The 10 Blind Spots That Lead to Executive Burnout

Tell me if this sounds like you. You become the person everyone depends on. You take on more responsibility, solve more problems, work longer hours, and you keep pushing because so far, it's worked. The numbers look good. The team sees confidence. The board sees results. And nobody sees the warning light flashing behind the dashboard until the leader makes a terrible decision, loses a key employee, damages an important relationship, or finds himself standing in an airport unable to stop crying. Burnout rarely arrives with a warning. The problem is that warning signs often look exactly like high performance. And that's what we're talking about today on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to this episode of Marc Haine Live. Of course, this is where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up some core skill sets to create the show-stopping, jaw-dropping experience that customers and employees deserve. I am your host, Customer and Employee Experience Strategist Marc Haine. And I'm so happy that you're here with me today. Because my guest today is Julian Godbarge, the leader who has crashed so you don't have to. And today, we are going to be exposing the 10 blind spots that can quietly turn high performance into executive burnout. So, stick around with us. And please, if you haven't done so yet, please make sure that you're subscribed to this podcast. By doing so, you'll get notifications when I bring you fresh new content each and every week with experts just like Julian today. We tend to imagine burnout as somebody sitting at their desk staring blankly at a computer screen while clutching their 4th cup of coffee like it contains the nuclear launch codes. But burnout does not always look like failure. Sometimes, it looks like dedication. It looks like the leader who answers emails at midnight or 1 AM. The manager who never ever takes a holiday. Know anybody like that? Because that brings us to our Question of the Day. So, what behavior is your organization currently calling high performance that may actually be an early warning sign of burnout? And what could that cost to your business be if that leader suddenly couldn't continue? I'd love to know what your experience is. Feel free to share this episode, a link to this episode on your favorite social media platform. Hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership and put your comments down. I'd love for you to be part of this conversation. If you're tuning in live with us, feel free to put your comments in the comment window and we'll get them up on the screen. And we'll use your comments and your questions in the show. Would love to see your input. As I mentioned, my guest today is Julian Godbarge. And he has had the career many executives work their entire lives to build. He spent more than a decade working in private equity-backed and family-owned companies, leading global business development, acquisition strategies, and operational growth. He eventually became CEO of a private equity platform company and worked with leaders and businesses ranging from what, $20 million to $400 million in revenue. From the outside, Julian was a winner. He was winning. He was hitting targets, building teams, closing deals, and creating the kind of resume that makes LinkedIn sit up a little bit straighter because he's something special. But underneath that success, something had been building for years. At the height of his performance, Julian experienced a severe burnout crash that left him breaking down in an airport unable to stop crying. That experience led him to write the book Crash and Learn or Burn: A Business Fable About the High Cost of Burnout, Hidden Leadership Patterns, and the Hope of Recovery. Julian, welcome to the show! Thank you so much for being able to make time for us today.

Of course, thanks for having me, Marc. It's a pleasure to be here.

So Julian, maybe you could tell us a little bit about what are you up to today? What Who are your clients? How are you serving them? What are you up to?

So after recovering from that very painful burnout back in 2023, uh, I wrote the book you just mentioned, Crash and Burn/Learn, uh, and it's been a resounding success. I'm very fortunate to be getting a ton of positive feedback, and I can tell it's really serving a gap in the market of not just researchers who study burnout, but executives who have lived through it, who have suffered from it, who have decided to throw the stigma away and to not be embarrassed and to just say, this is what happened to me. This is how I can help you prevent it. And so what I'm doing today is I've federated a group of very talented business coaches who have learned and appreciated my model and are helping me spread the word to protect today's entrepreneurs and executives from suffering the same fate that I did because that was not pleasant. I don't wish that on anybody.

So, can you take us back? Take us back from the outside. I mean, you were a high performer. What did success look like in the months before your crash? How did you know you were on the right track and you were kind of Understanding that you are this high performer, super successful, what did that look like for you?

So, as like a lot of your listeners, I'm sure, I've always been very KPI-driven and thought dashboards give you the insight that you want. So, from a KPI standpoint, things we measured were net sales growth year over year, percentage of targeted EBITDA achieved, Um, in terms of more personal scoreboard, how much of my bonus potential am I going to be able to hit this year? And I was 4 years in a row hitting 100%. Making sure I got there for a 5th year, uh, was extremely important to me. Uh, and I'm emphasizing extremely because I don't think I realized it at the time how much weight I was putting on those indicators that were a mix of pride, arrogance, and also good fatherly duties, right? I mean, um, I have 3 kids. These were the times where college tuitions were coming due, and those hefty bonuses right at the time where your college funds is starting to run a little light were dovetailing perfect. And so there was a lot of pressures on different directions uh, that, that would make me really identify and getting my self-worth from those KPIs, right?

Yeah.

And I'm starting, I'm starting to give away one of the ingredients to, to burnout. I'm not gonna jump right in and identify that one and share it with the audience. As soon as you start to link your self-worth with your performance, you are in a lot of trouble or about to get into a lot of trouble. And being able to separate the two is one of the things that our coaching model helps executives achieve because you will not always perform. Sometimes, things are out of your control. Sometimes, life happens, right?

And so, it begs the question and we'll get into— I'd like to get into 10 models a little bit later.

But it begs the So, I think pride should be, or at least can be more intentional, an issue with reflection, right? With thinking. It's more— while that assimilation of self-worth with performance is more at a subconscious level. Okay. Because at the conscious level, we can say, I have just delivered amazing IRR to my stakeholders for the fourth year in a row. I'm proud of that, right? That's logical. It's conscious. It's intentional. What is subconscious— and by the way, that's why I call my model the 10 Blind Spots— is because while they're happening, You don't know they're there and that's why they're dangerous, right? And so, that assimilation of self-worth and performance tends to be at a more subconscious level. You don't realize you're doing it until it's taken you far and it's taking you in the wrong direction.

It's interesting because right from the clarity point became when you describe what the pride thing was, which was, I managed to do this rather than going up to people and saying, I am this award-winning sales leader for 4 years in a row. I am that. And I think it's the use of the words I am versus this is what we did or this is some of the accomplishments, right? The minute we start saying I am, it becomes self-identification, doesn't it?

Exactly right, yes, yes. You really blend your identity with the performance as opposed to being able to discern with a more objective eye And that's a lot healthier. It separates the two, and it makes it more likely you're going to realistically assess your input in that victory, right? You can be proud of something and also realize I was part of the team that made that happen. I led the team. Maybe I was the captain of the team, or the CEO, or the business unit manager. Whatever the title or the role, you can be proud of that. And also realize that the team won, that there was market tailwind that made it happen. There was a lot of factors, right? And so, yeah, when you blend your identity with the performance, you are in hubris territory where you start to maybe subconsciously but think way too highly of yourself and start to think you might have the golden touch, uh, and it's not healthy. And it also gets you to take risks that are not well controlled because you start to lose a little bit of that grasp that, you know, if you're not able to really assess honestly why you succeeded, then you're not going to be able to honestly assess the risk of future failure either. And and that's where bad things can happen.

Yeah, well, it goes from that the whole thing is like I'm gonna stand here. I'm gonna wallow in my success. But then, I'm gonna blame everybody if anything bad happens.

Oh yes, the attribution bias, right? Some of us who like psychology books will recognize that one.

Oh geez! That never happens though. Not in this world. I mean, it doesn't happen in our political system. Not at all. So Julian, I'd love to just for— because I think what's important is I think the difficulty— would it be fair to say that 3 months before your break, your burnout happened, that you thought everything was fine?

Yeah, roughly. I think it's more 6 months. 6 months, things started to unravel. The first issue came up from an ERP deployment gone wrong. And Another thing that rarely happens, right? Wink, wink. I mean, those projects we know are risky. We had certainly did our best to mitigate the risks, but despite our best efforts, we created a dashboard that became my daily North Star that was faulty and that was giving me an overread on our backlog of orders, right?

Right.

So we were in a pretty seasonal business. So we couldn't really gauge shipments and revenue as our key North Star because that was really in the 4th quarter. But leading to that, our bookings, our orders we were taking, and therefore our backlog report was really what mattered the most. And I'll go into a little bit more technical just because I have to share, because I think it's a common mistake. I've seen it happen more than once. Sometimes if you're not careful Your backlog report will value every order in the backlog at its original value, even if you have already shipped a portion of it, right? So I had ordered— were— I had some orders in my backlog originally worth maybe $50 grand. We had shipped $45 grand of it, and damn it, in my backlog report it still showed at $50 grand. And you multiply that by the number of orders and we've got a several million dollar disconnect, uh, that, that, that was the first chink in the armor. Um, and then happy to share more of the story. Also, uh, want to keep maybe some of it, uh, for, for your listeners and watchers to want to read the book. Um, because I think the story reads a little bit like a Barbarian at the Gate kind of classic, uh, you know, PE highly leveraged kind of environment. with some nasty competitive moves from competitors. I mean, there's some intrigues. There's some drama. It's a great story. And I can say that now. But I have to say, while living it towards the end, I was not enjoying the story at all. It was pretty brutal.

Yeah, I can imagine the, you know, when I read your notes and I just thought about that one time in the airport. Could you take us back to 2023? Take us back to airport? What happened? When did you realize that this was more than just an exhausting week or an exhausting day or a bad week? What made this so profound for you?

Well, let me give you the context of that day of May 3rd, 2023. Like I said, 6 months had been tough. And that meant what for me personally? It meant that the normal baseline of stress had really started, had really turned into anxiety. And that means spiraling thoughts, a hard time to focus, a hard time to concentrate, and also a very hard time sleeping. For six months straight, I woke up at three a.m. every morning, most of the time some kind of a cold sweat in the middle of a nightmare where the term covenant and ibidah were were way too present. And so that compounded the anxiety into depression. I mean, when you can't sleep, you really can't. Function. So that was the backdrop. I was physically drained and exhausted. There was a cascade of challenges and problems that, that, that we were facing. And, um, I, I flew down to, to Florida to visit my son for his college graduation. And I remember, uh, landing in Fort Lauderdale to start that graduation weekend thinking, okay, great, I just, I Hopefully we'll be able not to think about work too much this weekend. As soon as I turn my phone back on, voicemail from the chair of the board, and I'm like, okay, great, this is a good start. Return the call, and as I'm explaining that I've been having a hard time focusing on updating our revenue model to get a better read on, on whether or not we're going to meet those so important bank covenants I explained that I was having a hard time, and I and I burst into tears in the middle of that call. That had never happened to me at work, and that started to make me wonder what was going on, and I was a little concerned. I was able to get it back together and explain, "Hey, look, I was hitting roadblocks, so my CFO and CRO are partnering up to take care of this while I'm away. It's a three-day weekend. I'll be back next week." We'll take care of this. And I was able to spend a very nice weekend with my son, graduation, all that kind of stuff. And then on the way back, I go back to the airport. I'm sitting at the gate. I'm waiting to be able to board. And I'm reading a paperback novel that was one of the things that could help me relieve anxiety for a period of time. That and yoga was were kind of my go-to to get. Some period of time where I could stop worrying about the business. And as I get to the end of that book, it's kind of sad, and I, I kind of feel a couple of tears coming out. And, and as I start crying, first because of the book, uh, then it just turns into this outburst of sobs where 6 months of fatigue, accumulated stress, and anxiety just poured out of me, uh, to— and I, I could not stop. And, and, and it was a bittersweet kind of feeling because it was, uh, it was scary to not be able to control one's emotions or crying, uh, but I could also feel that some of that tension had to find an outlet and that I had tried to white-knuckle the situation for too long And that something drastic was happening and that the next phase was just not going to be more of the same because it could not. I had reached the end of that rope.

Yeah, what's interesting about that is like, as you were telling your story, it's like, oh, I remember something similar like this happened to me. And I remember thinking to myself, what the hell is wrong with me? It's like, come on, suck it up buttercup. Just focus on what's important and just stop feeling sorry for yourself. You call these behaviors blind spots rather than mistakes or weaknesses. What makes a blind spot different?

So, one of the things that makes blind spots different is that, well, first of all, you don't know it's happening, right? It's kind of subconscious or things that are behaviors, mindsets, or patterns that because they have served you well until that point, you were not able to realize their hidden cost. And how you were really creating some form of emotional debt, right? You had this—you were borrowing energy and you were borrowing momentum, and at some point you'd have to pay the piper. But you did not realize, and when the when the bill comes due, that's where where things can come crashing down. The the other thing that is different from a blind spot from from a mistake. Is that some of those blind spots operate for a very, very long time. Sometimes your, your entire life, or at least, you know, from young adult until, until the crash. Looking back, I was able to realize, oh wow, I now understand what it means to complete the stress cycle, for example. That, I think, is a tangible example that people can can, can relate. If you don't mind, I'll just spend a couple of minutes explaining what I mean by that, because that's, that's a fundamental concept.

Sure.

So our metabolism is, you know, in our— the way we react to stress really hasn't changed for the last couple tens of thousands of years when humans, the early humans, typically would react to stress because of acute, short-lived, life-threatening situation. There might be a tiger in this forest and it might— I might become their lunch. So that's stressful. Your stress hormones go up. That creates a spike of glucose in your blood. You're ready and fired up for fight or flight. You run away and you try to escape from the tiger. If you don't escape, you're their lunch. Stress is not a problem anymore. You're dead. If you manage to escape, then okay, now you're safe. And because you're safe, your hormones go back to normal and you're back to your stress baseline from before the stressor took place. That mechanism, that mechanism and the cortisol functioning and the glucose spikes have not changed. That's still how this works. What has changed is the type of stressors that we feel. So it can be bad news at work, it might be something drastic in your personal life, it can be the death of a close one, it can be a divorce, it can come from any aspect of your life that creates a stress. Your stress spikes, and then what do you do? Are you able to resolve it and to go back to complete baseline within a day or two or within a couple hours? Typically not. And then what that means for a lot of us, especially when you're kind of a Type A, highly driven, action-oriented person, maybe highly oriented, action-oriented executive, is that we seek refuge in momentum. We just put the incident behind us or under the rug and we say, what's next? Because with momentum comes comfort and comes You know, this version that we think we call courage and we call resilience, we're like, that's okay, we're gonna make it up next quarter, guys, let's go, or whatever the case might be. And by being so forward momentum-oriented, then you deprive yourself from the opportunity of completing that stress cycle. So what does that mean over the long run? It means that you start your career when things are well, your baseline of stress is at a 0 out of 10. Each time you have a stressing factor that you don't complete fully, that you don't process, you don't digest, internalize the learning, you don't spend the time doing this, then you don't go back to a baseline stress of zero. So now you maybe when everything goes well, your stress is a one. It happens again. Your baseline is a two, and I call that the ratchet effect because it goes up and it never comes back down. You do this for 5, 10, 20, 25 years, your baseline stress might be an 8. And next time you have something stressful that happens, you are through the roof to what I've started calling the ignition point, because that's where you burn out.

Yeah.

And so giving ourselves the time to process is absolutely critical. And that's one of those long-lasting behaviors where We create that emotional debt that eventually will come due.

Yeah, I had one podcast with a guest expert, Kira Liskeu, and she talks about the importance of meditation in order to create that pause so that people can de-escalate and be able to start afresh. And it seems to be working wonders for people who are kind of really focused on it. I'd love to dig into some more of— I'm really interested in the blind spots that you define because I think that's something that we're just not aware of because of course, they are blind spots. If they weren't blind spots, we'd call them visible spots. I'd like to dig into some of those and we'll get to that right after this.

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Welcome back. I am speaking with Julian Godbarge. Julian, you talked— you teased us a little bit about your book. Could you go a little bit deeper into depth? What can people expect So, what can people expect if they pick up your book? What is the problem it's trying to solve for people? What are the big aha moments they're going to get from it?

So, the book is in 3 parts, right? The center part is a fable version of my story. And my editor and I decided business fable was the way to go. It protects the innocent and it gives you a little bit of freedom and flexibility in writing. But it's strongly inspired about my story, and it will take readers through, uh, one of my last promotions at a large lower middle market PE-backed company all the way until I became CEO of my own PE-backed company and crashed. And around that story, there is an introduction that I've called the 5 false beliefs about life in the C-suite. And these are expectations and mindsets that might make people want a C-level executive in their, in, in a company, and that are very important. I think are really worth knowing for, for, for those individuals because there's a fundamental difference between being able to hold one of those roles and being well-suited for one of those roles, meaning that you will not only perform, but you will self-actualize as a human being because some of your broader needs and interests will be fulfilled. So that's a good way to prime the reader and kind of think at a high level and make them question some of their assumptions.

I love that.

And then, and then we use the story and the power of storytelling with hopefully a hero that they will root for and that they will, they will feel sorry for at some points as well. And we use that emotional connection so that the reader can there again find similarities of, say, oh, I think I've done that kind of stuff before. And then the last section is where I present the model, the framework which is used in coaching for people who want that kind of assistance in their career. And we present the 10 blind spots that lead people to burnout.

So basically, you're saying if we were to do a show on your book, we'd be here for like a 3-hour epic.

Just like this new movie from Nolan that just came out, right?

There you go. There you go.

When you write, when you write stories, you are taught, or you are, it's advisable to use that model of the Greek hero journey. And so, you know, it's interesting you would say that because yeah, that's, there's, there's definitely some of that, right? You present the hero, you kind of get the reader to root for them and then you get them to worry about him because they can tell it's not going to go well. And then indeed it doesn't go well. And at the end, at the last 11th hour, the hero somehow recovers and things are gonna be okay.

And then, that's where we find out Darth Vader's our father and it's terrible. So Julian, could you delve into some of— because I think the important component is this idea of blind spots. Can you delve into some of the blind spots that people typically aren't aware of and what the signs are and what they need to do in order Yeah, absolutely.

And there's probably like 3 different questions in one here.

So, I know, right? I only ask small questions.

Good for you. I want to make a shameless plug of a tool that can be very useful to your listeners. I've created a self-assessment on my website, which is 10blindspots.com. You can take a questionnaire. It takes a few minutes. It's going to help identify which of the blind spots are the most likely to trip you up given your habits and your personality. So, an interesting way to start your reflection if you want to learn more after listening to this show. So, in terms of the 10 blind spots, we already talked about the tendency to not process stressing events, right? What I've called the denial tax. You are denying yourself the opportunity to process and you're going to have to pay that tax at some point. And that's not great. Blind spot number 2 is very common as well. And I call this one the confidence pendulum. And the name comes from the fact that imposter syndrome is a very common issue among executives. A lot. I think some some numbers even quote that it's over 70% of CEOs that are that are asked at sometimes feel imposter syndrome, and at the same time they all think they're they're the only ones because that's kind of what imposter syndrome is. You think you don't belong and everybody's better than you. But no, everybody at times suffers from imposter syndrome. That's a pretty well-known fact. What is less well understood is that the same individual who suffers from imposter syndrome can, within a very short period of time, also swing to the other side of that pendulum and suffer from way excessive self-confidence leading to hubris. And that's what I call the confidence pendulum, where executives tend to swing from imposter syndrome Hubris. I'm so good. I have the Midas touch. Nothing can go wrong. And it kind of goes back and forth. And it's a it's a terrible blind spot because at either end of that pendulum, you're in a bad place. You're in a bad place that might give you psychological pain and discomfort. And on the other one, when on when on the hubris side, you are you are taking sometimes reckless risks. You are miscalculating. You are not sharing credit for victories. And so there's all kind of downside for both ends of that spectrum. So your part of your trifecta question is, well, what can people do about it? And on this blind spot, like a lot of others, a root ingredient has to be self-awareness, right? Because you cannot fix a blind spot if you don't see it. And how can you see it? Well, You have— you can read a book, you can have a coach that make you aware of it. And so now you're aware of the existence. You still need that self-awareness to be able to detect when you are acting in such a way, right? So, and with that self-awareness comes the ability to counteract those bad instincts and those bad ideas and, you know, self-beliefs. So when you're on one end of the spectrum and you're in imposter syndrome territory, If you have that self-awareness, you realize it, you catch it, you can change your inner monologue. You can change those voices in your head that tell you, instead of telling yourself, that's it, I'm going to be discovered, I was a fraud all along, it's no more, it's a mystery why I've made it so long, I'm about to be discovered, right? You can stop, you can interrupt those voices, and you can replace them with something more fact-based, more honest. That you can have and that, that you can validate with your close ones and maybe a coach. And you can reassure yourself that you have accomplished plenty and you have contributed to people's success, and you can remain more grounded that way. And same thing on the other side of the spectrum. Instead of starting to think, haha, I have maximized my bonus and met the EBITDA target 4 years in a row, I'm going to be able to upgrade my sports car. You can reel that in and you can assess that, you know, the industry continues to have great tailwind. It's really great for my shareholders. You can recognize the contribution of all the team members and you can be more grounded and fact-based. And from a metaphor, from an image standpoint, what that means is that pendulum is going to keep swinging. But instead of you being the ball at the bottom that swings erratically from one side to another, you can be the one holding the string and you can control the amplitude of that oscillation so it never goes too far in one direction or another. And that ability to name the phenomenon and to control it and to replace and to upgrade the voices in your head is, is what we help our clients achieve in our coaching.

I love that. That's so powerful. Hey, for people tuning in who this is resonating with, how could people get in touch with you, Julian?

The easiest is to go to my website, 10blindspots.com.

Perfect! And we do have it in the show notes so people can reach out there. Julian, where does perfectionism fit into the blind spots?

Perfectionism is definitely one. I call it perfectionism prison. Because, you know, a lot of people who find themselves in situations of responsibility and get there because they have succeeded, right? So they have achieved high standards and they have started to elevate their, their self-expectations to, to the point where anything but perfection starts to feel like failure. And that's, that's a dangerous place because you might have a good streak of great results, but there's going to be things out of anybody's control. Life happens, bad quarter, pandemic, who knows, but sometimes things go wrong. And being able to have reasonable expectations for your performance is definitely something that's important to prevent burnout.

Now, how do you make that happen? Yeah, sorry. Would it be fair to say that when you're in this perfectionist trap, this creates situations where all of a sudden you're intolerant of other people? That you might be in blame mode? You might actually be creating a toxic environment because of perfectionism. Is that a fair assessment?

Absolutely, yes, yes, absolutely. And You know, there's many studies, and Google has one that's fairly well known, that they have attributed the success of certain of their teams to the degree of psychological safety that they're able to nurture and offer for their team members. And, and this blind spot, just like you pointed out, really comes to talk about psychological safety because with that idea that perfect is the only standard, you're going to scare people out of trying things, you're going to scare people out of voicing their concerns or ideas, they're not going to want to ask questions because they might feel ridiculed. So this is a blind spot that quickly hurts or even destroys a team or an organization's culture. And, and That's why it needs to be identified, recognized, and kept at bay.

Yeah, it's so interesting because I've seen that time and time again. And then, the solution or the leader's solution then becomes, you know what? It's just faster for me to do it myself.

Right, yeah. And I think a lot of listeners are going to be listening to that nodding their head because We get promoted because we are technically competent in one of our sectors. We might be a really good— well, whatever the case, we are good at what we do. And so, we get promoted in management and then up and up. And then, we become an executive at some point.

Yeah, I remember I used to joke around like in my early 20s when I was a manager. It was like I had the most keys of anybody. And to me, that was like a pride point for me because it showed how much I was trusted and really how much power I had. And it forced people to come to me all the time, which as I matured as a leader, I realized that was the most like— it was the craziest thing to have this ego in my head that I had to be involved in everything. Is that one of the blind spots as well?

I don't think I've named one exactly like this. But I guess, it's a tangent to what I call the Atlas Syndrome, right? where you feel that you must carry the sky on your shoulders, right?

Yeah.

After Atlas from Greek mythology, who was condemned by the gods to hold the sky on his shoulder for eternity. And part of it comes from that kind of maybe some level of arrogance that, you know, we are indispensable, but not only, you know, there's a lot of that Atlas syndrome that comes from goodwill and from wanting to protect our teams. For example, oh, I'm seeing this bad news, or I'm seeing this risk point. There's really not much to be done about it for now except monitor and wait. So no need to share with the team because that's just going to worry them or burden them, right? And so you end up internalizing a lot of those stressful points instead of spreading it out with the team and strengthening the team in. In the process, because it's short-sighted to want to protect people. You actually are a lot better off entrusting them with the harsh reality of the environment we're in, reminding them of the Stockdale Paradox, which is one of my kind of go-to coaching points. For, for those not aware, I highly encourage you looking up Admiral Stockdale. And in a nutshell, the The summary is that to be a good leader, it's important to have ultimate unwavering faith in our success in the long term, while also being extremely pragmatic and eyes wide open about how hard the short term might be. And being able to do both kind of seems like a paradox, hence the name, right? And so people who fall into the trap of saying, I'm just going to protect them and I'm going to keep the bad news to myself are hurting themselves and the teams and the team. Yeah, both.

So, Julian, so we've covered I think about 4 of the blind spots. If you wanted to leave a tease for the audience to encourage them to buy your book, your sentence should start, if you think those were good, you should know about this one and this one. What 2 would you say? What 2 blind spots without describing them? Just name them because then, it'll encourage people to actually look at the book and say, oh, I need to find out more about this.

So, if you have found yourself nodding along and/or finding some of those blind spots interesting, you should really get the book and learn more about the focus fallacy as well as the judgment trap. These 2 are almost omnipresent and extremely dangerous and sneaky. And my team of wonderful coaches are standing by to help you identify them before they hurt you.

Okay, just for the record, this is not a manipulation. We didn't manipulate anybody. We just are playing. So Julian, I'd love to talk about for the people that this might be resonating with and they know that they're I'm seeing some signs based on your story and what we've been talking about for the last 40 minutes or so. But at the same token, I'm always worried about the band-aid of the hour. Like that people will come across some information and they're like, oh, you know what? Starting tomorrow, I'm going to do this. But there's some cautionaries and pitfalls we should be aware of whenever we make a change. And I'd like to get to those right after this.

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Fair. I've lived this and I know that.

Welcome back! I hope you're getting lots from today's episode. As you can tell, Julian and I are on a mission to support leaders just like you. So, if you belong to an organization that could use our help, or you or someone you know might be planning a leadership retreat or a conference and they could use our expertise, drop us a line. We'd love to explore how we could be of service to you and your people. Julian, just during the break, you were just telling me a little something. A leader listening today suspects that they may be Closer to the wall than they want to admit. What is the first honest action that they should take like first thing?

They should share that realization with fill in the blank. It could be any or all of the above. Their spouse, their siblings, their parents, their board, their team. It doesn't have to be all of these. But there has to be Something to combat isolation, because one of the factors that aggravates stress and makes burnout more likely is being isolated. So if you can find that you're not in as good of a place than you suspected, you need to verbalize it and to have people that you can confide in.

You know, we see a lot of things today. Mental— men's mental wellness is a really big We talk a lot about how we tend to hoard stress. For the people, like, I mean, it takes a semblance of humility that we then have to overcome kind of the 20 years of ego that we've driven being pride and self-identifying and so on. It's like, how do we take this first step? Because it sounds easy. But for a lot of people, it's like, oh, I can't tell people that. They're gonna think I'm weak. They're gonna think I'm powerless. They're going to think I'm like everybody else.

Ah, so much truth in what you just said. They're going to think we're like everybody else. Guess what? Yeah, we're all human. We all breathe. We all manage stress the best we can. But it's like the rubber band kind of metaphor, right? You can stretch a rubber band for a while and pretty far until it snaps. So one thing that might be helpful to people who need a bit of a nudge, you know, if they're a little scared or embarrassed of having to say, this is getting to be a lot, I might not be okay if I continue too far in this direction, is consider the risk and the emotional pain that you might be enduring making this small confession now, as opposed to being completely broken, unable to work, having to resign, selling your sports car and reinventing your career from scratch after having to really rethink through and reconsider a lot of the assumptions you had made about yourself and about the life that you wanted. So it might sound like a daunting price, but consider the alternative. Consider that you're going to put yourself at risk of having to pay a much bigger price later.

And to use your story-building metaphor, every hero has to crash before they can turn the table and become the hero. So, we need to do that before the crash becomes a final kind of definition of who we are as an individual 20 years from now.

Right, yeah. And I think people should also take comfort in the fact that the concept of vulnerability is more and more commonly valued in leaders, right?

Yeah.

And I think we have Patrick Lencioni to thank for that because that's one of the bases of his pyramid to have a functional team is to have leaders who are vulnerable. And that creates that vulnerability-based trust that is such an important ingredient. So, you know, with that in mind, Hopefully, that fuels your motivation to say, you know what? I'm going to be vulnerable and I'm going to share something here. And maybe take baby steps. Maybe you don't start by sharing straight to the chairman of the board. Maybe you have people that are more approachable or easier to talk to. But share so you're not isolated is a really important first step.

Yeah. And I think that sharing part of it as well. is I think we grow up like— I remember being a young boy turning in puberty and you think it's only happening to you. Somewhere along the way, as we went through all the decades of experience, we still think it's only happening to us and we're isolated, right? Are there any other cautionaries or pitfalls we should be aware of as we come to grips with the fact that we have these blind spots that we need to work on?

Yeah, there's one more that I think is worth mentioning here is There is, and this is actually one of the blind spots that I call the knowing-doing gap, right? And what that means here is now that you've been made aware that self-awareness is important, or you probably knew that, but maybe you've been reminded of that. Maybe you now have been made aware of certain blind spots and certain risks. It's tempting to say, Well, now that I know this, I'm going to be okay. But knowing doesn't really help you much at all. What helps you is to understand what to do about it and to build a practice and a practice around it so that you can indeed defend yourself from from those dangers. And that's a very very big difference. So don't have the false sense of security that. because you've listened to somebody who crashed for 45 minutes, you're going to be all good. No, it's a good step in the right direction. But I strongly encourage to do the work, the introspection of what assumptions, what frameworks are basing your actions, which ones are great and help you, and which ones are just setting a trap waiting to catch you.

Right, right. Julian, this has been fantastic. Do you have any other cautionaries that we should be aware of before we move on?

No, I think, uh, we've, we've covered a lot of things here. And, uh, you know, like I mentioned earlier, I have some really wonderful coaches that are standing by to, uh, engage in a free consultation. And, you know, if you're not sure who that first person is that, that, that you should reach out to, well, please visit 10blightspots.com and click on schedule a consultation. We're here to help.

I love that. See, that just answered my next question, which is to remind people how they can get a hold of you. So there, you just did it.

There you go.

As we wrap up, do you have any last thoughts, Julien? This has been so fantastic.

Maybe last thought is if you're listening to this and you're thinking, you know what? I've actually burnt out already. I'm not even at the point of prevention. Like, I have taken this too far. I cannot keep going. It's okay because a burnout is only a step in the journey, and there is recovery, and we can think better and strong— and in a stronger way, and we can course correct. It's never too late to do the work to repair and be healthy again. So best of luck wherever you are on your journey on the burnout spectrum. It's never too late to be strong and healthy. And we can help.

Thank you so much, Julien, for doing this. Honestly, I really appreciate you being here to share kind of your perspective. I love the fact that you have this lived experience. And from there, people can learn lots from it. So, I really appreciate you taking time out to share that with us today.

Thanks for the opportunity, Marc. I really appreciate it.

Got any questions about today's episode? Or maybe you're thinking, hey, we could really use a complimentary 30-minute brainstorm So, if you want a brainstorming session with Marc or with Julianne, well, good news! You can snag a spot on my calendar. Just hit the link down below, the one marked meetwith.marchaine.com and you're all set. As always, I am at your service. And if you need somebody to talk to, first kick it the can. You don't know how to maybe come to grips with what you're dealing with right now. Please reach out. The link for Julianne's website is down below. Take the self-assessment. Book a 30-minute complimentary call. I mean, it can't hurt just to have a conversation. And you don't know how anything is going to uncover. So, make sure you take advantage of that because nothing is worse than having to toil with this all by yourself. And hey, if you haven't done so yet, please make sure you're subscribed to this podcast. Follow me on social media. I publish a lot of things all the time. Please make sure you do that. And of course, come back to this episode if you ever feel the need. It's great having you along for the ride. Thanks for joining me today. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.

See you next week.

See you next week.