E37: Self-Reflection: DEI Leader Wellness, Are We Burnt Out Yet?

Hi everyone, welcome to Inclusion Unscripted. Uh, thank you for joining us live today on, um, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Um, this is our end of year program, um, so I want to thank all of you who have been listening to us live on LinkedIn, uh, since the beginning. This is episode, um, I think 48 for us now. We've done 48 episodes of Inclusion Unscripted. I am so proud of the work that I am doing and the work that you are doing out there as we empower diversity, equity, and inclusion. Today's show is about diversity leader burnout. I just ended a webinar talking through this and I want to bring this today here to talk about it in part 2. Of diversity leader burnout. So for all of you who've never joined Inclusion Unscripted, my name is Margaret Spence and I'm the founder of the Inclusion Learning Lab. And we are here every Friday at 2:00 PM when I'm available. So I've been inconsistent sometimes, but it's all good. We are here on Fridays at 2:00 PM. And the Inclusion Unscripted podcast and the Inclusion Learning Lab is here to do a couple things. We are not just building diversity and inclusion programs, we're living it every single day. Diversity and inclusion is not a thing to do. It's not a process. It is a part of us as human beings. I said, um, on a meeting earlier this week, and I said it on the webinar that I did earlier today, Diversity and inclusion is not head work. It's not work that we do in our knowledge base of work. Diversity and inclusion work is heart space work. It's the work that we do from the heart. It is how we take our processes and allow people to take it in, but also to take it into their own heart space. And we as diversity and inclusion leaders, we do heart space work. And if you're still doing head space work where you're trying to get into the minds of people, then you're not effectively doing the work of diversity and inclusion. So today we are going to have a talk about diversity leader burnout, but we're going to talk about wellness. How we as diversity leaders can be well. How do we maintain our wellness when the work gets hard? How do we maintain our resilience when the work gets tough? How do we maintain our stick-to-itiveness, our ability to keep going when we don't see the results for the work we're doing, or the work that we're doing is being challenged by the organization that we're doing it in. How do we maintain that? What does that look like for us? So I shared on my webinar earlier today, um, we do a webinar called the Third Wednesday, and we typically do it on the third Wednesday of the month, but because it's a holiday week, uh, we moved it to Friday. And we talk through what it's like to feel like you're burnt out as a D&I leader. What does that feel like? What is the feeling that comes over you when you are experiencing burnout? And how do you, as a D&I leader, find wellness? How do you find your wholeness in this process? And I, I was shaken this week, um, to the core actually, when a man that I felt from a visual standpoint had it all, had everything. He was famous, he had what seemed like the pinnacle of his career, he had, you know, been on The Ellen Show for so many years, and he ended up taking his own life. And I thought, wow, Um, how do you miss that? How do you, um, what do we miss about a person when they end up feeling the need to take their own life, even when visually they seem to be doing so well? And I think when it comes to— and I, my heart hurts for his family, his children, because I know that is the question. That's always the question. What did we miss? One of my son's very good friends, high school friends, took his own life last Christmas. And for months we asked, what did we miss? How did we miss it? What did we— what did we not see in the process? You know, what didn't we see? And so that was the the question, what didn't we see in the process? For DE&I leaders, we're often out there putting the big smile on our face. We are navigating in spaces that aren't always welcome. We are navigating employees and leaders who may not want what we are giving. We are being challenged in our role. We are constantly having to prove our worth and worthiness in the role. We're constantly having to reinvent ourselves as we do the work of diversity, equity, equality, inclusion, belonging, thriving, all of it. So how do we find our own resilience? How do we address our wellness? How do we spot when we are in trouble, and how do we support each other as an envelope? What does that look like as an envelope for all of us? So I want to share, um, I want to share my screen for a second, and I want to share, um, a, um, a visual that I created that I want you all to see. So this is a visual that I sat down and I— what I shared with my webinar, my Third Wednesday webinar group earlier, was a story around a client that we worked with and the anxiety and the emotional distress that I had around the work we were doing. And, and when the work ended. And I personally, as a person, um, doing consulting work, um, working with organizations, I experienced not only burnout but depression, um, anxiety, um, and I was stressed out because of the work that I was doing. And so I had to step back from it all and say, how do I maintain my own wellness while I am doing the work of diversity and inclusion? And so that's what we're going to talk about. This is going to be a short episode today because it is our holiday episode. And for all of you who are celebrating Christmas, Kwanzaa, all of my Jewish family out there who are celebrating the holidays as well, I want to wish everyone early a happy holiday and also wish all of you a phenomenal 2023. But here's where we are going to land. As I was going through diversity leader burnout, one of the challenges that I had personally, and this is my own personal journey, and we all come to this in different places. When I was going through my diversity leader burnout, I grappled with everything that you see on the screen, and for those of you who are listening to the audio podcast, let me tell you what I've done. And if you, if you're listening to the audio, you can pop onto YouTube and watch the video so you can actually see the graphic that I've created. The first thing that I grappled with is I can't take this personally. I can't take this personally. I can't take this work that I'm doing personally? That was the first thing that I grappled with. How do I not take the fact that the organization is not moving in the direction that I want them to do, to go, how do I take that process and not take it personally? How do I do that? The next thing that got me was I've got to prove myself more. I've got to prove myself. I have to personally take on the mantle of making the organization change. I've got to prove myself more, and maybe I didn't prove myself enough. That's why they're not moving in the direction. Maybe the tools and skills that I have was not the right tools and skills to make this work. Maybe I needed some new tools and skills that I didn't currently have. And then I moved and shifted in this burnout cycle that if I work harder, it will get better. If I work harder, it will get better. When I got to that phase of if I work harder, I literally did start working harder. I doubled down on the work because I felt that maybe I wasn't giving enough energy to the work itself of diversity inclusion, the work of building effective strategy, the work of implementation, the work of working through the tactics and the results that I wanted to see for this organization. So I felt if I worked harder, I'd get better, it would get better, they would get better, they would see what I needed them to see. And then I shifted to, what do they want from me? Because by that point, I had given everything I had. There was nothing left. I had given it all up and there was nothing left. And so what was, what was there is, um, what do they want from me? And then I shifted to, why am I here? I hate this. That's when I exited. But before I got there, I asked a pivotal question: does my work matter? And for many of you doing D&I work, right, the question is, does my work matter? That is the question that we are often asking ourselves. Does the work of diversity and inclusion matter? Does it matter? And who does it matter to? Does it matter to the organization? Does it matter to the employees? Does it matter to the Does it matter to the building the office is in? Who does it matter to? Is often the question that we ask ourselves as we do this really hard work around diversity and inclusion and talent work. Because at the end of the day, what we are hoping to accomplish is to make life better for every employee in the organization and to uplift employees who have typically not been uplifted. That's the work we're doing. That is the work, right? And so after I went through this, I got to the point where I said, they can change. I can make them change. If I double down even more, they will change. I can make them change. I know I can make them change. I absolutely know that I can make them change. And then finally I got to, I don't want to be on the Zoom with these humans anymore. I don't want to be in the room with them. I don't want to be associated with them. I don't want to attend another meeting with them. And I got to, why am I here? I hate this. If you're experiencing any of these symptoms as a diversity leader, you are probably burnt out, and it's probably time for you to evaluate your own wellness. If you feel that you, you've got to take this personal, you have to prove yourself, if you work harder it's going to get better, if you're questioning what they want from you, if you hate being there, if you feel they're going to change if you make things happen, if you don't want to go into your office today, and if you don't feel that your work matters anymore, then you are officially in burnout, and I'm talking to you. And what I want to do is put my arms around you and say, the work matters, but your wellness matters more. Your personal wellness matters more than the work itself. Because oftentimes as diversity and inclusion leaders, we don't ask for our own psychological safety. We don't ask for the psychological safety that we need. We need to have our own psychological safety. We need a safety net around ourselves. We oftentimes want to create psychological safety our employees, for our diverse employees, for the women that work in our organization. We wanna help managers understand how to create psychological safety, but we don't ask the organization to create a psychologically safe environment for us. And so we set out to do the work without asking for what we need. And so the question always is, what do you want and why don't you have it now? But the bigger question is, how do I get the wellness support that I need in my role? How do I get that? How do I ask for it? What should I ask for? What do I need? As a DE&I leader, you need to have mental wellness to do this work. This is not headspace work. It is heart work. It is heart work, and you have to have the wellness to do the heart work. If you don't have the wellness to do the heart work, you cannot do this work, because everyone is going to find a reason on any given day to upend the work that you are doing. You know, this morning I got up and I read the New York Times as I do every morning, and the article in the New York Times was Elon Musk, management guru, question mark. Elon Musk, management guru, why the Twitter owner's ruthlessness, unsparing style has made him a hero to many bosses in Silicon Valley. When I read the article, I thought about the D&I leader who was at Twitter and the D&I leader who had put in the work at Twitter. And I thought about her work and I thought about the dismantling of her work, but then I read the article more and I realized that it wasn't about Elon Musk, it was about all the other CEOs who think he's a hero. And that's the, that's the thing. In this article, they said they, they consider the work he's doing a bossist. B-O-S-S-I-S-T-S. I'm assuming that is a new word, um, a new coined phrase for inhuman work. Um, or is that a new coined phrase for, um, disruptive work? Maybe, I don't know. Um, but what came out in this article was that the organizations, um, feel that diversity and inclusion workshops, remote work policies, company wellness days should be stripped away from their employees because the employees are lazy, entitled people. Um, so how do you, as a D&I leader, when you're watching this occurring and you're watching, um, in this case an employee wore a Stay Woke t-shirt as this issue was going on. How do we find resilience to do this work going into 2023? How do we find resilience? What does resilience look like for you as a diversity and inclusion leader? Here's what it looks like. Let me tell you why I'm doing the work. Let me give you my lens, my why of why I'm doing the work. Um, a couple reasons. One reason I'm doing the work and in a more targeted pace than before is because I have a grandson now. He's a year old, turned a year old a couple days ago, and I asked myself What is the world that I want him to inherit in 21 years when he is fully an adult and stepping out into the world as an adult? Do I want him to inherit the world where George Floyd has his knee put on his neck and his life is snuffed out of him, or do I want him to inherit a world where he is empowered to be his true self, where he is empowered to live, where he is empowered by any organization he works for to be his best self, and where his achievements are valued, and where his knowledge is empowered, and where he is allowed to move forward. So my new resilience factor is for my 1-year-old grandson. But the second resilience factor is from my 93-year-old dad. My dad is 93, and every day is a blessing, and I don't take them at all for granted. For him, I look at the days and nights that he has endured to get to 93 and all the changes that he saw along the way. And how society got better, technology got better, things got better. And through the lens of getting better, I say to myself, I think we can do better. I also think about the young boy or girl, the young woman who is going to be entering the workforce this year as they graduate in May. And I ask myself, what is the world that I want that young lady walking into? As a young woman coming to the world of work? Do I want her walking into a world that is welcoming, a world that acknowledges her and empowers her and gives her her wings so that she could be who she could be? Do I want to give her a world where everyone sees what's possible for her? I also harken back and the reason why I do the work. And in order for you to address your own wellness, you've got to be conscious about your why. You know, Simon Sinek says start with the why. If your why is jaded, then your wellness will be too, because you won't understand your why and connecting it to the work. We have to maintain the why in order to do this work effectively. We have to maintain the why. My why is for that young person coming into an organization that says, this is how we've always done it, and they're not willing to bend in any way. That is my why. My why is for the people who are currently working in organizations who are giving the organization the better part of their life, and they're getting not a whole lot beyond a paycheck, where they're feeling unfulfilled, where they're feeling that they aren't being heard or seen, where they're feeling not valued. That's the reason why I do the work. So how do I maintain my own wellness? When I feel like I'm burning out, I step back. I don't try to put this cape on. I wrote an article that is sitting on our blog at inclusionlearninglab.com about my self-reflection of 2022 going into 2023 and the superwoman capes that I've taken on as not only as a woman of color, as a caregiver to my 93-year-old dad, as a, um, mother to my two sons who are grown, who I'm now not their mother, I'm more of a support system to my grandson that I love watching on FaceTime as he learns to walk and talk and explore the world through the eyes that is not jaded. We have to find our own wellness. We have to find things within the organization that we work that fuel us, the things that make us the most happy. Because we can't do negative work every day and expect to be whole people as diversity leaders. We have to find the appreciative parts of the work we're doing. We have to really be diving into the appreciative side of the work we're doing. What do we truly appreciate about the work we're doing? And how do we take those wins as our fuel? But we must, as I said in last week's episode, put the mask on ourselves, put the oxygen mask on ourselves. And if we recognize that we're burnt out, we need to take the time away from the process to refuel ourselves. I posted on LinkedIn yesterday, do not let your PTO sit. Do not accumulate PTO. Take your vacation time, turn off the phones. Take your PTO, do not participate. Recognize when the day is done, don't continue the work into your life. I'm guilty of doing that because not only am I a, um, consultant business owner, I'm also doing a multiple of other things, and so the work often spills over into my life and the work becomes my life. I think the struggle that we have, especially for women who are doing this work of diversity and inclusion, is that we want to fix everyone. And we have to recognize that we will burn ourselves out trying to fix everyone. We cannot fix the planet. It can't be done. We can't make an organization follow diversity policies if they don't want to. But we can make a difference in the spaces that we can make a difference. But we can't take on as our only goal, our only mission, um, to burn ourselves out trying to make an organization change. It's no different— you marry a man who left the toilet seat up and every night you fall in the bowl and you complain and you say, you need to not put the toilet seat down, Well, he was putting the toilet seat up before you married him. If you are struggling with burnout as a diversity leader, get help. Use your EAP vendors to go and talk to someone. Find a coach to work with you, to coach you through what you are going through. Find a circle of friends who you can talk to. Reach out to another diversity leader and say, how can you help me? Don't try to exist in a silo by yourself and say, I don't want anybody to know what's going on with me. I'm falling apart inside and I don't want anyone to know what's going on with me. We cannot do the work of diversity and inclusion in a silo. We cannot do that work in a silo. We have to have a team of people who are supporting us and empowering us every day. We have to ask and demand that the organization create psychological safety for us. You cannot fight every day. There has to be some wins, some losses, some fights, some things that you put on the back burner. We have to prioritize the process and not burn ourselves out because the DE&I role is the highest turnover role in the HR talent space. The highest turnover, 70% turnover for diversity leaders. And so why are we having such a high turnover? Because the organization doesn't want us there, for one, but we burn ourselves out there and we don't address our own wellness. And when we are tired, we walk away. Ladies and gentlemen doing diversity and inclusion and talent work, this is heart work. It's not head work. It is heart work. And if your heart is not in the right place, then this is not the work for you to do. If you are burnt out, this is not the work for you to do. If you're tired and exhausted from doing this work, then you need to step away from it. I do not want to see a diversity and inclusion leader burnt out. I don't want to see that. I want to share this again so you all can see it. This is what a burnout situation looks like, where you say, I can't take this personal, I gotta prove myself, I gotta work harder, it'll get better. What do they want from me? Why am I here? I hate it. They will change. No, they won't. I don't wanna go in today. I don't wanna be on the Zoom. And you question whether your work matters. If this is where you are as a diversity leader, I wanna challenge you and beg you to take your own wellness seriously. Our wellness matters. No one is going to care about us if we don't care about ourselves. We have to put the mask on ourself first. We have to do that for ourself. We cannot expect the organization to address our wellness. I created the Inclusion Learning Lab because I wanted to create a safe space for diversity leaders to be able to share and come with their whole self. But I want to say to all of you, your wellness matters. You've earned the right to stand in the room. You've earned the right to do the work you're doing. You've earned the right to be empowered. You've earned the right to have the organization care about your wellness. You've earned the right to be supported in the DE&I role. You've earned the right to have a psychological safe workplace for you as the DE&I leader. You've earned the right to guide the organization while they support you. But here's what I know. You have earned the right to take your wellness seriously. You earn the right to take your own psychological safety seriously. So as I wrap up today's show and we close out 2022 and we head into 2023, I want to ask all of you to make a resiliency plan for yourself. What will it take to empower you every day? Who do you need to surround yourself with so that you are empowered? Who do you need to surround yourself with so you are supported? What kind of support system do you need personally, and what do you need to ask your organization to provide to you so that you have a psychologically safe place to show up every day. So that's the question. What do you need to be well in the role of a DE&I leader? What do you need to fuel and empower your own personal wellness? So as we go into 2023, I want to wish all of you a happy holiday. An amazing 2023 to come. We will be back after the holidays, um, so I thank you for listening to Inclusion Unscripted, and I want you all to have an amazing holiday season. Thank you for joining us today on Inclusion Unscripted, and we'll see you again soon. And tell a friend about this program and download it and like it on your favorite podcasting app. Thank you again. Have a wonderful holiday season.

You're like a circle that floats around me, keeping me safe and sound. And when I fall, you've tied a rope to me. You're blessing me every day. I was down with an illusion. Like a sparrow with broken wings, but now I shine with your reflection on me.

Thank you everyone. Uh, we have a couple comments. Um, thank you guys for joining today and have a wonderful holiday. Thank you.