Experience Willow

Yesterday our Founder and Chief Human Experience Officer, Kevin Finke, turned 56, and he is not treating it as a slow fade.

In his latest essay, Kevin swaps his old mantra of going out in his 90s like Betty White for a new one, inspired by June Squibb, who at 96 became the oldest acting nominee in Tony Awards history.

His point is bigger than a birthday. Ageism is real, and it often hides inside words like energy and fresh perspective, but age is only a score. It is not the story.

As he puts it, adaptability is a behavior, not a birth year, and there is enough future for all of us. At 56, he does not feel diminished. He feels distilled.

Give it a read, then tell us: what are you still becoming?



https://kevinfinke.substack.com/p/im-going-to-squibb-this-sht?

I’m Going to Squibb This Sh*t At 56, I am not winding down. I am still becoming.

Labor Day is a day off, and that's worth celebrating. Rest, cookouts, one more slow summer afternoon. Enjoy all of it.

But the holiday started as a thank you to the people who keep things running. That part still matters.

The folks on your team who feel truly valued usually aren't thinking about one day in September. They're thinking about the everyday moments. Getting noticed. A thank you that felt real. Time that was respected.

So rest up today. And this week, find a small way to remind your people they're seen.

Happy Labor Day.

People shouldn't have to guess whether their work mattered. But a lot of them do. They finish a shift, hear nothing back, and quietly assume it vanished. Over time, that silence teaches people to care a little less.

Appreciation is one more thing leaders can make visible, and specific appreciation lands very differently from the generic kind. A few ways to make it real:

Name the specific thing they did. "The way you reset the line during that rush kept every plate going out on time." Connect it to something bigger. "That's the reason the whole kitchen stayed calm." Say it where it counts.

None of it takes long. It just closes the loop, so people can see their effort reached someone and changed something. That's how they stop wondering whether they matter, and start knowing it.

Same task, two very different situations.

On the left, everything's implied. "Make it pop." "You'll figure it out." On the right, the priority, the deadline, and what success looks like are all easy to see.

The difference usually comes down to visibility, not talent or effort.

"You'll figure it out" can sound generous, but it often just moves the hardest part onto the person who can see the least. A little clarity up front saves a lot of guessing later.

Here's a number worth sitting with: only 46% of employees strongly agree they clearly know what's expected of them at work. That's from Gallup's 2025 report, down from 56% in March 2020.

It's tempting to treat that as a communication problem, like the fix is just explaining things more clearly.

But unclear expectations often start earlier, with tradeoffs no one made visible. Two good goals pull in opposite directions, someone decides which one gives, and only the result gets shared. People feel the tension without knowing why it's there.

Try saying the tradeoff out loud: we're protecting quality here, so speed waits this quarter.

Once people can see the tradeoff, the expectation makes sense. And expectations that make sense are the ones people can actually meet.

When everything feels urgent, people quietly decide their own priorities. It's not defiance. It's survival. If no one says what matters most, everyone guesses, and those guesses rarely line up.

One of the most useful things a leader can do is make priorities visible. It sounds obvious, and it still gets skipped.

It's as simple as saying, more than once: here's what matters most this week, here's what can wait, here's where I'd focus first.

Clear priorities give capable people something to aim at instead of a fog to guess through. And when things shift, saying so keeps everyone working off the same map.

So much of leadership happens where no one can see it. The reshuffled priorities. The tradeoff a manager made so someone's week stayed sane. The decision that only ever shows up as the decision itself.

People rarely see that part, so they fill in the blanks with guesses. And guessing all day is tiring.

Human-centered leaders make the hidden parts of work easier to see. Not every detail, just what people need to do good work: what matters most, how a call got made, what success looks like, whether their effort landed.

This week, we're exploring what leaders make visible.

Here are 5 simple ways leaders can turn listening into something people actually feel:

1. Acknowledge what you heard, specifically. Not just "thanks for sharing," but "here's what I understood from what you said."

2. Be honest about what can change now, what might change later, and what won't change at all.

3. Set a follow-up date and keep it, even if all you have is a small update. A little news beats no news.

4. Share your decision along with the reasoning behind it. People handle "no" a lot better when they understand why.

5. Follow up directly with the people who gave the feedback, not just in a group email.

You don't have to act on every idea to build trust. You just have to make sure people know what happened to theirs.

We've all seen this happen. Someone shares feedback, whether it's in a survey, a meeting, or a one-on-one, and then it just vanishes. No update, no explanation, nothing.

Now picture the alternative: that same feedback gets heard, someone makes a real decision about it, and that decision gets shared back with the people who gave the input.

Same feedback. Two very different experiences.

Today's visual is a simple reminder that people don't need every idea to turn into action. They just need to know where their input goes.

A new SHRM research report backs up something we talk about often: how leaders respond to feedback matters as much as the feedback itself.

The 2026 State of the Workplace report found that 91% of workers who feel their organization handles workplace needs well are satisfied with their jobs. That number drops to 44% among workers who don't feel that way, and 51% of that group say they're likely to leave within the year.

That's a big difference, and it's not really about having perfect answers. It's about people knowing their concerns were heard, understood, and responded to honestly, even when the answer is "not right now" or "here's why that can't change."