How to Combat Workplace Burnout: Strategies from Dr. Tamara Beckford

Hello, my friend, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. Thanks for joining us today. With over 10 million downloads and listeners from more than 180 different countries, it's dedicated listeners just like you who have made Negotiate Anything the number one negotiation podcast in the world. I'm your host, Kwame Christian. I'm a business lawyer, mediator, author, and the proud CEO of of the American Negotiation Institute. Now, before we get into today's insightful conversation, I have a golden opportunity for those of you who recognize the power of negotiation in your professional lives. Have you ever found yourself wishing that you could navigate those high stakes conversations with more confidence? Or perhaps you're looking to empower your team with the art of persuasion and conflict resolution? At the American Negotiation Institute, we've crafted specialized keynotes and workshops tailored for those very needs. We've transformed the negotiation skills of professionals worldwide and we're eager to do the same for you. We believe the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And our goal is to help you improve your lives and the lives of those around you one difficult conversation at a time. Don't let another challenging conversation leave you second guessing. Click the link in the description to discover how we can help you find confidence in conflict, negotiate better deals, and have stronger relationships. Because in the world of business, every conversation counts. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview. Tamara, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, it's my pleasure. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Absolutely. So my name is Tamara, but it's actually Dr. Tamara Beckford. So I am the CEO of youf Caring Docs where we do a few things. We help organizations to reduce their employees stress and burnout through self care and burnout prevention strategies. And I also help private practices, because I am a doctor, to do the same by boosting their proficiency and productivity through their team dynamics. In addition to that, you're probably wondering what kind of doctor am I? I am one of those emergency medicine doctors who were like standing up and taking care of all the people during the pandemic and therefore stress and burnout is something that I know a lot about. So I'm happy to talk about this today with your people.

Fantastic. No, this is great. And who better to come in and talk about stress management? And when we're talking about this, listeners, just a little bit of foreshadowing. We're going to talk about the difficult conversations that are required for individuals to maintain their mental health and reduce their own stress. But then also, if you're a leader and you want to create positive change in your workplace, how do you actually have those conversations? So let's start off on the individual side. When we're thinking about stress management and burnout, let's just start off with an overview. What is it that people are struggling with?

Absolutely. So one of the biggest things I think with burnout is a lot of people don't realize, like what burnout is. The. By true definition, it really is experience of chronic stress in the workplace. So we use the word loosely at times in burnout at home and so on. But its true definition is really chronic stress within the workplace. And I call it the three Ds of burnout. And the first D is usually depletion. Depletion is when you're having emotional exhaustion. Like you're just completely tired. You go to bed tired, you wake up tired, you're really sitting in the car and contemplating, do I even feel like going into the building? So that's the emotional exhaustion of that. And then you have depletion, you have the emotional exhaustion. And then you also have the detached depersonalization, which I call the detachment, where you're doing great work, but you don't feel as if you're doing great work. Right. So the work that you're doing is impactful, but you're not feeling that, what we'll call like that dopamine rush, that really good feeling, that release that happens when you do something and you feel. Feel that, yes, I've made an impact. So when all of that starts to really come on, that's when you know that you're heading towards burnout. Alrighty. So the challenge with burnout is that you don't want to get towards the crisis mode. And the crisis mode is really the fifth phase of burnout. So burnout starts off with phase zero, where you know you're happy, you just started with your job, you have great ideas that you want to help to implement. And then you have phase one where you're starting to just feel a little bit like tired. Phase two, you're starting to find out that you' some of those we call the somatic symptoms, where you're having this headaches, your belly hurts, or you go to the doctor, everything's fine, but you just can't really put your finger on it and you're starting to notice a little bit of that fatigue. Then you get to the burnout phase. Right. Phase three, it's chronic phase Four is the burnout. We talked about the depletion detachment, emotional exhaustion. Phase five is the crisis mode. So you're having repeated depletion. You are not getting up out of bed. You don't find any enjoyment in your work. You don't find any enjoyment in trying to go and even help. So at that point, that's the challenge with, once we get to the crisis mode, is that it can incorporate some of the mental health issues, right? Which is the depression and the anxiety. Now, we all know what that can lead to. The chronic depression, chronic anxiety can lead to more of what we call the mental health issues where people are starting to have intrusive thoughts of what is the point? What is the point of even being here? So now you're moving out from burnout to mental health, where you have maybe suicidal thoughts. You're having thoughts of just like, you know, wanting to hurt yourself. So that's why burnout is so important. Like, we talk about it lightly, but we can see how it's really a transition phase into a lot of mental issues that can happen in one's life.

This is so important for us to understand. And I think especially for you as a medical professional, you can actually paint the picture a lot more vividly because like you said, we talk about it lightly, but we don't fully appreciate just how significant and problematic this can be. It's just not an inconvenience. This is a health issue. And so listen, listeners, I wanted to make sure we started off with that PSA here so you recognize how important this will be and how important these conversations will have to be. Because now you know the science, now you know the background, you understand why it's so important. But then going into the workplace and actually setting these boundaries and protecting yourself and doing what is necessary and advocating for yourself, that's a completely different thing. So before we even get into the strategic and tactical approach for these conversations, what kinds of conversations need to be happening in the workplace about this?

Leaders. We're going to talk to these conversations from the leaders standpoint. One, leaders. It really is in the term leaders. So you have to lead by example, right? So when you have your team, you have to have the ability that your team should be able to approach you about these mental health issues, about these burnout issues, and not feel that they're going to be retaliated against. Right? Leaders. We have to provide an environment where we are being preemptive, where we are showing the team, because not everyone is coming to your office. It's not Everyone that's going to be in your company who recognize and understand these skills on how to manage stress, they might not have been from a background that does that. Their background might be like well you just need to just work harder. You know, they might not even have an outlet. So you provide these resources and the resources can be in the form of yes pamphlets and so on. But it how great resources. How about you provide the training. Training for them to, to recognize how stress affects them not just emotionally but also physically. Right. And how to handle stress from a personal standpoint and then also provide an environment where the stress level can be reduced. Now why is that important? In addition to the medical aspect we just talked about, there's also an increased return on investment. For each of the investment that you do as an employer or a leader, you're going to get a three times return on that because your having less turnover on your team. You're now having a team that can work and be more productive because they're mentally, they're at their best and they can be at their optimal for longer periods of time. And also the cost benefits for having to pay for the long term medical issues that occurs with chronic stress. So it's a win win situation in really providing this for your team.

This is really, really great because there, there are a couple of things that I really, I want to pull out here. So first of leader, one of the best things we can do to help our team manage their stress is by managing our own stress. I think that's really important because a lot of times we have that, that service driven mentality where we're saying okay, what I need to do here is I need to focus on everybody else and not focus on myself. But then we are getting stressed out and then we're sharing that stress with other people whether we want to or not. So I think that's really important. Put on your own oxygen mask first and then start taking care of other people. And then when it comes to the next thing that we have to do here as leaders when it comes to providing resources is not just giving pamphlets and then piecing out, it's actually understanding the information and then really working hard to put this into practice within our organizations. Very important now when we're thinking about the leaders approach to this because we can truly use a win win mentality here like you said. And a lot of times when we're thinking about the conversations, we feel selfish when we're trying to focus on our own mental health. But we have to recognize that we are Helping everybody around us, we're helping our teammates, we're helping our organization by taking care of ourselves. So we can really have a lot more confidence going into these conversations because this is not selfish, it's self care. And if we take care of ourselves, then we can take care of our job too.

Absolutely. And you know, that's the point of self care, is really to enhance one owns well being as well, especially during times of stress. So if you are learning how to do these management and these stress reduction techniques, when the stress level goes up, you already have something in your toolbox. You already have the arsenal. Now one of the real great investments, or return, I should say on investments of being able to do all this and learn it at work and even to teach your team is it spreads through their lives. Now they're able to use those same techniques at home. This is not just something that's applicable only during the work hours because people's lives are continuous. Right. You're going to have stress during other periods of the day, you're going to have stress when you go home, you're going to have family members who were stressed even in your direct household. So everything that you're learning, guess what? You get to teach them. And now your household, the same harmonious team that you have at work, they can also now have a harmonious team, AKA family at home. Because these techniques, they're all applicable to life itself.

Yes. Oh, this is good. This is good. For the rest of our time here, I want to dissect two major conversations here that have to happen. So first we have the conversation where we're advocating either for ourselves or we're advocating for changes within our workplace to make it better. The other type of conversation is when we are trying to persuade somebody else to take care of themselves. Because you're a Caribbean American. I'm Caribbean American. I know. There's the saying, it's like, oh, this person's lazy. They only have three jobs. Yes. It's like, cool, you worked hard. That's not hard enough. You know, it just keeps on going. And so let's say we recognize this pattern in somebody else and we're saying this person is very stressed out, but they feel like they should be doing this and there's some kind of admiration that they have for working in this way in a very detrimental type of way. So if you see that person in your life and you're trying to communicate to them that there is a better way and it's okay to take care of themselves, how do we have that conversation.

This is such a great question. When we are thinking of ourselves and not really just taking a step in a bird's eye view of life, we go hard. We go hard to the point that we are just finished. I kind of like liken it to trying to wring or trying to get water out of a dry towel. Like everything is like completely done. However, when we look at others, we can see all the strategies that they need to take in order to improve themselves. Right. One of the first things I said is, what would you do? And what would you tell that person, that version of you? Number one, what is your goal? Because a lot of the times the reason why someone is working so consistently and hard and hard and hard is because they're trying to achieve a goal. A lot of the times it's a financial goal. Now, this might not be the answer that you guys are thinking about, but I read a lot of personal development books and. And I'm deep into that space. So we're heading into that space right now. Number one, what is the goal? Is your goal a financial goal? Because there are more than one ways to achieve said goals. One of our, and I don't, I will call it our traits as hard workers, type A West Indian, Caribbean people, is if you want to get farther, you need to work even more. So it's a work more versus working smarter type of men mentality. Right. And that's applies to that in living color thing. They say you only have two jobs. Yes. Because they're trying to achieve. But how can you achieve that same goal by working smarter? Number one, what is your end point? Is your endpoint to get that certain number, or is your endpoint to get to that certain number and be able to enjoy yourself? Because if your end point is to say, I want to earn $120,000. Okay. And so in order to do that, I have to work three jobs. Okay, that's fine. Now you're at the 120,000. What was the intention and what was the reason you needed the 120,000? Was it to invest in something or was it to live this lifestyle of $120,000? So it's now to live the lifestyle. Okay, so you're there. Are you able to live that lifestyle or are you at work?

Hello, my friends. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever wondered how to elevate your team's negotiation game and how you can help the folks on your team have better difficult conversations at the American Negotiation Institute. We offer transformative keynotes and workshops tailored to empower professionals with top tier negotiation and conflict resolution skills. Whether it's a keynote for your next next event or hands on training for your team, we've got you covered. Don't just negotiate. Master the art with the American Negotiation Institute. Click the link in the description to find out more. Elevate, negotiate and succeed. Wow, I needed this three years ago. Amara, this is really great because we can actually see how this conversation is a conversation that we can have effectively as we're working with other people to try to persuade them because they have their goal. But let's think a bit more strategically about that goal. Let's go deeper into the goal. What is it? Why do you have that goal? And then bringing lifestyle into that as well? Because a lot of times we just have a very monolithic goal where we just say, yep, it's a financial goal, that's it. And then I'm willing to sacrifice everything to get there. But when we stop and recognize, oh, our goals can we can move toward both at the same time, then that clarification on our goal can also clarify the strategy. And then we can recognize how this also becomes an internal negotiation too. Because we have to start to challenge ourselves in the exact same way that we challenge other people.

Yes. You know what is the hardest thing for me to see as a person and also as a physician is someone who has worked their entire life right, has done the delayed gratification. Because we're so embedded in delayed gratification, which means that the self care wasn't happening. And self care incorporates. It's not just the mindfulness, the gratitude practice, yoga, the eating healthy, but it also is the going to the doctor, going for your appointments because you're so busy working towards said goals. Now you've put that off to say, well, once I retire, I will be able to enjoy this, enjoy that, and boom, you retire, everything goes down the hill. You're not able to enjoy any of the things while your health challenges are up. You know, you're, you're unable to. That yachts that you were able to buy. It'll be nice if you have a yacht, just call me. But that yacht that you were able to buy, you can't now enjoy any of these things that you've worked so hard for. Why? Because you were not taking care of self along the way. This is a journey that you're going to together. So it's the journey where you're working hard towards your goal, but you're also taking care of yourself because longevity is what you're working towards.

This is powerful. This is powerful. Yeah. Because when you think about the quality of a deal, that's really what we're looking at a lot of times when we're negotiating and if you're negotiating with yourself and the deal you come up with is I will work myself to death until retirement in my 60s and then I'll have fun. You negotiated with yourself and you made a bad deal.

That's a bad deal.

You agreed to a bad deal. Right. This is really, really powerful. And then again just honoring the fact that it can be a both and not an either or. It's not work, work and then or play. It's you can work and play, you can have fun and still be very, very successful. Now let's get a little bit deeper since you've been reading a lot of self help books. So what is it that holds us back from accepting that? Because sometimes it feels almost inappropriate to enjoy the process and pain seems to be a necessary part of the process. So what leads to that belief?

I'm glad that you used the word belief because our mind has been really trapped in a sect and this is just our, not just an anatomical aspect of life but it really is a protective mechanism that we have, right? So our mind is set to protect us and keep us in zones that are comfortable and just like, oh no, you shouldn't do that if stay here and be protected. So when they our mind is set like that, anything that's set to really bring us out of that comfort zone, our mind frozen. I don't know if anybody else has this but these scenarios that are just outrageous like there's like why would that even happen? But that's what happens to protect our minds. So when we're saying now, well you know, I would love to earn this amount of money and I would love to start this journey on self care. Well, do you really need to start the journey on self care? This is your inner self. I mean you're already doing things, right? I mean don't you have to walk back and forth all day? So do you really need to exercise? I mean you kind of are exercising, isn't it? You know, so you're talking about negotiating. Your mind starts to negotiate some random crazy one sided deal. We all know that, right? For negotiation to be good, both parties need to win. No, not when this mind takes hold of you. So a lot of the negative thoughts that happens that prevent us from really moving forward, it's really based on like from a chronological standpoint of adaptation to life in protecting us. But right now we don't have that saber tooth tiger chasing us down. So no, we don't need to be under chronic stress all the time. We need periods of rest. But our minds under stress, stress, stress, stress, stress, Right. So it exaggerates things. And for those who are not even like aware, like your brain and your mind cannot determine the difference between something that you made up in your mind and something that's actually happening to you. So your body will physiologically respond to whatever it is you throw in that you made up. Even if it's just a made up thought, your body will respond as if it's real. It can't tell the difference difference. So you're there saying, oh my gosh, you know, when life hits, it'll be great to be able to like, we'll use that same $120,000 man. As soon as this happens, A, B, C, D, E. And your brain is like, yes, yes, yes, all these great things will happen. Now your mind gets into a thought, but wow, you know, I should be exercising and I should be eating healthy and maybe I should learn how to reduce my stress a little bit. It add a little bit of meditation. It doesn't have to be anything deep. You know, I am a person who, I'm deep in religion, so maybe my meditation would be like reading the Bible a little bit to reduce the stress. And you start to think about that, your brain will actually start to release. And even just the act of thinking, of doing things and reducing your stress, your stress level goes down. When you actively start doing it, the stress level goes down even more. If you think about things that are horrible, your stress level goes down, up. It can't tell the difference.

That is powerful. And I think just the act of giving people permission to engage in this type of intellectual dialogue, this internal negotiation is powerful because it's not something that we learned in school. This is how you negotiate with yourself. We just believe that our thoughts are truths. They're thoughts, they don't necessarily need to be true. But like you said, our bodies will respond as if they are true. And so if we start to get into that habit of challenging ourselves in the same way we would challenge other people in a negotiation, now we can dig deeper and get a win win deal with ourselves. And that's really what we want to do.

Absolutely. As people, we're more powerful than we give ourselves credit for. And it's imperative that we use knowing how powerful we are and how powerful our mind, our body, everything is, it's imperative that we use it to our advantage. So you're going into that deal with strength, so use it to your advantage.

Absolutely. No, this is great. This is great. And just one last note here on the those conversations. Now let's shift to conversations within the workplace where we're recognizing either things need to change for us or things need to change in general for everyone. When you are having that conversation, when you're trying to essentially negotiate upward in the org chart and you're saying, hey, this is what I'm experiencing and I know this is what other people are experiencing, and then you try to have that conversation with your leader to create that change in the workplace. What advice do you have for people who want to have those change making negotiations?

Great, great question. I would recommend, in addition to just bringing up the idea, also bring in examples of what others have done. That has worked. Because there are many organizations who have invested within their team, and there are many organizations who want to invest within their team, but they don't know how to. And then there's some organizations, unfortunately, who are resistant to it. When you bring any new ideas, any creative ideas to the table for upward management, it's great to be in the mindset of the person you're bringing this to. So first that person is thinking, oh wow, this is either like, okay, this is new, this came out of left field. How can this help us? How can this help the bottom line, right of the organization? And the what is it that I now have to do in order to make this work? Have you created more work for me? Unfortunately, that's how the mind works and that's how people are. Right? So when you bring these ideas, you're not just bringing the ideas, but you're bringing how these ideas can work. This is what I've seen other organizations have do. This is what has worked for them. Based on how our organization is structured. We can implement this through this way because you know, you'll still need to arrange it for your particular organization. We can implement it this way and maybe we can start off by this, just a small chunk versus just throwing everything at them.

Oh, this is great negotiation masterclass here. So first of all, I want to recap this. We got first start with examples, not just from yourself, but from others. Because if you just come with a subjective experience, but no receipts, no data, no evidence, then we have to recognize confirmation bias. And confirmation bias doesn't always come from nefarious bad actors. Sometimes it just comes from people Being people, that's. That's just the natural consequence of your existence. And so you have a situation where somebody says, oh my goodness, I'm already burnt out and stressed out. Your manager, the leader of the company, is probably already feeling that way. And now you bring them with. Bring a problem. That was another thing for them to do. And so confirmation bias, they don't want to believe this because it would be better for them if this wasn't the case. Case. And so we say, all right, I'm going to circumvent that predictable psychological response by coming with specific examples. And now, just like a negotiation, we're going to come with an offer too. This is the initial offer. I'm not just going to say, hey, boss, here's a problem, and then peace out. We're going to say, all right, hey, I was thinking about what could work. This is how it could work. This is how we could implement it. And here are some examples of other organizations that have done the same. And just like that, you have actually not only started the conversation and conveyed it in a very effective way, but you've also reduced the stress that your boss might be experiencing by showing that it's viable and not as scary as it might have otherwise seemed.

Absolutely. And I think that that'll increase the chance of you being able to get it done, because now you've not. You've given the evidence that it works. You've given how it has worked for other organization and how it has benefited that other organization either. When you're going into the negotiation, as we talk about it, I mean, the person is in the www.dofi ifm. So what is in it for me.com like that radio station. So once you're able to tap into all of that part of the radio station, what's in it for me, then I think you've increased your chance of being able to get it implemented.

Absolutely. And then if you start to speak their language, when you talk about the return on investment, how does this help the business? How does this increase productivity? How does this decrease waste and increase retention and those type of things. They're recognizing, oh, they, this is a true win win. It's not an employee trying to be lazy and not work as hard. No, this is an employee who has a legitimate problem that's verified and other people are experiencing this. And if we solve this problem, it makes their life easier, my life easier, and the business better. Now we have a true win win. And I just really appreciate how clear you were with how to put this together because especially if we're feeling stressed out, burnt out, and overwhelmed, it's tough for us to do anything and it's tough for us to come together and put together an effective negotiation strategy to address the bur and stress that we're feeling. So I think this is really empowering for the listeners. So I really appreciate you taking the time.

My pleasure. And you know, one of the things that is so important when we talk about, like the stress and the burnout, one of the parts of the brain that it affects a lot is that executive function portion, which is what we just talked about, where you're making these decisions that are based on deep understanding and deep meaning. So to be able to to get these processes in place prior to someone getting to that point is so important.

Absolutely. Oh, this is great. Tamara, I really appreciate you coming on the show. And can you let the listeners know again about you, your company, your speaking, and how they can get in touch with you?

Absolutely. So I am available on LinkedIn. You can find me if you are in the world of looking for a dynamic speaker to speak on stress management and burnout prevention. I am also on Facebook where I talk a lot about our private practices, you know, helping to improve productivity, proficiency, and team dynamics. Both ways you can find me is my you caring docs website. That's your caring docs, which is U r c a R I n g D o c s dot com.

I love it. Thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

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