How Can HR Address Generation Numb’s Emotional Fatigue to Build Resilient and High-Performing Teams?

Welcome to the Vantage Influencers podcast. This podcast is sponsored by Vantage Circle, the simple and effective recognition platform for employee engagement.

Riha Jaishi: Hello listeners. Welcome back to another episode of the Vantage HR Influencers podcast. I'm your host, Riha, and today we are exploring a timely and critical topic: how can HR address Generation Numb's emotional fatigue to build resilient and high-performing teams? Across today's workplaces, many employees are productive, connected, and capable, yet emotionally drained. This quiet fatigue often goes unnoticed, but it directly affects trust, engagement, and long-term performance. For HR, the challenge is no longer just managing output, it's more about rebuilding resilience, meaning, and psychological safety in an always-on work culture. To help us unpack this, I'm joined by Josh Cardoz, Chief Creative and Learning Officer at Sponge. Welcome to the show, Josh. It's a pleasure to have you with us today.

Josh Cardoz: Thanks, Riha. Thanks for having me and looking forward to the conversation.

Riha Jaishi: Yes, we are equally delighted. Now, to kick things off, Josh, can you briefly take us through your professional journey so far? We're eager to learn about your journey.

Josh Cardoz: Yeah, of course. As you mentioned, I'm the Chief Creative and Learning Officer for Sponge, and Sponge is a people enablement agency that really works with the world's biggest organizations to support their people on journeys of critical change, behaviors, and culture capability. It's a little bit of best-in-class learning, a little bit of experiences that engage and wow, and a little bit of what we're talking about today, helping unlock additional performance, or helping un-numb the numb, more than anything. A little bit about my career background: I've been in the corporate learning space my entire career, with a bit of consultancy along the way too. I think my passion is really in human resonance, and at a time when business outcomes and technology outcomes are driving the way, I'm still one of the lone holdouts for human outcomes, making sure that humans, who still drive value at work, are looked after and cared for in the right way.

Riha Jaishi: That's such an interesting venture, Josh. Thank you for sharing your experience.

Josh Cardoz: You're welcome.

Riha Jaishi: Now, with your permission, I would like to delve into our topic further. Shall we?

Josh Cardoz: Yeah, let's go for it.

Riha Jaishi: Okay, great. Josh, when we say Generation Numb, what are we really describing here?

Josh Cardoz: Generation Numb, more than anything else, is trying to capture a feeling. We work with some of the biggest brands in the world and have the privilege of talking to our clients daily about what's going on with their teams and the big shifts in their organizations. Sponge has been around for over 20 years, so we understand people at work and what it means to change people at work. Generation Numb has really been a body of work born from just listening to the signals that are out there, and the signals are everywhere. Whether we're looking at what's going on in the larger world or in our digital lives, we're approaching iPhone 17 at this point, and I'll call my age out here: I remember what life was like before the iPhone, and 17 iPhones later, what does sustained digital overwhelm look like in our lives? Our relationship with digital overwhelm through social media and scrolling feels simultaneously underwhelming too. Everyone knows what the price of bread is regardless of where they live, and bringing that closer to work, you've got chronic uncertainty, a strange relationship with AI that on one side is an amazing enabler for a career and on the other could be a blocker, and an identity crisis about what AI means not only for how we work every day but for our careers. The AI conversation has dominated at a time when we were still actually recovering post-pandemic, almost like we're not allowed to talk about navigating the world of work post-pandemic, or what the rule book for hybrid working even looks like. All of those are signals of coupling and sustained effects, and "numb" was a carefully selected word over things like disengaged, checked out, or burnt out, terms we often hear in the HR space. Numb is really about people who are still working, still showing up, but the question is what quality of performance you're actually getting, in times where always-on transformation and always-on change is the norm. Organizations rapidly pivot to macroeconomic circumstances and then need to take people on that journey, and people just say, "Sure, okay," without knowing what to do with it. So people are in survival mode, but not a very visible one, and it's this numbing effect: "Yeah, sure, I can show up to work," but ask me how I'm really feeling, and if you're willing to listen, I can tell you what I actually feel in this environment. It's a concept Sponge is very passionate about, because it feels like something lurking beneath the surface while the career conversation, the HR conversation, the performance conversation, is dominated by other topics.

Riha Jaishi: Josh, I must say this term Generation Numb is such a powerful term that sums up all the signals you mentioned, the uncertainty, the disengagement, people going through survival mode. It aptly sums up what people are facing that nobody is actually even talking about. This really addresses the need to look into things that are being overlooked, right?

Josh Cardoz: Yeah. Also, to clarify, with Generation Numb we opted to take the larger definition of generation. It's not necessarily defined by age group, but by a time period or effect that people have all gone through. Most of us are navigating this post-pandemic, AI-forward workforce, whether we were in the workforce when the pandemic happened or not. I was talking with a peer the other day about how whatever playbook or rule book you had for how to show up at work just doesn't make sense anymore, it doesn't exist now. Whether you're at the top of your organization or a manager, we're all navigating new rules together, hence Generation Numb. On the point about this not being talked about, my number one reaction whenever I bring up this concept is that people lean in and whisper, "I've been feeling it too," almost like we're giving permission to bring the conversation up. I spend a lot of time speaking with leaders, and I think leaders themselves feel the most isolated in this, because they feel the pressure of the business saying "more productivity" and "get your people going," and then they have to face their team wondering, "Is this change going to be the one that costs me my job, or do I get to continue on?" This idea of numbness, particularly in leadership, is that we're all in this boat together, whether an individual contributor or a CEO. I think we're all feeling it in some capacity.

Riha Jaishi: Absolutely, absolutely. Well said, Josh. Now, moving ahead: what are the early warning signs of emotional fatigue that don't really show up in engagement surveys or productivity metrics? What do you have to say about this?

Josh Cardoz: Great question. Part of the idea of Generation Numb is that when you talk about it, the first reaction is "I feel it too," and the second reaction, depending on who you're talking to, is either "I want to do something about it" or "But what are you really supposed to do about it," as if people feel paralyzed by the ask. I think it's important not to place numbness in a place of culture, something that feels outside the org or purely a lag effect that only HR can affect, versus placing it in performance. As someone who has to sell every day and represent an organization on the vendor side, there are real stakes: "Sorry, Josh, everything I love about numbness, but what's the budget line item I attach to this?" I think about that a lot, because businesses are crunched right now, hence the pressure on productivity and meeting shareholder needs, with really slim margins to try and accomplish what businesses are trying to accomplish.

To go back to your question about early signs: rather than go down the path of culture and engagement, I'd go down the path of performance and ask your leaders whether they're getting the extra performance they're trying to extract from their people, the competitive advantage that will be the next key innovation. Every business is trying to figure out how to optimize costs, drive innovation, or be more customer-centric, these are the big shifts shaping organizations right now. The way I'd frame it is: if you believed numbness was a barrier to top performance, wouldn't you do something about it? That becomes a conversation about performance versus culture, and culture, in these times, can feel like something that's easily put aside because we're trying to run a business and become AI-ready, and culture will just settle its way there. There's a pragmatic way to make this a serious conversation so it doesn't get shelved to "well, times are tough, let's just get through it." Our argument is that you get through it by tackling numbness head-on, rather than saying "let's keep pushing productivity, let's rally the troops for more," because people don't have anything left in the tank. People are showing up saying, "The world is on fire, I don't know what's going on at work, but I'll show up because I'm worried about losing my job." It's not exactly an employee market, so people do what's asked of them. My co-author on this piece, Olivia, a brilliant talent I work with every day, coined the idea that we're all trying to replicate this early Silicon Valley mood, everyone wants to be in their Steve Jobs era hacking away in a garage building the next iPhone. But today, Silicon Valley culture, probably because it's most in the headlines, is forcing that application rather than rallying people around something amazing: "If you really want to work here, you've got to work Saturdays, that's just what it is." It's a good example of performance and numbness colliding, because no one asked people in the glory days of a legendary organization like Apple to work weekends or they wouldn't be taken seriously, there was strong purpose, connection, and unity on that team, which is hard to replicate today given everything going on in the world. The path, for me, in terms of the signals of numbness, is to ask your people on the front lines: are you getting the most out of your teams, and how can we rally them to a place of top performance?

Riha Jaishi: Josh, I really like this point about focusing on the impact of numbness in terms of performance rather than culture. Everything is reduced to performance these days. Ultimately, what are we getting out of the performance, how is it going, and is numbness impacting that? That's a big takeaway, to focus on the impact of numbness on performance and figure out ways to handle it rather than just pushing it off as a culture issue.

Josh Cardoz: Yeah, and I spend a lot of time talking to both HR leaders and functional leaders, who have very different priorities. At first glance you might say, "Oh, there's numbness in your organization, that sounds like an HR problem," but I think it's unfair to put that at the feet of HR and say "solve for it." The pathway is partnership, because if you ground this in performance, a functional or sales leader arguably has an even more vested interest in extracting performance than HR does. If I were an HR leader saying, "I'm with you on numbness, I can feel it, I can see it in the data, what's the pathway to unlock it," I'd keep the word "culture" in my back pocket and instead seek partnership across the business: "What are the KPIs you've been assigned? What came out of the last CEO town hall? How can we extract more from our people in a better way?" There's a better chance of leadership hearing "we can capture 10% more performance out of our people" and thinking that sounds like a dream outcome. I can't quantify exactly what that looks like, because numbness isn't only an individual journey, it's also unique to every organization, and I don't want to make a blanket statement that everyone feels a certain way. But we ran independent research asking people to describe their relationship with work in one word, and a large portion of responses were things like "meh," "surviving," "it is what it is." If that isn't a perfect description of the moment we're in, and imagine that's something people are even willing to tell you. I believe it was Gallup that found the average amount of organizational change an employee faced in their career used to be around two, and in the last ten years that's risen to thirteen. Imagine the energy it takes, every year, to hear "I know we said we were going this way, now I need you to go this way," even when the economy is tough and customers have tight pockets. So the piece for HR is to tap into what the work is really trying to do. Culture is the enabler of that, culture is the 10%, but when culture becomes a line item in a budget review, it's a lot like the word "training," often the first thing cut. So how do you make this a business priority, because your people are feeling it too? I've yet to meet anyone who says, "Our organization is amazing, everyone's united, everyone feels great showing up to work," there are components of that everywhere, and if you tap into it, everyone gets on board with extracting more performance, because that feels like the piece that's missing right now.

Riha Jaishi: That's such an interesting perspective, Josh. Really loving the discussion around HR's role and culture, and how people are overlooking what's underlying beneath all that numbness. Now you're really bringing this into the light, and people are getting to know there are underlying issues that need to be addressed.

Josh Cardoz: A key part of what we recommend, well, how are you supposed to even tackle any of this? The starting point is really to read the room. This is what I mean by numbness being unique to every organization and team, you have to be bold enough to actually listen. There's no need to hide behind what's going on, everyone already knows, and that requires a lot of radical transparency. There's something to be said for a leader who has business pressures and says "we just need to go" versus grounding the ask in something real. One of the key skills needed to navigate this numbness is commercial maturity, understanding how the business makes money. If you understand that, the next critical shift is grounded in "this is what's needed to survive the next six months of uncertainty," rather than "we're doing this change and you haven't been consulted, just go do it." People have to get over themselves just to start thinking about change, but if it's grounded in context, even a bold decision becomes something a leader can stand behind: "I'm in it with you, I know it's tough, but we'll find our way through it." That's far more inspiring than a single slide from the last town hall and "now let's go, team." It's in the Generation Numb white paper, which I'm happy to share afterward, where we draw an equivalency to Maslow's hierarchy: corporate comms loves to put "we're great, we're the most customer-centric" at the top of the pyramid, when really people are at the bottom. That dissonance is exactly why reading the room and radical transparency matter. We're not asking leaders to open the books completely, we're trying to run a business, but leading into the difficulty of decisions matters. Sometimes HR's role is to protect leadership from the bold question and the honest answer, but the real response to numbness is simply, "I'm in it with you too, I'm feeling it too."

I'll come back to AI, since that's the timely conversation of this moment. We've all seen the memes of a CEO saying "I want AI," leadership asking "what does that look like," and the CEO saying "no instructions, no playbook, just figure it out." Contrast that with leadership saying, "We're feeling the pressure to be more AI-fluent, just like our competitors, let's experiment, let's figure this out together, and think about norms a month or three months from now. I don't know exactly what that looks like either, but we'll figure it out together." That's radical transparency and reading the room, versus "I need you to do this because I need you to do this."

There's an element of tackling numbness in stages, we can't assume a team goes from feeling "meh" to fully engaged overnight. You're not going to conquer numbness with a pizza party, this isn't The Office. The way we talk about it is in three stages: me, us, and it. First, take care of personal needs, it's hard for people to get excited about customers when they're worried about the price of bread or their job security three months out. Address personal priorities: giving clarity to someone's role in these ambiguous times, or giving managers more autonomy to run their teams. There's a real disconnect between what's passed down from the top and what's left for people to figure out with their teams, a middle layer being lost. If you can't define the role clearly, at least give people the autonomy to define it for themselves, that's the "me" stage. We also live in a time with a loneliness epidemic at work, people are genuinely lonely, and the best work of your career probably wasn't done alone, it was done with a team you believed in. People are craving that connection, especially navigating a post-pandemic world where being in an office five days a week feels like a relic. It's less about return-to-office mandates and more about deliberately recreating authentic connection, because people show up to an office and spend the day on calls with colleagues who aren't even in the room, which defeats the purpose. One recommendation in the white paper is that if you bring people into the office, use that time with precision, a tech-free day or a whiteboarding day, so people are actually engaging with each other. That's the "us" stage, building community and connection. Once you've addressed personal priorities and built connection, you get to what you've really been trying to do the whole time: rallying people around the work itself, the "it" stage, the place of top performance. That's where we spend a lot of time unlocking deeply human skills like creativity, design thinking, and empathy, skills you can only access once you've done the work in the "me" and "us" stages. That's where the innovation organizations are looking for actually shows up, along with real unity and reduced silos. I have a bit of a bone to pick with productivity, because what organizations are actually chasing is performance, and productivity has almost replaced performance as a proxy, as if being productive automatically means you're performing. I'd argue the opposite: getting top performance out of people isn't about productivity, it's about psychological safety. It's about turning numbness into actually having your team come alive. What does it mean to have your team come alive and do the best work of their careers? It's still possible in these times, but you have to work your way up there.

Riha Jaishi: Josh, those were some amazing insights. Thank you for such amazing insights.

Josh Cardoz: Oh, my pleasure. As you can tell, I can literally talk about this for days. It's not only something I'm passionate about, it's something I think the world needs right now.

Riha Jaishi: Your passion is reflected, it's amazing. Okay, so now moving ahead, Josh: is today's definition of resilience really about capability, or is it about tolerating broken systems?

Josh Cardoz: Oh, man, resilience is such an interesting word. It almost feels transitory, like "I just need you to be resilient right now, don't worry, there's something better on the other side." I come back to why the word "numb" was chosen, because you could argue our resilience has been tested for six years now, sustained effect after sustained effect, almost no reprieve, just layers on layers. We were all trying to survive 2019, 2020, 2021, then organizations tried to recapture value lost in that time, saying "thank you for your effort, now I need you to go please our shareholders." A year later, generative AI becomes a thing, and now everyone needs to reimagine their work without a clear idea of what that even looks like. You could call that resilience, or you could call it, and I know this is a cliche, the new norm. On one side, yes, it is about capability, the new rules of work haven't been defined yet, and we're defining that playbook in real time. But I almost feel like resilience isn't a fair enough term for what's being asked of leadership today, it's about commercial maturity, psychological safety, change management, the environment you're crafting, not just getting people "through it," because there isn't a getting people through it anymore, this is just what it looks like now. Helping people understand the process of change is helpful and empathetic, the same idea of radical transparency: when you're asking for change, understand how hard the ask is and start from there, rather than assuming people are automatons. The frequency and intensity of change is so high now that we have to accept this is just the environment we're operating in, whether or not you call that resilience. But we need to be more specific about the skill sets resilience is hiding behind, and be more solution-oriented, because resilience on its own feels passive, like a survival mechanism. How do we move people from survival to actually functioning and creating value for the business? You also asked about broken systems, and yes, everything feels broken right now. Ask someone how they're supposed to do their job every day and you won't get a straight answer, whether it's the playbook for in-office, hybrid, or remote work, or the right relationship with AI, or whether the goal is productivity, efficiency, or innovation, we haven't figured any of it out. So yes, systems are broken, but framing it that way almost absolves us of the problem, as if we just have to be resilient through it. The powerful move is creating agency within people, we forget that we have incredibly talented people whose skills are probably underutilized, and if you tap into that by saying "we're creating these rules right now, can you help me do it," you'd be amazed what you get back. Resilience can quickly become something action-oriented, as long as you're creating the space for people to do it.

Riha Jaishi: Josh, from what you've described about resilience, it seems like resilience has quietly become more about endurance rather than sustainability. What do you have to say?

Josh Cardoz: Yeah, to quote another great line from my colleague and co-author, Olivia, she talks about how we're being asked to move at a sprint pace across what is really a consistent marathon, the energy still needs to feel sprint-like even though the pace never actually relents. I keep coming back to the me, us, it framework, because you need to understand which phase you're in, since it's tempting to jump straight to "it," where the performance outcomes show up, that's where everyone wants to build the next iPhone in their organization. But you need to be keenly aware of which phase your organization is actually in. I'll give you a good example: we were working with a large enterprise organization in the food and beverage space, and a key part of that engagement was with their global capability team. The work was about unlocking new mindsets and giving that team a new purpose, shifting their focus from "we just build and assemble training" toward "we actually build capability in people." That sounds like a big ask, but the way we actually did it was by designing a core experience that brought the room together and helped people depend on each other. Everyone came together for a three-day, in-person session, with no technology and no slides, so there was no temptation to check email because everyone was locked into each other. It's a scary thing to propose: no presentation to fall back on, no laptop. We spent three days in genuine, face-to-face conversation, activating the concepts needed to unlock that mindset, with exercises to build a real sense of empathy in action. The feedback afterward was overwhelmingly about community and connection: people saying they didn't realize they could work this way with their peers, or that they'd forgotten great work can happen without a laptop. It was like reminding people of a muscle they'd lost. People left energized about who they are and what the work is, because we primed them for it rather than just handing them information and saying "go get them." There's always a temptation to focus purely on knowledge and information and forget the human component: how do you activate someone's deep-seated motivation, how do you tell them their work matters more than ever right now? That required senior leadership willing to be bold, because it's easy for a senior leader to ask for a 200-slide deck as proof that something happened. But when you ground the work in performance and in what you're actually trying to achieve, you can create experiences that unlock those things, whether people are in the me, us, or it stage.

Riha Jaishi: That's such a powerful example, Josh.

Josh Cardoz: Yeah, I was part of that experience. It was a transformative time, not just for what it delivered, but from being in the room with those individuals.

Riha Jaishi: Yes, that's great. Okay, so moving ahead, Josh: what metrics do you think HR should track to understand emotional health beyond engagement scores and attrition rates?

Josh Cardoz: Yeah, this comes back to my point about reaching across the business and creating partnership. I empathize a lot with HR leaders on this, it shouldn't just be on you to solve. Attrition rates and engagement rates are too lagging for me, they're indicators that confirm numbness exists, but they don't necessarily help you address it. If you start building partnership with business leaders and say, "You're losing top talent," or "trust in the org is really low, so I don't expect your team is going to give you the performance you're looking for, how can we build through that, how can we activate it," you're transferring autonomy over to those leaders. As an HR function, you're asking, "How can I support you, how can I help?" Some leaders are already tapped in and intuitively understand the power of culture, but for those who aren't, what they understand is business metrics. So once again, ground it in performance, then ask what experiences, as a people-support mechanism, can help unlock those things: rethinking return to office, reallocating budget toward a new leadership experience focused on commerciality, or on building resilience and navigating teams through these times. If that feels like it can help extract more performance, partner on it, rather than sitting on the outside not knowing what's good, because the way forward is through the work itself, not through an artificial attempt at shifting culture. Ultimately, it's your connection to your peers and to your work that's the grounding point for reaching that next level of performance. I'd really encourage HR to be more proactive in partnership with the rest of the business.

Riha Jaishi: Yes, Josh. You mentioned HR's involvement, not only through engagement scores, which are lagging as you said, but through partnership with business leaders and taking practical steps to help build resilience. I guess those are practical steps HR should consider, rather than sticking to manual, tech-oriented work. Their practical, hands-on presence matters more here, right?

Josh Cardoz: Yes, being practical, being hands-on, being close to the work. It's an empathy exercise at the end of the day, you can't culture-survey your way out of this problem, the same way a pizza party isn't going to automatically make people more engaged with the organization. In the same way you're reading the room in a radical way, the response needs to be incredibly authentic, that's the key part, because in a time when people are craving a lot of things, the thing they're looking for most from their organization is authenticity, we've had enough lip service. Especially in moments of change, it's okay to say "change is the new norm" as a leader, because yes, we're in survival mode in a lot of ways, but so are our competitors. Show me an organization resting on its laurels saying "we're fine, everything's okay" and not being honest about it. So be transparent about it. The other piece, when talking about personal priorities: we'd all love to be able to say "don't worry, your job is safe, here's a 15% raise," but we don't get that guarantee in life. So if you can't offer that, what can you do? That's the real question, how do you activate people anyway, because we still need to show up, we still need to perform. It's about tapping into people who still believe, "Actually, I miss the days when my work had tremendous value, purpose, and meaning." That's not to say people don't feel that now, but something is eroding because of the larger economic factors at play. How do we bring that back?

Riha Jaishi: Well said, Josh. Okay, so next: as AI and automation and hybrid work are accelerating, do you see this emotional fatigue increasing, or can technology be designed to protect human energy? What do you have to say?

Josh Cardoz: I think technology absolutely can help protect human energy. The whole AI conversation reminds me of when the internet came around: "What can we do with the internet? Anything, it can be everything." We're in a similar storming phase right now, figuring out the role and relationship of AI in our lives and specifically at work. At its best, AI helping to improve our workflows, being a thought partner, removing admin work we don't want to do, is genuinely helpful, in certain applications it's transformative. But the piece about managing emotional fatigue comes down to the environment in which you're figuring that out, whether AI is an enabler of what you're trying to accomplish as a business, or a blocker. I still firmly believe that as long as humans are in the workforce, they'll always be the number one value creator. I was actually just looking over some of the highlights from CES, the big tech conference that happens every year, and apparently one of the major automakers is going to be among the first to bring humanoid robots onto their assembly line, which feels like something out of a science-fiction film. As long as people are still in the workforce, they remain the number one value creator, that's my personal belief. As a leader, if you believe that, you have a vested interest, AI or not, in tapping into that and getting the most out of your people. If getting the most out of your people means positioning AI as something that can help augment their work, then create the right environment for that to happen. A lot of organizations go wrong when they ask, "Is there a chance I can eliminate 30% of my workforce and replace it with AI?" Of course people are going to feel scared, of course they're going to feel like they're training something to take over their job. That's not a safe space to innovate or think clearly. It's a strange relationship: depending on who you are and how you operate with AI, it can feel like it opens new doors in your career, or it can create tremendous fear that you won't have a job in six months. It's our job as leaders and organizations to put people in a position to succeed. It's almost the existential debate of our time: where do you believe the value in work is coming from? If you still believe it's humans, and I do, then you have to lean into the human side of things and treat AI as a tool, a support mechanism, a thought partner. If people know they get to retain their job, and the goal for the organization is clear, you can give them space to experiment, to test and fail, to create norms and rewrite the new rules of work. That's how you manage emotional fatigue, instead of people constantly worrying that tomorrow their boss will say, "Great job, now the AI takes over."

Riha Jaishi: Josh, I guess you mentioned a really critical point here, that it's more like a balance, getting the most out of people but with the help of AI, AI being a helper, a tool to enhance their performance. That balance means people don't need to worry about being replaced, more like AI being an enhancer and an aid in the current work that we do.

Josh Cardoz: Yeah, and this comes back to radical transparency and commercial maturity. Let's not pretend that people aren't losing jobs over all of this, in some cases they are. It would be disingenuous to say "use this tool, don't worry, everyone's fine and safe" if we can't actually make that guarantee, or we're still figuring it out ourselves. But for most organizations shifting toward an AI-fluent or AI-first mindset, this is the most critical change initiative of the year, and it's fundamentally a human change initiative. There will be resistance. How quickly you get your organization on board becomes a competitive differentiator, and that's the difference in when you'll start seeing returns on the investment you made in AI. So lean into the fact that if you don't get people on board, you won't get the effects you're looking for, rather than mandating change and expecting it to work. That's not how change works, whether we're talking about introducing people to Windows 95 back in the day or telling everyone they now need to work from home. This is the moment to lean into how people embrace change, because they're going to be your greatest enablers of what's possible, and also your greatest resistors to it.

Riha Jaishi: Well said, Josh. Okay, so now before we wrap up our session: what part of organizational culture must change first if we truly want to reduce emotional fatigue? Is it leadership norms, performance pressure, or how success is defined? Josh, what do you have to say?

Josh Cardoz: Can I take all of the above? As I mentioned, it's about me to us to it. Start by reading the room, understand what people are looking for right now, whether it's clarity in their roles, reconnecting with their peers, building community, building a cohort of people you're willing to go through the next hard change with, and say "at least we're going through this together, and I want to work for these people." That means activating leadership in the right way, whether you have clear guidance on direction and can communicate it plainly rather than just cascading it down, or whether you're dealing with extreme ambiguity and need to lean into that honestly too. Either way, give people the autonomy and agency to work through it with their teams, because no one understands the work better than the leaders and teams actually doing it. So yes, it's 100% a leadership exercise, but it's also about introducing new rituals and norms that feel like visible change. I'll come back to the joke about pizza parties, that's not visible change, that's a reactive "throw something at the problem" response. Instead, organically think about what people are trying to do, where they are in their stage, and create the environment where that can happen. And please, by all means, start replacing the productivity narrative with the performance narrative. It's easy to get increased productivity out of people, I can show you I'm busy at work, no problem. Something that's become the new norm in these times is just how full everyone's calendars are. But I'm also a huge advocate for negative space, because that's where the real work happens. That used to be the water-cooler talk, the impromptu meeting, the "hey, can I just hop over to your desk and chat about that" moment, that doesn't really exist anymore. It's been replaced by neatly scheduled 30-minute and one-hour blocks. It's easy to be productive, but what organizations are actually chasing is performance. If you root the question in "how can I extract more performance out of my team," the answer isn't productivity, that's the wrong tool. It's "how can I overcome numbness, how can I lean into it, how can I build my team back up to a place where high performance feels possible."

Riha Jaishi: Josh, these are some amazing perspectives you've highlighted, really helping us understand how to challenge, handle, and tackle emotional fatigue, which is something that's been going on for a long time now, right?

Josh Cardoz: Yeah, thank you. Like I said, it's something I'm really passionate about, something I think we're all in together right now, and we're all looking for answers. Hopefully today I've illuminated at least some strategies, because the answer is unique to every team and every organization, but at least I've offered strategies that can help someone.

Riha Jaishi: Absolutely. Okay, so Josh, we have finally come to the end of our podcast session. Thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your amazing insights. It's been more than a pleasure hearing your perspectives on addressing Generation Numb's emotional fatigue and on building more resilient and high-performing teams. We truly appreciate your time and your expertise, and I'm sure everyone tuning into this session is inspired and walking away with a wealth of information.

Josh Cardoz: Thank you, Riha. Thank you for having me, I really enjoyed the chat.

Riha Jaishi: Great, equally enjoyed it, Josh. And to our listeners out there, thank you for tuning in. We hope you found today's conversation as enlightening as we did. So until next time, take care and we'll see you soon.

Subscribe to the Vantage Circle YouTube channel for the latest episodes.