Rethinking Burnout, Imposter Syndrome & Leadership w. Shannon Weber

Burnout puts the responsibility on the individual and it makes the individual solely responsible for the problem that exists without thinking about the systemic issues, if you will.

Welcome back to another episode of the Yes And Podcast. I am your host and serial entrepreneur, business therapist, retired stuntwoman, all the things, Bunny Young. And today I brought another mental health guest. Sort of, kind of. We're going to get into it and we are going to have an incredible conversation around organizational leadership. And I mean, we're just going to chat. We— the lead-in to this for my guest and I were that we met in a bougie hotel lobby and this is the behind-the-scenes chat over some delicious bougie drinks. So Shannon, welcome to the Yes And Podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm delighted to meet you in the bougie lobby.

So I read through the bio and I read through LinkedIn and, you know, there's so many things and so many areas that I think we could talk about. The first thing though is I just want your assistance in becoming more resourced if you're, if you're up for that. Are you up for that?

I'm up for it.

Coming into COVID and being a business consultant and coach that specialized in burnout prevention in organizations, You can imagine what my life looked like for about 3 years.

Yes.

And I was here for it because I think that having the conversations, the, the means with which we started the conversations maybe wasn't the greatest, and I'm so glad that we were having the conversations. I'm at a point right now though, if I'm being 100% honest, I'm burnt out about seeing and hearing and talking about burnout. Right. Am I alone?

You are not alone. You know, in the healthcare space, we actually think about it in this way, which is that burnout puts the responsibility on the individual and it makes the individual solely responsible for the problem that exists without thinking about the systemic issues, if you will. And so in healthcare, there's actually a group of providers that have come together and started to talk about it as moral injury, meaning when the systems are set up, the systems are working the way they were set up to work, right? So I think that's important to think through. Like, if we have these individual solutions, and a lot of times it requires us to either be more efficient or to juggle more or really to stretch in these certain ways, which we can do during a crisis period. Like, again, look what happened at the beginning of COVID A lot of amazing things happened too, but it's not meant to be, or they're not sustainable, and it's not for the long haul. And we have systemic issues that we need to grapple with as well. And so I wonder how that lands for you. Like, what if it's not just you? You're like, you're not the problem, or the folks you're helping are not the problem.

Is that so? So Taylor Swift is wrong? Like, it's not me, I'm not the problem?

I mean, we all have issues for sure.

Yes. And how much time do we have? Yeah. I— so if my If the systemic organization owns part of the burnout, is it still called burnout when it's at a cultural or a systemic level?

Yeah, I think we need a new name for that. And I'll draw another parallel around it again with coming from the helping professions, which is like there's this misnomer around compassion fatigue. And my colleague in Australia, Mary Freer, has pointed out in her book, she wrote a book called Compassion Revolution, and she says, hey, it's not your compassion that's fatigued. It's the, again, it's the systems. And so I think in so many ways, if we can also use a strengths-based perspective when we think about our own self instead of— otherwise, I start to add into this, I already have an internal narrative when I wake up that's going over how I could be doing better and what an imposter I am and all these things. And if I'm going to add this onto it, when in fact, I think there's a huge reckoning right now around workplace and what do people want from work and what do we expect from work. And this brings its own challenges if you're a manager. There was huge reckoning around relationships and what does it also mean for primary caregivers who are working outside the home, right? So there's these bigger things for us to also grapple with.

Yeah, and when there's not a pandemic going on, there's still a level of psychological safety necessary as well as, like, they say that, you know, the pandemic kind of amplified everything. In my opinion, as a sandwich caregiver, right, who has their mom living with them and 3 children, it was not simple and not super easy prior to the pandemic as well. If anything, and I have the benefit of being my own boss, right? And so I have the benefit of having my own company. So working from home wasn't a, wasn't a huge shift. And I think that, you know, there's a lot of conversations that obviously this is a long time coming. And so to hear you say all of this, really is like a breath of fresh air. And I feel like we could talk about this forever. You're probably one of my favorite guests now, and we're only, what, 5 minutes into this? So that's, that's good news.

Yeah, one of the things I love working with people on though is when you get that opportunity and you get that insight to say then, in what systems do you have an opportunity to create change? Either like for you, Bunny Young, like where you have, because you're your own boss, like what how can you tweak those systems? Or for a manager in a company or organization, like, what are these systemic long-haul shifts? And we know with all change, small changes can go a long way. And I'm not saying that these are small solutions that are needed, but it doesn't mean that we have to know the total answer to get started. We can experiment with making small tweaks and seeing if we can make improvements to the system. Rather than just putting the sole responsibility on ourself.

Okay, so when you say the improvements, like, the first thing that comes to most people's minds is self-care. And so I want to have that conversation with you because— and I mean, I want to talk about self-care and imposter syndrome. I also want to talk about love notes. So we're just— we're going to throw all of those out there.

All my favorite things.

We're going to take notes. And unicorns. Um, so self-care. The first thing that comes to mind is for, for primarily for women, manicure, pedicures, massages, maybe for men, uh, a night out, a round of golf, all of those kinds of things. So you asked me about my systems and I'm gonna be fully transparent that after I got done, for me, self-care, true self-care, after I got done doing all the things that felt good, self-care is now about doing the things that maybe don't feel so good that I've been avoiding, like therapy, like inner work.

Yeah. This is like the root stuff. Yes. Boom. So I think self-care is, uh, not a great phrase because, well, and I had this thought before COVID and, um, my book came out, um, before COVID My book is about how to have empathy and show up really big for folks, but not burnout. And then the book I talk about, hey, self-care is actually something we think about after the fact. And I also think it has gotten commercialized in this this way and in many of the ways you just talked about, which it involved spending money, but we did it later after the fact. And I really want us to think about, if I wanna show up so big for people, what am I willing to do to invest in myself? So I talk about it as resilience investments. And I don't think that resilience is actually either the totally right word because it still puts a lot of responsibility on the individual again when there's systemic problems. And I don't want to add on one more thing like, oh look, you're not resilient. So no, but really more of just a reframe of like, I'm going to look at my week or my month or my year and say upfront, I'm investing in myself in these ways. As you said, I'm going to go to therapy. I am going to take, you know, time off the screen. I'm just brainstorming things that people have done. I'm going to have a spiritual practice. I'm going to see my family or I'm not going to see my family, like whatever it is that is working for you at the time. And I think many of these things that worked for us pre-COVID don't necessarily work for us now. For my own self during the season of COVID It was these cycles of me evaluating, well, what's working for me now? How do I feel rooted and grounded and able to show up really radically for, for others? And in what ways am I not? What can I shift to do that? So I think constantly evaluating, or when we start to feel resentful or we start to feel burned out, then evaluating what needs to get tweaked here. Um, and the more small things we can do and the more things we can do that don't require huge financial investments, honestly, the better. Because this isn't to corporatize self-care. And again, I love a massage. I love going to my dance class. Yes. And I prioritize those things in my budget. But it is also about the exercise and it's about learning how to, to breathe and about finding ritual and creating a meal for myself. So there's really other ways that, and it can be smaller things too that we build in that we're doing as a commitment to ourselves so that we can show up for others.

I love all of that. I especially like my, my soul responded when you said make a meal for yourself because there's so many ways to nourish yourself and nurture yourself. And I mean, one of those ways is having a bougie drink in a bougie hotel lobby. And there's something so incredible about going through the steps and committing to a recipe for nourishing yourself, whether that's literally with food or over a process and over a ritual. And I think that we're missing a lot of those supportive rituals in our society today. And I've never shared with anybody my massage barometer, so I'm going to share it with you here.

Oh, I can't wait to hear. Yes.

With, with just a couple million of our closest friends. So I, when I started to have this conversation with my coach and my therapist about massages and self-care, This is how I, I grew in my massages is at first I'd go and get a massage and my brain would not stop chattering. My massage is where I would make my grocery list. It's where I would go over everything I had to get done for the rest of the day. It's where I wish I had my phone because I remember that I have to call these 15 people back. Okay. So that's how it started. And then we got to the place where I finally got my brain to quiet down and I would fall asleep. And I thought that was winning, Shannon. I thought that was a, a huge W. And what my therapist reflected back to me is, That's the other side of the scale. It's where you're not relaxed, you're actually fatigued. And now that you've shut your brain off, your brain is needing sleep. And so that, that middle ground of the, the spectrum where I'm at now, where I can go get a massage— it's not 100% of the time, but I can go get a massage and be present.

Present, yes.

Not in the future, not in the past, and not asleep. But how many times in life when we're awake are we not present?

Uh, I mean a lot for my, myself. I catch myself so often. Yes.

So that's my massage barometer.

Yeah.

Is, I don't know if that barometer's the right tool. You tell me.

Yeah. But I think you can bring it to also, I wanna just say, hey, and when you slept during the massage, that's what you needed. So good job. Look how your body is resilient and takes care of itself.

Yes.

How can we trust? Are these clues in our body to know. Yeah.

Just so you know, you know, I apologize, Carrie. I snored because that's my massage therapist.

And you can bring this same noticing to other aspects of your life. Like, how are you driving? How is it that you're doing the laundry or whatever? Are these mundane and everyday things that can we also bring our presence to that? Um, and so that we can be really with ourself and with the moment, but I think also So we steer away from these things that exhaust us because that internal chatter and list-making is inherently exhausting.

And so if we, if we tie in our favorite friend here, imposter syndrome, I find it very difficult to be both present and experiencing imposter syndrome.

Absolutely right. It's like shining the light. Yeah.

If I'm present, I'm me. I'm not trying to be somebody else. Yes.

Imposter syndrome's like in the shadow. And if you have the light of presence, it's just not able to, to be there. So yes. And I think there's some normal grappling with imposter syndrome. This is part of showing up and doing brave things and new things and being wrong and changing our mind and all of this, which is so terribly important. But to be guided by that imposter syndrome or be debilitated by it. Is so problematic.

Do you find that imposter syndrome shows up more in professional life or in personal life, or just both? It's indiscriminatory.

I think it's, it's a greedy little beast.

I was trying to be nice to it and say indiscriminatory.

Yeah, it'll just show up anywhere. It likes a mic.

It likes the light.

Yeah, it likes to hear itself talking. Yeah, I think that it's showing up for us in all sorts of places, right? Like, look how many of us who are caregivers and have work outside the home have constant narrations about how we're failing at both of these things. And it's kind of incessant, at least for me and many people I know. Yeah.

Well, my husband, he's, he's a stuntman, and so he's a huge movie buff. I, I don't typically watch movies, but he dragged me into I love you, honey. He dragged me into this movie to ask me a question. Um, it was about, uh, split personalities and this one individual experiencing multiple personality disorder and actually getting the voices and the different accents and preferences and even allergies. And he's like, is this, is this a thing? And I said Yeah. And I said, and even if you don't have a personality disorder diagnosis, this is also what we do to ourselves.

Correct.

Like at a micro level, we have different identities in our minds that we are stepping into and shifting in different hats that we're wearing and all of that. And that's exhausting.

It's true. I think it's great though when we're able to recognize them and name them for what they are, 'cause they also can be useful at different times. There, I think about them as different parts of myself. Like there's a part of myself that is such a great list maker and can make a plan B. And of course this part of myself grew really strong during trauma and crisis. Now, do I wanna be living with that person directing my life now? No, but boy, when a crisis happens, I have a lot of gratitude for that part of myself that can step forward and can be assessing the situation, making a list and having a plan B and ready to go. Yeah.

And so do you name that part of you?

Sometimes I do with my coach or therapist, and maybe it would be better if, like, I could come to name them now. I actually just recently named one of my plants, um, one of my, the, a name for one of the imposter critical, critical, uh, voices in my head right now. And then I came to realize like, oh, this plant, how can I make friends with it? As you were saying, to be more kind to it. And so then I have this really, this amazing plant. And so I named my plant. After this part of myself that I'm trying to shake hands with, if you will, and become more comfortable with.

That's so beautiful. I absolutely love that.

I—

yeah, making friends with— I— so we're, we're just gonna go totally into, uh, TMI in the aspect that I remember when, um, my mom first took me to like a gynecologist and OB-GYN. And it happened to be a doctor that my grandmother used to work for. And so I'm laying there on the table for my first appointment, and he's like, 'How's your grandmother doing?' And I'm so uncomfortable. And I think that, yeah, caused a micro trauma where I wanted nothing to do with like any kind of feminine body part discussion or all of that. And my mom used to tell me, she's like, 'You just need to make friends with your body parts.' like you need to make friends with your body, you need to make friends with your, um, identity and the feminine parts of you. Like, she didn't, she didn't say like I was hyper-masculine, but I feel like growing up, modeling, doing sports, all of this kind of stuff, and being in business, I was very direct. I was very— I had walls. And, um, so when you said that about making friends with your plant, that's something that over my fertility journey and now having my third kid at 36, I feel like each and every time I got more grateful and did make even more friends with this vessel that is carrying my children. And it's been such a beautiful experience to the point that— this is the TMI— my, uh, we have our cleaners that come over to our house. We're so blessed and I feel so privileged to be able to have that, and I recognize that, and I'm so grateful for them. And they went into my bathroom to clean the bathroom, and my vibrator is sitting next to my bathtub. And my mom came over and was horrified. She's like, what? And I— and it was, it was there. Whether or not this is growth on my part, it was there because I'm nursing and somebody told me to use the vibrator to help with my milk supply and not get clogged ducts. Yeah. So whether or not it was because I was not using it for this like taboo purpose, I just put it away. Like, I wasn't horrified, I wasn't mortified, I didn't make a story about what they're thinking. I'm like, you know what, they probably see tons worse stuff than a pink vibrator sitting on the side of, you know, a bathtub. And the— how I react to it also is a mirror for my children as well. Yeah, I have a 12-year-old daughter and I What I desire for her is to, to have a better relationship with herself and her femininity and her body than I did. And so if I'm making a big deal about it and I'm making taboo, and so whether or not that has to do with imposter syndrome, you said make friends with your plants. I made friends with apparently a vibrator. So there we go. How's that for— how's that for a podcast?

I love to, um, I see this, this thread coming from your mom where she was doing probably what was radical for her at the time, teaching you. To, to love these different parts about yourself. And then you're saying even for your daughter, you want to do even better for her. And I just love that, um, being passed down.

It's, it's generational healing, right? You know, and I also see my mom's opportunities and like her lessons that maybe didn't land 15 years ago now coming from my mouth because, you know, I'm in this place where I can receive them. And I also like, it's such, it was such a great gift to have my mom come with me on one of the retreats I facilitated because I, I think at that point she's like, wow, she really was paying attention. I hope that that was her sense. We didn't have that conversation, but she's, she's available to have that conversation.

You should have your mom on the podcast.

I would love to. I would love to. I don't know if she will or not, so we'll, we'll put that out there.

I would tune in for that. Okay, Mom, I wanna hear from you.

Okay, I'm going to send this to her.

She—

well, now that we're just mortified that, you know, I told the vibrator story on the podcast. So— and I also now can't remember if it was my husband or her that was more upset that the vibrator was out while the cleaners were there. And everybody lived. That's the end of the story.

Yes, here we are.

So last thing that we are going to cover, and this is a perfect segue, is into love notes.

Yes.

Tell me about this practice.

Oh my gosh. It is one of the things I just feel so alive doing. So it all started with this, um, when my kids were young and I was leaving on a business trip, um, I would leave these little trinkets for them. Um, they called them little juju. They'd keep them in their pocket. And one time one of my kids said to me, you know, we need a piece of you even when you're here. And I felt really like overwhelmed by that. Like what? Like I'm just doing so much. And I created this self-serve love note system. It says I love you on the top and I love you too on these little pull tabs. And I put it on our kitchen fridge. And from that, we started hanging these love notes up places. People wanted to be able to download them and hang them yourself. I started painting wood signs on reclaimed wood and hanging them on the fence by our home and hanging them places. And so this has been a practice I've had for I'll call almost 15 years now. Wow. And hung love notes all over the world, um, and hosted these love note writing events in, uh, all different community spaces. And for me, the value or the desire is to be able to catch people in transition and give them this other way of seeing things. Um, and with the practice of writing the love notes to find small, easy, actionable ways to share how we feel about each other while we're alive. So this practice grew out of losing my brother at a young age. He died by suicide. And at his service, so many people had lovely things to say about him. And I thought, I don't want to minimize any reasons around why people feel unwell and about suicide, but I did think, I don't know that all these things were said to my brother when he was alive. And so I really wanted to commit to this practice of being able to write and share love notes. So they're on my website, loveyou2.org. There's love notes in 6 languages now, 'cause I've done collaborations with a number of different community groups. And it's really, really fun to see how those small things that go out in the world come back in so many surprising ways.

I'm going to make sure that that's linked in the show notes so that people can go and find that. And thank you, thank you for doing that. Yeah, it's, it's the simple things, going back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it's the simple things that, yes, just shift it so much. So I, I think that's the ultimate gift, my biased opinion, and I'd love to know your opinion. How we are able to love ourselves is what we're modeling and what we're able to receive from others.

Oh, you're so right about that. And sometimes we have a harder time being able to love ourselves, and sometimes we have a hard time being able to love others. But there is such a, um, a balance to it to me. Like, it, it does feed each other, as you've said.

Yeah, it feels like, like the precipitation cycle. It feels like to absorb it and then redistribute it, redistribute it, and then yes, have that cycle all over. And, and what I described to clients is when you're looking for just external validation and external love, it's pouring into a bucket with holes in it. So no matter how much—

totally—

it's, it's gonna— it is just gonna go out. And if you're able to give it to yourself, then you're constantly refilling it and receiving it versus is having to hold on to it. And, you know, if you're not watching this with the, the video, if you have— if you put a fist out in front of you and look at how much you can hold in a fist versus opening your hands and relaxing and receiving, and how much more you can hold when you don't need it, when you're not grabbing it, when you're not, you know, grasping for it. And so that's the visual that I try to use for myself and for my clients. But I also think about that with my children of if I desire to see it from them, I also need to model that. And, and I think working in child protective services, I'll never forget the day that it clicked to me when I saw a parent yelling at their child to stop yelling.

Mm, yes. And how many times are we like that in whatever way?

Exactly, exactly. Okay, so I know I've kept you a little bit over what we said. This has been such an incredible episode. I really, really appreciate you being here. Do you have any last words to leave with our audience. And I also have the question that I ask most of our guests of, Shannon, what is your definition of a Yes And lifestyle?

Ooh, that's such a good question. I love when you ask people that. So I think one last thing I want to leave with, which is building on what you just talked about, about this mirroring, and I have this, this line in my TED Talk about my Love Note Project where I say a I had learned a broken heart has much more surface area from which to radiate and to receive love. And I think this goes with this metaphor you had of the closed hand and the open hand. And I wanted to share that to say, you know, it doesn't mean we have to be fully healed or have really reckoned with our imposter or know all of our parts to also be in this practice of giving and receiving, you know, whether it's love or generosity or whatever it is that is your devotion in this world.

That's so beautiful.

I love that.

I love that definition. And I know that my— the audience also is going to thrive with so many things that you shared. And my encouragement for those of you listening would be to go download some Love Notes and spread them in your community, because I don't think you're going to regret that. So Shannon, thank you so much for being here. So yes, you can record an incredible podcast episode and have your, your 12-year-old there listening and watching you do all of the magic as well. So thank you so much for joining us today. I'm gonna put all of the links— remember, all the links are in the show notes to find more out about the love notes, to connect with Shannon, to get her book, to watch her TED Talk. All of these things are in the show notes to make it super easy for you, whether you took us on a neighborhood walk today or whether you or just listening on your way to work or on your way to pick up your babies from school. We appreciate you being here. I appreciate you being here, and I will see you in the next episode of the Yes And Podcast.