the world to community groups, religious groups, associations, high schools, universities, legislators, inmates and to some of the world’s largest organizations. Though Covid I have spoken to over a quarter of a million people and have had an opportunity, in my sample set, to see the mindset of the American people.

• I tell simple stories of passion and purpose – of courage, faith, hope, resilience, love, perseverance and power!
• I tell stories of – character – ETHOS
• I describe how to create a simple Code to activate purpose – TELOS
• I offer no prescription, only my stories and my perspective, of ethos – character, and telos – purpose, – and the Code, to help others find their purpose and their path.

All the stories I tell help me, word by word, sentence by sentence, create meaning, purpose and hope for my own life, and help me in my path forward out of the darkness, towards the light that shines ahead. After my stories are told, I encourage others to write their own Code, 12 lines of commitment, 12 lines of hope, purpose and power, melding their ethos (character), and telos (purpose) into a commitment to action.

This process, The Code Method, is a tool for individual introspection, collective engagement, commitment and accountability, that seems to help distill and reframe one’s purpose, and focus one’s psychic energy into an actionable 12-line mantra for positive change.

• It is a way to find one’s best self, and a way for others to know one’s best self.
• It is a way to re-connect to one’s true purpose, a way to re-engage with the meaning of one’s life.

I believe this simple intervention can help burned-out individuals and organizations find meaning and purpose in the challenging sea of life.

Try it, and if you like it, share it with someone who needs it…

The post Leadership and burnout are inextricably connected appeared first on Shaun Tomson | World Champion Surfer, Keynote Speaker & Author.

The company is based in Ventura, California, nestled in a grove of trees at the junction of the 101 and 33 freeways, a short walk to California Street, the town’s best surfing break.

I had the opportunity to work for Patagonia in the mid 90’s when the company was generating around $150 million in revenue, a tenth of its current size.

When I worked there, Yvon would have these “philosophy” sessions for small groups of his employees – in meetings and in casual conversation he would stress the simple yet powerful ethos that is the core of his business philosophy.

“You gotta understand. “Doing good is good for business.”

Yvon decided to transfer his and his family’s ownership of Patagonia into a trust rather than sell or go public – he wanted to enshrine the values of the company and ensure that all its profits, approximately $100 million a year, go towards environmental causes, in perpetuity.

His choice to transfer ownership of Patagonia into a trust, rather than pursuing a sale or going public, exemplified his dedication to creating corporate purpose.

He stated: “Instead of going public you could say we are going purpose.”

With the company valued at $3 billion dollars, and annual sales of over $1 billion, it is the most significant donation in the history of the environmental movement which in fact started 25 miles north in Santa Barbara in 1969, with the blowout of Platform A in the Santa Barbara Channel, and the release of over 4 million gallons of crude oil into the Pacific Ocean, and onto our beautiful, pristine beaches.

So, what’s the big deal about purpose and why is it the word on the lips of so many leaders of organizations. Certainly, Yvon Chouinard is one of the few in leadership to put his money where his mouth is and commit his company’s entire existence to a purposeful path.

Some hard truths on purpose

A number of recent studies on purpose have revealed some hard truths about what might be perceived as a soft, touchy-feely issue.

In a longitudinal study of 73,000 people, Professor Celeste Leigh Pierce at the University of Michigan showed that “people who didn’t have a strong life purpose were twice as more likely to die than those who did.”

Another more recent study at the same university showed that “working with a sense of purpose leads to far greater engagement, motivation, productivity, and retention.”

With retention, engagement, motivation and productivity being fundamental issues in our post-pandemic workplace, one would think that corporate leaders and HR directors across the world would be busting down doors to find out how to imbue their teams with a sense of purpose.

Embracing strategies for creating corporate purpose could hold the key to unlocking team potential and driving lasting success.

Purpose is the energy that empowers organizations and individuals to thrive.

Recent research from Ernst and Young indicates that purpose-led organizations perform 42% better than those that are simply in business.

However, according to a Gallup poll, two-thirds of employees worldwide are purposeless – bored, detached and ready to actively sabotage plans, projects and other people. Considering you spend around a third of your life at work, this disengaged culture means that helping people to find a sense of purpose isn’t just vital for business, but also for people’s overall wellbeing.

The significance of creating corporate purpose should be a primary focus for leaders. By establishing a clear and meaningful purpose for their organizations, leaders can inspire and engage employees, foster a positive work culture, and drive sustainable success.

What is the true meaning of this elusive and ethereal concept – how can it be quantified and captured and spread across an organization?

Purpose can be simply defined as a long-term committed intention to accomplish goals that are meaningful to oneself and others. Purpose is our reason for being and gives our lives meaning. Purpose is the energy that empowers individuals to thrive; a personal North Star that enables us to truly fly and realize our potential. Purpose underlies our drive on the path to life fulfillment, what humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow called self-actualization, the state of becoming everything one is capable of becoming.

Purpose has five elements that can be described as a simple acronym – AIMAT.

• Purpose is aspirational, a higher order mission that is something to strive for.
• Purpose is inspirational – our purpose inspires ourselves, but also inspires our peers, our colleagues and our family members.
• Purpose is moral – in this age of shifting quicksands of truth and false reality, purpose is a bedrock of our existence.
• Purpose is authentic – my purpose is authentic to me in the same way your purpose is authentic to you – purpose has no nuance or shading.
• Purpose is timeless – it does not change with the winds, with the seasons, with trends or culture shifts. Purpose is forever and is the polar opposite of a SMART goal – purpose is not time sensitive.

How to find and define one’s purpose?

Finding purpose is easy – all it takes is a pen and paper, 15 minutes of time, and some thought, imagination, commitment and then action.

I call it the Code Method.

The Code Method

Download Worksheet

• Find a quiet spot and do the exercise solo, or with your family or colleagues at work.
• Set aside 15 minutes.
• Write 12 lines, each beginning with “I will…”
• If you are with a group, then once all are complete, each person gets up and reads their 12 lines out loud to each other.
• If you are solo, read it to yourself and feel proud.

These words are poetry of the soul – words of passion, power and purpose.

Try it – 15 minutes, 12 lines of poetic prose…

The Code is designed to create a positive wave that spreads across the planet, activating purpose and igniting hope…

The post Creating Corporate Purpose – On Purpose appeared first on Shaun Tomson | World Champion Surfer, Keynote Speaker & Author.

What is team engagement?

Gallup defines employee engagement as the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace.

The key words are involvement and enthusiasm – you could seamlessly switch from engagement to stoked – the only difference being the context – the workplace or the surf break.

In surfing, the essence of a great surfing experience comes from being stoked/engaged – from being in synchronization with the waves, reacting to changes, and working with the power, not against it. When employees are disengaged, they often just go through the motions, much like a surfer who is un-stoked. The result? Decreased productivity, one of the major problems stemming from disengagement. Just as an un-stoked surfer struggles to maintain enthusiasm, a disengaged team struggles to deliver results, holding back company growth and profitability.

Quality matters, both on a board and in the boardroom. A stoked/engaged surfer is committed to giving it everything, on every ride. Thinking back to my years as a pro – every wave I rode got everything I had to give. I simply wanted to be the best I could be, on every wave – I took great pride and pleasure in my passion. Sometimes disengaged/unstoked employees don’t take pride in their work, leading to a decline in work quality. Ultimately, this erosion of enthusiasm leads to a of lack of attention to detail, that can result in customer dissatisfaction, negatively impacting the organization.

Individual morale and job satisfaction are as crucial in business as they are in a surfing context. When one member of the team isn’t putting in their best effort, it affects everyone. Disengaged employees can foster a toxic culture that can spread through an organization like a wave of negative emotional contagion. Over time, this individual negativity can lead to a broader culture of disengagement, affecting employee satisfaction and company culture.

Just as the ocean constantly changes, employees change and often look for new opportunities – inside and outside of their organization. Disengaged employees, feeling disconnected from their roles, often seek greener pastures, resulting in high employee turnover. Losing a team member means valuable experience and skills are lost and having to replace an employee is a costly and time-consuming process.

Customer satisfaction is the lifeline of any business and when employees are disengaged, it reflects in their interactions with customers. This can lead to subpar customer service, potentially driving clients to competitors – a clear loss for the business. One unstoked team member can have a tremendous negative impact so re-engaging team members should always be an ongoing organizational imperative. In conclusion, the negative impact of employee disengagement can create profound problems in an organization. I enjoy using surfing metaphors to clarify the complexities of business – engaging team members, getting them stoked and maintaining that stoke, should be a primary goal of leadership. A stoked team is an engaged team, and an engaged team is a great team.

The post Riding the Waves of Business: Understanding the Negative Impact of Employee Disengagement appeared first on Shaun Tomson | World Champion Surfer, Keynote Speaker & Author.

What is engagement in an organization?

Gallup defines employee engagement as the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace.

As an athlete, entrepreneur and author, I understand the importance of engagement in achieving success – engagement with core values, engagement with life purpose, engagement with passion, engagement with others, and engagement with organizational mission. A disengaged team is a dysfunctional team.

 Having spent a lifetime in the ocean and decades in business I have learned there are fundamental lessons about engagement that cross over from water to dry land.

1. Energized Performance and Flow:
   When surfers ride a wave at the outer edge of their ability, when they feel they are at one with wave, they experience what renowned psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls, “a state of flow”— a transcendent merging of their skills and the ocean’s power – all while in a highly focused mental state. Similarly, an engaged team operates in a state of heightened awareness. Team members who are fully engaged bring their best selves to the table, combining their expertise with a sense of purpose and passion. This synergy leads to exceptional performance and a sense of effortless achievement, like riding a wave with style and grace.
2. Stoke and Collective Spirit:
   Surfing is not just an individual pursuit; it is deeply rooted in a vibrant community and a culture of shared stoke – the feeling of exuberance and exhilaration unique to all surfers, no matter how proficient. Likewise, an engaged team creates an environment filled with camaraderie and collective spirit. Team members who feel connected and valued form a supportive community that fuels motivation, energy and enthusiasm. This shared stoke enhances collaboration, fosters trust, and strengthens the bonds within the team, resulting in a unified force inspired to overcoming the challenges of a turbulent business environment.
3. Innovation and Adaptability:
   Surfers constantly adapt to the ever-changing nature of the ocean. Similarly, engaged teams possess a remarkable ability to innovate and adapt in the face of shifting tides and market dynamics. Engaged employees embrace change, bring fresh perspectives, and proactively seek creative solutions. They embody the surfer’s mindset of embracing uncertainty, which allows them to react to the turbulent waves of uncertainty in market conditions.
4. Inspired Customer Connections:
   Surfers understand the importance of connecting with the wave’s energy. And they understand how important it is to watch out beyond the next wave, to look out for the wellbeing of other surfers too. Similarly, engaged teams forge deep and caring connections with customers, going way beyond transactional interactions. Engaged employees bring genuine passion and care to their customer relationships, creating meaningful connections that foster loyalty and trust. Engaged teams provide exceptional customer experiences that leave a lasting impact.
5. Resilience and Mental Well-being:
   Surfing teaches us resilience in the face of adversity. As surfers, we always paddle back out, no matter how severe the wipeout. Similarly, an engaged team possesses a resilient spirit that can spring back from any setback. Engaged employees are more equipped to handle challenges, misfortune, and stress, thanks to their sense of purpose and connection to their work. They navigate turbulence with determination and hope, and bounce back stronger, ensuring the well-being of the team and fostering a positive work environment.

I have witnessed the transformative power of engagement both in the waves and within organizations. An engaged team possesses the energy, unity, enthusiasm, passion, and adaptability required to ride the wave of success. By embracing the lessons from the ocean—energized performance, shared stoke, innovation, inspired customer connections, and resilience—organizations can create an environment where team members thrive.

So, let’s paddle out together, catch the wave of engagement, and embark on a stoked ride toward sustained success and team member wellbeing.

The post Riding the Wave of Success: The Transformative Power of an Engaged Team appeared first on Shaun Tomson | World Champion Surfer, Keynote Speaker & Author.

I was conscious of the situation I was putting myself into. I certainly felt apprehensive, but I was fired up as well. Money, reputation, personal pride, professional stature, all of these were on the line. I was twenty years old: it never crossed my mind that I might meet a wave so terrifying that it would shake my confidence to the core.

The first set I paddled into was pushing twenty feet, definitely a solid-sized wave. I had wanted to pick off the very first wave that came through just to get one under my belt: shake off the nervous energy, get used to how the wave broke, and most importantly find out if the board I had borrowed actually worked for me. I had taken a calculated risk and paddled farther to the inside—closest to the breaking wave—than all the other competitors. It turned out my calculations were off. Way off. I had focused too much on getting that first wave and had paddled too far to the inside. Not knowing the break at all, I did not realize that I had placed myself into a very dangerous situation.

I remember catching the wave and standing up cleanly. As I dropped down the face I thought, “Well, this is pretty easy.” I was about a quarter way down, knees bent, arms straight out in perfect balance.

The wave hit the shallow part of the reef and jacked up. The face went absolutely vertical on me. The board came completely out of the water, and I began free-falling with my arms and legs windmilling out of control. The board hit the bottom first, then I landed on the board and bounced off with so much force that my body began skipping across the surface of the water. Normally water is a soft cushion; at high speeds it feels like asphalt.

The worst thing that can happen to a surfer who wipes out in big waves is staying on the surface. It is critical to try and penetrate, or else the wave can land directly on top of you. Even getting sucked up the face and going over the falls with the white water—as gut-wrenching as that experience can be—is preferable to having the entire wave hit you squarely. When this happens a surfer can easily be knocked senseless, or even unconscious, and then drowning becomes a real possibility. The lifeguards at Waimea are the best in the world, but even for them a rescue in the impact zone is a tricky, time-consuming proposition. Donnie Soloman, a twenty-five year-old surfer from California, died in 1996 after trying to paddle through a set wave at the Bay. There was simply not enough time to save him once he went under.

That wave did hit me squarely. I felt as if I had been walking along the highway and gotten hammered by a truck from behind. A terrifying impact. Never to this day have I been struck so hard by a wave. It was a feeling of absolute crushing violence, an unbelievable sensation of force and power. I could not have imagined any human body taking such a beating and surviving.

The wave hit and took me down deep, too deep to see anything. Sometimes surfers open their eyes underwater, searching for those shafts of water illuminated from above that offer havens from the turbulence of breaking waves. In this instance it was completely black. I have never been especially conscious of the sensation of noise underwater, but as I was being plunged into this blackness, I heard pounding, horrifying noises coming from below, as great rocks rolled around on the ocean floor.

When I finally surfaced, gasping and coughing, I thought the wave had broken my back. I could hardly move my legs. My head felt as murky as those silt-filled waters back home in Durban.

We used no leashes back then. We had no caddies like pro surfers do today—guys who sit in the channel during a contest and can paddle over a replacement board. So I began to swim toward the beach. Slowly at first, then more desperately, constantly looking over my shoulders and trying to stay out of the rip, which would have sucked me out beyond the break.

I found my board floating in a deep spot about twenty-five yards from shore. At Waimea the wave breaks a few hundred yards out, then backs off over deep water before reforming into ferocious shorepound. I hauled myself onto the board and looked first to the beach, then back to the lineup. I did not know it then, but this moment turned into a defining point of my career.

Twenty seconds of paddling and I could have been safe on the sand.

But the contest was still running—guys scrambling out of the way now as another set exploded off the reef.

I kept looking from the surf to the beach. I had just experienced the worst wipeout of my life, and I knew I could not survive another like it. The consequences of that moment have meant everything to my career; at the time, of course, I did not even have a career in surfing since the World Tour did not begin until the following year. And yet for all of its importance, the action itself was so simple: I swung my board around and paddled back out.

Australian Mark Richards went on to win the contest. I rode a couple more waves in my heat, smaller waves than the one I had wiped out on. Certainly nothing worth going into details about. Waimea taught me a critical lesson about positioning and perseverance. Never again will I make the mistakes I did that day. I had known after my wipeout that I was essentially done for the contest. I did not have to try to win after paddling back out, did not even have to surf my best during the rest of the heat. It was enough to know that I had turned my board around and faced those waves once again.

Now if anyone had told me while I was getting drilled by that set at Waimea that the business world would be a lot harder than surfing, I never would have believed them. But after retiring from the tour in 1990 I had two devastating free-falls in business, both of which shook my confidence even more than the Bay. And yet the knowledge that I did not give up on myself that day and take the easy way out has carried me through each crisis.

The first occurred in 1995. I was sitting in the waiting room of well-known apparel company in Southern California. It had not been my first interview for a job. Not even my second. What’s more, I had never had to interview before because my whole life I had worked for myself. I had arrived that morning tens of thousands of dollars in debt after having closed the doors on my own apparel company in South Africa. Three years of hard work down the drain along with the dream of prosperity in and with South Africa. And the consequences of going under at that point extended beyond my own survival to that of my wife, Carla, and my five-year old son, Mathew. After an extraordinary career on the World Tour as a champion surfer, as the owner of a successful apparel company that had sponsored other surfers, as someone who had always been optimistic and successful, I sat in that chair and realized that people had very little interest in Shaun Tomson. Suddenly I was no longer a success.

I came from a family of successful entrepreneurs. My father and uncle had both owned their own businesses, and my cousin, Michael Tomson—also a professional surfer—had founded the surf apparel company Gotcha in 1978. I followed suit in 1980 by founding Instinct. Even from the beginning of my surf career I had wanted to parlay my success on the Tour into long-term financial security in the business world. Instinct was created with this in mind, but after I retired from the Tour in 1990, I was bought out of my share in the company. So I returned to South Africa to finish my university degree. Afterward Carla—who had a degree from London’s Saint Martins College of Art and Design—and I decided to start over again in our native country. We called our company simply Tomson.

It was a personal and financial failure directly linked to the volatile times in South Africa. We were a country in political transition during those years, literally on the brink of civil war. Although the democratic elections in 1994 transpired peacefully in the end, the years leading up to the elections were extremely violent. The Natal area, which included Durban, had been placed under a state of emergency by President de Klerk. At stake, of course, was over three hundred years of white-dominated rule. Very conservative factions among the Afrikaners had denounced de Klerk and fallen into league (amazingly enough) with equally radical elements among African militants: these forces had a vested interest in the failure of a unified South Africa, which would have meant a loss of independence for them; for the Afrikaners especially, a black-dominated government could mean retribution for Apartheid. So black and white fought battles in the streets against Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress. To add to this chaos, South Africa had been in deep recession. Our business simply was not strong enough to survive such political and economic hardships. After three years of working and struggling I found myself in Southern California wondering not only about the future of South Africa, but in particular the short-term prospects for me and my family.

After the unsuccessful interview I was very shaken, not unlike the feelings I had experienced after my wipeout at Waimea, but more on an emotional level. I had a similar life-changing decision to make, but this time I understood, as I had not before, how serious the consequences of that decision would be for my family’s future. It would have been easier to get on a plane and go back home to my wife and son rather than face another interview and risk those terrible blows to my ego. I phoned Carla in South Africa. Her advice to me was simple: keep looking for a job. She knew—for the sake of my own self-confidence—that I had to find something, anything, before returning home. She was right, and I needed to have that reaffirmation from someone so important in my life.

I did paddle back out and find a job with a great clothing company, Patagonia. Then another one in the apparel division at O’Neill. After three years with those companies, Carla and I decided to start our own company again, this time in Santa Barbara. We knocked on doors, talked about our ideas, and we raised over a million dollars in investments. The apparel business is a very demanding, time-consuming endeavor, and we could not have worked harder. Carla designed all the clothing and directed production while I oversaw the day-to-day business operations. After three years we had built up a great product line, with hundreds of distributors from California to New York. And then 9/11 hit, and the bottom fell out once again.

Our company, Solitude, experienced what many businesses did after the terrorist attacks: sales plummeted, and we had a hard time finding investors to recapitalize. Apparel is an especially expensive product to fund with a great outlay of time and capital on the front-end (to make the clothing) with the possibility of very little return due to changing trends, or even an event as unforeseen as the attacks on the Twin Towers. To make a long story short, I was looking at my second business failing in less than ten years. We had no cash coming in to fund our next season, and investors were holding onto their capital until the political and economic situation stabilized. Overall, the situation was not unlike the turmoil leading up to the elections in South Africa.

On a Friday we began clearing out our offices in Santa Barbara: furniture, inventory, personnel. Everything. Except three things: my desk, my telephone, and a computer terminal. I had no idea what I was going to do come Monday, but as long as I had a phone hooked up I could still make calls.

Turned out I didn’t have to. By chance one of my friends got talking with another father-Randy Paskal- at their sons’ Little League baseball game the next day. Randy and his father were looking for investment opportunities, and of course I was looking for investors. Carla and I met the Paskals the next day, on Sunday, and we shook hands on a deal. Monday morning we started moving everything back into our offices. What is it they say in baseball? It ain’t over till it’s over.

We eventually sold Solitude to Oxford, a large publicly traded apparel company on the New York Stock Exchange.

I have faced more competition than I ever did in surf contests, and I certainly have gotten my fair share of poundings. But I have always made it back up. Whatever comes over the horizon at me, I draw strength from knowing that my experience in the water supports other aspects of my life that now take priority. I may yet get worked over again in the apparel business and washed up on the beach. Home will always look like a comfortable place to rest and recover. But you know I’ll always be paddling back out again.

The post Surfer’s Code: I Will Always Paddle Back Out appeared first on Shaun Tomson | World Champion Surfer, Keynote Speaker & Author.