Joy Spotting and the Spiritual Side of Work with Jessica Grossmeier

Jessica Grossmeier (see bio below) has spent more than 25 years helping organizations understand what it really takes for people to thrive at work.

And no, it is not just a fitness challenge, a meditation app, and a sad banana in the break room.

In this episode, Jeff talks with Jessica about workplace well-being, burnout, human-centered organizations, and the deeper role that meaning, connection, purpose, and spirituality play in how people experience their work.

Jessica grew up in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, home of Leinenkugel’s beer, competitive diving, lots of reading, and, apparently, the possibility of a beer-and-mustard tour across Wisconsin. Her early love of movement, health, and learning eventually led her into corporate wellness, where her first job placed her inside the UAW Ford Twin Cities Assembly Plant.

That experience taught her an important lesson: never assume you know someone’s full story just because of their job title, uniform, shift, or rough edges.

From there, Jessica built a career as a practitioner, researcher, author, advisor, and speaker. But after years of studying workplace well-being, she experienced burnout herself and realized something important: burnout is not just an individual problem. It is often a system problem.

Jessica also shares the story of her 2021 sabbatical, the restlessness that led her to take it, and how that year helped her explore workplace spirituality: the practices that help people connect more deeply to themselves, to others, and to something bigger than themselves.

This is a conversation about burnout, purpose, leadership, sabbaticals, faith, joy spotting, human-centered work, and why how you do your job matters just as much as what you do.

And yes, we also cover introverted speakers, Stephen King in fifth grade, The Godfather, springboard diving, water aerobics, Polish-free Wisconsin beer tourism, corporate layoffs, and why “your colleagues think you’re prickly” may be one of the more useful performance reviews a high achiever can receive.

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