How Ad Age’s Former Publisher is Taking on emotion
Allison Arden is the Founder and CEO of The Elements of Us, a consultancy working with organizations to empower the well-being that fuels success. Prior to launching The Elements of Us, Allison served as Vice President and Publisher at Advertising Age, leading the brand through the most disruptive and inventive decade in its history. This experience provided a unique vantage point on an industry undergoing tremendous transition and a deep appreciation for the emotions that come with inspiring great change, growth, and innovation, all while juggling the responsibilities of motherhood and life.
Allison is a frequent speaker and panelist on topics including well-being in the workplace, minimizing burnout, finding purpose, and taking the leap for the second act. She is also the author of “The Book of Doing: Everyday Activities to Unlock Creativity + Joy.” She is currently working towards her Master’s in Psychology at the Harvard Extension School and will be graduating in May 2024.
The Continuum sat down with Allison to talk about the importance of letting everyone show up as themself at work, making space for hard conversations, and how empathetic and authentic leadership translates into increased productivity and dollars.
You spent many years at Ad Age, ultimately as its publisher – can you please tell us a little about your career there?
In the ten years or so I was there, I think I had about nine different jobs. They always gave me the things that needed to be recreated or figured out. I went from being a salesperson to leading Creativity, a print magazine at the time. I built its website, and then I became Ad Director. I came back from maternity leave a few weeks after 9/11 and told my boss I couldn’t do that job anymore, but I knew what I wanted to do. I became the Director of Custom Content and Business Development, which we really needed, and I got to create all kinds of great things.
A few years later, right before I was going to have my second child, they asked if I would take over the digital products to try and figure out how the Ad Age brand lived online. It was 2004, so Ad Age had been online for a while, but those early days of the internet were kind of like the Wild West, and the website had never really been integrated into the brand. I said as long as you understand that I'm going on maternity leave for three months, I will do that when I get back.
I did that for a few years and was considering leaving Ad Age when some changes were made, and I was asked to stay on as Associate Publisher. About seven months after that, I became Publisher.
You took the job just a few months before the global financial crisis really changed the ad industry. What was that like?
My job was to manage all the revenue pieces and the overarching strategy, but suddenly, we had no business model. I mean, nobody was spending money on advertising, which meant the people who were trying to attract advertising couldn't spend money on advertising, and therefore we had no business model. We had to pivot and evolve. In that time, we launched the A-List event, the Hispanic Fact Pack, the Cannes Cover Competition - all things that are still alive in some form or fashion today.
While it was a challenging environment, it was an exhilarating time because we were able to break down the silos and do things that were innovative, fun, and purpose driven, and spoke to who we were as a brand.
“Emotions are at the heart of the major issues and opportunities in the workplace, whether that’s mental health, embracing diversity through cultures of inclusion and belonging, or creating environments of trust and psychological safety.”
While you were there, you wrote “The Book of Doing.” Can you tell us about that and what you learned from it?
It’s called “The Book of Doing: Everyday Activities to Unlock Creativity and Joy,” and I can’t believe it’s been over ten years since it came out. When I first wrote it, people thought it was a book for children; it’s not. It’s a book for adults to begin exploring our lives and the world through a new lens. I wanted to help people reconnect with what makes them happy, let go of fear, and get in touch with their creativity. My personal exploration that led to “The Book of Doing” gave me a much deeper understanding of who I was and what mattered to me. It also put me in greater touch with my creativity, which I brought to our business and encouraged others to do as well.
As we get older, we get set in a certain view of ourselves and what we can and can’t do, but it is crucial to continue to explore, learn, and grow. The same can be said for organizations; they get stuck. You’ve always been one thing, or you’ve always done something a certain way, but through exploration, you can change that mindset. The book helps people use their daily activities to get comfortable stepping outside of their comfort zone and begin to build the muscles that enable them to be a bit bolder in other areas.
A CEO once asked me if I had considered writing the book under a pseudonym because it didn’t align with his view of what an executive should be – but I believe that experience was important to my development to create a singular view of who I am. That integration is very crucial to our well-being, whatever we do. I was a young executive at the time, juggling a career and motherhood. It can be overwhelming and oftentimes easy to neglect taking care of yourself and taking time to do the things that make you happy. Carving out time to do the things that light you up is so important. It makes you better for yourself and for all those around you.
You left Ad Age to start The Elements of Us, focusing on mental health and well-being. Before we talk about this project, can you tell us why you made this career pivot?
As the Publisher of Ad Age, especially during a time of such change, I realized the pivotal role of emotion in work and the way our ability to navigate stress and uncertainty plays into our success – this is true for each of us as individuals and is even more powerful when considered at the team and organizational level. Yet, growing up, we were always told that business wasn’t personal and there was no place for emotion in the office.
With everything going on in the world, this has never been farther from the truth. People are struggling with so many feelings that impact how they are able to show up every day. Emotions are at the heart of the major issues and opportunities in the workplace, whether that’s mental health, embracing diversity through cultures of inclusion and belonging, or creating environments of trust and psychological safety.
I believe that if we are all able to show up at work as ourselves and really be who we are, we can all be our best. I saw that you get people to talk about what was going on in their lives and get to know each other on that level; it becomes a lot easier to have difficult conversations and challenge each other about how you're going to change the business.
I had this idea that the real challenge with emotion is that it’s invisible. And I thought that if I could make it visible, I could help a lot of people.
This insight led me to the development of the Elements framework, which enables a shared language and a universal way of thinking about emotion and navigating to healthier outcomes. It has important implications for industries of all kinds and absolutely applies to advertising and media. Ultimately, healthier companies with healthier leadership teams lead to healthier outcomes for both the business and the people.
When you say healthier or better outcomes, what do you mean exactly?
When teams work better together and can engage in real and respectful discourse, it changes both the employee experience and the outcomes. Getting everyone to function that way is hard work but vital to driving better overall results. There is a ton of research that connects the dots between high-trust organizations to higher productivity, lower turnover, lower stress, lower absenteeism, and deeper engagement.
There is also research that suggests empathetic and authentic leadership leads to greater innovation. It all points to creating cultures that are life-enhancing rather than detrimental to our mental health and well-being. We need to make showing up as human beings our starting point first and foremost.
And it translates into dollars, too. Mental health issues, stress, and turnover are costing businesses trillions of dollars. In a 2021 study, Deloitte pegged the cost of that turnover alone at $1.8T. If you have ever had a boss who doesn’t prioritize well-being, you know firsthand how damaging it can be to you and to the company culture. The World Health Organization published a report calculating that anxiety and depression are costing $1T in lost productivity globally. That doesn’t account for the medical costs associated with poor mental health or the physical health issues that come along with it. The Surgeon General issued a warning last year stating that toxic work environments are equivalent to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.
There’s a ton of money to be gained, too. Accenture published a report in 2020 showing there is $1.05T to be gained by making diversity work through increased collaboration and creativity.
It’s all related. When people feel othered, like they don’t belong or aren’t valued, it is psychologically damaging and debilitating and leads to negative outcomes at all levels.
“Mental health issues, stress, and turnover are costing businesses trillions of dollars.”
Can you explain a bit about what Elements of Us is doing now and what you’re working on for the future?
At its core, The Elements of Us is a visual framework that tells the story of the human condition and allows people to better understand how they can take care of themselves. It makes it easier for people to talk about how they're feeling. It allows for both individuals and teams to think about how they want to show up, and it enables people to talk about the stressors and obstacles in a way that makes it much easier and simpler to get better results. People we’ve worked with have described it as a common language of empathy and understanding.
Right now, we’re using it in workshops with businesses in a number of sectors. Sometimes, it’s an entire company; other times, we work with leadership or one specific team. It starts with letting people find common ground, which comes from telling the real stories of their lived experiences. Then, it provides a framework for having the difficult conversations. You have people talking about what their experience is within a team or what it’s like being in conflict with another team. The workshop allows people to be vulnerable enough to give voice to that.
If leadership is committed to having difficult conversations in a human way, changing processes that aren’t working, and making the necessary changes to embed well-being into cultures, these workshops can be transformative. I’ve seen companies change structure, adjust how teams are aligned, or merge teams based on these conversations. To be clear, we’re just providing the language; they are doing the work.
For the future, we are working on resources that can help people use The Elements of Us materials on their own, whether that’s in a work setting or in their personal relationships.
You’re going back to school, getting a Master’s degree in Psychology at Harvard. What made you decide to take that leap, and how is it going?
Back when I wrote it, I knew the lessons in “The Book of Doing” were applicable to business as well, but I also knew there needed to be much more science and research behind it if it was going to be accepted in corporate spaces. I’ve taken that part very seriously and done a lot of research for The Elements of Us, but I thought I needed more of a background in psychology myself.
I’m actually getting my degree from The Harvard Extension School. It’s been an amazing experience that has stretched and challenged me in ways I couldn’t have imagined. I highly recommend it. I graduate in May, and I’ll definitely miss it when it’s done.
Speaking of missing things, do you miss being in the advertising industry?
I get to do a lot of work with companies aligned with the industry—Spectrum Reach, Smithsonian, BlackRock, and Twitter before it became X, just to name a few. I do work each year with The Ad Club’s Fellows Program, which I adore. I’m also the Board Chair of Reisenbach Philanthropies, which is an amazing organization that provides resources and funding to programs helping to make New York better, brighter, and safer. It started out of the advertising industry thirty years ago and has expanded tremendously since the pandemic. So, I’ve stayed connected to the industry and many of the amazing people within it.
My favorite part of the work I did in the industry was building cultures that are equally focused on driving innovation and taking care of people. That’s still the work I’m doing, but now I’m focused on creating a language that fosters well-being and enables deeper human connection at scale. It’s meaningful work and central to the change we need to change our trajectory.
November 7, 2023
