S1E2 Corey-osity Unleashed, with Kelly Swingler

Welcome to Curiosity Unleashed, where we turn bold ideas into action and help businesses and leaders step it up.

We're your hosts, Deborah and Ken, obsessed with fresh takes, bold moves, and shaking up the way we lead and work.

Alongside our amazing guests, we'll dive into the good, the bad, and in the actual what the hell of the workplace. Served with a side of sarcasm and a splash of wisdom.

Oh, and fair warning, this is an adult podcast. Expect swearing like Ken just did, brutal honesty, and the occasional dramatic reenactment of some of the most epic workplace fails we've ever seen or done.

So grab your drink, get comfy, and let's unleash some curiosity. Welcome to today's episode. We're honored to have Kelly Swingler, the renowned burntologist. Did I say that right?

You did.

Kelly's. Kelly's mission is to eradicate burnout from the modern workplace. Drawing from her personal experiences and extensive expertise, she became the UK's youngest HR director at 30 and pioneered the world's first well being program for HR professionals. As a global educator, Coach, author and TEDx speaker, Kelly has collaborated with esteemed organizations like Waitrose, John Lewis and Genesis Housing. Her insights have been featured in the Times, the Guardian, BBC, and Sky. Through her Burnout Academy, she offers specialized training programs including the Master Practitioner Burnout Coach accreditation, empowering leaders worldwide to lead without sacrificing their well being. Let's dive into her journey and discover how we can all combat burnout. First off, welcome. Kelly, how are you?

Thank you. I'm very good. I always, I always think I sound fabulous in intros. It's like, look at me, Gary.

What do you, what do you mean you sound fabulous? I mean, come on.

You know, I don't think you kind of realize it until you get introduced though, do you? So, yeah, I really good. Thank you. Thank you very much for inviting me. I'm really looking forward to chatting with you both.

Oh, what a pleasure. What a pleasure. Kelly, can you tell us a little bit about your history and what drives you on this journey?

Yeah. How long have we got? Right. This could, this could take an hour in itself. But yeah, so I, I worked, I was in HR for, for quite a long time. 2002. Well, I started, I joined kind of HR in 98, 2002. I really kind of started to focus on kind of individual individualism in the workplace and how we could stop this kind of one size fits all approach for lots of our people. 2008 scrapped annual appraisals. Still, my favorite bit of feedback was that I was the best thing to come out of HR since the Netflix culture deck. So for anybody that knows what the Netflix culture deck is, that was literally like, that still is for me, like the best bit of feedback that I could have ever been given. Enough. I've had some amazing conversations. I think, Deborah, you have too. I've had some amazing conversations over the years with, with Patty McCord. And yes, I was, I was doing some really, really great stuff in HR. And then in January 2013, I started to just experience this kind of really like crippling, excruciating pain. I couldn't, I couldn't stand, I couldn't walk, couldn't really function, but still carried on. All right, I carried on working, carried on pushing, carried on going. I was leading quite a big project for my team at the time and I knew based on the organization that I was in, and it was a toxic organization. But I think for, for many of us that work in hr, we think we can, we can go into these toxic organizations, right, and turn them around. So I was absolutely convinced that I could turn it, still turn it around, but my body was telling me differently. And so I was leading this program. Some of my colleagues were like, kelly, you've got to go home. I was like, no chance.

Right?

Because I know if I'm not here, it's just not going to get run in the right way. Right. The morals and ethics are going to go out of the window. If it's, this is going to be done properly, I, I need to be doing it. And so I had seven months of really just kind of like I was passing out again. If anybody, if anybody knows this Liverpool street station in London, if you go from kind of street level down to the, down to kind of the, the platform level, there's a really, really huge escalator. And one of my passing out tricks was literally falling from the top of the escalator at Liverpool street station down to the bottom. Went straight back to the office at Edgware Road. Got in the tube, went straight back to the office at Edgware Road. I was passing out on the tube, I was passing out on trains. I was passing out crossing the road because of the pain that I was, I was experiencing, but still never took a day off. And I now know the neuroscience behind why I didn't take a day off. But yeah, just, I just carried on going. And in the July, I had to have two operations in 48 hours. So two different health conditions have been created. Two different hospitals, two different consultants, two anesthetics two general anesthetics in 48 hours. And after those operations I did take some time out, but it was my sons really that had said to me like, we don't want you to go back to work, mum. We, we think your job is killing you. And that really caused me to kind of start to think about things differently and look at things differently. I did go back to work, but I did recognize very, very quickly in this toxic organization that I was definitely kind of square peg, round hole and that I just didn't fit. Started to look for other jobs, couldn't see anything. Like all of the jobs look the same, right? All of the HRD level jobs, if you wanted your kind of seat at the table, all of the jobs looked the same. And I just thought, I don't want to go, I don't want to go from one like this role into just another role that's, that's going to be exactly the same. And I was completing at the time my exec coaching qualification. And I heard myself say for the first time that I wanted to start my own business. So I did. And I started this with a brilliant HR consultancy, right? I wanted to do the stuff that I'd been kind of doing internally, the stuff that I've been headhunted into this organization for scrapping appraisals, doing things differently, ripping up rule books, burning books, doing kind of all, all of that really brilliant stuff that I had been doing in my career. And then I received a phone call that really just kind of changed everything for me and the direction that I was taking, everything. So I received a phone call to say that my replacement, the replacement HRD that had gone into this organization had died in her, in her room on her own whilst she was away on a leadership residential. And then I received a phone call two days later from, from another colleague that I'd worked with within that organization to tell me that I hadn't been the first HRD to become ill in that organization. I'd actually become the fourth. And I think for lots of us, when we're, when we're kind of in, in these internal roles and at a senior level, right? If people leave with kind of comp agreements or under a bit of a cloud, I, I kind of call this now like the Harry Potter phenomenon in that it's a bit like Voldemort, right? Once you, the organization with a, with a bit of an agreement like we must never mention your name again, right? We must never say why you left. We must never say that you existed in the first place, we, it's just like we just never, we're never allowed to talk about you again. And so some of the previous hrds I could definitely see that there had been this kind of high levels of turnover, but I think the assumption had been that maybe they just weren't very good at their jobs. And so to receive this phone call to say that I'd kind of become the force to become really, really ill as, as a result of this organization, my replacement had, had then died. And I remember I reached out to the CIPD to say like what, what are you doing to, to help HR professionals? And their response was contact your eap. So your, your employee assistance provider, just contact them. I was like, you, I don't think you understand what I'm saying to you. What are you doing to support us in, in HR in our senior roles? Right. And they were like, well, nothing. And so I just like not good enough. Right. If you're just going to be saying like eap, what are you doing to support us? And so that was kind of, I suppose the, the start of this kind of crazy journey then that I've been on for, for nearly a decade now in that I just thought it wasn't, it wasn't good enough. Yeah, I began to really kind of unpick and research. So I'd done my exec coaching qualification. I had, you know, my kind of psychology degree. I started to, you know, I was doing my masters in, in organizational change and development and I just wanted to kind of understand as, as much as I could. So I, I began to kind of understand. I started studying kind of hypnotherapy and psychotherapy. I started studying neuroscience. I started to understand kind of energy in the central nervous system and the vagus nerve and understanding kind of from an anatomy and physiology perspective kind of what was going on within our bodies and our brains and our minds. When we get to that point of, of being stressed or high levels of stress, what stops us being able to stop as we get closer to burnout created the world's first mental wellbeing for HR program, which I rolled out to some huge organizations globally, but realized then that, you know, this thing called burnout was, was growing even more and I just thought like, I want to be able to stop that. So for, I suppose five years of that, I was specifically working with HR to stop burnout rising within hr. But really over the kind of last five years I've, I've been working with and training and teaching people from, from all sorts of different sectors all the way around the world. I've, I've trained doctors, I've trained therapists, I've trained counselors, I've trained leaders, coaches, HR professionals and you know, I speak on, on kind of stages and you know, podcast platforms, webinars, you know, all sorts of stuff. Now, really just all around the world about burnout, what we need to do about it, why we are understanding it, why it's being underestimated. And really this is, you know, this is, this is kind of what gets me out of bed in the morning. So that's, that's, that's what I do. This is my absolute passion. This is what I'm here for. And I think perhaps somewhat ironically, when I first joined HR in kind of 98, the reason that I just initially I'd wanted to go into law. I did two, lots of work experience at two different legal firms and was just like the chaos and clutter and mess. I was just like, not, I can't, I can't, I will not cope in this, in this environment. So kind of, what, what would I, what would I do instead? And, and I remember my mum had, my mum was kind of CIPD qualified and I remember she used to get his People Management magazine and these kind of HR director jobs. I thought maybe there, maybe there is something there. But I think for me, I suppose it was always that kind of driving force, like I wanted to stop what I kind of call this Monday to Friday dying that so many of us go through, right, where we're literally just kind of living, like, literally just going through the motions Monday to Friday. But I was hearing either from my parents or from friends or from people at the pub or people next to me in the hairdresser's chair, it just like people were literally kind of dying Monday to Friday, right? They hated their jobs, they hated their bosses, they hated their pay, they hated all of this stuff. And I just thought I wanted, like, I want to stop this Monday to Friday dying. And so I think, you know, perhaps ironically, you know, kind of 15 years later, I've, I've almost died in, in my kind of Monday to Friday, 9 to 5. Well, it wasn't a 9 to 5. I don't know anybody that does that does a 9 to 5. But I think, you know, if I kind of go back to that initial, I suppose, mission, if you like, I didn't necessarily know it was that at kind of 18 years old, but I think looking at it now, like I, I'm, I am still stopping the Monday to Friday dying. I'm just doing it from a completely different angle and with a very different lens, and that's my hope.

Kelly. Kelly, I'm going to jump in here because I know we've got a bunch of other questions that we want to be able to get to.

Yeah.

First off, I'm so sorry you had that set of experiences. You know me, I like a good, snarky comment, but hearing what you went through with those companies, I just. There is no snark left. It's just, how can these people keep on doing what they're doing? With that in mind, let's start from the beginning. Deb, why don't you take this question?

Sure, sure. I guess before that, just. You can't listen to Kelly's story and not say anything. As you were talking about it, I was thinking about my experience as well. And you interviewed me once on your podcast about burnout, and my burnout was from a very different reason. Mine was from a bad boss. Yours was from a toxic workforce. But I think what's really interesting is the similarity and what saved both of us and is our children. I hadn't realized that part of your story before, that your boys were what made you leave. And I think it's really important. We'll talk more about it later. Just listening to the voices around you, I mean, I just think, oh, my gosh, if your boys hadn't been there, you're. The end of the story would have been very different.

Yeah, absolutely. It would have.

Yes. Amazing. And we are very glad that you're here. I think what I love about you, and I've seen your evolution, because when you first started out, I was right alongside you doing, you know, rebel approach to hr. And I love that what you do is you don't just take a problem. You just put your rebel cape on and you just go out and you're changing the world, and that's exactly what you're doing. So anybody who's listening, I really would encourage you to just, you know, listen to how Kelly approaches this in a very different way, which is a good segue into my question, because, you know, people use the word burnout all the time. Oh, that person's burned out. Yeah. I'm going through burnout, and it's almost like a badge of honor. Can you maybe just talk a little bit about, you know, what does this word really, really mean? How can we start from the beginning with the idea of burnout?

Yeah, sure. So I think if we were to kind of take burnout so if you look at the World Health Organization organization definition that tells us that was created in 2019, that will tell us that kind of burnout is this workplace phenomenon. So it is as a result of chronic stress that has been unmanaged. And what we mean by chronic stress really is stress that has been really, really high levels of stress that have been know for a really long period of time. But again, I, I, I don't think the World Health Organization definition describes it enough. I don't think it really talks to us about what it is. So I kind of talk about it as, you know, if you had a stress scale, right, so we've got a kind of scale, 0 at one end and 10 at the other. We all need some stress. So we don't want to be at kind of 0, 1 or maybe even 2 on, on that scale. We don't want to be in the chronic straight state necessarily, which is kind of 9 and 10 on that scale. But really, burnout is what happens. It's the kind of period when you've fallen off that stress scale, so you have been operating at that kind of 9 or 10 level probably for a really, really long time and then you kind of like fall off the edge of that scale. Burnout is really the kind of debilitating, can't move, can't function, can't think period that happens when you have been operating at that point of stress for a really long time. I do think it has, it is being underplayed. I think lots of, lots of people see it just as a bit of a buzzword now. You know, oh, I'm burnt out. Which it's not. And it's so much more than just being tired, just needing a day off, just needing a holiday. It really is. You become like addicted to work. You be like, work is your everything. You become fully, fully addicted to work. You can't switch off. You might be hiding work from family or friends. You might be saying, you know, you go into the shop just so you can check your emails, you might be taking your phone to your bathroom with you, you might be doing everything. But you are quite literally addicted to work. It's all you can think about from the minute you wake up to the minute you go to bed. And it doesn't feel safe for you to be able to stop. It's not just like, I've got work to do. It fundamentally does not feel safe for you to stop. And I don't use the word addiction lightly, but it, it is an addiction. If we were talking about Addiction of any other sort, it's that, that can, that can cause us to get to that point. But at the same time we are withdrawing from life. So all of the things that we would normally do to reset us, recharge us, help us balance and all those things, we withdraw from that at the same time as having this being addicted by, you know, to work, being fueled by this addiction to work. And so yes, if we, if we look at it as a scale, it's kind of burnout is the thing that happens when we fall off the end of that stress scale.

And if you think about it, you know, I'm thinking to when I started out in my career, a lot of things that you describe, we didn't have tools like that. So I think that, you know, the workplace in general and technology and the pace of work has all absolutely contributed to why it's such a rise. Because, you know, we don't necessarily know how to deal with all of these things. I'm sure you've seen this yourself in working with people.

Yeah, a lot. And you know, the world of work has changed, right? Whether whether we kind of want to, want to accept that or not, the world of work has changed hugely. And actually when I did start in 98, you know, we did have work hours. If you wanted to work extra hours, you stayed in the office or in the workplace to of do that. Many of us now are carrying work around in our pockets all of the time. But we are also, you know, I do think there is this expectation and I had a conversation with somebody about this a few weeks ago. Right. Ordinarily when we, when we used to just kind of, I'm just going to say just go to work, I would rock up to deliver, you know, with my skills and experience and in return my organization would pay me. Right. So I was literally, you know, I would be paid in exchange for my, for my skills and, and, or for my time. And I, you know, I had part time jobs from kind of the age of 12. But then we start, you know, we didn't just want people to show up and do the job, get paid and go home, right. We then wanted people to be engaged at work and we wanted people to be happy at work. And you know, if you weren't engaged, you know, if you weren't putting in the extra, then we just kind of thought you weren't really engaged. So. And you know, we know loads of people start talking about engagement and the difference that that makes to productivity and performance and profit and, and all that sort of stuff. So we said we want people to be more engaged, we want people doing more hours. We want people to be giving more and showing more. We want all this effort. But actually then what, what are leaders and organizations? What, what, what are they giving us back in return? And actually what a lot of them are giving us, you know, kind of free, free Friday and yoga classes, you know, maybe, maybe a bit of a meditation app. But that's not enough to be stopping any of this stuff. So employers are wanting more and more and more. They're wanting to make more profit, they're wanting people to be more productive. So they're pushing people harder and expecting more from people. We then think that unless we're giving everything right, literally everything, then surely we, we won't be successful. We can't be successful because actually success looks like stress and burnout and exhaustion and the badge of honor and, and all of those sorts of things. And actually employers really want people that are pushing harder, getting more stressed and reaching burnout because they're getting more done in return. So I think we have to recognize that that is what happening in a huge amount of organizations that's fueling burnout, that's pushing people to breaking point and you know, many, many more organizations now we've, we, again, we've seen it over the last couple of months, right? They're cutting back on a lot of the people focused stuff. They're cutting back on a lot of budgets. They're expecting their people to just keep on giving and giving and giving and then saying, well, burnout isn't really a thing, doesn't really exist. And you know, people just need to kind of pull themselves together. And that's just, that's, that's not going to stop what I, what I can see as, as, you know, it is, it is an endemic and it is part of a, a deep rooted issue that many of us, you know, we, we can't afford to ignore it. It's killing people.

Yeah. And I think, and Ken, I'll hand the next question to you in a second, but I think what you said is really powerful in that organizations need to step up and take responsibility for it because as you say, they are contributing factors. It's not like these employees doing it to themselves. Organizations are doing it. And I can also just picture a little cartoon. You said that we take work with us in our pocket. We take burnout in our pocket as well. So, yeah, burnout comes with us everywhere. So anyway, Ken, sorry.

Yeah.

The next question. Yeah.

Kelly, as you, as you Were talking about burnout and not being able to stop and not being able to think about anything and not being able to give yourself time off. Deb, I, I just want to ask you the question. Did that ring any bells for you? I'm just asking.

What are you trying to say?

Yeah, moving on.

But as Kelly said, there's the levels, the 1 to 10, right. It's when it gets to the critical point. So.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so now, now that we've got a really good working definition of what burnout is and isn't, how do, how do individuals spot it in themselves? How do they see this coming? Because it kind of creeps up on us, doesn't it? And, and, and, and the follow up question to that one is what, what can leaders do to support their employees to not fall into that trap?

Yeah, I mean there's, there's so much for this again, so a lot of us will not spot it in ourselves until it's kind of too late. And we, and we say it creeps up. Some of the, you know, some of the signs, some of the symptoms will have been, will have been experiencing them for years. Right. Burnout can take years until it kind of reaches that, that really kind of peak point. And some of the things that we might be experiencing, you know, from a, from a personal perspective could be we might be experiencing more headaches, we might be experiencing more lethargy, we might be becoming more kind of short tempered with people. We might start to experience brain fog. We might be, you know, again, that kind of feeling of it's not safe for me to switch off. We might be developing things like digestive palpitations, heart palpitations, allergies to food. We might start to become more anxious. So we've got all of those signs. But, but, and I, I always caveat that caveat with this. Every single one of those symptoms could also be a sign of something that is nothing to do with burnout. And what I always say to people is, every single one of us know our normal, you know, it might be maybe once a month I get a headache, but actually that, and that might become my normal. Whereas actually if I'm starting to get headaches on a daily basis, if I'm starting to get more cranky on a daily basis, then, then that's not my normal. And, and I think for every single one of us, we know what our normal is in terms of what's going on within our body, whether that's changes cyclically, you know, you know, monthly, weekly, annually, Seasonally, we will all roughly know, you know, what, what our normal is within that. So if there is anything that you recognize as not being your normal, ideally that's the point that you want to start to make some changes to stop it becoming, you know, full blown burnout in the first place. But I do think what we need to be spotting, what leaders need to be spotting, what we need to be spotting in ourselves and you know, for all of our colleagues, again, is really like, you know, like, like we've just touched on it, is that it is not safe for me to stop. If we recognize that people are pushing even harder, they're working even harder, they're working even longer. Again, many, there are still many organizations, many leaders that are like, oh, you know, Deborah and Ken are really brilliant. You know, they're doing, you know, 80 hours this week and, and I'm really proud of them and I'm really pleased with that. Right. So again, typically we reward that behavior, but we need to be looking actually, why are Ken and Deborah now working 50 hours, 60 hours, 70 hours, 80 hours, right? What, what do we need to have in place? And, and we need leaders that are again, are not expecting people to just be working 80 hours a week as the norm. You know, if you're on a 40 hour contract, you're working at a 40 hour week, you, you know, half your salary, right. If you, if we do it from a kind of hourly rate, you are halving your salary every time you double your hours, you are giving your employer a, an extra person for free if you are doubling your hours on a weekly basis. Right? That's, that's what we need to consider. We need to be recognizing when people are pushing too hard. We need to be asking why people are pushing too hard, what is happening, what is changing. But we also, so we need leaders and we'll, we'll have, you know, kind of time to, time to talk day and all that sort of stuff. But we need leaders, not just that, talking to people that, but that are actively listening to what is it that I am hearing and then acting on it. So if I see that you are pushing a lot and you're telling me that you need extra resource, you need extra support, you tell me that you're struggling, you tell me that you're getting tired. I need to pay attention to that, that, right. I need to listen and I need to be asking you what do you need and then delivering on that. So one of the types of burnout, There are actually three different types of burnout, but One of them is what we call kind of moral injury. And this is where if you're, you know, your kind of values, your morals, your ethics are going completely against what's happening within the organization. And, and that moral injury again can cause us to, to just keep pushing. Right. Because we want to create the change, we can see how things could happen. And we've just stop expecting our people to be giving almost like their lives. Right. We've got to stop expecting people to give us their health in return for their paycheck. Whereas as I said initially it used to be you give us your skills and your time and we, you know, we, we give you money in return. The expectation I think at the moment is that people will jeopardize their health, will jeopardize their, their well being for their job. And that's what, that's where we need to, where we need to change it. But yeah, the biggest signs again, as I said, will be that addiction and withdrawal, so withdrawing from life, so hobbies, family, friends, teams, all of the stuff that we would do to kind of ordinarily light us up at the same time as being addicted to work. But anything that is not your normal, that's where you need to start to make the changes as early on as possible. Because if we can prevent burnout. Right. Prevention is absolutely kind of better. Better than cure.

So one of the interesting things in your personal story you were talking about the company was a toxic company. You had gone in there to, you were going to change the world and make it a better place, whatever, and it just didn't turn out that way, is two questions. Is this the you don't feel safe taking time off, is that similar to psychological safety being in the workplace? And then the second question is if you spot that and you come to the realization that you're not going to be able to change the company, is there any way to stay safe in a company that brags about how hard everybody's working, that rewards 80 hour weeks and doesn't consider people?

Yeah. So I think if you cannot leave the organization again. I hear this from people all the time. I talk about boundaries, I talk about making change, I talk about speaking up, saying that you don't feel safe saying what you need. And I get pushback from lots of oil. You can't do that in my organization. It's not safe to. You can't speak up about that in my organization. And actually if you can't speak up about it, I think the question is, is this a place that you want to stay anyway. And we need to acknowledge, particularly as we're seeing at the moment, right, the job market currently is a tough place to be. Not everybody can afford to leave a job without having something else to go to. Some people are applying for tens, if not hundreds of jobs and not even getting any kind of response. So we do need to acknowledge that not everybody is in a position either mentally, emotionally, physically or financially to be able to quit these toxic workplaces to, to, you know, to take care of themselves. In some cases, that can cause even more stress and angst and worry. Again, what I would say to people is ultimately there will be a choice. If you don't choose to make a change now, you will be forced to make that change later. And again, I don't say that light hearted. We've all got, we all need to pay our bills, we all need to keep our roofs over our head. But so if you need to stay within that organization, short term, medium term, long term, depending on what that looks like, like you need to be putting those, those boundaries in place, putting those barriers in place. These are my working hours. This is what I would do to protect my mental well being. This is what I would do to protect my emotional well being. This is what I would do to protect my psychological and my physical well being. Right. That's where a lot of the, the onus really is on you. We can't just keep saying, well, my manager won't let, well, you need to be making the change. Right. You really do have to be driving. That does take courage and that does take confidence and that can take a lot of energy. But again, the, the consequences of not doing that are, you know, in many cases very, very serious. And again, not just life changing, but life threatening. And so your point about psychological safety. Yes. If I do not feel safe again, you know, if you two are my bosses and I do not feel safe saying to you, I'm, I'm feeling overwhelmed at the moment because actually I might worry that I'll be, you know, I'll be kicked out if I say I'm not struggling. We'll get somebody in that, you know, handle it, Kelly. And if you can't handle the workload, we'll get somebody in that can. If the fear is genuinely that by asking for help or saying that I'm struggling, I will be exited from that organization. That is not a psychologically safe organization. That's not a mentally, emotionally, psychologically physical safe place to, to be in. And again, I, you know, from, from my own experience, toxic Workplaces can look very, very different for, for many different people. I can say the organization that I was in was the most, the one that contributed to my burnout was the most toxic organization that I have ever worked in in my entire career. Some of my team still work within that organization because they thought it was the absolute best place in the world. And again, I think a lot of that, I was protecting them and, and shouldering a lot of that for them. So sometimes, you know, I can experience a toxic workplace and everybody else can think it's, it's the best place in the world. And so I think we've, we've got to kind of look at, look at that as well, because when some people are speaking up and they do find the courage to be able to say, I need it, and everybody worse, no, that's like, that's not my experience. So again, then we're brushing off what it looks like for that person. And we, we can't do that. We have to say, you know, Deborah, if you come say, this is how I'm feeling, that's how you're feeling. It's not for me to say, well, you're wrong or you're, you know, you're mistaken. It's not like that here. I need to listen to what you're saying because every single one of us will experience a very, very different working environment. We'll all have, we've all got different lives outside of work that will impact us in different ways. Our own energy levels, our own health. So, yeah, psychological safety is what is one for all of us. And if we cannot leave those organizations, then we need to find a way to, to keep ourselves well in those organizations. And a lot of that will come from hours timeout, taking care of ourselves outside of work.

Sure.

I was just going to say that, you know, in a lot of the work that we do with leadership, we talk about the idea that a lot of times our leaders are unintentionally getting it wrong. So, like in your scenario, absolutely 100% toxic. But I do think that in some situation, and it's happened to me, some of it was, I could have done something in hindsight, but I didn't have necessarily the, the courage. And I was going through a hard time, which made it even harder for Duke, you know, to do for it. So I think to some extent we need to take some ownerships and to your point, speak up. We can't assume that our bosses are going to know what we're going through because sometimes we're hiding it from them, we're hiding it from our families, we're hiding it from our bosses. So to some extent, I think that we need to take responsibility. But also, I love your phrase about know you're normal. I think as a leader, and it sort of leads into my next question about leadership. I think as leaders, we need to know what normal is so that if our employees are hiding it from us because they're in a bad space, we can then step up and say, this is your normal. I don't know your thoughts on that. You know, what is the role of a leader to know the normal and to take some responsibility when it comes to supporting this whole burnout of our people? Yeah.

I mean, again, if we've got emotionally intelligent leaders that are focused, that are focused and passionate about their people, Right. They will, they will be able to spot and see when somebody is not operating at their normal. I think that's, that's kind of a given, right, for a great leader. If you know your people, you would know either their energy's off or they're doing more, something's changed, and then they'll have a conversation with it. And like we said, they're into, you know, they're not maybe necessarily intentionally doing it this way. And I don't necessarily think that either. I, I still like to think that nobody wakes up in the morning and says, you know what? I'm going to be a really awful boss today. Right. I'm going to be the worst possible leader I can be. I genuinely don't believe that's happening. But again, I think if we look at what's going on within organizations, within leaders, if we look at everything that's been happening globally over the last five, six years, I genuinely believe that a lot of toxicity that's being created in organizations and a lot of the rising burnout that's being created as a result of toxicity in organizations is because leaders are themselves in that chronic stress state and they are on the brink of burnout. They maybe have not had role models again, to be able to kind of talk about any of this stuff. And that's where it starts to filter through. So I think we've got a lot of leaders experiencing chronic stress on the brink of burnout themselves that is filtering through into organizations. And that's how we're almost right. Creating the ripples of burnout and chronic stress, rather than the opposite, which would be, you know, kind of creating the ripples of, you know, great cultures and, and, and well being, you know, workplace well being. Well Being for individuals, being, well, as individuals in, in organizations. So I, I think we've, we've kind of got a lot of leaders that aren't recognizing it in themselves. And, and again, I think a lot of those leaders are not recognizing it in themselves. And then when somebody else mentions burnout, that's why they think it doesn't exist because they're also at breaking point thinking, well, if I've, you know, if I've still got a cope, actually, so have you. Right. We're. We're all at burnout. Roll sleeves up, get on with it. And that's not the response, actually. We need to be saying, right, burnout might becoming the norm, but it is not normal. And that's what we need people to recognize. We can't just keep saying, well, everybody's at burnout. Right. Get over it. Like that's, that's not the response. The question needs to be why are we all at burnout and what do we do about it?

Yeah. A fundamental shift in mindset.

Absolutely.

If we can't change that. Yeah. Change that mindset and it's not going to get any better as the pace of the world gets, gets faster and faster in AI. So no, you're right. If we don't tackle it now, which is why, you know, you wrote one book and I was really pleased that you wrote another book because it's, you know, we need to keep looking at it in, in different ways. So.

Yeah, absolutely.

Our next question's yours.

I think the next question is mine, but Kelly's just answered it. She's that amazing. So do, do move on. Deb, you take your next question.

Okay. I think we've talked about this one a little bit also about. It's a bit paradoxical. Paradoxical. I can't even say that word in that, you know, you look at the best of the best, your high performers, your people who are on the road to be promoted and such. But yet if you did some type of an analysis, and I don't know what type of, you know, analysis you've done on this, those are the kind of people that seem to be hitting hit the most. So these are the people that we're putting up there as our next leaders and we're almost hurting our organizations because they're the ones who are getting burned out the most because of what we're doing to them. What are your thoughts on the existence. But what we can do to protect those, those high performers and everyone else.

Yeah. So you're absolutely right. So if you are A kind of type a high performing, high achieving, maybe even like people, people pleasing perfectionist. You're absolutely more prone to experience burnout, right? You, you are, you are more prone to. But we've also got the other end of the scales. I kind of mentioned earlier three different types of burnout out. So one is, is what we call frenetic burnout. So that's as a result of stress, you work harder and push harder in order to be able to deliver, right. You, you put everything into work to kind of to try to deal with the stress. We then have a second which is, is kind of more current, commonly being referred to as bore out. Right. So at the other end of that kind of stress scale, you, if you're not being challenged enough, if you're in repetitive work, you're not being stressed enough, you're not being challenged enough. That can be a different sort of burnout. So you may experience some of the same symptoms, but not with those high levels of stress. It might be because of kind of not enough stress to kind of keep you going. And then as I said, we have this kind of worn out or kind of moral injury burnout which is, which is the kind of third. So that's when we've got this working practices that go against our values, our morals and our ethics. So if we look at it from that perspective still, globally the most common cause of burnout is toxic workplaces. And so if out of those three types of burnout, if we think about it, it is actually this kind of moral injury that's coming to play more. So and this again, you know, if we've got high, high performers, high achievers, typically, and again, not, not I hate stereotyping, but typically these will be people that do care more, that are more engaged, that can see actually if you just stopped doing this and started to do this instead, this is how we change the organization. This is how we'd be able to fix it. It. So a lot of these people are trying to fix the problems that they can see as, as pretty much an easy fix and then pushing themselves to the brink of burnout because it's, they do want to do work that is aligned to their values. They do want to be doing work that has purpose, that has meaning, where they can make a difference. And so yes, in those organizations it's those type of people that are going to be more prone to burnout. And again, I think that's why a lot of the time it's not spotted by leaders in organizations because if you're all if you've always been the high performing, high achiever, it's just, you know, people just assume that it's who you are and actually you may be just doing a bit more. Maybe a lot of people don't even realize that you're on the brink of burnout because you've always been working to that level in that way for that, for that set period of time. And I think that's, that's where it's kind of sometimes, sometimes going unnoticed. But yet nobody is immune to burnout. Burnout can, can have anybody, but it is much more likely to impact high performing, high achievers, perfectionists, people pleasers. They will kind of type A, they will be the people that are more prone to, to getting to the point of burnout.

Absolutely.

So if we're in a company that rewards high amounts of effort, there are type A people around who are putting out that kind of effort even though it's not their normal in, in the long term, what is going to be the cost here? I mean this is, this is not just going to burn some people out. This is going to have a knock on effect on the organization, I have to think. So what is the actual ROI of this? If you want to look at it in those terms? Okay, ROI of the situation.

Yeah. So I think it's Gallup that put out a survey. I don't know if it was the end of, end of last year, it's end of 2024, but it is, it's reported that burnout is costing the global economy $8.8 trillion. So globally the cost of burnout is costing $8.8 trillion. Now again, if you are a leader that does not like, doesn't care about your people, right. If it's all about profit and performance, this is costing you big time in terms of profit, performance, it's costing you in terms of recruiting, it's costing you in terms of losing some of your skilled people, your, you know, your, your high performers, the people that are engaged, the people that get it, the people that want to be making a difference. So there is that organizational cost and I think many of us are ignoring then the individual cost to, to the individuals experiencing burnout. This impacts our confidence, our decision making, our feelings of self worth. It can have long term health impacts. So we've got the, the organizational profit and performance ROI and $8.8 trillion is what burnout is costing that globally at the moment. And then we have the individual cost, the cost to the individual. If this is left unresolved with Those long term health issues, their lack of confidence, their lack of self worth, their, you know, just kind of feeling of really complete and utter failure. Right. We need to be recognizing that. Yes. Whilst this is a systemic problem, the impact on individuals is long lasting, long term, potentially life threatening. It can be, it doesn't have to be career ending. And you know, so there's, there's costs to every single part of it. You know, I describe burnout as this kind of, you know, a whole person, whole life impact. That's, that's what it does to us. It has an impact on our entire body and mind and can impact every single part of our life. And it will filter through the organization.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Dem.

Yeah. I think everything that you said is huge. And I think what you've really highlighted and I hope people take away from this is there's not just one form of burnout, there's multiple forms because a lot of people only look at it one dimensionally. And also I think for me, some real light bulb moments about that there's not just one way to fix it. I have to admit, as both of you have been talking, I spent a lot of my career in rewards. I'm feeling very guilty because I think you're right. I think a lot of what we do in organizations is we design programs to almost drive this. And I think that as organizations, we need to take a step back and think about what are the factors that we're putting into how we treat our business and treat our people and how we run our business that are factors that are leading into this. But that could be for another, another podcast because unfortunately we're out of time. Next episode, because it's almost like I would love, you know, I know that's what your books are about. I know that's what your programmer about. How can we look at all the individual factors and tackle them one by one instead of just saying, oh, they're burnout? To your point, I'm going to send them to an eap. I'm going to give them a week off, all of those types of things. But I guess if there's, you know, I just gave a couple my takeaway moments. What are a couple of things that you could say to our listeners that they could take away and start thinking about right away? Besides reading your book, coming to your burnout academy with, what kind of quick wins or quick thoughts could they have?

Yeah, I mean, do all those things, right? Buy the book, listen to the podcast, join the program.

There you go.

But yeah, I suppose, yeah, There you go. You know, in terms of, yeah, in terms of what we can order, we have to recognize one week off is not going to fix burnout. That, that has to be the, the key. And actually I, I have a burnout equation. Toxicity minus sense of self equals burnout. We can work in toxic organizations and if we have a really great sense of self, we can avoid experiencing, we can avoid reaching burnout, every single one of us. If we start with the question who are you? And really kind of dig into that, right. You know, what gets us out of bed in the morning? What are our values, our strengths, our passions, our drivers? If we start with that and get really, really clear on who we are, like, who were you before the world told you who you could not be? If you can answer that question and get really, really strong on your own sense of self, that can be the absolute biggest factor in helping us to eliminate burnout.

Now, we're about out of time, Kelly. I think it's really important all the things that we've talked about here. People who are listening to this have got to be asking themselves, how do I reach out to Kelly? So of course they're asking themselves. Of course they are. So let's get specific about your website, your books, your courses, all that. How do they, they, how do they reach you?

Thank you. Yes, so you can, if you're on LinkedIn. I am very active on LinkedIn with all of this stuff, so you'll just find me Kelly Swingler on LinkedIn. The website is KellySwinkler.com and yeah, there you'll find books, courses, podcasts, blogs, kind of everything, you know, resources. I'm always kind of uploading some, some different resources on there. So I suppose the kind of the One Stop Burnout Shop, if you like, with links to podcasts and YouTube and everything will be my website. So, yes, just head to kellyswingler.com you'll find the burnout academ, coaching, speaking, blogs, podcast, YouTube channel videos, everything. Well, yeah, the One Stop Burnout Shop. The One Stop, the One Stop burnout shop is kellysumbler.com can I make a suggestion?

It's not the burnout shop, it's a. It's the burnout fix it shop. Because I don't want to go and buy some burnout. I got plenty already.

Well, we need a conversation if you have Ken. But yes, so, yeah, so, so the burnout either burnout prevention or recovery shop. Right? Or burnout, if we kind of go for it. So, yeah, so all things burnout prevention recovery, avoidance, training, development, all of that stuff. Kellyswinker.com Fantastic.

Kelly, it has been such a privilege and a pleasure having you on our podcast. Thank you very much for coming.

Thank you for asking me. And again, you know, you know I'll come back anytime to keep this conversation going. So, yes, thank you very much for inviting me.

Be careful what you promise we're going to hold you to that.

That's fine. Whatever you want, I'm here. I'm here. Whatever you want.

Okay, everybody, thanks for coming and thanks for listening. And we'll talk to you later.

And that's a wrap on this episode of Curiosity Unleashed. Huge thanks to our amazing guest and of course, to you for tuning in.

We hope you picked up some useful tips. And hey, if this episode sparked a minor existential crisis because you realized, oops, you might be guilty of this at your company, don't panic. We've got your back.

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