Three questions, one roll of paper

On Wednesday night we set up a table at the Faculty of Management’s Business Connections mixer at UBC Okanagan, covered it in white paper, put out a tin of markers, and asked the business students of the EME atrium three questions. By the end of the night the table had become a dataset. Here’s what the room drew.

Question one: where’s your balance today?

We drew a long line from “empty” through “balanced” to “thriving” and asked students to drop an X. Thirty-four marks later, a picture emerged: not a single X in the deep empty zone, a small honest cluster just shy of balanced, the crowd sitting between balanced and thriving, and one optimist who planted their X directly on the thriving arrowhead. Either the next generation of business leaders is doing better than the burnout headlines suggest, or nobody writes “empty” at a networking event. We’d gently point out that both are findings.

Question two: what will be the most valuable workplace skill in 2035?

This one filled fast, and students began adding “x2” beside answers they agreed with. The leaderboard: creativity on top, human connection right behind it, then adaptability, communication, and knowing how to use AI well. Around them, fifteen more answers, from resilience and curiosity to our two favourites, “asking meaningful questions” and “humility & humanity.” Read that list again and notice something: in the age of AI, a room full of business students bet almost entirely on human skills. Even the AI answers were about mastering the tool, not becoming it.

Question three: what are you optimizing for, money or meaning?

Meaning outvoted money by roughly four to one, eighteen tallies to five. And six students did something we didn’t plan for: they refused the question entirely and drew circles on the dividing line itself. Both. As counsellors, we loved the honesty. As a business, we took notes: this is the workforce arriving in your offices over the next five years, and they are telling you plainly what keeps them.

Why we were there

Safe & Sound Therapeutics grew faster than it was designed to, and this January we’re bringing that real challenge into COMM 493, the Faculty of Management’s fourth year consulting course, where student teams will work on it as consultants. Wednesday was our chance to meet the people who might be in that room, and the conversations did not disappoint: sharp questions about how a clinic makes money, what the new regulations mean for group practices, and whether profit and care can share a roof. (Our honest answers to the five best ones live here.)

Thank you

To Graeme McLean and the UBC Okanagan Faculty of Management: thank you for the invitation, the warm welcome, and for inviting us to share these findings with the UBCO community. And to our practitioners Charu Talwar, Mikaela Dahlman, and Grace Kunz, who gave their evening and represented Safe & Sound beautifully: the best questions of the night were answered by you.

To the students we met: you have our attention. Find us on the Business Career Hub, visit safeandsoundtherapeutics.com/ubco, and we’ll see some of you in January and we will be at the February 2027 Connection event so be sure to some and visit us!