DEI expert Daisy Auger-Domínguez on overcoming burnout and navigating a corporate crisis

So Daisy, it is an absolute pleasure to have you on The Imaginals. Welcome.

Oh, thank you so much, Ashley, for your warm welcome and for, um, being interested in talking about me and my book.

Yes, and congratulations on this book. I have it right here, Burnt Out to Lit Up. Um, this is your second book. And it is.

Yeah.

And I was nodding my head so many times flipping through the pages of this book. It's so down to earth and vulnerable and tactical and honestly the managerial Bible that I wish I had when I was a communications executive in the fashion industry navigating a culture that was not too dissimilar to The Devil Wears Prada. And I have to say, it must have been so cathartic for you to process those grueling years during the pandemic when you held the position of Chief People Officer at Vice Media. Leading—

yes, it was. Yeah. Yes.

Leading a global team and the 24/7 demands of standard HR functions, The tensions of COVID recruiting during the Great Resignation. I can't imagine.

Yeah, it was bananas. I like to think of the process of writing my book was like building my own pharmacy. It was— I was healing as I was writing. I was crying. I was laughing. I was angry again. I was feeling all the feelings, but what I was really doing was releasing a lot of the pain and the tension that I had held and the sense of shame and failure that I had held for a lot of that time.

Beautiful. Yeah. I'd love to explore the series of metaphoric moments that you explore in the book and that we've talked about personally that were, I'm guessing, the apex of your burnout. I know you've mentioned being burnt out a number of times.

Mm-hmm.

And really how that changed you. And the book starts off with this moment that was catalytic, um, in, in that you were, um, managing a crisis at Vice Media when a tweet that leaked executive salaries went viral. Um, will you just take us to that moment and paint the picture of what you were feeling and thinking and experiencing during that time.

Sure. It was in the summer of 2023, a year ago. And I was transitioning from my role at Vice. I had already given my exit date, and I was slowly transitioning from the organization. But we were in the midst, or we were just shortly after having completed both a bankruptcy, a massive layoff, and also getting ready for a rapid sale. So there were all of these— there were all of these events. It was a perfect storm. Yeah, there were all of these events that were happening. And HR is usually the function most loved to be hated, right? People don't really understand it. I think for most people, they saw HR as just the driver of the layoffs. Right. And also the terrible communicators because it was our responsibility to communicate to teams what was happening post-bankruptcy to their severance payments, which had been paused as part of the bankruptcy process, which was— Mm-hmm. Not a surprise to those who had been in the structuring process, but certainly a surprise to all of us who had never been through a bankruptcy. So everybody was in this anger and frustration and admittedly so, like an awful place to be. And so as the head of the HR team responsible for figuring out how to communicate, what to communicate, how to make sure that people received their payments on time and were as supported as possible while also handling the external— sort of madness that was happening. So we were in the midst of all of this operational madness and emotional madness. And as part of a bankruptcy, as I've learned, every week there are releases of public information related to the company. And this was on Sunday evenings. And our teams would be— our journalists would be kind of like waiting every Sunday to see what was released because they were piecing together— The transcripts. Yeah, they were piecing together the story of how this awfulness happened, right? And one Sunday, the information that was released were the salaries of all the top executives in the organization. So, that included me as part of the C-suite. And immediately, one of our journalists posted on X, right? Then, I think it was still Twitter then. And he posted, he chose to post only 4 salaries. One of the ex-head of news who was no longer at the company. He had left abruptly. And then the 3 others were women, the person that had taken over the head of news role to lead news, our head of digital publishing, and myself.

Mm-hmm.

Why he chose us, still nobody knows. My theory was that we were the ones that he knew the most. As I told my peers, I was like, because we were the ones working. We were the ones— You were most visible. Yeah, we were visible because we were doing our jobs and people were seeing us. They had proximity to us. But the ire that came from not just— and the message was, I knew it was bad, but I didn't realize the tremendous corporate greed and how can these individuals make all this money in the midst of layoffs and they got bonuses. Some of it was true. Some of it was far, far, far off. But what was really interesting that the biggest anger, and there was anger towards all of us, but the biggest anger was towards the HR leader making so much money. I'm like, for some reason, there was bias upon bias thrown on me. It wasn't just that I was— also, of the 3 women, 2 of us were women of color. Nobody ever pointed out that There were women of color in the C-suite. Nobody ever pointed out that from a pay equity perspective, we were all being paid—

That side of this.

Yes. Comparable to other people's salaries, high salaries, comparable to other executives in the industry, as you well know. And a lot of my friends would call me afterwards and say, Daisy, you guys weren't making that much money. I was like, it was. It was a lot of money. But yes, it wasn't this greedy, you know, awful setup that everybody— that it seemed to become. And so I should go back. So it was— so the tweet goes out on Monday morning. And later that afternoon, a group, a subset of us gets a note saying from our comms team, hey, there's a little noise about this.

There's some noise out there. Maybe you should raise attention.

People are talking. And by that point, Ashley, like I said earlier, I was so used to leaks. I was so used to especially this story of our bankruptcy being fodder for just so many tales out there that I purposely was trying to protect myself by not paying attention to what was happening, right? I was saying, you know, as I told my PR team, I was like, listen, you know, we're each playing our roles. I was like, you manage that. I'll manage, whatever I hear from employees, and we'll do what we can. Did you create some boundaries? I had no idea, right? And then they were like, and then there's the 3 of you. And then I just— right? And it was in the evening of Monday. And I looked at my husband. And I said, ah, there was another leak, this time my salary. And he kind of looked at me worried. And I said, what am I going to do? It's public information. I don't need to hide this. I really was not thinking anything beyond that. By the next day, it had blown up completely. And I had— my daughter was at camp, which I was so glad she did not have to face what became of me in those days. My daughter was at camp. I went to the gym. On my way to the gym, my phone is just blowing up. There's emails from my bosses and colleagues going like, what are we going to do about this? And I'm like, what is happening? And they're like, it's all over social media. I'm like, well, Before I respond, let me look into this, right? It was just disgusting how people were responding, how quickly people glammed on, right, to thousands of— and then all of a sudden, it wasn't just the usual, like, oh, this is awful, and they're awful people, and whatever other language people choose to use, is that then there were the additional stories of people then digging things on me and coming back and going like, oh, and she wrote a book about inclusion, and she could care less about diversity.

Mm-hmm.

And then there were employees making up these stories of like, oh, and she fired all of us and she was so cruel. And I was like, whoa, like, who are you? Like, where is this coming from?

What was it like to be bombarded by all of those attacks?

Even as I say this to you, you see my body, my body is just kind of like tensing up again. It was, my heart just was beating super fast, right? I mean, fight or flight, right? Like I just wanted to like flee. It was— my nervous system was just completely shot. I remember just crying a lot those days, being very angry, while also trying to remain somewhat composed because decisions had to be made. For example, you know, hey, Daisy, we need to fire that guy. I was like, no, actually, we should not fire him. He has every legal right to talk about his work conditions, which is— Totally. That's technically what he's doing in a really mean and awful way, but— right? In an irresponsible and really immature way. But he's talking about his work conditions. He has every right to do that. Also, we're not going to make him a martyr, right? Like, this is not about getting him more clicks because it's what he wants, right? So that's not what we're going to do. Then there was the, like, you know, do we have an employee— like, do we have a policy against this? I was like, yes, we do. I wrote it. Right? I was like, we also— it's in our employee handbook. We also have an anti-retaliation policy, right? All of these policies I worked on with our legal team.

It's all in place already. Now we just got to follow the rules.

Our legal team and I were like— would be responding to our leaders like, we can't do anything else other than this, other than trying to appeal to his humanity, right? And so I reached out to his manager. His manager was like, well, what do you want me to do? I can't stop him from pressing. pressing the buttons on the computer. I was like, you're absolutely right. Never in any of these conversations was there an I'm sorry. And in those conversations, what I said to this manager— because I never spoke to the employee purposely because as much as I was trying to stay composed, I knew I was not going to be composed if I talked to him. But as I spoke to his manager, I said, can you do me a favor? Can you let him know That I'm not evil, that I am here, that he could have called me at any moment. He had—he knows all of my information. He could have emailed me, called me, asked me questions about this. I would have gladly spoken to him about this because that's who I've been ever since I've been here, and you know that. And he and he and he nodded. We were talking. He's like, "You're right. You're right." He's like that he could have done that. And can you please remind him? that I'm a mother, that I'm a wife, that I'm a daughter, and that the things that are out there now are not just damaging to me professionally, but personally, I'm really hurt. People are getting into my email. People are writing to me through my computer— sorry, through my website, getting to me. They're getting to me on every social media post.

Wow.

They are— They are attacking me.

They're infiltrated.

I mean, I was like, this is what doxxed means, right? Like, OK, so I'm living this. And all I did was try to do my job to the best of my ability. And all I've ever asked is, if there's a problem, please come. Let's talk. Why didn't that happen? And so he was tired. He was angry, all the things. And he's— but he was— the manager was— somewhat thoughtful, and that he's like, you're right, and I'll talk to him. And then supposedly that conversation happened. But while all of this is happening, I'm also managing my team, who is also reading all of these things and trying to be thoughtful and protective towards me. And I'm like, I'm not where your energy needs to be at right now. Mm-hmm. Your energy needs to be with the employees who need us, right? My husband, meanwhile, who's like my tech guy, He blocked— he did all the blocking on social media. I have no idea what he did. I want to see. Yeah, he did all the blocking on social media. He held me every time because it was kind of like it would be quiet and then it would be all these posts. And you don't want to read these emails, but they're there, right? It's not productive. So you're just like— you're like, okay, well, let's—

But you can imagine what they're saying once you've read enough of them, I'm sure.

Horrid, horrid language. So after a while, I would stop. But then it would be like again and again and again. And so it was tremendous pain, fear. I remember feeling fear, not for my safety. The company immediately sort of like, do you need any safety measures and whatnot? I was like, I live in Bed-Stuy. These are mostly really silly old white dudes, and they're not going to come here because I'm well protected. Don't you worry. But I felt the fear of, are people gonna believe this?

Yeah.

Will this now become my narrative? I have worked so hard, so hard to build a career and a life, and yes, a reputation that's based on my work and my word and trust. And right now, all of that feels very fleeting. And— and— not anything and not true, right? So then there was like, in addition to all of that, I was like, that's not true. There's all this missing information that people don't know. And so all of a sudden, I become the subject of ire. But you don't know me.

No.

You don't know my story. You don't know what I've done. And you have no idea if even these data points that are being shared with you are fully accurate because there's more to it. So there was that fear. You know, I think the fear that I've always had, and I attribute that to kind of being an immigrant, being the child of working-class parents who worked so hard so that I could achieve what I'm achieving, and always kind of feeling like it could go away at any moment. It

was temporary, your success.

Yeah. there's always this sense of, like, this can go away. And, you know, I grew up with— and I talk about this in the book— I grew up with grandparents who survived a brutal dictatorship. And it wasn't until I was really, you know, writing this book that I realized, I was like, that had seeped so deeply into me, that sense that cruelty and inhumanity, that, you know, the sense that systems can crumble.

Yeah.

And, you know, and worlds around you can crumble at any moment. That had been so deeply— It has been so deeply embedded in my soul, if you will, that as successful as I may be, as wonderful and joyful as I really hope my life can be, there's always a part of me that feels like something can happen and I've got to be ready. I'll give you an example. Yeah. During the pandemic, everybody was losing their minds getting toilet paper and whatever. And I remember opening my closet and looking at my husband. I was like, We're good because I always prepare for a crisis. We have lots of cans. We have lots of rice. We have lots of beans. Like, I am constantly—

Start a line hiding in the drawer.

My husband's just like, why do you need all these things? I was like, because you never know. I am always prepared. And so that fear that all of it could crumble and I was leaving this job knowing that I was going to take a sabbatical. I knew that I was already in process of doing that. But I was like, what if nobody ever hires me now? What if— all of these what-ifs. This ruins my reputation.

And

everything.

How, you know, with all that context missing and given your background and this fear of success being temporal and that, you know, there are—

Not even success, like security being temporal. Beautiful. Great distinction.

Yeah. Security, like the most elemental thing that we need to thrive. How did you find the inner strength to stay composed? And what I hear is really showing up with a lot of empathy and acknowledging that hurt people hurt people.

That was it, Ashley. It was a lot of crying, a lot of anger, sometimes yelling, and then creating those moments of pause of like, OK, this is beyond what's happening to me right now. This isn't just about me. This is about the hundreds of employees who still have not received their severance payment and have mortgages and rents and medical bills and—

They're hurting.

Medical operations, all of these things. Like, that still needs to— that still needs to be addressed. It is about the people that are under me, right? And I hate, you know, sort of like the under me piece, but the people who I'm responsible for to make sure that they are putting one foot in front of the other and that they're OK. so that they can be okay for others. That's when it clicked on me. We can't be good to others if we're not good ourselves. And my responsibility, my job was to make sure that I could safeguard my team so that they could then—

Support everyone else. Yes.

Support everybody else. And so that, in many ways, it's what saved me during that time. It's lovely to think about it as empathetic and kind and all that, but it really was also my safety space. It was where I went, where I needed to remind myself, this is who I am, right? All of this is out there, and I can't control it. It is not true. It is harmful. It is all of these things. I can't control this, but this I can control— how I respond and how I treat others. Mm-hmm. That's what grounded me in those moments.

What were those essential qualities about yourself that you had to remind yourself of specifically?

The expansiveness of my kindness. Yeah. Right? That I'm not just kind because I want to be kind. I am kind because that is who I am. It is— central to who I am. And it was recognizing the expansiveness of it as a gift, right? Not as a burden. Because for some of us, sometimes it becomes a burden, but as that gift. I think another one of my go-tos, if you will, during that time is I operate really well in crisis. You know, when the world around me is going bananas, like, I can zero in on What needs to be done, right? Where do I need to be? Again, clearly a part of how I was raised. And I think a little bit of how I'm wired personally.

Right.

And so, in that moment, like, when there's a lot of noise around me, I can usually kind of tune it out and say— I'm like, okay, that's all happening. Again, can't stop it. I was like, but I need to get to point B and to point C and to point D. And then I think the last piece of it is— and I have— and again, sort of like, you know, your gifts are also your burdens in a way.

There's a shadow there.

Yeah. Yeah. There's that— I have this outside sense of responsibility towards others, right? And so, it was not making it about me, but making it about everybody else, right? And so, again, it was my team, the people who were

Yeah, and it sounds like returning to purpose and service and your strengths was incredibly helpful in that moment. And then also on the flip side, that your depth of caring also probably, I'm guessing, was a primary reason for your burnout. And at that stage, how burnt out were you? You use this funny term, like burnt Crispy, which I love. That makes me laugh. Where were you sort of in the trajectory of burnout at that time?

Yeah. I mean, I had nothing left in me. I was burnt crispy. I had been through so many bouts of burnout. And I describe burnout based on research on what burnout really is in the book. And it's those 3 dimensions of excess fatigue, cynicism, and this sense of a loss of professional efficacy, right? Which means, like, I can't get anything right. And that was, like, that was me every day, right? Every day I was tired. I— the cynicism showed up in how I responded to my peers and those around me. Like, why can't, like, just be nice, right? Like, just be kind, just be effective, right? Yeah. Like, in that instead of having those moments of pause and reflection and, right, I would jump to the, Everyone's a mess. Everyone's wrong. And we just figure this out. And then the loss of professional efficacy was ending my days every day going, like, I did nothing today. I fixed nothing. I helped nobody. Nothing I do is right. I can't— whatever. I'm making all these impossible decisions every day, which, to be fair, most of us were throughout the entire pandemic. Yeah. Incurring these moral injuries from decisions that were never right for everyone. And so, but fundamentally, we had to make a decision, you know, having to lay off not just hundreds, but thousands of people and sometimes having to make arbitrary decisions— Right. —in who it was, right? That weighed so heavily on me. And it wasn't just once, right? It was again and again and again. And I was just— I was empty. I was empty. And it's why I was transitioning, right? So it wasn't just that I was burnt out and burnt crispy, is that I was almost out. You were so close. Getting to that place of trying to find that replenishment and where my immune system, everything was already at its lowest. And then I just got hit even harder.

Tell me about that time that you received a call from a senior executive whose daughter had attempted suicide.

It was heartbreaking. Yeah, it was a Friday afternoon. I'll never forget. And it was someone that I knew. We had talked about our families.

You had a daughter of similar age.

Yeah. similar age. And instantly you go into solve mode, right? Yeah. I remember the moment of empathy and, are you okay? And all he wanted to do was figure out what he could. So hard to do on a late Friday afternoon when, you know, you can't access the providers that you need. And instantly I reached out to our benefits lead to make sure that they, you know, he and his family knew all that they would have access to according to our benefits. Our senior HR business partner, I was like, listen, he's going to need a little bit of extra love, right? I started— I did all the things of, here are the people that you need. Here are the phone calls I'm going to make. Here's everything that needs to happen. You're okay. And he's, you know— and then, the minute I turned off the phone because we were on the phone, I was thinking screen, but we were on the phone.

Yeah.

The minute I turned off the phone, I just started crying. I just— it was like these convulsions came over me because I started feeling— I started— I was feeling everything for him. And then I started feeling everything for me as a mother. And kind of there's this thing that I believe happened to me and may not happen to every mother. But there was this expansiveness of motherhood that happened to me when I became a mother. Like, I became everyone's mother, right? Like, I worry about everybody.

A mama bear.

I was like, I want all children to be OK, right? And my daughter's office— is— I'm sorry, my daughter's room is right next to my office. So, it's just a few steps from my office. And I went in, and she was in her room 'cause it was COVID. So, and she was on screen, and I just went and hugged her. And I kissed her, and I told her a version of what we often would tell her during COVID I was like, you know, you can talk to us, you know, if anything's happening. But this was, like, totally unprompted. And I remember her looking at me like, Auger. What's happening, Mom? Like, what's happening? But I remember, like, just— It was like— it was a spring— it was spring. Yes, it was really painful.

How did it change your perspective?

Hmm. I don't know if it changed my perspective, Ashley. It maybe expanded it in terms of the million pain points that we all go through every day. And as I write in the book, this wasn't the first time that I had to deal with an attempted suicide. This was the first time that it was with a child, right? So we had had employees who had attempted suicide. We had had family members, right? Like, these are things in the world of HR, especially during COVID but in the day-to-day experience, especially now with everything that's happening with mental health crisis, right? We're still not healed, right? We're walking wounded. Mm-hmm. These are the things that HR deals with. That was one of the realizations for me. I'm like, even though I'm present and I'm reading all the books and I'm doing all the things to figure out how to be a good parent to my kid, I just don't know what I don't know. Yeah. Because this parent, that was him too, right? That was his family, right? And so, it is all of those experiences that to me, it was necessarily not shifting my experience, but it was— broadening it up to all of our lived experiences and reminding me of what I used to— I've often told my team, but I realized I needed to also be more expansive in my thinking. Just like this hit close to home for me, all of the experiences that we were going through, many of those could hit close to home to my team members.

That's right.

So how do I stay awake to that so that when one of my team members is dealing with something that could be traumatic to them and they're dealing with someone else's trauma, right? How do I treat that differently than the usual, as HR professionals, this is our job, right? Like, that's— it's a little bit more than that. And so, that piece, that woke me up to an element that I hadn't thought of as deeply about.

That sounds Really heart-opening. And then in this role, it sounds like you are constantly needing to show up in practical and tactical ways while also maintaining and being open to the human experience of your employees, no matter what it is, even if it's foreign to you.

All day long.

And having the self-awareness of who you are and what you've been through and what your triggers are and what other people's triggers are is so critical. And you have this quote in the book that I loved. It really stuck out for me. And you say, we spend far more time trying to be understood than trying to understand ourselves in relation to others. So beautiful.

It is. We want to be seen. We want to be heard. Look at me. Look at me. But it's understanding ourselves in relation to those we're engaging with, those who we are managing, those who we are supporting. What shows up for me? For what reasons? How do I want to show up? And for what reasons? It is understanding that. And you did something at the beginning of the session that was really beautiful, which was about centering. Mm-hmm. centering me and through breathwork and, and these beautiful, beautiful reflections. And you and I both kind of joked about how, you know, at different parts of our careers, we each had coaches that would do that. And we'd be like, nah, like, just get me to get me to where I need to get to. It's like, this is such a waste of time.

Before we can get into the actual work, just rolling eyes, wasting money.

Like woo-woo stuff. This doesn't work. Here's what I've learned. That kind of work, right, that kind of deep reflection of understanding ourselves in relation to others, that creates shortcuts to operationalizing and to feeling and relating to people differently. Mm-hmm. And what I mean by that is the operationalizing piece is, you know, we tend to operationalize, to solve for things, to make decisions based on experiences that we've had. And sometimes they have nothing to do with what's really happening in the moment.

That's true.

Because we just jump into, oh, I've seen this playbook before, blah, blah, blah. Here's what I'm going to do. If I spend the time thinking, hey, Ashley, or going through— like, Ashley, what's really happening to you? And then thinking for me, reflecting on, why am I responding to this differently? Like, am I— am I not— do I not like Ashley? Right? Like, is Ashley making me feel inferior? Is Ashley making me feel— a certain kind of way that reminds me of another moment, not about her, but another moment, right? All of those things—

How am I projecting my past onto this situation and person?

It's, it's all of these things that, that we let occupy space in our heads and our hearts. And in the moment, if you're able to, to parse through that, and to separate what's really happening here, you will be a better decision maker, you would be a better problem solver, and you will be a kinder, more thoughtful, more purposeful colleague or leader, right? I love that. And it takes— it's not— it doesn't have to take 10 minutes. It can take 5. It can take 3. But it actually creates a shortcut for efficiency. And in our careers, all we're often hearing about, it's like, we need efficiency, efficiency drivers, and how do we get more out of people? Productivity all the way. Get more, get more, get more. I was like, hmm. You know what? You get more out of people when they actually feel a sense of trust and a sense of clarity and

a

sense of—

Psychological safety.

Worthiness, right? And a sense of safety, right? You get more out of people when you do that, not when you push them to the ground. And that's the kind of work that— and that's the kind of thinking that inspired me to write this book. Because you and I both know workplaces are just systemically screwed up, right? It can be very toxic. Yeah. There's so much wrong in so many of them. And many of us have dedicated our careers to making workplaces work for everyone. And we all know that it's an ongoing battle. But what if, in that battle, we were actually much better equipped emotionally and physically, right? Not just skill-based, but emotionally and physically to actually solve for what needs to solve for and drive the changes that we need to. I believe we could actually get to those changes faster. And that's why I write what I write.

Beautifully said. Yeah, I'm curious to know what hungry ghosts you had to confront personally.

Oh goodness. I have all the hungry ghosts.

Maybe just

one or two. They're so fat around me.

We all have them. And maybe just first describe what a hungry ghost is, just as a concept.

Yes, yes. It's a Buddhist term that I learned from my colleague, fellow chief people— sorry, chief legal counsel at Vice. And I just became obsessed with it when she explained it to me. And she explained it to me in the context of work, right? Work is a hungry ghost. All of the people around you are hungry ghosts, right? They will suck from you, right? It's this Buddhist term of this creature. And if you see images of them, and I've seen it, right, it's like they have like these big fat stomachs, right? And they're just like, right, they're just like navigating around you, right? They are living amongst us, um, waiting to suck, right, the life out of you, um. And, you know, and they, they thrive on your insecurities, right? They thrive on your, you know, your— the overly ambitious person. They thrive on the overly insecure person, and they just like suck everything out. My colleague was talking about it in the context of our colleagues just constantly sucking everything from us, our energy and our time, right? Every day. Like, oh, but I need more from you, Daisy. I need more. I need more. And her advice was like, they will always be here. Let them go, right? Like, just— right? Create— we would say create boundaries. Those are not the words that she used, but that's really what she meant. It was like, hold on to your boundaries, know what's important to you, and don't let the hungry ghosts take up all your time. And for me, the hungry ghosts— my biggest hungry ghost is my sense of not being enough, right? Mm-hmm. Of not— of not being able to— whatever I do is just not enough in terms of who I am as a daughter, as a grandchild, as a wife, as a mother. That was— and that, you know, and again, that comes from my deep-seated traumas as a child, right? I was— you know, I did not grow up with my mother. I grew up with my grandmother. I had teenage parents, a father that lived in another country. I was deeply, deeply loved, deeply, deeply supported, but I grew up with this sense of not being worthy of, you know, of what was even being given to me, and also this sense of, like, I need to prove that I deserve all of this, right? I need to prove that all of this that's being given to me is worthy because I'm not worthy. Otherwise, my life could have been totally different. And as a child, you carry that. And then as an adult, right, it manifested throughout my life. And professionally, it manifested in just doing more all the time, which as women, we tend to do anyway, right? So there's also the gender biases as a Latina, right? So I can't— so think about like all the little— like think about it like baggage. It's just like I just had baggage on top of baggage on top of baggage for months.

You're carrying a really heavy load.

Yes, but the underlying piece of it was the sense of a lack of worthiness, right? That I did not deserve this. And so therefore, I needed to work extra hard to earn it. And that extra hard meant that I took on the extra assignments, that I took on the extra calls, that I took on the extra hours during work, that I just said yes and yes. But it made me angry. Yeah. Resentful. I was so resentful and so cynical about things, right? Sometimes I look at myself and I'm like, God, I was— I became so hard. Yeah. Even as softness is so core to who I am, the hardness was my protective mechanism, right? The emotional armor that I put on every day to go to work and sometimes to live, right? But mostly to go to work. And that hungry ghost, like, it knows exactly where to get me.

Yeah, and that leads me to this thought too, that at least when we have the self-awareness, we then have the autonomy and the agency to co-create something different for ourselves.

Absolutely.

And when you're armed with that, then you realize that you no longer have to be a victim and that there's so many other possibilities leading from that place of, okay, I know that I'm gonna overachieve or I'm gonna overwork here and I'm going to over-caretake. And what part am I playing in the results that I say that I don't want in my life anymore?

Yes. It is. And that's why I wrote the book. Because I— it was, again, it was my healing journey. And when you start writing a book, you have a path that you think you're going to take. The book takes you where it's supposed to go, right? The story takes you where it's supposed to go. And I always knew I wanted the book to be about how do we overcome these moments of deep exhaustion and feeling not just burnt out, but beat up, right? Like, just, you know, like, not like us. I wanted to show that there was another way. What I learned in writing the book is that in that agency, that we can find for ourselves, we can change ourselves, and we can change others. Yeah. And we can change the systems, right? But it has to start with us, right? It is what feels selfish for many of us, especially women, right, of taking care of ourselves. It is the least— it is the most selfless thing that you can do. But it is about decoding these narratives, right? Reshaping these narratives in our minds so that we can be at our best, right? Chapter 7, I think it is, it's called Right Within, right? Thank you, Lauryn Hill. But it is about just getting right within so that you can be right for others, right? And that you can be good and full in your fullness, whatever that is for you.

Fully self-expressed. Yeah.

Yes. Like, your fullest sense of— like, we talk so much about authenticity, right? Like, for me, authenticity is really fundamentally about showing up and the fullest expression of myself, right? That's my— the truest version of myself. Not the one that's been beat up and made to feel less than, or not the one that has hardened and made to feel like I need to be tough around me so that I don't get hurt, right? Not like all of these personas that we take on. No. The truest version of Daisy, right? Who I was meant to be because it's lighter, right? And it is— that's my ikigai, right? That is my purpose in life. That is why I exist and why I'm here. And I need to— I needed to grapple with all of the other systemic pieces around me to get to that. And by the way, it's not a one-and-done thing, right? You reference there's tons of practices in the book. There's a reason why I call them practices and not strategies, right? It's a management book, so you would think I would use the word strategies often. I was like, no, it's about practice. Because on any given day, I revert back to those pieces. Sometimes I let the hungry ghost get the best of me, right? And— but I am in a place now where I have these tools and these practices and these rituals that allow me to come back to myself. that allow me to see what's truly happening around me and how I can respond, not react to it.

I really appreciated those conversational scripts that you included in the book that you're speaking to, because I think that so many people don't have those hard conversations and don't practice candor because they're scared or they don't have the words. And so I thought that was really, really brilliant. I think Brené Brown highlighted that candor is the number one Or the lack of candor is the number one issue that's creating toxic or unconscious workplaces. And that was a few years ago, but I bet it's still true today.

Oh, absolutely. We don't say the things. That's what I used to always tell my team. Say the things. Just say the thing. Just say the thing. What is happening? Sometimes I would use different expressions. I was like, sometimes it would be, I can't solve for what I don't know. So you've got to talk to me because I think I'm pretty smart. I think I'm pretty astute. But I don't know what I don't know. I can't solve for it. But most of the time, what they would hear from me is, you'd be— we've all been in these conversations, and people are just going around what needs to be said. We don't want to hurt people's feelings. So we don't want to say that such and such fumbled that. And now this is what we have to do with it. We don't want to get into any legal concerns. So we don't want to say that this person, you know, stereotyped this person or this person. harm this other person. But yet, we're all talking, and it's nothing. And it's not only just a waste of time and energy, but we're not getting to the solution. So say the thing. This is— Clear as day. Just say what is happening. Because that is what helps us truly build good workplaces instead of leaving a conversation feeling even more beat up because—

Or misunderstood.

How many times have we left conversations and you're like, Yeah, or you have like the conversation after the conversation after the conversation. And sometimes, someone would have those like third-level conversations with me and I'd get so angry. I'm like, why didn't you say it? Why didn't we— like, we could have solved it then. No, Daisy, no, this will never get solved. It's awful. I was like, we don't know now because we didn't have the conversation. Right. So, to fix the things, we have to name them. And naming requires skill. Right? So, that's why I share scripts in the book because I write scripts for myself. Me too. I write tons. I write scripts for everybody because that's what HR people do. It's like you kind of laugh sometimes. It's like people don't know how to communicate. But we do in charged moments. In charged moments, I know words escape me, right? I don't know what to say. I always joke like the 7th version of my script is way better than what I said the first time, right? Right? So, we have to— We have to harness that, right? We have to just get better at it. And so, I wanted to write scripts, A, to remind us that we need to be intentional with our words, that we need to be thoughtful in how we communicate. I wanted it to be across different power levels, right? So, it's the manager, here's your script, but also the individual contributor, here's your script, right? Because you also should be able to talk to your leader.

We all have to talk.

You should be able to engage with them, right? Like, we all have to do it. Here's some scripts. You do not have to say them verbatim. But they are hopefully a starting point so that you can, too, write 2 and 3 versions of it until you feel this is the right version of what I want to say.

Yeah. And then you can attend to what's happening for you when it's a whisper before it becomes a scream.

Yes. That's the name of my— one of my chapters in Inclusion Revolution. Listen to this— to the whispers, the screams, and everything in between.

I'm curious, now that you've been through burnout, you took a radical sabbatical.

Yes.

What does offering grace look like to you now?

And I talk about offering grace both to yourself and to others. And I think that we need to recognize the distinction because I know for me, it would often be easier to offer grace to somebody else than to start with me. Right? To be kind to me, to say, Daisy, you're safe. You are okay. You do not need to overwork to be respected. You do not need to overcontrol to be valued.

Mm-hmm.

You do not need to shrink yourself so that others will be okay with you, right? It is— it is that, to me, offering myself grace is deconstructing these narratives that would— would reduce me to versions of myself that that should not exist, quite frankly. And so that's that grace. The other version of grace is the grace that we give on to others, right? It's our generosity. It's our— it is gratitude. It is appreciation. It is recognition, right? Sometimes grace is simply seeing someone, right? Making sure that they feel seen.

Yes.

And that they are there, right? That they matter. in this world to you and to others. That is offering grace. Offering grace sometimes is forgiveness. And in writing this book, I had to forgive myself a lot and forgive those around me, those who were some subjects of some of my stories, right? I had to forgive— I have to forgive them and forgive myself and forgive who we were in that moment.

Yeah.

Right? Because sometimes who you are in a moment, it's not really who you are. Always. But we have to recognize, it was like, this is who we were in that moment. Okay. And now we can move on. Right? What does that look like? And so that's what grace to me is. It's gratitude, generosity, forgiveness, and recognition.

Beautiful. On every episode, we ask our guests to share one strategy, practice, tool, resource, quote, book, or piece of advice that has served you. And this book is chock-full of them. I really just want to shout out to Arthur Brooks's Failure Journal. I think that is brilliant. So anyone listening who's afraid of failing or making mistakes, definitely Google that. Or the psychological sigh. Yes, I love that

one. I love them all.

Yeah, they're all really brilliant. But what would you recommend to someone who may be struggling with burnout in this moment and who is on the precipice of change or interested in transforming?

Yeah. The one— my first piece, my go-to piece is to deepen your self-awareness. And the question that I ask myself— I ask a lot of questions throughout the book because that's, A, I'm just this naturally curious person since I was little. I was always asking the questions that people are like, why does she ask so many questions? But I do believe that it's not only important to ask questions, but I think we have to ask better questions. Because we ask a lot of questions sometimes, and they just don't really get us the answer that we're going for. I was like, because, you know, we went around it. We didn't really ask the direct question. The direct question that I ask myself often is, what is really happening here? What is really happening here? What is really happening? Yeah, it's like, is it, is it that that person offended you? Because you are an awful person, or is it that they're having a bad day? Is it that that person let you down because they're irresponsible, or is it that they've got too much on their plate and they just couldn't finish that last task that day, right? It is asking what is really happening because as human beings, right, our brains are constantly working, right? 11,000— what was— I remember when we were talking— Google about inclusion, about blind spots. And we talk about— it was like 11 million data bytes that your brain is going through every minute or something like that. I probably messed up that number, but it's a lot.

It's a lot.

But, you know, our brains are— and the way that they function is by making connections, right? So they're constantly making these connections of things that may not be true. It's kind of like ChatGPT, right? There's a reason why ChatGPT isn't perfect, right? Because ChatGPT is making a whole lot of connections And I love asking it questions and going like, nah, that's not right. Right? I was like, because you didn't follow that sequence. You followed that sequentially. You did not include this. Right? So— It's getting better now. Our brains operate— it is. Yeah. Yeah.

More and more of the time, yes.

We're helping make it better. But it is that every day, it is— there are things happening around us. And our brain is naturally— Firing. Running through all these shortcuts and getting you to this is what it is. And it is, but we have every power to stop and say, no, is it really that? And you know how you find out? By asking, right? By getting situational awareness, right? It's by, you know, and sometimes the asking isn't with that person, but sometimes it's directly going, hey, listen, like, it's not like you to, you know, to be late on these assignments. And I just want to, you know, and I'm like, and I'm Like, I was getting really angry, but I like, I had to pause and just think something else could be here going on here. I was like, like, can you, like, do you want to talk? Is there something that I can help you with? And I love that. It's like, how do you get there?

Right. Or when you say that, that phrase that I go to all the time, which is the story that I make up about what just happened is because it creates the buffer and the acknowledgement that your version of the truth is not the only truth. We experience things from totally different standpoints. And I find that—

And that's—

go ahead.

Sorry to interrupt you. But I was like, that's not to say— that's not to say that we shouldn't trust our guts, right? Because I was saying that the other day.

It just may not be shared.

Right, exactly. And it may not— it may not be exactly what's happening in that moment, right? You're like, it's still important to get a sense of your gut. Because if your gut's telling you that something's really wonky and weird, or even dangerous, it's like, You need to listen to it. Yes. But you don't just listen to the gut, right? You— and I love data, right? You get other data points, right? And you figure out data points that matter, right? Data points that help inform that. And then— and you don't— and this doesn't mean, like, hours of collecting data. It's like, it's enough for a couple of minutes to go, oh, I really am in danger right now. And so I should get myself out of the situation. Or what I— like, the anxiety that I'm feeling, the fear that I'm feeling, is in response to something external that's not a threat, that's not dangerous, right? It thinks there's a threat out here, but this isn't the threat. This isn't damaging to me. It's just somebody else having a bad day or somebody making a mistake or somebody kind of like, you know, just like getting cranky and angry about something that happened to them in the meeting before this meeting. And— but they didn't get to take it out on them, so they're going to take it out on me, right? It's a million and one things that can happen to us. And if we become more mindful of those, imagine what it looks like, not just for those of us who are trying to respond differently, but for those who are acting in harmful ways, right? If we think about it that way, right? When I go to a meeting, if I know— I used to have a boss that we would all be prepared. We were like, if she had a bad meeting before our meeting, like, everything's going to be squashed in this meeting. And we're going to be destroyed.

Yeah.

Imagine if that leader would have a 5-minute breathwork exercise in between that bad meeting to let that go, imagine how much more differently that experience could be, not just for her, but for the rest of her team.

Or could just acknowledge that that's her pattern and acknowledge it at the front of the meeting. Just like, I'm—

Hey, guys. I'm in a crabby mood right now. If you need some— if you need the best version of me right now, I'm not going to be able to give it to you. Should we reschedule or should we look at this? Right? That kind of clarity and honesty does not make us these vulnerable, weak leaders that most people think. It actually makes us far more effective, efficient, and thoughtful leaders.

That's a beautiful place to wrap. How can our listeners stay connected with you or follow you?

Oh, goodness. Well, LinkedIn is my community. So I'm Daisy Auger-Domínguez on LinkedIn. Instagram, Daisy AD. And also my website, daisyauger-dominguez.com. I write tons. I speak publicly everywhere I can. And I'm always happy to talk about work and how to make it better.

Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today. I really appreciate you and this book. Thank you, Ashley. And I highly recommend that everyone listening go grab your own copy of Burnout to Lit Up.