health and wellness coaching transcript

Insight on Coaching Health & Wellness Coaching Transcript

Prepared for:

IEC: Insight Educational Consulting

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Ubiqus Reporting

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Confidential | August 27, 2008

Health and Wellness Coaching Transcript

Time Speaker Transcript

00:28 Tom Floyd Hello, everyone, and welcome to Insight on Coaching.

Insight on Coaching explores the many facets, flavors and sides of the emerging professional coaching field.

I’m Tom Floyd. I’m the CEO of IEC: Insight Educational Consulting and your host for today’s show.

Today’s show focuses on health and wellness coaching.

It’s no secret that rising healthcare costs are a crushing burden for a lot of American businesses, both large and small, and many companies now are turning to workplace wellness coaching as a way to instill healthy lifestyle behaviors among employees to lower claims and costs.

In the next hour, we’ll explore how health and wellness coaching is being used in Corporate America and its role in helping contain healthcare costs.

As always, to set the stage, our research team did some fact-finding to prepare for the show, and I wanted to share some of the information they gathered to set the stage.

According to RAND, the United States produced more than $10 trillion worth of goods and services in 2005, and nearly one out of every six dollars went to healthcare.

By comparison, in 1960, Americans spent only $1 out of every $20 on healthcare, which just blew my mind when I read that.

Healthcare costs are still rising, though. In fact, they’re rising three times higher than the annual inflation rate, which is certainly a little alarming.

While the amount we spend on healthcare has risen dramatically, as a nation, it doesn’t look like we’re any healthier for it.

Let’s take a look at some numbers from the Centers for Disease Control.

• Chronic disease, for example, such as, heart disease, cancer and diabetes, account for 7 out of every 10 deaths and affect the quality of life of 90 million Americans.

• Also, an estimated one out of five adults is a tobacco user.

• Additionally, the Department of Health and Human Services says that approximately 129 million U.S. adults are overweight or obese, which costs the nation anywhere from $69 billion to $117 billion per year.

A logical question for me at this point was how does Corporate America feel about this?

With health cost containment being such a major issue, many companies in Corporate America are embracing health and wellness programs to try to prevent the causes of chronic conditions like obesity, diabetes, and even asthma, to reduce claims and costs.

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Some more interesting facts, the National Business Group of Health says that 80 percent of large companies now offer health and wellness programs versus less than 20 percent five years ago. Companies like Motorola, IBM, Dell Computer and Union Pacific Railway have been recognized as being at the forefront of the trend with innovative programs that are producing tangible results for each company.

To give you some more information about that, the Department of Health and Human Services says Union Pacific Railway achieved more than a 10 percent decrease in healthcare costs due to lifestyle-related factors, equating to a $53.6 million cost saving in 2001.

Also, interestingly enough, smoking prevalence at Union Pacific dropped from 40 percent to 28 percent in the last 10 years, which is certainly a significant drop.

In the trucking industry, Con-way’s pilot health and wellness program at a facility in L.A. in 2005 led to a 75 percent reduction in lost work days and an 80 percent decrease in workers’ compensation claims, which is pretty huge. The company now covers 10 percent of the unit’s 1,800 drivers and is looking to cover 25 percent by then end of 2007.

Now one last statistic from another company, at Motorola, for every $1 invested in wellness benefits, the company saved $3.93 in healthcare costs.

Overall, the company saw $6.5 million in annual savings in medical expenses for lifestyle-related illnesses.

I’ve talked a little bit about wellness programs, some of the facts and things out there related to that, and the question of the day on today’s show is how does wellness coaching fit in as overall component of corporate wellness programs?

In the next hour, we’ll discuss the nature of health and wellness coaching, the different forms it takes, some of the issues it targets, and why spending money on it can make a major contribution to the bottom line.

We’re very fortunate to have four of the most prominent people in this field with us this week, Michael Arloski, Helen Darling, Gene McGuire and Jennifer Tuma.

Let me give you a quick overview of each of their backgrounds.

Michael Arloski is founder and CEO of Real Balance Global Wellness Services and author of some of the earliest articles on wellness coaching. He is the author of a new book, Wellness Coaching For Lasting Lifestyle Change, and, as a licensed psychologist, presents seminars, keynotes and consultations on four continents, pursuing his mission of taking the concept of wellness worldwide.

Welcome to the show, Michael.

05:30 Michael Arloski Thank you very much, Tom.

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05:31 Tom Floyd Our next guest Helen Darling is the president of the National Business Group on Health.

The National Business Group on Health represents some of Corporate America’s largest employers and works on solutions for the most important healthcare and benefit-related issues that companies face.

Prior to joining the National Business Group on Health, Helen served as a healthcare practice leader at Watson Wyatt Worldwide. She also directed the purchasing of health benefits and disability at XEROX Corporation for 55,000 U.S. employees, dependants and retirees.

Helen serves on several high-level committees dedicated to improving the cost and quality of care in the U.S.

Welcome to the show, Helen.

06:06 Helen Darling Thank you, Tom.

06:07 Tom Floyd Our next guest, Gene McGuire, is the Chief Marketing Officer for Wellness Coaches USA, a pioneer in the field and a leading provider of wellness coaching to major corporations.

He has more than 18 years of health-related experience with companies such as Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis and Wrigley. He has been with Wellness Coaches USA since 2002.

Welcome to the show, Gene.

06:27 Gene McGuire Thank you, Tom.

06:28 Tom Floyd And our last guest, Jennifer Tuma, is a transformational health and wellness coach and author of the DVD, Diets Don’t Work. She began a career in wellness nine years ago, and since that time Jennifer has lost over 120 pounds and overcome the threat of Type II diabetes.

Jennifer offers group classes for weight loss, nutrition, total health, fitness and motivation.

Welcome to the show, Jennifer.

06:49 Jennifer Tuma Thanks, Tom.

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06:51 Tom Floyd As with most of our shows, today’s show is definitely going to be more of a group conversation with everyone. I’m going to pose questions to all of our guests to get the conversation started, and we’ll see where the topic takes us from there.

Helen, I’d really like to start with you first.

As some of that information that we shared highlighted, containing healthcare costs is definitely one of the biggest issues that’s facing Corporate America.

And although costs aren’t going up in double-digits the way they were a few years ago, the fact that I shared about them still rising much faster than inflation, for example, is alarming.

From your perspective, how serious is the problem, and what are some of the things that you’re seeing Corporate America do to cope with that?

07:38 Helen Darling The problem is very serious.

The average cost per employee for a company, any employer, is over $8,400 per year right now.

An employer is spending that already, just on healthcare claims costs.

So even if it’s only growing 6 or 7 percent, that means that more and more employers will find it unsustainable to provide health benefits.

As a consequence, employers have decided they really need to tackle the problem of health problems as quickly as possible to try to limit the increase in medical claims costs.

It’s just within the last couple of years that they’ve started doing this, and they’ve begun, very comprehensively, looking at all of the problems and the two-thirds of their workforce that’s overweight and obese, which is similar to the figures that you mentioned, and they’re saying, “We’ve got to help our employees to move into healthier lifestyles and to reduce the health problems that result from their inactivity and their poor eating habits.”

08:52 Tom Floyd In terms of what you’re seeing, how comfortable is the average employee in having a conversation around that?

When they hear their company is making a move in this direction, is it something that has been well received by employees in general?

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09:07 Helen Darling How it’s announced is very important.

First of all, it is never information that’s shared directly with an employer. All of the conversations and information is between the employee, voluntarily, and health professionals. The employers ask professionals to handle that.

They don’t get close to the data in any way, and they make that clear.

When the health professionals reach out to an employee as a consequence, say, of their agreeing to even be reached out to, they assure them that no information would be provided to employers.

All information is provided only to health professionals who have to follow both federal and state laws, and their own professional ethics of not sharing information.

09:56 Tom Floyd Got it. I want to turn to the rest of the group. Anything that anyone else would chime in and add around this, in terms of some of the things that you’re seeing Corporate America do to cope with some of these issues?

10:12 Gene McGuire Tom, this is Gene. We, as a company, we’re still pretty much in our infancy. We’ve only been in existence for five or six years.

But we’re finding that progressive companies, folks that have really figured out that the system is broken and needs to be fixed, and the answer is absolutely helping people to deal with their own personal issues, are seeing great success when folks are offered the opportunity to become healthier and safer.

They really want to be healthier and safer, they just really need help.

And the reference to broken means that most of what’s out there right now is really very passive, it’s remote, and people have to make a decision to access it.

And we’ve found, as a company, that if you actually offer the opportunity for someone to work with an individual that can actually help them, most folks will actually take advantage of that.

And to echo Helen, one of the kick starts to the whole thing, and a very important one, is that if people really feel comfortable, if they understand that it’s a voluntary thing, and more important than that, a confidential thing, the participation levels can be quite staggering and the results, as it relates to helping people to reduce their own risk factors independently, because it’s very personal, the cumulative effect of all that is mind-boggling as it relates to reducing overall health risk factors in any given population.

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11:43 Tom Floyd So it really does come back to the fact that it’s definitely something that’s proactive for people, they have to have the desire to want to do it, to want to change, which, when we talk about coaching big picture, that’s a key part of coaching as well, going down a process of self-realization, so to speak.

11:59 Gene McGuire Absolutely. Coaching is not about telling people what to do.

It’s about being there to help them make the changes in the lives that they’d like to change, or to figure out what the driver is of what’s causing the issues to begin with, and then helping them make those changes.

12:14 Jennifer Tuma This is Jennifer Tuma, everyone.

I just absolutely want to agree with what you’re saying about them having to be ready to make the change.

Typically, where my place is in corporations and small businesses is I’m sort of the kickoff speaker when they decide that they’re going to go down the route of incorporating a wellness program.

Typically, we’ll have a lecture planned first and that gets peoples’ minds going about what their possibilities for themselves are.

And I think that when they open up their mind to, are they ready to change, what could be the result of change, how their lives and their work could change, then the employer then sees not only the costs, but the level of stress being released, and people feeling better in the workplace and more teamwork going.

Then they’re more open, I believe, to having that one-on-one coaching relationship.

And of course, as Gene and Helen both said, having the rapport with people, and that trust that the information isn’t going to be shared is so important to the coaching relationship.

13:24 Tom Floyd And it seems like, when you have a conversation about that, it would be surprising to me—and maybe this is something that happens—but to hear somebody say, “We care about you as an individual and want to offer options for you to live a healthier lifestyle,” it would blow my mind if someone said, “No, I don’t want to be healthy.”

Does that happen?

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13:44 Jennifer Tuma I definitely agree that people are so open, when they are given the opportunity.

A couple years back, I was working with a law firm, they had never done anything like this before, and it was sort of a trial or test.

They were nervous and wondering, “Are people actually going to attend this program”?

We did a wellness program versus one-on-one coaching to start.

They were wondering if people would even attend, and they were apprehensive.

The response was great the first time, but then they had to do a repeat of the program only a couple weeks later for all of the people that missed it that wanted to attend.

People are thirsty for learning on how they can help themselves.

Exactly as Gene said, not being told what to do, but to find what works for them and how they can be their own expert.

14:36 Tom Floyd I’m hearing the music for our first commercial break, so let’s go ahead and go on pause.

Stay tuned, everyone, more on health and wellness coaching when we return.

Welcome back to Insight on Coaching, I’m Tom Floyd.

For those of you just joining us today, today’s show focuses on health and wellness coaching.

Guests on today’s show are Helen Darling, President of the National Business Group on Health; Gene McGuire, Chief Marketing Officer of Wellness Coaches USA; Jennifer Tuma, a lifestyle coach and author of the DVD, Diets Don’t Work; and Michael Arloski, Founder and CEO of Real Balance Global Wellness Services.

Right before our last break, Jennifer, you were sharing a great example around a law firm that you worked with and what it was like really kicking off a wellness program around that.

Any last thoughts that you’d share around that?

18:02 Jennifer Tuma I just think that when you’re a little bit apprehensive, a little bit nervous at first, to just go for it because people really respond.

I just can’t tell you the overwhelming response when people are given the information and allowed to help themselves. It’s amazing.

Of course, with the assistance of coaches and things like that, I think people really are looking for that in the workplace.

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18:30 Helen Darling I think that’s true. But we’ve found that there also is a large number of people that, especially when they’re approached through a health risk appraisal, that is, they’re given a reduction in their healthcare costs if they agree to submit information about themselves to health professionals, most of them do it because they want the reduction.

18:52 Jennifer Tuma Oh, absolutely.

18:54 Helen Darling But what’s striking is how much—we would all think that people would know, for example, if a man is 60 or 70 pounds overweight, that he’s probably eventually at risk for lots of things, and if he’s a middle-aged man and 60 or 70 pounds overweight, he’s at risk for serious heart disease problems.

And unfortunately, sometimes they really don’t know how serious their problems are and how much they’re threatened in terms of their health.

They may think, “Well, sure, I need to lose a few pounds, and it would be nice if I was more like I was when I was 18,” but it’s news to them, in some instances, that they are at serious risk for things like strokes and heart attacks.

Sometimes it takes more than just reaching them.

It’s helping them to realize that this is a threat to their lives and the quality of their lives.

Once they get that picture, then they’re more willing to do something about it.

It’s still hard, I might add.

19:54 Jennifer Tuma Yes, I agree. I think there are many, many pieces to the puzzle.

The first is obviously knowing and hearing, and then it’s understanding, and then it’s realizing and putting it into action. I totally agree with that.

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20:10 Gene McGuire Tom, you mentioned Con-way at the front end of the conversation.

They are a very progressive company. They really do want to take care of their folks.

To comment on Helen mentioning health risk appraisals, and then Jennifer mentioning how willing people are to make changes if they’re offered a safe place to do it, we start our whole process off, ironically, with meetings, and the meetings are designed to let the company actually physically say that they care about the folks in the room.

And they, at that point, let them know that they really want them to be healthier and safer if they’d like to be, and then offer this voluntary benefit, if you will, or resource, i.e., the coach, and then we follow up.

As Helen mentioned, health risk assessments are wonderful tools.

We then follow up by offering people health risk assessments while they sit in the room, and these kickoff meetings take about an hour.

But the point I’m going to make here is that you offer people the opportunity to fill one of those out, because it’s an opportunity to actually see where they should make changes if they’d like to, and offer them the opportunity to have someone around afterwards to really help them with whatever changes they choose to pursue, we’ve been averaging, nationally, 95-plus percent participation in people filing out a health risk assessment.

And by way of offering a human being to be there as a resources afterwards, in lieu of paying people to actually fill them out or to offer premium reductions, people would much prefer, if given the opportunity, to have a coach around afterwards than a short-term gain.

However, a lot of companies are offering incentives to get people to fill those out.

I just wanted to share the fact that you can actually get people to fill them out by offering a coach on the backend to help them with issues, instead of offering them cash or premium reductions.

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22:04 Michael Arloski That’s really the paradigm shift, and that’s what we’re really talking about here today, moving from the wellness programs that we’ve already had in place for 30 years, which relied so much on information or perhaps were modeled on, “Mail in this health risk appraisal and we’ll mail you back your results,” and that’s it.

Instead, we’re individualizing wellness.

And this trend of individualizing wellness really is a paradigm shift that I really think has a lot more potential than anything we’ve done in the wellness field in 30 years.

And it’s really based on the idea, like, Gene was just saying, of giving someone an ally. Remember, that’s what coaching is about.

It’s about creating the alliance and someone who feels like, “I’ve got an ally to help me through this change process.”

We were talking abut readiness for change, and something that’s been very fascinating for me as I’ve trained coaches over the years is how unaware they are of the work of James Prochaska and company and all the work on readiness for change, and how people really do not change until they’re ready to.

And as much of a “well, duh” kind of a thing as that is, in the healthcare profession, we don’t really work that way.

We say to you, “I want you to change because I’ve determined you’ve got all these problems. I want you to change now, no go ahead and do it.”

23:32 Tom Floyd And if we step back and think of some of the behaviors that health and wellness coaching tries to deal with and target, from all of your perspectives, what are some of the behaviors or things that, when you’re looking to try to get people to want to change or influence them, that this type of coaching focuses on?

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23:52 Gene McGuire I’ll make one comment on the word targeting first, and then open it up because there are people on the phone with a tremendous amount of coaching experience who can fill in the gaps.

We’ve made an effort to avoid the word targeting.

Targeting is very negative, and it really doesn't work all that well.

It’s basically saying, “We’re going to identify all the people that need to lose weight, all the people that need to stop smoking, all the people that need to,” whatever, and then put a bulls eye on their back.

What we’ve decided to do, by deploying coaches in workplaces, we offer the coaches time, and enough of it, for everyone in a workplace to participate and then they end up migrating to the coach for the issues that they would like to explore changing on their own or with help from the coach.

And the coach guides them through that change process that Michael mentioned.

There are many models that are tied to it.

Michael mentioned probably the most prolific one.

I’ll turn it over to Michael and Jennifer to talk about coaching.

24:55 Michael Arloski Readiness for change is certainly right at the heart of it, and incorporating that into your coaching style can help you no matter what coaching you’re doing, whether it’s wellness coaching, business coaching or anything.

We really have to tune into the person and where they’re at, and we’ve done our job if we can just move them from not even being aware of it, like Helen’s example of that one person who was overweight and didn’t realize it was a risk, moving them from what is called pre-contemplation to just contemplating it and thinking about it.

We’ve done our job at that point, and we can then take it further with them into the next step of preparing to change, and then taking the action of change, then maintaining the change and finally, incorporating into where they’re really adopted it as part of who they are.

25:42 Jennifer Tuma Just to add to that, as a coach, when you see people change from that sort of, “I can’t, I won’t, nothing will ever work,” into, “You know, maybe this might be something I’m interested in learning more about,” and then actually putting that into action, I think it’s pretty amazing from the coach’s perspective.

I know, even in my own personal life, going through losing 120 pounds, I was definitely one of those people that we’re probably talking about that had no want to change.

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26:14 Tom Floyd Is that common? Is that how a lot of people get into this, starting out with that, “This is not going to work. I can’t do this.”

Is that something that everyone tends to see?

26:24 Michael Arloski So many people have so many failure experiences around lifestyle change. They’ve already had so many times where they’ve tried and failed, tried and failed.

And the problem is they’ve tried alone.

26:37 Jennifer Tuma And that’s why what Michael said before about the individualizing this makes it so much effective, because most of us have tried and failed on things that weren’t individual to us.

26:52 Gene McGuire Exactly.

Tom, you had asked, I believe, what were the top areas of concern in any given workplace?

26:59 Tom Floyd Yes.

27:00 Gene McGuire In the pilot facility in Southern California with Con-way, our one coach conducted in excess of 26,000 face-to-face coaching sessions in a year.

27:12 Tom Floyd Holy cow!

27:13 Gene McGuire Right. And the topics that were generated, really, by the people that were approaching the coach—and we had 90-plus percent participation, meaning 90 percent of the people there approached the coach to talk about these things.

Condition and exercise was one of them; nutrition was one of them; weight control, tobacco use and stress were typically the top five.

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27:36 Tom Floyd Got it. Interesting. Let’s go ahead and pause.

We’re up for our next commercial break. I want to come back to those five when we get back.

Stay tuned, everyone. More on health and wellness coaching when we return.



Gene, I wanted to come back to a point that you had just made before our last commercial break, and you summarized some of the five key issues that people were focusing on.

You said exercise, nutrition, weight control, smoking and stress were the top five.

Can you speak a little bit more about that?

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31:21 Gene McGuire Yes, you bet. We’ve turned the education piece, and Michael will love this, that’s typically been very passive, sending out the information, hope the people read it, and we’ve made wellness very proactive.

In other words, we’ve taken information that you’d like people to read because it’s universal and it’s probably part of what’s causing a larger issue in any population, from a cost perspective, and physically bringing very brief pieces of information to everybody that works in any given work environment, and conducting very brief, three to five minute conversations with them to really get to know them, build trust and rapport, because, as we all know, in any relationship that’s important, especially as it relates to coaching.

And by doing that, and by offering things that people are really interested in, for example, blood pressure screenings, or body comps or things like that, where people are interested in finding out what their numbers look like, conversations begin.

And when those conversations begin, people really start to talk about, “Hey, I’d really like to eat better.”

Nutrition is obviously a very big issue in this country, and people really want to eat better.

And the reality is most people know what to eat and what not to eat, but something’s driving them to eat the wrong things.

That’s really where coaching comes into play because a coach will listen intently when involved in any conversation with an employee or a person, and understand what may be driving them to make the decisions to eat the wrong things, and then guide them in the change process because they want to, not because you’re telling them to, to revisit what we discussed earlier.

But in any case, conditioning and exercise is constantly coming up.

People want to exercise more, they want to make themselves feel better.

In a lot of cases, people just have busy lives, stress in their lives, things have changed and they need help and guidance in terms of helping them manage the cause of the reason why they don’t exercise, and then help them to find ways that they actually can in their life, based on what they do every day, not based on what people would like them to do.

Same thing holds true for nutrition, for weight control, tobacco use and stress.

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33:33 Tom Floyd Stress is one of those things that I’ve seen here, being based out of Silicon Valley.

I see the stress thing big time.

A personal thing that had to happen with me a couple years ago, I was having some health problems and was working about 90-hour weeks, and I had to have a specialist sit me down. I’ll never forget this.

He sat me down and put one hand on each of my shoulders and looked at me and said, “This is in your head. There is nothing wrong with you. It’s in your head.”

And I was so taken aback by that, but I thought, “Okay. Wow. I’ve really got to get this under control.”

It took something like that for it to really impact me, for me to realize, “I can’t make the difference I want to make and get the things I want to get done, done, if I’m dead.”

I had to literally make that morbid point to myself.

34:25 Jennifer Tuma I think stress and time management are the two big things that come to mind when people say, “Why aren’t I living healthy? Why aren’t I being active?”

It’s time and it’s stress.

And ironically, those two things obviously affect what you said, Gene, about the nutrition and weight management.

But also, as costs to employers go, if you can relieve some of that stress and help them practice good time management skills; you’re going to increase productivity for those employees in all areas.

It’s not only going to help you with healthcare costs, but it’s going to help you with your business in general.

35:05 Gene McGuire Right. They’re all tied together.

35:07 Jennifer Tuma Yes, it’s all connected.

35:09 Gene McGuire I think the highest number I’ve read is 70 percent of lost productivity actually comes from work presence not work absence, i.e., presenteeism.

35:17 Jennifer Tuma Yes, yes, meaning they’re there, but they’re not...

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35:20 Gene McGuire Right.

35:22 Jennifer Tuma Absolutely.

35:23 Tom Floyd What are some of the things a health and wellness coach can help people around that or guide them? Let me give you an example.

I have a rule for myself, to use my story as an example, that I won’t take meetings before 7:00, I just won’t.

I go to the gym in the morning; it’s a commitment I make to myself.

I find that I get challenged on that, ongoing and relentlessly.

And when I bring up, “You know what? I can’t have meetings beyond that, or before 7:00,” it’s almost like people get this irritancy in their voice.

And I’ve shared this with other colleagues in the field and friends and things like that, and they say the same thing, “Yes, it’s like people make you uncomfortable for doing that,” and you’re like, “Look, it’s just a boundary for me. This is just something I do for myself.”

Why is that?

Why is it what when you do try to communicate something like that that some people have this reaction to it, like, “What’s your problem? It’s just a meeting. Give in”?

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36:15 Helen Darling One of the things that we’re doing at the National Business Group on Health is helping all of our employers to understand that it’s in their interest to help their employees make those kinds of choices and reinforce that as positive behavior.

It’s not in the interest of just the individual but the interest of everyone.

If we have a sick and disabled workforce because we’re not scheduling correctly or we’re sending, either not so obvious, but sometimes very subtle signals that you want your employees to be a certain way and you’re going to reward them if they do that, and if you’re doing that you’re contributing to lost productivity and ill health on the part of your employees and their dependants, and it’s going to come back to bite you.

That’s the message that we’re trying to send.

It’s everything from how you encourage people, what you serve them in the workplace.

If they come in for a meeting in the morning, you don’t give them donuts and all sorts of fattening things.

On a campus, in an area like Silicon Valley, if you’re going to have a meeting with just one other person, you could have that meeting walking around the property, talking, and to get people to think to go up the stairs, not to get on elevators, and that you send the message that, “Your health and productivity is a human capital investment that the company is making, and it’s for your good as an individual, your good to have a healthy family, and it’s in the company’s good, too.”

37:52 Michael Arloski And health culture is really what you’re talking about there.

We’re doing a two-pronged approach.

We’re individualizing wellness through coaching, but we also can really work well as consultants with organizations to help them see that the peer health norms, the people that surround that employee are going to really influence their health tremendously, make a huge impact on their health.

If they can change the health culture of that company to where having decent boundaries and healthy boundaries is reinforced rather than ridiculed, that can make a real big difference.

38:29 Helen Darling It can. Leadership at the top is key.

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38:34 Tom Floyd What are some examples that you’re seeing of things that companies are doing?

One that comes for mind for me that’s local that really had an impact on me is Yahoo!.

A lot of people work at Yahoo! and you hear people really talk about that, the experience that they have when they go on campus there.

It’s totally different. It’s wild. It’s zany.

The food is fantastic.

People are playing football outside.

There are arcade games and things like that in the lobby, and candy, and the most fantastic gym I think I’ve ever seen. It’s the same type of gym you’d expect to see in downtown Manhattan.

I really noticed immediately. The energy at Yahoo! is so upbeat.

It’s upbeat, it’s positive.

You see a lot of people smiling.

It left a really good impression on me and several folks on my team.

What are some things that companies are doing to help get that energy and focus on health and being positive and all of that?

39:30 Helen Darling Another company there is Cisco that has a program called Health Connection that actually does a lot of what you’re saying, too.

It offers online personal health mangers, health content, access to a health coach.

They have Web casts featuring health experts.

They have exercise classes, nutrition seminars, onsite cafes, all sorts of things that are aimed at exactly what you described with Yahoo!.

It’s a healthy culture.

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40:03 Gene McGuire We’ve found now that, touching thousands and thousands of lives nationally, it’s effective in every case because there’s actually physically someone there to help people, but it’s far more effective, far more quickly and far more sustainable if a senior management team makes that statement that they care and then actually physically shows the people support.

We’ve had this happen where the process was physically rolled out, and management or middle management would turn one direction and say, “Yes, please, we want you to take advantage of this,” and then look in a different way when people actually tapped into it, because all of what we do happens where people work.

But when folks support it from the very top and show the physical support, the visible support, it is absolutely a culture thing.

And when people really believe that the folks that employ them care, really interesting things can happen and you can branch off then into all those other directions that were just mentioned by Helen, fitness facilities, funky menu items and all the other things that you can use as an adjunct to support the coaching process.

41:18 Helen Darling Intel Corporation has a program called Health For Life, and again, it has all of the ingredients, the health improvement, it comes from a very high level, all sorts of opportunities.

That culture in the workplace is very reinforcing, and it not only provides you with tools and information, but it makes you feel good about them.

You don’t feel like you’re the only one out there trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

It really becomes part of everything you do.

41:52 Tom Floyd It’s almost like you feel a sense of community around it and really feel, from a company perspective, that it’s culturally okay.

41:59 Helen Darling Right. In fact, you may have seen, just in the last week there was a big new study out about, in this case, unhealthy weight and how it is, in a sense, socially contagious, that is, people reinforce, in this instance, to gain weight, accidentally.

Not that anybody plans that.

But in effect, what this kind of cultural—

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42:23 Tom Floyd I’m sorry. I’m going to have to go ahead and have you pause for a second. I’m hearing our commercial sneak in.

I want to come back to that point when we return. Stay tuned everyone, more from our health and wellness experts when we return.



We’ve been chatting with four fantastic guests today.

We have Helen Darling, President of the National Business Group on Health; Gene McGuire, Chief Marketing Officer of Wellness Coaches USA; Jennifer Tuma, lifestyle coach and author of the DVD, Diets Don’t Work; and Michael Arloski, Founder and CEO of Real Balance Global Wellness Services.

Helen, I wanted to come back to a study you had mentioned.

You were starting to mention a study that just came out, I believe in the past week, related to weight control and obesity.

Can you speak a little bit more about that?

45:36 Helen Darling A study done over a number of years shows there is a relationship between the friends you have gaining weight and your gaining weight.

There’s a process of people, among other things, probably mutually reinforcing that it’s okay to gain weight, and there’s not enough pressure, if you will, or encouragement, if you will, to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight when you are surrounded by friends who are allocations overweight or obese.

46:10 Gene McGuire The interesting thing about that study to me was that they found that the correlation didn’t vary much if people lived 3,000 miles away.

46:20 Tom Floyd So if people were virtual friends, so to speak, and didn’t even see each other much, that still held true?

46:27 Gene McGuire Right.

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46:29 Helen Darling It was a very big study with a lot of subjects, so it’s a very impressive study.

When you look at parts of country, as we do because we’re a national organization, it is very striking how much the percentage of overweight and obese people varies by geography.

It’s huge.

46:49 Gene McGuire Same holds true with tobacco use and alcohol use and a number of other things.

46:54 Tom Floyd What are those areas of the country and some of the trends you see there?

46:58 Helen Darling In terms of healthy weight, it’s California, a little bit in the Seattle area, and New York City, and about every other place has either serious overweight or serious overweight and obesity.

47:09 Michael Arloski Hey, come on. Colorado leads the nation in healthy living.

47:11 Helen Darling Yes, Colorado. That’s right.

47:13 Tom Floyd Yes. When I do think Colorado, I have to say I do think healthy.

47:17 Helen Darling It was interesting because the State of Colorado just put out a report saying, “Yes, we have been the healthiest, but we have to worry, too.”

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47:24 Michael Arloski Yes, we’re going to lose that title if we keep the same trend going. But what I’ve observed is that you can’t just say, “Oh, it’s all about being overweight.” I’ve coached and I’ve seen and I’ve talked with many people who have multiple health problems, who look like they should be on the cover of Shape or Fitness magazine.

They may have ulcerative colitis, they may have all kinds of stress-related disorders, joint problems, arthritis, asthmas.

You can’t tell a book by its cover.

I think we have to get away from this stereotyping that everybody that’s overweight is our wellness target.

The targeting thing that Gene was talking about, I love that, and staying away from that is real important.

And realizing, that if we impact the health of everyone—there’s actually been a study saying that if a company takes care of everyone and it ends up with so much prevention, that the overall healthcare costs are affected more positively than if they just target those high-risk people.

48:26 Tom Floyd Interesting.

48:27 Jennifer Tuma And I think, by nature, people group together, we sort of follow each other, in a sense.

And just as you were saying, Michael, that it’s not about weight, I certainly agree.

I think it’s habits. If you’re with people that practice healthy habits, it’s sort of contagious.

Like you were saying, Tom, with Yahoo!, they’re all out there playing football and having fun, it’s contagious, and that’s the good contagious we want to happen.

It’s not about necessarily—what’s going on on the outside doesn’t always tell the story; it’s what’s on the inside, and habits, tell the story, more or less.

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49:00 Gene McGuire Absolutely. And a lot of the companies we work with are really starting to understand that it’s really a function of risk factors, how many risk factors does each person have?

And all those risk factors, they’re very personal to people, but they’re very much willing to work on them with coaches.

Companies are really understanding that lifestyle and behaviors are driving the risk factors, which then drive utilization of the healthcare system, which then drive claims, and then cost.

The very root of the issue, which is why are people doing what they’re doing or not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, and it’s all personal, you really, really have it solved.

49:41 Michael Arloski And that’s where a coach really has the upper hand, because we are all about being behavioral change experts.

We don’t have to be nutrition experts and fitness experts and stress management experts.

We don’t have to do that.

We have to help the person change their behavior in a way that’s going to last.

49:59 Jennifer Tuma Yes, and they find the answers to what that is.

50:02 Michael Arloski That’s right. I didn’t name my book, Temporary Lifestyle Change.

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50:09 Tom Floyd If we take a look at one of the issues, let’s use smoking as an example, which that statistic from early was one in five Americans are still smoking, what are some of the habitual reasons or habits or things that can lead to smoking that you can help focus on with someone and get them to change?

One thing that I jokingly say to people—I’ve had a couple friends ask me, “Have you ever tried smoking,” and my honest answer always is, “No, I couldn’t smoke.”

And they say, “Why”? I said, “Because it would give me something to do. I know I’d like it. Like, after a restaurant or at a bar or at a picnic or something, I have found that I need something to do with one of my hands,” and what I have found as a healthy solution is I carry bottled water.

If I have a bottled water with me, that also prevents me from getting drunk, as a funny example, because I’ll realize, if I keep having a beer in my hand, suddenly I’ve had eight.

It’s like, “Wow. That really wasn’t the best decision I could’ve made,” certainly not the next day.

But with water it works, with that whole habit of wanting to be social and interactive with people while doing something at the same time.

Are those some of the habits and things like that that can lead people to smoke, coming back to that example?

What are some of the habits that help drive that?

51:24 Michael Arloski Anxiety is so much about it, but it’s also a lot about what we’ve been saying about who you are around, who you are with, etc. establishes health norms.

A culture that supports it often initiates it.

One of the things we’ve seen that’s really pretty remarkable is this whole shift into no smoking in public places.

We have two daughters and our 20-something-year-old, is a “I used to have a cigarette at the bar once in a while” kind of person, and when she started having to go outside into the Colorado winter to have her cigarette, she said, “The heck with this, I’m not even going to smoke anymore.”

52:00 Gene McGuire The number that’s really mind-boggling. Well, actually, it’s not when you think about it.

Eight out of 10 people that use tobacco don’t even want to.

They really just don’t know how to stop or they can’t bring themselves to do so, it’s just so addicting.

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52:15 Jennifer Tuma Yes, it’ very addictive.

52:16 Gene McGuire Right. So what we’ve found is, and the key is the resources are out there, what we do is help people to understand what they are, and then attempt them, because, on average, it takes smokers nine attempts to quit before they’re successful.

The key is, you’ve got to try, because people do want to try but they’re very, very addicted.

And people need help, so what we’re doing is providing the coaches to help them, to educate them, to guide them to the resources that are available and help to choose, and then help them to sustain the change.

52:50 Michael Arloski What’s great there, Gene, is that you’re giving them the ally through the process of change, and that’s what’s been missing.

We’ve been great about prescribe and treat, “Here, you ought to go do this,” and we’ve been great about educate and implore, “Here’s all this great information, now I beg you, please change.”

We’ve got to use a coach mindset, a coach model that gives an ally through the change process so the change is lasting.

53:14 Tom Floyd So in this case, the coach really is there as an ally, they’re there to help guide, they’re there for support, they’re really just there to help you focus on the goals that you’ve set and really be there for you?

53:27 Michael Arloski That’s right.

And who we’re calling a coach needs to work from that mindset, not work from a mindset of a profession they might also be in or that they might have formerly been in.

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53:38 Tom Floyd Well I want to extend a huge thank you to the four of you today.

We have certainly covered a lot of ground. This has been fantastic.

And, as always, huge thank you to our listeners as well.

For more information about our show, you can, of course, look us up on the VoiceAmerica Business channel; you can visit our website at www.ieconsulting.biz; and you can always feel free to drop me an e-mail at [email protected].

And don’t forget, for you Apple iTunes lovers like myself, you can also get the podcast version of our show in Apple iTunes.

Just go to iTunes, go to the iTunes store, click podcasts on the left side of the screen, and just enter Insight on Coaching in the search field.

Thanks, everyone! We’ll see you next week.

http://www.ieconsulting.biz/

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health and wellness coaching transcript

Health & Medicine