The One You Feed - Leah Weiss on Workplace Burnout

Episode Date: February 15, 2022

Leah Weiss is a researcher, lecturer, consultant, and author. She teaches compassionate leadership at the Stanford School of Business and is a principal teacher and founding faculty member of Stanford’s Compassion Cultivation Program, conceived by the Dalai Lama. In 2019, she co-founded Skylyte, a company that specializes in using the latest neuroscience and behavior change to empower high-performing leaders and managers to prevent burnout for themselves and their teams.In this episode, Eric and Leah Weiss discuss workplace burnout: the definition, signs, causes of, and treatment for this debilitating condition.But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!Leah Weiss and I Discuss Workplace Burnout…Her story of suffering workplace burnoutThe definition and signs of burnoutThe individual, team, and corporate level causes of burnoutThe difference between burnout and depression or anxietyThe difference between burnout and compassion fatigueThe role of boundaries in compassion and empathyHow to know when you need to change your external circumstancesHow to know when it’s internal work within you that need to doWays to go through the process of life change without blowing everything upTools and questions to use for discernment about elements of change within your lifeThe role and value of other people who you can turn to for support and guidancePaths to make work more meaningfulLeah Weiss Links:Leah’s WebsiteLeah’s Company: SkylyteTwitterWhen you purchase products and/or services from the sponsors of this episode, you help support The One You Feed. Your support is greatly appreciated, thank you!If you enjoyed this conversation with Leah Weiss you might also enjoy these other episodes:Leah Weiss (Interview from 2018)Embracing Emotions at Work with Liz FosslienSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Do you ever feel like life is just one problem after another? You finally feel like maybe there's a break and then BAM! Another problem. This is how it is for many of us, but there is a better way to respond. A way of responding that brings greater ease into your life and returns some of the energy that the problems drain from you. We are hosting a free live masterclass on Sunday, February 27th called, Learn the Spiritual Habit to Unlock Energy and Ease in Your Life,

even if each day seems to bring a fresh pile of problems. In it, I will teach you how to tap into the resources that are already within you so that life feels less like a never-ending fight and more like an ever-evolving dance. You will learn the number one source of unhappiness that drains your energy and keeps you feeling stuck, and a simple mindset shift you can make right away so that life doesn't feel like such a constant struggle. This will be a live event, and you'll have a chance to interact with me and with each other. I've really grown to love these community events where we get to meet each other

and deepen our connections. I hope that you can become part of that. Go to oneufeed.net slash live to learn more and register for this free event. Again, that's oneufeed.net slash live, and I really would love the chance to meet you and see you there. I had just turned 40 when we spoke last time. You know, some of these symbolic ages, I feel like really help us ask the questions around, am I where I'm supposed to be in my life? Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.

We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Hey y'all, I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. This January, join me for our third annual January Jumpstart series. Starting January 1st, we'll have inspiring conversations to give you a hand in kick-starting your personal growth. If you've been holding back or playing small, this is your all-access pass

to step fully into the possibilities of the new year. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the floor. What's in the museum of failure? And does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the

iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Leah Weiss, a researcher, lecturer, consultant, and author. She teaches compassionate leadership at the Stanford School of Business and is a principal teacher and founding faculty member of Stanford's Compassion Cultivation Program, conceived by the Dalai Lama. In 2019, she co-founded Skylight, a company that specializes in using the latest neuroscience and behavior change to empower

high-performing leaders and managers to prevent burnout for themselves and their teams. Hi, Leo. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Yeah, I am happy to have you on. As we were talking before this interview, you were on the show almost four years ago to the day, which is just kind of interesting that we talked at this time and amazing that it's been four years. So I'm really happy to have you back on. I'm really happy to be here and continue this conversation we started many moons ago and in a very different climate that we're in today. Yeah. And our basic topic is going to be oriented around the idea of burnout,

you know, workplace burnout primarily, but we know it extends well beyond the workplace. But before we get into that, let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it a second and looks up at their grandparent and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd love to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life

and in the work that you do. I think in terms of how I hear that in my life, one of the ways that this really resonates with me is acknowledging the degree to which we're influenced and shaped by our surroundings and that we want to be thoughtful about that. I'm a parent of three young children. And so we talk a lot about the navigation of being a friend to people who need support, who are in distress, but also understanding what you need to thrive so you can be that friend. And I think one nuance I would say when I read this parable again in advance of our conversation is it really caught me these words, good and bad, because I think the way that I tend

to think about this is tendencies that pull us in directions that are connective, supportive, in directions that are connective, supportive, inducive of compassion, or fear-based scarcity. And I don't know that labeling them as good or bad helps us in actually navigating these currents that we all have. So it'd be interesting to talk that through. And then for the other side that you asked about in my work, how does this influence, how does this influence?

How does this relate? I think I spend my time now working within companies, helping to set up teams, climates of ports in the storm within organizations that are navigating a lot of change and even often toxicity. How do you think about feeding the positive, not just within yourself, but collectively? So I think that it really does come to the heart of what do you do when you're navigating things that are problematic and how do you create mutual support so everyone can move towards the proverbial best selves, healthiest selves together? Yeah, I think that idea of good and bad is really interesting. It's brought up a lot. And I've said a lot of times on this show, you know, I've always loved the Buddhist phrasing of these things as skillful and unskillful actions. Like, I feel like that speaks to, you know, what we're really

saying more, but it's kind of a boring story. The grandparents said there's this unskillful wolf and he was sent away to corporate training and, you know, so I thought where we might start is with you and burnout, because I think you suffered, I don't know if this is how you would say it, but you certainly had a case of it. And I'm wondering if you could kind of share what that was like, what happened and, you know, sort of how you made your way out of it. And I think that'll lead us then into talking about this more generally. Yeah, absolutely. I'm happy to share. I think, you know, for me, what is so interesting, at least from the vantage point of today, is to uncouple kind of what happened externally and internally for me that led me to kind of realize at some point a few years ago that I just I don't want to go on this way. This isn't how I want to work, how I want to parent,

how I want to be in the world. I had just turned 40 when we spoke last time. I think for me, that was actually, you know, some of these symbolic ages, I feel like really help us ask the questions around, am I where I'm supposed to be in my life? And for me, I think what I was seeing was I was working in a way that was not sustainable, that I was missing elements of my children's life because I was traveling or preoccupied when I was there. I think a lot of what I was hooked by, to use another kind of Buddhist psychology term, when I went back to Stanford to work full-time after graduate school, each of us kind of has currencies that we buy into. And for me, this kind of academic research, understanding, kind of contributing

in that space was so exciting. But also, it led me to work around the clock, let go of a lot of what I now know are the signs of burnout, you know, tipping from starting to let self-care go, displaced frustration from work into other elements of life. And then of course, like for me as someone who identifies as a practitioner, as someone who's trying to work on myself, like I'm sure everybody listening to this podcast can relate to, spent many years in doing meditation retreats, cultivating skills that it really hurt to admit weren't working in this environment and compounded by, you know, living in Palo Alto, one of the most expensive places in the world, having three children, being a breadwinner for our family. And I think then for me,

what I experienced was very similar to what a lot of people do. One of my mentors was the one who really made me see where I was at. And that often is the case. It's hard to self-diagnose when we're burned out. It's our loved ones, a close colleague who calls us out and says, you're not the version of yourself, you know, what's happening. So she called me out as kind of the frog in the pot over time. And I really, all of a sudden, I remember that breakfast viscerally where I felt it and I saw it. And then, you know, that's kind of the first step, but that's also where the work begins. And one of the things I've been really interested in is playing both sides of this equation of when do you make decisions around, I need to change my external circumstances, which like who in the world isn't thinking about that now with the

great resignation, right? So when do I decide this fit isn't working? When do I decide this is me, I can quit, I can move, but this is my stuff that's going to follow me wherever I go. And how do you uncouple all of this and understand what you need to do? So being a nerd, I've been working in the space of burnout and compassion fatigue for many years, but I started to take this lens more looking at the question around how do you think about culture of workplaces of our communities and how I had guided so many other people through this question of, am I in the right career? Am I in the right location? Am I living the life I'm wanting to live?

And then asking all those questions of myself and letting myself off the hook for like, I can't expect myself to meditate my way out of this. And what if I allow myself to also come to a conclusion like this isn't where I want to raise my kids. This isn't the work that I want to be doing. This isn't the way I want to be doing it. And let that part of the equation open up, which I think is interesting to look at now, because that's where so many people are, right? Because we can move now and people are quitting their jobs now and there's other jobs available or that perception, the set of questions, if you feel like this is not my beautiful life that you're living right now, how do you start to go through that process in a way where you're not blowing everything up irretrievably, but kind of in a thoughtful way, asking the right questions and experimenting with steps that you're not going to completely end up regretting? Yeah, I think that question is so fundamental to so many things. Is this something that I need to change in the outside world? Or is this something I need to change inside myself? Is that a little bit of both? And I think this is why I have often said, I think the serenity prayer sums up so much of what life is about, right? Should I accept this or change it? And the wisdom to know the difference is really the hard part. What things for you helped you or still help you in sorting that question out?

You know, how do you go about when you find yourself at one of those points and you're looking in those two directions? What are some of the tools or ways, thought processes, whatever, that help you find that wisdom to know the difference? thought processes, whatever, that help you find that wisdom to know the difference? I mean, I think there's always some element of having quiet, some version of prayer, jubu prayer in my case, meditation, if you will, like there's those elements. But I think what I've really been leaning into as well, you know, just getting back to like embodied elements of life, like cooking with my little kids, walking a ton, knitting. I've been knitting so much, gardening, like putting physicality front and center and slowing down to do that. And taking when that feels odd to move back and forth between the pace of ideas and screens and Zoom meetings, you know, hour after hour after hour. And it does feel jarring

to be back into bodies and relationships and listening more deeply. And I think even taking that kind of discomfort of transition as an important daily practice has been huge. And just like so many of us, you know, sleep in the last few years with the pandemic, you know, we were already in insomniac world, but how much more so now and, you know, experimenting with like what happens when I take screens out of the equation, when I go back to paper books, when I draw, even though I'm a terrible artist, but I draw because of the process feeling, you know, grounding all the things we're baking in the world, all the things that we're like reclaiming. I think this physicality is kind of shared. That's been big,

big, big for me too. Yeah. I think the other idea it's in the spiritual direction world. And I was trained as an interfaith spiritual director. The word discernment is used a lot, right? And that's what we're kind of talking about. And I've more and more become convinced that discernment kind of has to happen in community. It really works much better when I'm not discerning all by myself, when that discernment is happening has to happen in community. It really works much better when I'm not discerning all by myself, when that discernment is happening by me processing it with other people. Obviously, the right people, the right circumstances, but still a really valuable part of the process. I want to go back for a second, though, before we move on to you. You've got this role at Stanford. You've got children. You're the breadwinner. Your husband's still, I think, in school. And you are doing work that all right, this is it. And yet there were still

aspects of burnout for you in there. Did that make it harder to figure out because the work did feel so meaningful? Oh, you're good, Eric. Yes, it did. I think it made it harder to recognize it. Even a culture that is a group that's come together around a shared value with noble ambitions can still have toxicity and challenge in how to operate and how to function together. That, you know, since that time now I'm well aware, like even if you look at the research, like toxicity and cultural problems and nonprofits where we're aligned on purpose, they can be pervasive because there's a sense of you self-sacrifice and you sublimate think that culturally, that is a big part of the experience. And it's even more painful, you know, and I see this even I do a lot of work in health care these days with the pandemic, when people who are purpose driven, they're in a line

of work because they want to help others. And then they feel divorced in their how they're executing that work from their core values. I think there is an extra layer of what we're calling moral injury that happens. And disillusionment, right? Because yeah, there's a lot to say about that. And then I think for me, it was a lot of self-doubt too. And I felt like I was in layer upon layer of kind of worldviews that didn't align with me as a mom, a woman, you know, academia is not known for notoriously being friendly to women, nor is Buddhist organizational structures. You know, it's a lot. But I also want to come back to what you said, I think so profoundly this point about discernment in community. And when I went to Boston College for my graduate degrees, that was something that really jumped out at me. was being raised in. But I think the way in which it's understood is really unique and profound.

And I think that was something that gave me kind of strength that amidst feeling overwhelmed, feeling like I'm in my dream situation and it's not working, but there was access to some amazing people around me, even swimming in the same culture that was dysfunctional. Or I remember one of my mentors described being in academia is kind of like being in a mafia oriented place because you have to like hook yourself on to the people with power. But if you start getting powerful enough, then you become a magnet for other people who want your turf. And you know, all of that, when I first heard, I was like, this is bananas. And by the end, I was like, that's pretty astute.

So anyway, the people who are swimming in this kind of dysfunctional toxicity, but have their heads on, not necessarily just straight, but they have some practice they're grounding in. Those people that you can come back to to figure out who am I, what does this mean together is everything. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. And I'm thrilled to invite you to our January Jumpstart Series for the third year running. All January, I'll be joined by inspiring guests who will help you kickstart your personal growth with actionable ideas and real conversations. We're talking about topics like building community and creating an inner and outer glow. I always tell people that when you buy a handbag, it doesn't cover a childhood scar.

You know, when you buy a jacket, it doesn't reaffirm what you love about the hair you were told not to love. So when I think about beauty, it's so emotional because it starts to go back into the archives of who we were, how we want to see ourselves and who we know ourselves to be and who we can be. So a little bit of past, present and future, all in one idea, soothing something from the past. And it doesn't have to be always an insecurity. It can be something that you love. All to help you start 2025 feeling empowered and ready. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you

and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does tom cruise really do his own stunts his stuntman reveals the answer and you never know who's going to drop by mr brian cranson is with us how are you hello my friend wayne knight about jurassic park wayne knight welcome to really no really sir bless you all hello newman and you never know when howie mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really? No, really. Yeah, really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really? No, really. And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app,

on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to get to where you are now. And I have some questions about that. But I feel like before we do that, it would be helpful to talk about burnout a little bit more. What are we talking about? What is it? How do we know when we have it? Like, I mean, I think there's a lot that we can sort of cover in that area. And then I'd love to talk about how your current experience compares to your old experience and the differences there. So maybe we'll just start with that very simple question. Like what is burnout? Yeah. Burnout is this combination of emotional exhaustion, dehumanization, and a lack of self-efficacy. So those are like the

academic words to describe them. And it's also part of the World Health Organization definition. In more plain terms, I think a way to think about it is the emotional exhaustion, that feeling of like at the end of a long day, you just don't have anything left to give. You can't hear about another person's problem. You know, the version of you that wants to show up to others is depleted. The depersonalization goes in both directions. So one of the kind of textbook ways people describe it is like the physician who's become kind of a cynical, rude, like no grace or tact.

They're just like going to get right to the question without thinking about how does that impact you. So it can be the side of depersonalizing others, but it can also be depersonalizing yourself. And they often happen together. So if I'm treating you from a cynical kind of dehumanized perspective, I'm probably also thinking of myself in that way and the people I'm surrounding myself with. And then the third part is a lack of self-efficacy. and the people I'm surrounding myself with. And then the third part is a lack of self-efficacy.

This is, I think, the actually trickiest part for building health out of burnout because the more burned out you are, the less you feel like you can shape your environment. So then all the options for where would you change yourself, change the situation seem impossible because there's no efficacy. You feel like a victim and the world's happening to you as part of the illness itself. So you can't recognize the help that is available to you. So you put those three together. One of the ways I often talk about

it that people find helpful is it's not a binary, you have it or you don't, it's a spectrum. And so early burnout often looks very similar to workaholism. Middle burnout is like middle stages when you're losing your habits of self-care, when you're snapping at your loved ones at the end of the day. And then later stage burnout, you know, significant behavioral changes, either significant depression or anxiety, loss of hope, complete collapse. There's physical symptoms that happen along the way with all this. When you're burned out, your amygdala is enlarged. Your like old lizard brain, as people often kind of summarize the amygdala, is bigger

in your cognitive resources, your ability to think and problem solve is smaller, like literally your brain functionality changes when you're burned out, which is also really interesting. And then when you think demographically, women, people of color, those of us who don't have a partner, there's higher risk. And then in the context of the pandemic, we've been seeing mass exodus of women from the workplace. And I've been really looking into this a lot. And the rates of burnout are much higher, which makes sense given all the contextual factors. Parents are higher than non-parents. Women are higher

and so forth. So there's all these other layers and features of the individual, but also the environment that feed into burnout. And how do we determine burnout from something like depression or anxiety, particularly if burnout eventually manifests itself in depression and anxiety? Is there any way to sort of tell the two apart? And is it important to tell the two apart? And is it important to tell the two apart, I guess? It's a great question. I think by the time you're experiencing the anxiety and depression symptoms of burnout, it would be indicated to get mental health support.

You'd be at the upper end of the burnout spectrum. And so you would want to be seeing a professional, have the professional do the differential diagnosis between burnout or generalized anxiety or depression. One thing that people say you see in the literature, it's like, is there a sense of it gets more acute in the workplace or more acute Sunday night blues or anxiety, you know, so maybe you're, you feel like yourself on your vacations in the evenings and the weekends, but you see your reactiveness heightened in the workplace, that could be an indicator. But for listeners who are experiencing this kind of depression or anxiety, the upshot is basically you want to talk to a professional anyways, and work with them to determine, you know, because it might be that

you want to have medication or a certain kind of treatment alongside doing a whole discernment process around your professional context and path. Yeah. As somebody who has had depression in, you know, different forms for a long time, and somebody who may have suffered burnout at different points, the relationship between the two is very difficult to figure out, right? Say like, well, depression often, to me looks like what burnout might feel like, which is particularly a lack of enthusiasm of anything that takes energy from me. Right? So it's like, that's one of its signal things is like anything that takes energy from me. Right? So it's like, that's one of its signal things is like anything that takes energy causes me to be like, no, which work gets implicated in

right work can be one of those things. I think that question around, you know, how do you respond on off work times is an interesting one. What about compassion fatigue? Because you also say this is not the same thing as compassion fatigue. So I certainly know that is something we're hearing a lot about. Talk about how burnout and compassion fatigue are different from each other. So the interesting thing with compassion fatigue, and I'm sure you've come across this, but I think for listeners, it's good to kind of lay this out. When you start reading about compassion fatigue, one of the first things that you start coming across is people saying it's not actually compassion that's fatigued, it's empathy. And the reason this is important is basically the

neuroscience of understanding how our brains and bodies respond to chronic suffering. We have built into us these, if you remember back to Psych 101, the ideas of mirror neurons and the mother-infant mimicry that from the time humans are newborns, they read and mimic the parents' facial expressions. So we have wired in these emotional kind of tuning forks. One of the things that has been really interesting with the advances in neuroscience in the last decade is we see that people who are chronically exposed to suffering, if they're responding from a place of empathy, there's a tipping point in which like our brains and bodies can't stay empathically attuned all the time. We hit a point of overwhelm and collapse where our compassion then goes away.

So that becomes interesting. So let's say in the beginning, it's useful if I'm with you, Eric, and you're talking about a problem that you're facing, it's useful that I have this ability to mirror you to understand and respond. We're social, we've evolved to be like tribal in some way, mutual support is part of survival. But at some point when it gets Eric times a thousand that I'm surrounded by suffering that I can't solve, then the pain response in my brain that's mirroring hits a point where it's not signaling all the time. It like doesn't function anymore. When we talk about compassion fatigue, we're actually talking about empathy fatigue. When we talk about compassion fatigue, we're actually talking about empathy fatigue.

And then what's interesting about that is that there's compassion because it's different than empathy. There's a way that we can respond to other people's suffering that doesn't get depleted and used up is the thought behind it. And interestingly, this is a thousands of years old intuition from wisdom traditions, right? Like the idea that you could participate in contemplative support of others amidst massive suffering. I mean, there's so many stories all the way back to wisdom traditions canons about people who did that. So the idea then borrows on what does it mean for us as people to learn to respond with compassion rather than empathy? What is the difference? What does that feel like? How do we train ourselves? How do we train our physicians and healthcare providers to do that? And then

therefore, how do we kind of solve this problem of compassion fatigue? So this is a discourse I've been a part of since I was in grad school right after September 11th, studying all the rise of burnout and compassion fatigue in health care and first responders and all of those kind of studies. And I think the implications for us today are fascinating. No matter what our line of work is in the pandemic, all the uncertainty and pain and anxiety that we were all navigating this lens of like hitting a tipping point with that where we can't engage skillfully anymore. So what does that even mean for me as, you know, a parent navigating schools closed and changes in workplaces and yada, yada. So back to your question of that, compared with burnout, the way I would think about it is we need to both, from the individual side, train people to understand how to respond with compassion

rather than empathy, which in some cases means retooling, taking on feeling the other person's pain and having a responsive way of engaging with them, but that has an understanding of a type of boundary in support of both people, the person in pain and the other person. So it doesn't become dehumanized and cynical, but it has a wisdom of understanding me getting overwhelmed by your problem isn't going to necessarily help you, especially if I'm here to be in a role where you need me to not be crying alongside you about your diagnosis. You need me to hold the space to be able to be clear. That's a really interesting idea there, the empathy versus compassion. And I kind of want

to go deep down that hole, but I'm going to resist. But I have one question on it, which is, do you find often that people earlier in their career start from an empathy perspective, like that's what comes most naturally, then one of two things happens. Either they move into quote unquote empathy fatigue and they become cynical or they figure out how to do this with compassion and they move into sort of this wise healer mode. Is that the general path? I think that is a really good way to summarize it. And when you said that, it made me think of, I remember when I was in grad school doing my clinical training, I was one of the settings I worked in was a Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights, which is headed by this incredible physician who does work with

refugees from around the world. Like it talk about someone being immersed in so many unimaginable kinds of pain and trauma on the daily and I remember walking out of the hospital with him at the end of one of the days and just kind of asking him how he was or how he felt about his day he just came back to being so grateful to be here and what an incredible world what an incredible opportunity. Like he was, you know, coming from that wise healer perspective. And I was the angsty, you know, clinical training, like overly empathic to the point where it's probably annoying to be the recipient of for the folks I was working with at that point. I think that's right. And I think the other thing that reminds me of from the

neuroscience perspective is, you know, one of the studies I often talk about in my keynotes is when we brought a group of meditation experts to Stanford, put them in an fMRI machine, had them do compassion meditation, and the reward regions of their brain light up, not the pain empathy regions of the brain light up. And I've always said and felt like I would love to do the studies where we do this across traditions, right? Because every wisdom tradition has some version of compassion, contemplative practice. How interesting to see what that looks like as a way to motivate the rest of us to cultivate. © transcript Emily Beynon Hey, y'all.

I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. And I'm thrilled to invite you to our January Jumpstart series for the third year running. All January, I'll be joined by inspiring guests who will help you kickstart your personal growth with actionable ideas and real conversations. We're talking about topics like building community and creating an inner and outer glow. I always tell people that when you buy a handbag, it doesn't cover a childhood scar. You know, when you buy a jacket, it doesn't reaffirm what you love about the hair you were told not to love. So when I think about beauty, it's so emotional because it starts to go back into the archives of who we were, how we want to see ourselves and who we know ourselves to be and

who we can be. So a little bit of past, present and future, all in one idea, soothing something from the past. And it doesn't have to be always an insecurity. It can be something that you love. All to help you start 2025 feeling empowered and ready. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. We've talked a little bit about what burnout is, maybe some of what it's not. Let's talk about some of its causes. And I know that you sort of delineate causes kind of at three levels I've seen in some of your work, which I think is interesting. There's an individual level, you talk about a team level and an organizational level. And I suppose if we were to take it one

step further, we'd say there are societal components also. But walk us through those, what the causes are, you know, kind of at each of those levels. You know, a metaphor that I find helpful for framing comes from the godmother of burnout research, Dr. Maslach. And she uses a metaphor of if you're trying to understand burnout, what people typically do is analogous to looking at cucumbers in vinegar barrels and being surprised that they turn into pickles. So it's nonsensical to just look at the individual level, not meaning that there's nothing we can do as individuals and there's not contributors, some of which we can address, some of which are intrinsic to who we are,

our demographics, you know, as I kind of mentioned before. So if we start from the individual level, it's what are our habits around mindset, professional fulfillment, how clear are we on our values, how aligned do we experience our lives and our work with our values, all of that can contribute to burnout or resilience. At the group level, let's say the team level in a workplace, you know, and this comes back to the profound point you raised about discernment in community, the role of the community, kind of our work family, the people we spend the most time with, interact with the most, you know, kind of back to the parable. Do we have a version of our relationship that is supportive, compassionate? We care about them. We know about their values.

We believe that they're wanting to support us. We feel that way about them. Or is it the opposite? Do we see them as a threat to our advancement, even survival? Do we not trust them? You know, there's all these interesting studies about if you have one workplace friend, you're going to be healthier, more engaged, advance more. If you can build that at the team level, like this microcosm port in the storm, that is massive for your resilience. And then the broader culture within the organizations we function in, and how do those impact our values, our ability to be socially attuned to others, our ability to feel like we can do our work and feel like we're being seen and rewarded,

all of that, that there's fairness. Interestingly, people often hear about burnout and they think working too many hours is one of the biggest precipitants. Actually, one of the biggest precipitants is feeling like we're out of alignment with our values or that our workplace isn't fair. People are rewarded for bad behavior or there's inconsistencies. We talk about being this great culture, but in practice, we're actually like, you know, live and let die. So you can do work at each of these three levels. I spent the first very long part of my career focused on what can you do as individuals, mindfulness, mindset, part of my career focus on what can you do as individuals, mindfulness, mindset, framing,

emotional intelligence, social intelligence, all really good stuff. But if we start looking at applying even that like next level to what does it mean to bring your self-awareness into the team? So if you and I are a team with five other people that we can then share, what are our triggers? What are our values? And how do those align with the work that we're doing together? How can we support each other? And how can we even tactically do things the way we allocate work, the way that we assign blame and credit, the way we help each other actually be off when

we're on vacation, because that comes down to your team often. Like, do you have a way, a give and take? And then at the culture level, there's so much to do, but it's tricky because it's big, it's amorphous, and it takes a long time. Three years is like what the number that most experts give to a culture change project in an organization. So if you want to talk about bang for your buck, focusing on the team level, I think, is the way to go, which is why I'm putting my attention there. Build your community. Build your support. Get that interactive part, but it's manageable.

A team of eight can make a decision today to try something different and do that tomorrow. We don't need to go get sign-in, buy-in and approval from a lot of different people and all the alignment and socializing that comes with a culture change project. Yeah, that resonates with me for a variety of reasons, but one is sort of a middle way kind of guy, right? Between the organizational and the personal, what's there? The team, right? But to your point, it's influenceable. Our organization may be a little bit, but it's going to be kind of hard, but we have more influence on the team. And it also addresses some of those issues that are slightly more important than the personal.

This gets back to discernment questions, right? You just mentioned like, you know, if I have teammates who are toxic, right? There are people I know in life who see nearly anybody who doesn't agree with them as toxic. Their self-awareness is such that it's like, if you don't agree with everything that I think, then you're, you know, I've labeled you as the problem. You're the toxic person, right? And then the other extreme would be the person who, you know, thinks that it doesn't matter who it is out there, you know, Genghis Khan could be on their team. And they're like, well, I really should work on my ways of relating to other people from a place of loving kindness, right? And so it strikes me again is, you know, how do we find this middle

ground? Do you find that it's helpful to start with the individual work and be sure that you kind of have that in place? Or is it really something you can start kind of at all levels? You know, when we're talking within the context of a team, we want to remember that power structure influences. So the team has a manager or a lead, and that person will realistically have an outsized influence on the culture of the group. And what's particularly tricky is often the folks who are middle managers are at very high likelihood of being burnt out themselves. Yes. So there's trust.

They're probably not at the top of their interpersonal game. They're stressed. They're probably not at the top of their interpersonal game. Maybe they've been trained to be a manager, or maybe they became a manager because developed and work with is a combination of the individual and the team. in general, but their burnout proclivities and their burnout specifically in this workplace, right? Which is an important part of the question we were coming back to before. How do you determine what's me? What's the environment? So having that understanding what's environmental, then at the team level, understanding where's my team at with respect to burnout? Are we all clustered at the high end of the burnout spectrum? Is it a range? Are some of us in actually like a pretty solid space? How can they help the others? What's the role of the manager in supporting resilience or contributing to burnout?

And then what I've been finding a lot of success with is if you take some of this data and share back with a team, hey, group, here's where you're at with your sense of belonging and psychological safety and burnout. So each individual doesn't have to take the burden of saying, I don't feel safe here, or these are the ways that this team is not working for me. But you're laying it back at the group level, but anonymously. So your starting point is the group to address this shared problem that no individual has had to stand up and own or blame the others for. It's just, this is

what is in this group. And then giving a methodology within team health, there's four pillars. And based on where you're at, we suggest you work on the belonging psychological safety component first. Or we suggest you work on structured rest because you're all exhausted. Nobody's getting any time off. There are some basic kind of stop gaps you can take. Rest up and then address the next and the next and thinking in terms of the science of behavior change, which is don't do everything at once. Pick a keystone habit and work there as a group. Yeah. You just sort of answered a question I was going to ask, which is a lot of discussions about team efficacy these days seem to have boiled down to psychological safety. I'm not that focused on teamwork or corporate work anymore, but I see that phrase all the time when people are talking about team psychological safety. And my question was going to be, is that all there is to this? But it sounds like you just identified four pillars that are important, psychological safety and belonging being just one of them.

The other three you mentioned, I guess, R&R, right? Is that just kind of the team culture around what hours we work, how much we work, supporting each other in being able to take time off? Yeah, that's the most kind of tactical of the four elements. And it really is around also just having the basic conversations like, I've got little kids, I live on the West Coast, the hours that I really want to carve out and need to be with my family are this, and yours are that because you're in another time zone and this is your life. So like having some structure around those basic conversations goes a long way because people are driving each other mad with the meeting invite. Like, you know, that is my Friday at five, like, but you're in another time and especially

in this global workplace. Right. So it's some of that very tactical coordination or having blocks and processes in place. I'd say slightly more nuanced, but also important is autonomy. So getting that balance right, which is going to be different for each individual on a team of, do you have the right amount of support and flexibility? If you're being micromanaged, that's probably driving you bananas. If you're untethered, being told to do things that you have no support or resources for, that's also really bad. So autonomy is a collective process of resourcing and teamwork that is so often a big part of what's driving people into the ground with burnout. They don't have to be deep conversations, but get some really productive work done on this autonomy place pretty quickly. And then the other piece is

awareness, self-awareness, understanding your own values, understanding basic tools of emotional and social intelligence, but doing that at the team level. So triggers, values, alignment, all of that work. And so these four, when you put them together, you know, are really they capture a lot, if you look at the literature and all the different precipitants of burnout or resilience. So psychological safety, super important, but not the whole story. And also, I think so many people get it so fundamentally wrong thinking like, oh, if we want to build psychological safety, we should all often has to be the sanctioning around, let's come to agreements around how we want to be together and what we're going to do when there's microaggressions and when people deviate. Because you can do all the work to share and be vulnerable, but if you haven't made agreements about how you're going to respond when someone is

getting pushed out of that group for whatever element of their personality or whatever ism is at play, then you can't build a psychological safety. So that's also part of, I'm like, no, this is not about trust falls and sharing all of our trauma with each other. It's also like naming norms for like, how do we want to be respected and respect others? And what will we do when those are transgressed to signal that we're not going to be complicit? But there's nothing wrong with the good old trust fall, is there? No, I mean, we all, who doesn't love a good trust fall?

Who doesn't love a good trust fall? That's right. That's right. I keep trying to talk Chris into one with just me being there to catch him, but he won't go for it. He's not having it. No, he's probably taking lots of notes about team culture based on this. I want to ask a question about job satisfaction a little bit. This sort of ties in. And if I'm straying too far outside where you feel comfortable, just say, I don't know. But I see a lot of people and what they feel is that their work isn't meaningful. And what they often mean by that is that it's not directly helping another person in like, say, helping starving children. And so they feel like, okay, I don't feel like my work is meaningful. And I'm

always torn by that by sort of going, yep, you're right, you really should pursue that because that's the path. Or are there other paths? And this gets back to our question before, do I change myself? Do I change the situation? But what are paths to make work more meaningful, assuming that we're in generally, a good situation, right? Generally, like we're doing work that's at least like somewhat challenging, somewhat interesting, you know, that can engage us, but the bottom line mission isn't say philanthropic. I love that question. I think coming back to probably work you are well familiar with from a spiritual direction is, you know, the values work, getting really clear about values,

and then taking that from the abstraction and looking for the opportunities to walk the talk on those values. So maybe we're not working to end world hunger, but one of our core values is around community or compassion, and really exploring what are the opportunities within the work I am doing, the people I am interacting with, how can I lean into expressing that value? And then one of the ideas that we talk about in the academic language of extra role behavior. So what are things that are not part of my core job description that energize me, that bring me meaning, that help me feel connected with who I am and want to be. And often it's a little bit of investing in those and coaches and managers can really help the people that they're talking with to identify not just

the values, but what are the opportunities. And it's amazing how many times I'm sure you've seen this, that you have someone who realizes they want to learn some skill and service of a core value. They start just spending an hour a week and it changes everything around for them. So this is a place where, you know, and having taught MBA students at Stanford for years, I'm always saying like, don't look at it like you're losing time from this person. If you're bringing them alive, then you are doing the right thing, but also doing the smart thing for the business. So look for the values, the extra role behavior, which means you need to

know each other, have real conversations and have honesty to the point where people can, you know, the work that's just like they're always procrastinating. It's miserable for them. Can you get an understanding of what that is, why that is? And then within the realm of reason, respond. Yeah. So I want to bring us back around to where you are today. So we described you burnt out at Stanford, you know, overwhelmed.

There's something you've talked about that I think is really important here. You talked about how, in addition to all that happening, there was an enormous amount of internal criticism of yourself because you felt like, based on all the spiritual practice you had done, that you shouldn't feel this way, that you should be able to meditate your way out of it, or you should be able to, you know, have enough equanimity to handle it. So take us from here I am, I am in this place of, I recognize I'm burnout, I'm overwhelmed, I've got all this internal negativity happening, and maybe give us the short version of, you know, how you got to where you are today. And then maybe we could talk a little bit about today, because the thing I'd like to hit today is you've gone from one classical place where people can burn out, which is academia to another classical place where people can burn out, which is the startup world.

So I want to talk about that, but, but walk us through the change process a little bit. Well, I first have to comment, like, I just, I want you as a spiritual director. I feel like I could benefit from these conversations. It's therapeutic. I think you're really picking up on things about my experience. It's taken me a long time to, and some of it I'm still definitely grasping to formulate. Well, long story short, a couple of years ago, we came up from California to visit some of our friends who lived in Portland, who for years had all been saying, you guys really need to be in Portland. Like all the things we're hearing from you about as a family that you're struggling with, like, and just hearing this

from two of my oldest friends in the world, my husband's oldest friends. So we came up and I just had this like physical feeling from the moment we got here of just like decompression. You know, I've experienced that in a few places in the world where I've gone before that, you know, it's like a cellular shift when you get off the plane kind of thing. And, you know, I think fast forward to today, I was just talking about this this weekend, I was taking a walk with a very close friend who's a physician, public health officer, and was just saying, for me, it's so powerful that, you know, the places I've lived in the past, and had my kids in schools, like I didn't feel people around me to the degree that I do now, where there's so many folks who have similar academic backgrounds or kinds of choices about where they've taken their

careers. A lot of other families that are like ours with the mom, you know, working a ton and the dad working a ton to support the family and home. So we came up this weekend, decided, oh my gosh, let's just jump. Let's just do it. Our oldest son was starting kindergarten the next year. It's like, if we just do this now, he can kind of come right in the process. So we did, we just moved really, really quickly. And since that time, I've seen, you know, so many people in the context of the pandemic do this, it did seem a bit bananas, I think,

to some people in our life to just make the change so quickly. But I was like, I'm traveling so much anyways, I can travel down to Stanford as opposed to traveling to go see clients wherever. And then also taking some of the financial pressure off, which sounds ludicrous for someone, you know, but coming from California, anywhere is less insane. So there was that whole side of it. Now, to your point about the startup world, yes, it's another kind of microcosm, less than 4% of venture money goes to women founders, including if it's a woman and man co-founder. So me and my co-founder, my former superstar student from Stanford, two women, two moms,

we are definitely not in a system that is like set up by or for us. But I think this discernment and community, like my co-founder is one of my dearest friends who I think has more character and integrity and social intelligence than pretty much anyone I've ever known, including a lot of like spiritually well-known figures. Like, you know, and not to overly put her on a pedestal, she's just a really good person who we can talk about everything together. It's like my other marriage. And so there's a lot of stress,

but there's a lot of alignment and values, a lot of ability to have real talk, and a lot of shared commitment to the team that we're building is gonna walk the talk. We're not going to be an organization dealing with team health that is a hot mess internally. I've lived that, you know, country song before, I'm not doing it again. And she has her own version of commitment to that. So, you know, I do feel like I have the right resources in place. But there's a lot of stress, a lot of frustration. And, you know, also continued, like doubt that I'll have to work through around being a middle aged woman in a role that is not conducive. But I kind of am excited to do that on behalf of like, that's most of the world. We're not, you know, if we can't build team health or think about organizational health from the perspective of a middle aged parent, like, I don feel confident that a 20-something-year-old non-parent is going to do it in a way that works for me or anyone I know. So I'm going to lean into the discomfort and hopefully have enough support and clarity about what I need to do from having lived through

kind of untenab-ness before. Yep. Somebody I interviewed recently in one of their books was talking about age. They were talking about patience, but the thing they said, which I thought was really interesting, was they quoted some study where far more businesses that go on to be a certain size were started by 50-year-olds than 25-year-olds. It's just our cultural lens is 25-year-old startups. But if you zoom out from just Silicon Valley and you look broadly, you go, okay, being 50 or in your 40s is not an impediment. It can actually be in a lot of ways a benefit. You and I are going to talk for a couple more minutes in the post-show conversation because I do want to go a little deeper into entrepreneurship and burnout because you're an entrepreneur, I'm an entrepreneur, I think we could have some

interesting conversations, but we're out of time for the main episode. So listeners, if you'd like to get access to Leah and I's post-show conversation, ad-free episodes, all kinds of other good things, and the joy of supporting something you care about, go to oneufeed.net slash join. Leah, thank you so much for coming on. It's been such a pleasure to talk with you again. Thank you for having me. It's been great to spend time with you and your listeners, and I so appreciate the community that you've built and being able to visit. And just in case people are interested in the work that you're doing with building team resilience, what's the name of your company? Skylight S K Y L Y T E.

Perfect. We'll have links in the show notes where people can go through and learn about that work if they like. So thank you, Leah. Thanks Eric. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for

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