Kelly talks to the Co-Founder and CEO of Delivering Happiness about her new book, "Beyond Happiness: How Authentic Leaders Prioritize Purpose and People for Growth and Impact."

This is a book about happiness informed by grief - specifically when you lost your friend and colleague Tony Hsieh - and it seems you learned that grief isn’t a linear thing.

“Exactly, because the whole ‘time heals all wounds things’ is kind of bull crap to me.
Because I lost my dad 18 years ago, he was way too young, I was in my late 20s and then, of course, with Tonys passing it just brought it back to a different level. You know that we're a bit more mature and more self aware about who we are and what we are doing in life but,  yeah. I mean it just came full circle, but in such a deeper way that I needed to really get into that grief process that I hadn't before, especially because I’m known for happiness right?”

And then moving from the personal grief to the pandemic and how that also presents an opportunity to do things differently.

“Everything got flattened. Between  businesses, CEOs, board members - to the front liners of what really not just happiness means, but what humanity means. And this was a global  reset on humanity. So what better time than now to look at the silver lining of it all - to reflect on what I think has been the most promising thing that people that are leading companies can see: that we need more humanity at work.”

You write that it took 75 years for the telephone to reach 50 million people in the world and it only took 19 days to reach the same number of people in 2016 through Pokemon Go.

“I brought that one data point up because that's just one of so many exponential things that are
happening that we're not even aware of unless we sit with it and understand the rate of exponential changes are passing our ability as humans to adapt. That's why I think we're really digging deep into being ourselves and understanding that level of humanity that is needed at work.”

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