Leadership Live - Beating Burnout: A Continued Discussion

Foreign.

And welcome back to another Leadership Live. This is kind of a different one just for anybody turning in on the. Tuning in on the first time. The whole purpose of Leadership Live is to address topics that maybe others don't want to address or at least not the way we're going to address them today. This is not a formal pre Hearst discussion about the subject of burnout. This is more of an informal opinion based discussion. But there'll be some facts, of course, because I have a lawyer sitting here right to my right. So we can't avoid the facts, can we? But before we get started, I want to introduce everybody who's here. So it's the first time where we actually have six of us. Usually there's two of us. The last time Ana and John. John and I did it together. But let me, let me kind of go around the room if we don't mind. I'm going to just start with Nikki. So I hope I get this right. So fill it in if I don't. Senior VP for Frank Franco. Overseeing strategic initiatives for clients and for the overall agency. Specific focus on integrating and aligning communication services for maximum results. Outside of your work at Franco Impact 100 Oakland County Board member and a whole bunch of other stuff that's on there. But I'm not going to get into everything. Anything else that you want to mention that is important? Okay. John, you introduced yourself last time, but I'm going to do that as well. I'm going to open it like this though. John, or John David, if his parents are listening. John David Gardner is an attorney member for BODMIN plc. You've come over from the west side of the state. So thank you for driving all the way over. In the workplace. Employment law, law practice group, workplace and employment law advice and counsel to Michigan employers on a bunch of stuff. So John, thank you for coming back.

Thanks for having me.

We got a new one, so. Well, lot, lot of you are new, but Kurt is. Is in the public domain as opposed to the corporate domain. So within education. So Kurt, thanks for joining us. Kurt Ellis is the assistant superintendent of HR for Seline area Schools. If you don't know where that is, it's very close to Ann Arbor. You've been there since 2011, so you have seen a lot over the last couple of years. Prior you were running, you were the director of athletics for South Lyon and for Novi. Well, this is what I didn't realize. 600 employees with an annual payroll in excess of $50 million. Big numbers. Big numbers. Welcome.

I don't recall Duke very much anymore. So that's, that's, I appreciate that. Thank you.

It's all good. It's all good. Ane. Welcome back again. We've been, I've been seeing you a lot here recently. Senior VP for HR for Trinity Health, one of the largest non for profit Catholic health systems across 26 states. 123,000 colleagues across what you do. And you have four or five states that you particularly support from an HR perspective. So this is not new for you being in this setting. So thank you for, for coming back. And our youngest of the group, Autumn. Autumn is currently a benefits consultant with usi. That was a recent move that you, you joined USI passion for helping HR and finance teams find better ways to attract and engage employees through benefits. We specifically asked you to be here after a conversation that the three of us had last time around because we wanted somebody from different generations to join us in this conversation. So anything else any of you want to add to your bio before we jump into this burning topic? Nothing. Okay, so let me kind of set the stage for all of you that have been watching and we've already had this conversation. So a number of months ago, an A John and I decided to tackle the subject of burnout. And, and it was an interesting dialogue that we felt needed a part two. So this is really the part two of this idea of burnout. And I'm going to pose a couple of questions, I'm going to, I'm going to ask a couple of them and then I'm going to kind of stop to start us. And I want you guys to kind of weigh in on this and don't raise your hand. Let's just have a dialogue about your thoughts on some of these things. So again, burnout is the topic and, and one of the questions is. Is burnout real? Just let that sit for a second. Is burnout real? There's a reason I'm gonna that I asked that as, as one of the first questions. The second thing is if it's real, whose fault is it? Now, I don't want to get into names or blaming or anything along those lines, but these are two questions that continued to come up after the session that we did a couple of months ago. Is it real? And if it is, whose fault is it? So I'd like to get your thoughts on this and just jump in and I'd like your opinion on it. You don't have to raise your hand.

I think it is real, Steve, and I believe it's real for a Couple reasons. One is because you'll never disprove the non existence of something. So if someone feels that they're burnout, you're not going to convince them otherwise.

Fair.

It's the flip side to me of engagement, employee engagement. So it's an ambivalence versus an employee's commitment to an employer. And in the current market we're in for talent and literally zero unemployment in certain sectors. It is very real because these folks, whether they're burnout or not, in reality, are very difficult to replace.

That's very true. I would agree with that last part of it. What about the rest of you? What are your thoughts on this? Is it real from your perspective?

I think it's real. But I also think that we have to do a better job of coping and learning how to cope so that we reduce the instances of feeling burnt out or, or feeling stressed or like we can't continue with something because there's just too much pressure. So I think sometimes people mistake how they might feel as burnout without really understanding the symptoms. Like not every symptom of being stressed is a bad thing. Like stress is a good thing in some cases. So just understanding how to deal with it, coping, putting coping mechanisms into your life I think is important. Having two young children, I know that I could have done a better job teaching them how to cope. I'll leave it there.

Right now I'm laughing because I have two as well and I think all of us probably could have done a better job. So I want to come back to coping here in a second. But what about the rest of you? When you think about this idea of burnout Autumn, I think just in terms.

Of where we're at, I guess we're still trying to hire people to start the school year. So what John said about this being a very difficult labor market is absolutely true. I don't like the term. I think the term is too vague, too ambiguous. It's kind of like a check engine.

Light when it comes on.

It could be any number of 500 different things. It might be that I'm frustrated because I have too much workload, or it might mean that my skills are a bad fit in for the job. I would prefer to hone in in more specific areas or more specific areas of concern so that we can try to come to some solutions. But I think just the long term burnout, it's very difficult to manage because it is so vague so often used.

So hold that thought for a second because one of the other questions I'm going to come back to all of us on is, how do you define it? Don't answer that one yet. We'll talk about this. So they can't answer that one. Nikki, don't answer that yet. Let's first visit Le.

Yes, yes.

I did some research for this because I really wanted to understand like how, how are others defining what's the difference between that? There, there is a difference, right? Stress or is this too lean for her? So hold on. I think we can dig into that further. But yes, I think it's real and it is a mixture of.

Yeah, I like that. Autumn.

Yeah, I was going to say, I do believe it's real.

I do believe.

That they're more stress. I think stressors and overwork. But I do think that there is a responsibility to the person to, you know, take a step back and evaluate, like, well, what am I doing to continue to that? Have I not made my boundaries clear with my supervisor? And so on.

So, so for any of you that are watching, and we'll come back to this here just a second. If you have comments, thoughts or questions instead of on all the social media platforms that we're streaming live on right now or on Zoom, actually text me 734-837-8500 against 734-837-8700. I won't necessarily know who you are, and that's. And that's perfect. But if you want to ask a question that we kind of bounce around, please do that as we're having a discussion or disagree with something. There's nothing wrong with that because we have different perspectives. Okay, so let's, let's go back for a second and set some, some level playing field or a kind of a level playing field. How do you define it? What is it? What is burnout from your perspective?

So I'll. Because I said I did some research.

Yeah, right.

So the World Health Organization defines burnout as chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.

Okay, that's very clear. Right.

That makes a lot of sense to me. So that's that more technical definition. For me personally, I've experienced it and I know I shared the story when we were coming from this and I'm happy to talk about it. But I think of it as that your cup is overflowing. So there needs to be, we need to put good things into our cup.

Our cups need to be filled every.

Day, whether it's work or whether it's personal combination. But burnout happens when that water is teetering right at the edge, if you put one or two drops in, it flows over. So you physically, mentally do not have the capacity to handle more. The passion, the joy, the fun in your work is gone and that spark for your work is gone. That's how I define burnout.

Okay, I think that's a good, good definition. What about the rest of you?

Yeah, I mean, I tend to agree with Nikki. I, I look at it as. It's like a collision of all things in your life. You know, I recently experienced it and I remember the day and I remember the moment and I just needed to get out of the house and not talk to anyone, just kind of walk and be by myself. But it was, you know, personal life, work life, you know, dealing with, you know, all sorts of things, but everything just colliding at once and then just feeling like this sense of, I can't deal with anything anymore, I don't want to deal with anything anymore. I'm failing. And even though I know I'm not doing any of that and I shouldn't be feeling it, it was just this overwhelming sense. So, you know, I think it is whether it's work or whether it's personal, personal, this feeling of my environment is not supporting me. Something in my environment is not being supportive of me. Where am I in this equation? And either your cup's overfilling or everything's kind of like a collision course in your life.

I think that's a good way of putting it as well. But we'll keep going. How do the rest of John from a. You've got a legal background.

Just so everybody knows I was going the other direction. My definition is a little more simplistic for my own mind, which is ambivalence plus. So ambivalence plus.

I like that.

For me, personally, thankfully, I have not experienced sustained burnout. But I know I earn to make a living based on the phone ringing and the emails pinging. When I literally, you know, start to get passive aggressive with clients asking me questions, I'm burnout, right? I want those calls, I want those questions. I need to step away because at that point I'm experiencing short term burnout. What I focus on with clients is sustained ambivalence, right? Loss of productivity, loss of, you know, loss of a path, loss of commitment to the employer. That affects a number of things. So it's that ambivalence plus to me is the working definition because it impacts.

The team members, it impacts the client, it impacts the home, it impacts literally everything at that particular point.

Once you're in it. I mean, the whole thing with burnout, right, is you can't see a way out of it. And that. That has a snowball effect.

That seems to be the issue. I can't. I don't know how to get out of it.

Yeah.

Like, what do I do? Because it becomes a feeling of somewhat helplessness almost, at least in that moment. Is that a fair way of potentially looking at it? Would you add anything else?

I think that chronic nature is really important to emphasize. There are peaks and valleys to any. Any occupation, any job. There are busy times, there are less busy times, etc. Some roles have less ability to control that than others. But I think it's when you don't feel that relief, when you don't feel that, okay, there is a time that I can clear off my desk, I can catch my breath, I can tend to my personal needs, that I'm just overwhelmed with these tasks and there is no end in sight. That that becomes difficult and that probably kind of sick. Listen to that. Okay, who's responsible for this? And if it's something that is a part of the job, if the structure has created that feeling of being overwhelmed because there's just not enough manpower to handle those tasks, then that's a structural issue. I've got 15 personal things that I'm trying to tend to at the same time. Oh, we're giving the gift of 24 hours in a day and seven days in a week. And how much we jam into that will often contribute to how we feel with these issues.

The end piece, the not having resolve seems to be like the trigger to this. And here's kind of the analogy that I use. Everybody's heard the fight or flight thing that we all tend to have, right? So if you're getting chased by a lion, none of us are being chased by a lion. But if you were being chased by a lion or if a lion came up to you, what would you do? You'd run. You're not gonna stand there and get eaten, right? So the flight comes into play, right? So there's a beginning. The lion comes up to you. There's the middle. You run like hell from the lion, and then you get away from the lion, and you go to your villagers and you start telling your villagers the story, and there's an ending. But we don't have an ending sometimes when people are feeling burnt out. So we're not actually finishing the. That description that I just gave you is what some academics and health professionals call the stress cycle. You got to Have a beginning, you got to have a middle. And you get out of stress when there's an end. And sometimes the burnout folks feel like there's no end.

We've been doing a lot of studying around burnout and how do we establish colleague care. We call it colleague care program, especially post pandemic pandemic, you know, with healthcare workers, they're seen as they have to be ready to care for other people. So when they're caring for other people, when does care for myself come into play?

Yeah.

And so reading the book the Burnout Challenge as an organization, and Christina Masla, who wrote the book and has researched it for many, many years, talks about like pebbles in my shoe. And that's when you say, where's, what's the ending? Right. So you're always going to have this nagging sense and it might be short term burnout and then it leads to chronic. Until you take care of those pebbles in your shoe, you're not going to resolve anything. And sometimes that's the employer making sure it's a psychologically safe environment, healthy environment. What are we doing to remove barriers? And oftentimes it's you, you know, what are you doing to make sure your work is aligned to your values or your decisions are aligned to your values so that you're true to you.

But I don't love my job. What do you do with that? I don't love my job now. I love my job, most of it. But there's even things about my job that caused me to be feel a little burned out at times too.

But right.

This seems to be the, the. And I'm kind of shifting gears on what you just picked up and go, but everybody's like focused on purpose of their job. Like my, I've got to live my purpose in my job. Is that mentality causing some of the burnout and is that the right mentality?

I think that people have to evaluate. They have to do a personal assessment and determine, is it, am I staying in my job because it's giving me my financial needs? Is it meeting what needs? Is my job meeting for me right now? And I think more of that occurred right evaluation during the pandemic or post pandemic pandemic where we all were saying, am I in the right place? Am I working for the right employer? Do we share common values? And I don't know the answer to it. I mean, I think I evaluate it. You know, I love my work and I have to decide, is the employer the right employer for me to do my work at. I think that's what people need to evaluate. And for me today, that answer is yes. But a couple years from now, it may not be right. So you just have to continue to evaluate. I mean, John can go practice anywhere he wants. He can work for himself.

True. And I think part of it, to Steve's question, hypothetical, I hope once you've run away from the lion and you get to the village, to be asked to go run back in the other direction. Right. Without a recuperation, without an employee recognition, without some. Some ability to pop up for air, that becomes difficult or impossible over a sustained period of time.

Sure.

And. And so I think part of it is from the employer perspective, how are we recognizing, not every day in terms of the cycle, but how are we recognizing what we're requesting or demanding of our employees? Obviously, on the employee side, it is not a daily work life balance. It is over a period of time.

It's more of a blend at any given time. And we'll kind of come back to the what do we do about it? Because. Because I still want to keep exploring kind of this. What does it really mean? Are we all saying the same thing? Do we view things a little bit differently? Because anybody watching has probably got a little different opinion of truly what burnout is and what's causing it in the first place. So let's kind of try to stick there. Then I want to come back to, okay, if it sounds like it's real, what the hell do we do about it? That's kind of the next step of this thing, both as individuals, our responsibility, as you both have said now, and as well as employers. How do we know? So we'll come back to that. Anything else to add in terms of what you feel it is, what's causing it, and is there really a difference between stress and burnout?

I think there's a big difference between stress and burnout. And I think that stress is what leads to burnout in several instances. To everyone's point, it's like a sustained or sustained period of time of stress, and then when it becomes unsustainable, the stress has just become so great. That's when you see burnout. So I feel like it starts with stress, and if you don't recognize it soon enough as an employer or an employee, because I still believe that the employee has some part in it to say, like, this is crossing my boundaries or this is overstepping and this is becoming too much, much to kind of pedal back, you know, to get to that point. Where you can say something before the lion is chasing you. You know, like you can draw the line in the sand there. Then you never really have to get to a point of burn.

Burnout.

Fair enough. Do me a favor. Just. I've got some comments that maybe the mic's not picking us up enough. Grab that mic right off of there, if you don't mind. Nikki, just grab the mic itself, pull it out of the. Out of the holder, and we're just going to have to. You got it? Come on. There you go. Just. Just hold. Pass. Pass the mic to make sure it's loud enough. Don't throw the mic.

All right.

Your question of do I love my job? So low job satisfaction, low job employer loyalty linked to burnout.

Right?

So if you don't love what you're doing, you don't have to love it.

Love it, right?

But if every time day you get up and you're like, I'm forced to do it.

You're loathing it.

Yeah, Right, right. Of course that's going to lead to burnout, Right? Because you're stressed about it. You don't enjoy the work. Like, they're very, very related. Right. So I think it's really important, again, as. As leaders, we're recognizing the people who we maybe have identified as, like, maybe this isn't a fit for them. Right. So is this burnout that they're feeling because they just. They don't enjoy the work and there's nothing I can do to change that. Right. Because I can try to put them in different roles or try to put them in situations or give them the type of work that really is aligned with the. Their passions and the things that they want to do. But I can't make every situation perfect for everyone. So if you've just come to identify that I don't love this. Right. Then it's smart to get into something that you're more passionate about because that will eventually lead to burnout.

What do you think of that? What do you guys think of that?

It resonates with me. I mean, I also think that as an employer, as leaders, that working within organizations, we have an obligation to look at situations and turn them around. And so it's the way in which we're interacting with our colleagues or our employees. It's the way that we are inspiring them. Right. So instead of maybe asking questions like, you know, curtis, what keeps you up at night? Maybe it's what gets you up in the morning. You know, what gets you up in the morning and what's driving you, it starts to change. That mindset of everything's kind of bringing me down, therefore I'm stressed or I'm burnt out, whether the term is real or overused.

So, Autumn, you mentioned that burnout and stress are different. That too much stress, that sustained stress leads to burnout. What do the rest of you think about that particular. Particular comment? There's a reason that. Because I'm gonna. I'm gonna. I wanna pull something out that I did a little research on as well about the different kind of stages that lead to burnout. What do you think? Is it stress that causes burnout?

Goes back to what you were saying too. It's chronic, right? It's repeated, it's daily.

It's grab the mics.

It's when it's chronic, repeated daily, constant stress, healthy stress is a good thing. We all need a little bit of healthy stress. And what you were saying about your kids, that's something I'm trying to work on. My husband and I are so intentional about that with our kids. Is that healthy? Stress is good. You have to go through challenging situations. That's how you grow. That's how you grow in whatever stage of life that you're in. Right. But I think it's the chronic part that makes it different that leads to the burnout.

So the reason I. I caught on that, Autumn, is that I was. I was reading something. I'm actually delivering a session tomorrow in the public school system on burnout. Because you've got this group of people that are feeling like, I don't want to work in the public schools anymore, in essence, is really what it's coming down to. So I wanted to do a little bit more of the research that kind of substantiates what burnout really is. And there's a different, different view. There's an extra step, and I really appreciated this step. Stress is our physiological response. It's not the thing. It's our response to what? To stressors, individual stressors. It's the. According the way that they laid this out, and it's not the world health. It's something similar to that. It was about if we don't deal with the stressors, our response to that is actually causing is the stress. So it's really the stressors that are causing burnout. It's not stress that causes burnout. And when we focus too much on the stress piece and we. All of our programs and our companies and everything is about stress and not dealing with the individual stressors. You, in fact, never address the situation, I thought that was a really interesting difference. That cleared some things up, at least for me. Looks like you're gonna say something.

I just read something recently that said, oh, I'm trying to remember what it was now, but like you can create all the wellness packages or unlimited vacation time pto, you can make, you know, mindfulness rooms in the office. Right. But that's not going to matter because that really resonated with what you just said, is that those stressors are still there. All those add ons aren't going to do anything.

It's masking it. It's temporary. Right.

I think I don't want to go back to the lion, but I will go back to the lion. When John talked about, you know, if I have to go back out and lay that line the next day, I'm not going to be real excited about it. And I think, you know, for a lot of folks, if the rest of the village goes out with them, that has an entirely different feel than if they're asked to go out on their own. And in the public sector that you talk about where you're going to go speak tomorrow, I think one of the things that's very challenging is that I don't know that we have a real unified purpose anymore. I don't know that we have this kind of rallying point where we're all pointing in the same direction. And so when you talk about finding purpose in your work, we all have thoughts and feelings about what our goals and objectives are. But when you're dealing with the public sector, every one of those parents has a different idea of what they're expecting right now. You know, not just in my community, but in all communities you're really hearing from, you know, about 5% on either end of the spectrum and they're really loud. And so to have that unifying purpose, to have the whole village going out to slay that lion just isn't happening anym anymore. It's happening on an individual basis every day.

So let's go back to that, this idea of loving your job because I think it's a big cause of burnout. Should we be, and I've referenced it earlier, should we be teaching that you should love your job, that you should just pursue your passion?

That's a tough question that I don't know that any one of us can answer.

But I want your opinion on it, John. That's why I invited you.

I know, I know. That's why. Okay. I think Alan Watts said, what do you desire? Right. So if you do what you love, you'll be good at it and you'll do a good job or something to that effect.

It says if you do what you love, if you do what you love, you won't consider it work. It was something like that.

Right. And to everything that's been said, which I don't disagree with, I think at the end of the day, as employers, we do also need to say, you got to teach the kids, you got to produce widgets. It's a job. Whether you're here for a paycheck or. Or for your career, that is in some sense up to you. But we have to get the job done. And so I think the expectation, setting and the transparency with employees is what do you want within this job in terms of promotion, development, mentoring, a paycheck? But loving a job every day is probably not realistic. And so it is not realistic. And so I think expectation, setting, and transparency from the employer is important. But I think for employees to be burnt out, doing what you do for a living every day is also something that the employees need to reflect on. It is a balance. And unfortunately, with compromise, you can't go halfway and expect the other party to come the other half. You got to go all the way and hope that they're going to come.

Back all the way.

It is such a difficult dynamic.

It's kind of like a marriage. It's not 50 50.

It's 100.

100.

I learned that in marriage. It was pre marriage. I don't think it was counseling, but it really resonated with me. And I've mentioned it to my wife several times.

50, 50 does not work.

I'm over 50.

50.

I'm over 50 now.

Autumn, you're gonna say something? Yeah.

I think that, you know, to everyone needs to answer the question, am I doing this job for paycheck? Am I doing this because I love it? And whatever your answer is, I think that's fine as long as, you know, you're willing to kind of deal with the. The fallout of that, like, if I go to work because my job pays me really well and my heart's not in that. Well, I made that choice. I can't really blame burnout for it because I sacrificed, you know, doing what I absolutely love for that paycheck. But to answer the other question about, you know, are we teaching everyone to love, that they have to love their job? I think we've kind of created a culture where we can't push the adversity sometimes. And so at the slightest, like like to your point, you know, you're not going to love every aspect of your job and it's kind of balancing that. I coach a dance team and we always say, you know, you love dance, but do you love working out, which is a part of dance?

No.

There's always going to be that 5% that you don't love, but you love the 95%. So this is why you do this, you know, And I think that some people have a really hard time pushing past that 5, 10%, whatever they're willing to allow or whatever boundary they're going to set. And so that's where people maybe misuse the term burnout or, you know, mis or confuse stress with burnout.

Okay, I just, I got it. It came through on text. I worked directly for Ani and she was exceptionally supportive and accommodating.

Oh, I thought.

There was a dramatic pause.

I worked, I have worked for other leaders who continually pushed and producing was always the priority. So that was a compliment in the context of everything that we're talking about. But, but there's, there's a, I'm going there for a reason. Why? I was kind of, I want kind of everybody's thoughts on this because I was reading something. There was a study that the Harvard Business Review did over a 12 year period of time and they just published it here recently. And it said that the most effective people over long term that were satisfied did in fact not love their job. What they did is they found things in their job to love. And there's a big difference between the two. And you'd mentioned the 5 or 10% that maybe you don't like so much. It was actually much greater than that. But what they did is that they found those nuggets in the roles that they felt that they could manage. Right. And they focused not on the, the things that they didn't love, they truly focused on the things that they loved. And they were the most successful, most effective over that study. Which I thought was really interesting when you relate it to this idea of burnout, stress and everything else that's actually going on. Because part of it, there's a bit of a mindset.

Right.

For us as individuals too in that whole thing. So I like where you were going with that. But that's, that's not a popular. We're going to get to the employer, employer side here in a second. Don't. We'll get there. But that's not kind of a popular discussion these days because of everything that's going on and the burnout that everybody is feeling and so on. So how do you have that discussion?

You know, you're. I don't know if I'm going to answer your question, but just something that came to mind years ago, you know, we would use the Gallup survey and the sweet 16, right. And one of the questions and everybody mocked it was, I have a best friend at work. And so when I hear what you just shared about the Harvard Business Review, you know, for me, and I hear this and I talk to folks that I work with about it, they do find something at work that draws them to work. And oftentimes it's other people. Right. And, and I know that's true for me. There are certain people that draw me to work, that if I think about leaving, I think about, well, I'm not going to be doing this work with these people. And I enjoy doing this work with these people. We've actually lifted each other up. We are a shoulder to cry on. You have that level of safety with these people. And for me, when I'm feeling as though I'm getting stressed or a period of just overwhelming sensations, I can go to those individuals. So it's getting, you know, it is.

Truly, I think to the people is the thing you focus on.

Yeah, I think they're people is an element.

So, so what do the rest of us focus on? If this idea is true that the HBR put out, I like that.

That makes a lot of sense. I, I think in a similar vein, for me and hopefully a lot of other people too, it's purpose and it's impact. So if I know my work is purposeful, if there's a greater meaning beyond just writing copy for whatever channel it is that I'm writing for, just using that as one example. Right? But if there's greater impact, right, like if you can see kind of the forest through the trees. And I know even on super stressful days or weeks or whatever it may be, at the end of the day, if I'm making some type of impact, if my work is perfect, purposeful, and if my work is aligned and we can. I know somebody mentioned this too about the core values, but like, if my personal values are aligned with the company's values and the work that I'm doing, then it's worth it. So even on the days where I might feel stressed or burnt out or whatever, if it's short term, but having that long term vision of there's purpose and impact behind my work, that helps me get through those challenging types.

Okay, Kurt, your Thoughts?

Yeah.

I think the people element is really have an alignment with the vision of your corporation, your organization. And that happens for people at different levels. There are people who are far more intrinsically motivated than extrinsically motivated. But I think the core people you work with really have an impact on how you feel about the work you do. I had a colleague retire yesterday. Yesterday was her last day. And I can tell you this person, by the end of her time, really did not enjoy her job. And yet she walked out sobbing because she was leaving behind three very, very close friends. And in the 12 hours since, has texted all of us several times. And so I think having some connection and I wonder in our world, Covid certainly had an impact when we went virtual. And I will tell you that one of our teachers talked a lot about how it was the first, first time in their career that they realized just how transactional the relationship between the parents and they were as professionals. They thought it was really a deep, deep connection. And without the ability to see people and be around them all the time, they came to the conclusion it was very transactional. And in that particular individual's example, their job satisfaction really sunk.

So it was interesting. And I don't know when you did your Nikki, when you did your. Your. Your WHO research, if it. If this came up. I was looking for statistics directly related to that, like has the idea of burnout and stress and all that increased. So it did at first. When Covet first got here because everybody freaked out. We all did. Right. But then it seemed to have settled. I like working from home. I don't have the commute. I should be. I shouldn't have as many stressors now. And it was interesting. So surveys will tell you if you're looking for it, you're going to find it. You know that, right? So you can get a survey that's on both sides of every single coin. It doesn't really matter. So I looked at how many surveys were on one side or the other. So about eight. Eight out of ten of them said that the stress and burnout has increased since we sent everybody home after that first kind of group. But I did find two that were like, no, it's gone down. So I'm going to say the majority rules in this particular case. Is that true? And does it relate to. Is burnout increasing because we don't feel the connection to other people? Could that be one of the stressors? Because I feel like I'm on an island. Is that one of the negative impacts of the flexibility we now have from working from home. And I'm not suggesting that it's not a good idea we do it, but could it be a challenge based on the connection that you guys were just talking about?

I'll start with somebody else.

Talk too much.

But I will say that one of the things that I'm struggling with in terms of finding employees is, you know, one of the 21st century values which people want. Flexible workspaces. Schools are the antithesis of flexible.

Very much so, sure.

I always say to people, we have 180 school days a year. You need to be here 180 times. That's less than half the days in the calendar year. And yet it's not the flexibility that the young people's peers are getting in other areas.

Yeah.

So I'll answer your question and say, yes, I do think it's been an impact. But there's that flip side to it for us where we don't offer any of that flexibility to work independently and that has an impact as well.

I did not find any of that those studies in my research, but I believe it because I've seen it with myself on some days. I've seen it with colleagues. But it's easy to get burnt out when you're working from home if you are not diligent about taking care of yourself. Yeah, it's super easy depending on if you have family, right? Like, but if it's just you maybe, right? You don't have pets, you don't have family to take care of. It's so easy to just sit there for 12 hours and just boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Keep going, keep going, keep pushing. You can always find more work to do. Right? So of course you're going to get burnt out. Right. It's not like, okay, I have to get into work, I have to drive, I have to leave work. Right. It's just so easy to sit there for a very specific amount of time and not take any breaks. So of course that's going to lead to burnout. So I think that goes back to taking care of yourself, having boundaries, treating breaks or walks or exercise or listening to a podcast or whatever, that might be as non negotiable. So just as we would treat a client deadline as this is due at this time, like I am telling myself I'm getting off today at this time, if my work is done, I am off. So I, I think when people are not committed to taking care of their themselves and not putting themselves first above the work or making themselves as important as the work that's going to naturally lead to burnout.

How many of you work from home consistently?

Hybrid? Yeah.

Mostly you don't work from home at all. So from, from a legal perspective, and then, then Autumn will come back to you from a legal perspective, because I do see that happening a lot with people working from home, like they just can't shut it off. Doesn't that create some legal issues for employers when people are not taking their breaks and so on?

It does. Certainly for non exempt employees, you have to be tracking, you know, hours for overtime and other purposes. There's also an aspect of offering hybrid or fully remote work as an incentive or taking it away as a, as a form of performance improvement. And you need to be uniform in its application. Right. Because the alternative is you're retaliating against someone if you can't establish a lawful reason for the form of discipline. And so it factors in with burnout because folks, a lot of the folks that want to work remotely also want more constant feedback. They want more mentorship, they want recognition. It is in conflict. It is in conflict going in. And so I think we as employers again need to realize you have to be mindful of retaliation claims. You have to be mindful of. You didn't allow me to take time off. You didn't provide me with the wage and hour FML paperwork that I see more and more and more. And I think statistically has been on the rise for many, many years.

I think that's going to cause burnout for employers having to deal with all that crap. Autumn, you were going to say something.

Yeah, I was just going to add to, you know, when the pandemic hit, burnout spread spiked for me, My head went to, everyone's head goes to. You don't know when to shut off. You know, you start and everything kind of blends together in your day. But for me, my head went to like the feeling of isolation and how much I missed my co workers. And for me, a stressful work environment is when like I'm in my four wall, like by myself. Like, I don't have any human interaction. You know, I don't have somebody to go get feedback from or promise an idea off of. And so, you know, for me, it got to a point where I was like, I'm starting to feel the weight of this, like being here when it was appropriate. I like went to my boss and I said, hey, I need to come back to the office, I need to do something. I need to be able to be out. So I think that that's like, you know, another side to why burnout maybe spiked in the pandemic. Aside from the fact that we couldn't shut off at 5 o' clock or we started way earlier because our laptop was right there.

Yeah. And creating our own kind of own environment that's not conducive to our own health at some times.

And you know, in healthcare, it's kind of split because you have a workforce that can't work from home. Right. Because they have to care for patients that are in beds or in the medical offices. And then you have an aspect of the workforce that can be a little bit more flexible and work remote, fully remote or hybrid. And so we saw a mix. We saw our healthcare providers, the ones that are caring for patients that need to be in the hospitals, in the medical groups that were trying to balance everything. So when the schools were closed or daycares were closed, but they were still required to come in and work. Right. And they're trying to find that right balance and the flexibility and healthcare is trying to catch up with. Can you work a schedule outside of setting 7 to 7? You know, when schools let out at 3:50 and you have to still work till 7, what does that look like? And so there was a great deal of burnout. And I can't remember the study, but I think it was done Duke University, it showed an increase Pre pandemic from 26%, which we thought was really high, and we were trying to mitigate it back then to about 46%.

Wow.

And so we're still trying to work that out. But then for those that can work at home, hybrid, to John's point, we started to see this sense of burnout from the standpoint of I don't have a living space that is nice for you to see on camera and you're requiring me to be on camera and you're in, you know, it's feeling of intrusion in my personal space. The boundaries was a big one. And so, I mean, as a leader of people and someone that's, you know, I also have a leader, I would encourage my team. Tell me when you got to turn it off. Like, don't feel obligated to sit at the computer. Don't feel obligated to say yes to something. You know, you, you also have, you have to balance. You know, I'm not a big believer in work life balance. I think there's an integration point. You got to figure it out for yourself. Yeah. Blend it. But you have to, you have to establish the Boundaries, but communicate the boundaries.

I think one thing that I've seen over and over again, and it's an oversimplified solution to a more difficult question and problem is don't hide the work from the employer perspective, right? Everyone wants to be in education during the summer. Nobody wants to be an M and A at the end of the year, right. There is no Christmas break if you're closing deals year end or it's holiday break. But don't hide the work and remind employees or know. Make sure you're transparent with employees. Yes, this is the, this is the burden, but this is the benefit, right? This is remote work. Maybe it's not on off, but it is a much different environment than going into a branch or a school every day. And I think if you don't hide the work, there is, there's simplicity and transparency. I'm always reminded when I was in law school, I had a group of folks that I put played sports with and their first job out was at a rental car. Well, they went out to drink like Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and the company sponsored it. And I thought that was so cool. It's short term, right? I wouldn't want to do that. I couldn't do that now. And I think you don't need to hide the work necessarily, but you can certainly pump up what the benefit of the work is.

So let me recap where we are and then because I want to address the last piece, which is what, what do we do? Because that's the questions I keep getting. What do I do? What do I do as an employer? What do we do? How do we re engage our people better? So we all agree that, and I think everybody watching agrees that some level of burnout is probably a real thing. Everybody's got a different threshold for it. I do want to just keep pointing out that it's the stressors that cause the burnout, not the stress. Right. And I know it seems simple, but when you break it down, what's the, what's the stressors that are creating it? In my job at home, a combination of those things. Let me address those because the, when you deal with stress, too much of the advice, and I don't know if you saw this when you did your research, Nikki, was breathe. I'm like, I get meditation, I get all that stuff. But if I'm burned out and I feel like crap and you tell me it's going to be okay, John, breathe.

It works.

But does that solve the problem?

But it brings you to a place where you can start to identify those stressors.

But it's like if somebody says that to me when I'm in my. Everybody has a bad, crappy day, right? And if somebody says that to me while I'm having a bad, crappy day, I just get pissed. Right? That's just how some of us are wired. So that's kind of it. We did go down the path of there's some personal responsibility in this. And one of the other comments that I got was, you've got. It's how one communicates their own level of burnout or ambivalence and how they're supported impacts their sustainability. So you've got a, you've got a, you've got an obligation to say something about it too as well. And then we talk a lot about, okay, there's a personal responsibility in this. You know, we're not going to love every part of our job. We got to stop teaching that we need to love every part of our job. I get it. Right? Find the passion in that piece. And if all the other crap that you have to go through allows you to do the passion, is it really that bad? And I know that's oversimplifying it, but then most of the questions now are, as employers, what do we do? Burnout's real. People are feeling it, we're feeling it. What do we do now? Like, practical stuff. Go ahead, Autumn.

I think that this is where the employers come in. I think that they have to create the space where the employee feels like they can come to their supervisor or manager and address like that. The boundary's been crossed.

How, how do you create the space?

I think by, you know, if somebody kind of hints at something or I mean, even in a scenario where like maybe I witnessed my super supervisor not be very understanding of, you know, something even super small, well, then as an employee, I'm not going to feel super comfortable going to them and addressing, you know, this bigger issue. I think the employer has to, you know, present themselves as, you know, open door policy. We talk about that as that they're, they're there for the employee. They're there to kind of help make them successful. And, you know, I think that they can change, show that they're willing to have those conversations with the employee when the stress is nearing burnout by just being available, not being resistant when small things are brought up and, you know, being open to change.

Because we like to deal with the big issues, but the big issues will never come to us if we don't allow the little issues to be talked about. Is that kind of a general synopsis for you?

Sure. I mean, yeah, you got to address the small things as they come. Like the pebble in your shoe, like at what point is it, you know, there's so many pebbles in your shoe that you're just fed up, you know, like address them as they come. I can't do anything when you're, when it's just past that point.

Sure.

I think it's modeling the behavior too. Right. So if we're telling our team members when you go on vacation, go on vacation. Right. Don't be responding to emails, teams messages, slack messages. Don't be sending emails at all hours of the night. Right. And, and sometimes, and I'm really understanding with a lot of our team members, they have younger kids or they have other things. Right. And a lot of times I'm working at night too. But I'm very cognizant of not emailing team members and asking them to do certain things or delegating something or following up on something. Like, you will not get a late night text or teams message or email from me unless it's urgent. So it's modeling that behavior. Right. Because that creates, that can lead to that burnout. If they're the leader, that's always the one who's pinging somebody at 10 o' clock at night or emailing at 6 o' clock in the morning. But then you're telling your team, take breaks, like don't be working at all, crazy hours. But if you're not modeling that behavior, then how, how do they know to, to do that?

So I'm gonna go ahead, I'm gonna actually comment on that from my own perspective.

So I, I, I used to do that. Right. I'm, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna happened for me was I got backlogged and so I, you know, I just would meet with my team and say, listen, it's different for everybody for me, what's happening in my life. I may email you at 10 o' clock at night, I'm not going to ask you to do that at that moment. And so you might get emails from me on a weekend, you might get emails when I'm away. But I'm not expecting you to respond immediately, I'm expecting you to respond when it works for you. I mean, considering deadlines, et cetera, all that. But I don't expect you to be online at 10 o' clock at night. And so that's where that intersection between integration for me comes into play. I even have it in my email. You might get an email from me late at night. I don't expect you to respond or work the same way I do. But I agree, modeling behavior, that's part.

Of the communication though, right?

It is.

Don't say that. And I'll do the same thing too, like for the morning. Like if I'm working on something, I just need to get it done. This is for tomorrow. Or don't respond until tomorrow. But the leaders that don't communicate that, then your people are sitting there going, well, do I have to jump back on at 10 o' clock at night and then drive right now?

Right.

I, I just had to deal with this and this is what I wanted to comment on. Like, like, I view owning the businesses that, that I own. Like, I love to work. Like, I just love to work. My wife hates it, but I love to work. Right. And she, she puts up with it. So I don't view a lot of what I do, even the mundane stuff, truly, as work. Right. So I, and, and, and the work that I do between nine and five when everybody's in the office is very different than the work I do after five and cleaning stuff up. So I'm firing off emails all the time. All the time. I don't have that in my email. I've seen your email and I've seen that. I, I think we even, yeah. Did a social post about you because of that particular thing. But this is just a week ago on a Friday night. My controller, who's relatively new, and I'm sure she's watching, she's emailing, I'll take care of this tonight and this tonight and this tonight and this tonight. Because she knows I'm always on and I'm taking care of stuff like that. Right. Like, no, Monday you take care of it. Monday you're done working. So it's kind of the balance of the two, I think, at least for, for many of us.

Yeah. But making sure the teams know, I mean, to Nikki's point, like, if we're not, and you mentioned it too, you have to be able to communicate the boundaries and what works for you. Because not checking email on a weekend might cause me to go into it, might be one of my stressors. Right. But it shouldn't be somebody else's.

Yeah.

I think, you know, one of the. You guys are all spot on with this, in my opinion. I think one of the things that I've chosen to do to that end is because I'm the same way you are. If I just let it stack up over the weekend. I'll have 250 on a Monday morning and, and it's just overwhelming. So I'll use a scheduled message and so I will not. You won't get my response until 6:45 Monday morning but I may have sent it at 9am Saturday. And it solves my, my mental anguish for being able to attend to those things as they come. But it doesn't place that undue stress on, on the employee. I think, you know, going back to kind of this original question, what do we do? To me there's two parts to this. There's the what do we do for prospective employees? What do we do for people who aren't even a part of our organization yet? And I think what John said is absolutely critical. We need to be honest about what we're asking people to do.

Yeah.

What are the skills necessary? What are the demands that we're going to make of you and then what are we going to give you in return? I know there's a lot of discussion about, you know, the relationship and purpose and whatnot, but at its core we're paying people to provide a service. It's a transaction. And so we need to be really honest and upfront about that and then be true to our word once they start. And I think we need to also make sure that we're, we're hiring people that are good fits for what we've identified in those jobs. With the labor market being as difficult as it is. I know that we're compromising our standards in a lot of situations and those compromises at the hire often end up with the burnout being burned out employees. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

That's only, that's when good business we call John or we call John to say I got to get of Rid. Rid of this person.

And then certainly everything we said about once they're in employee, what do we do to support the people once they're with us. But I don't want to lose sight of that. There's that whole front end before that versus other part of our organization that we do our due diligence to make sure that we've properly aligned the job with the people we're hiring.

One of the comments that I got, and I actually I see this on a pretty consistent basis was around companies that are now overselling the opportunity because it is so tight. And the employee starts, the person starts, realizes that was a load of crap about how you sold the organization and it's causing the, it becomes a stressor the stressor creates the stress which creates the burnout and everything else happens. So that's, that's actually dead on. Are you seeing more from a legal perspective on stuff like that or does it even affect it from a legal perspective perspective?

Yes, I think it does. I mean, there's a lot of, I think in a good way, a lot of discussion about employee experience and employee engagement and employee recognition. And I think there's a need to reduce stressors, but you're never going to eliminate the stressors. And so I think there's, you know, many statistics, but some fraction of an employee's annual compensation is lost. When you lose an employee, whether it's a third or a half, you're losing potential, potentially a lot of money by onboarding the wrong person, even in a tight market. And so I think being more transparent and yes, being dynamic. So maybe, you know, we don't need more than 15 minute Zoom meetings. We don't, we can do walking Wednesdays. There's a number of small, medium and large solutions. But what we see very often is, as you described, employers taking on challenging, you know, questionable candidates in a tight market and then having to, to go through a whole host of hurdles to offload folks that probably weren't a good fit to begin with. Yes, you need, you need staff. School starts. I know, but being intentional about who you're hiring and being transparent in the hiring process can often pay dividends throughout. Right now you can't tell every single person you're going to be the president and the CEO of this organization.

That's not possible because hiring the wrong person, it also contributes to burn out on the units. I mean, what we see in our workforce is that, you know, staff are leaving because they don't feel that there's enough resources to support the work. But we're hiring, but we're also seeing them transition. And so at the front end, it's really important. I, you know, going back to your question about what are we doing? I think it's as simple as, you know, teaching. And I, we have to say this, I have to say this. Teaching, teaching. Sometimes our middle managers to be kind, right. And empathetic and you know, you don't want to spend five minutes, you know, how was your weekend? And do all that, but you have to do a little bit of that. You know, you have to do a little bit of that. You don't need to take up 15 minutes. But just being kind and empathetic and really teaching basic leadership skills. I think I feel bad for our middle manager, because there's so much that is on their shoulders, and we keep giving them more and more and more. Whatever industry you're in, they keep taking on more. Your teachers are taking on more of the parents burdens. Right. Parents are asking them to do more than they're. They're like, I'm not paid to do this. And what are we doing to say, how can we relieve them of some work so that they can focus on their basic management responsibilities, which is taking care of those human resources within their. Within their leadership?

That could be a whole different topic. We have middle managers too, and it's one of the greatest thing that we put into place at our agency because we have our senior leadership. But then we've kind of growing nurturing this middle manager group. But that's one of the toughest spots to be in. And it was the most challenging part of my career was learning how to become a manager and a leader while also still doing so. You're still charged with executing, but now you have to teach, you have to mentor, you have to delegate. And you have to do it in a way that is kind and caring and empathetic. But like, you still need to tell people how to things still need to get done.

Right.

That accountability. So it's that. It's that balance that when not done well, it can cause the manager to burn out. It can cause the people who they're supposed to be supporting and guiding and teaching to burn out. Whole different topic.

Yeah. And then something is compromised. Right. Whether it's the people or whether it's the organizational outcomes.

You know, have you ever been, any of you? And. And if you can't say where. And that's. That's fine too. Been in a situation where the objectives you thought you had were truly not the objectives that you were held accountable to. You ever experienced. So it was kind of like the goalpost change. I'm not talking about the culture of the organization. I'm talking about the actual deliverables of your job changed or you didn't actually know what they were.

I think I've experienced that maybe a teeny bit.

Okay.

Yeah. Just like you kind of said, we actually, me and my co worker, best friend, we would talk about like this little bit frustrating when you feel like the assignment was X, Y and Z. We were all on that meeting where we agreed on X, Y and Z. You know, we go back as the people that are, you know, the executors, we start to execute just to find out that that was not you know, it maybe wasn't articulated the way it was. You know, the manager wanted it done. And now I'm sitting here with time wasted, feeling very frustrated and now going back to square one.

So the reason I asked that is one of the. Again doing the research, right? We both did a fair amount of that. I've been, I've been thinking about this for months, ever since we said we're going to do a series number two on this thing. So they tied dysfunction or they tied burnout to two things, kind of that one, that personal piece. And then the broad brush on the other side was dysfunction of the organization, which I think we're all kind of saying there's some dysfunction in just about every organization. But as they drill deeper and into what dysfunction, what stressor had the biggest kind of impact on burnout. And it wasn't specific to middle managers. It was just the entire population of hundreds of thousands of people that they surveyed. And it was zero clarity on what my job is or how I'm held accountable or the goalpost continued to move. That was one of the biggest stressors. It was like an overwhelming 80 some percent that said, said this is how I view dysfunction in my organization. So I tested this. I went to some of my own team members. What do you think I found?

There wasn't a lot of strategic clarity.

There was some stressors right now. Not at all, not in all roles. There were certain roles that they like, what's the expectation? Bam. They were right on the money. They could recite it as if I, I was saying it. And then there were others. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm causing stressors and potential burnout for some of my folks because I wasn't clear or their boss or something about what we're doing. We didn't communicate it the way that we should. So then I started asking client people within our clients and same exact thing, like I do think this is a big part of the expectations are off. It creates a stressor. It creates the same stress and it creates the burnout. From a company perspective.

One of my favorite phrases from Brene Brown is clear as kind. I say that all the time, for sure. I work in communications, right? So communications is at the crux of everything that I do. But you're right, because when people aren't clear, then the expectations aren't there. They don't understand the job, right? Then you spend all this time doing something just to find out that wasn't what was intended in the first place. Place right so, yeah, And I think.

Just to expand upon that, I think you can be in your mind crystal clear and it doesn't mean that people are still perceiving it the way you want. I use the example all the time. I can describe the head of a quarter with great clarity and I can be a hundred percent. Right. But if you're looking at the tail, our worlds are very different and that happens all the time.

Yeah.

And so, you know, being crystal clear about our communication is really, really important.

It's like our attorney friends here. Right. Which we love. We, I mean, come on, we tease John a little bit, but how could we, how could we operate a business without an attorney? But it's not, you know, you get a, you get an employment agreement. Attorneys don't argue about the, the black and white text. They argue about what the intent of the text, the perception of the text, what it means. Right. It's very different than here's the fact. It's not about the fact, it's about the perception of the fact.

Absolutely.

And we all have that. I don't know if you want to add anything to that, John.

Yeah, no, I just back to the question, which I think is a great question, is the objective is different from the, you know, the assigner and the assignee. And so I think a lot of times there are basic things we can do along the way. What did you. This is what I interpreted the assignment to be. This is when I interpret, interpreted the deadline to be. If you don't have that, you end up sometimes just completely missing the mark. And I think it also ties into. You don't take the work out of the work because that at the end of the day, we're a business, run like a business and there's, yes, we want great work, we want XYZ widgets, we want, you know, all of these things. But at the end of the year, this is how you're going to be evaluated. This is how the middle manager is going to be evaluated. This is how the company is going to be evaluated. And if you don't continue to keep that going or keep that top of mind, I think people can get lost in. Well, I thought I was supposed to do this. Well, yes, that's important. But this is the, this is the framework. You're focusing on this minutiae and it's going to frustrate an employee and it's going to frustrate everybody up too, for sure.

So it's four o', clock, so I would kind of go around in kind of Close real quickly. So if you, if you are going to provide one bit of advice to an individual and one bit of advice to an organization like your boss or somebody else, what would that piece of advice be? When it comes to dealing with this idea of burnout, start with you?

I think again it goes back to just this clarity of what's expected. And so I think from the employer side, making sure that the, the prospective employee or the employee understands what's expected of them, how they're going to be measured, how they're going to be evaluated, what we're defining success as, and then ask the employee to be able to regurgitate or recite that back in their own words so that you ensure there's a level of understanding. After meetings, I'll often send a follow up email just to say I want to review what we talked about so that it is there in writing. And then if there are any questions about it, there was another opportunity to re engage. So I think just that reassuring clarity is really important.

Good. Thanks, Kurt.

Nikki, I would say speak up, have boundaries, but also recognize that going back to the healthy stress, we, we have to have that level of healthy stress to grow, to train, to change. It's important, but really work to identify is it good stress, is it healthy stress or is it change to burnout? For the leaders, it's care. Listen to your team members, care, get to know them, know how they're wired so that you can also identify maybe they're not comfortable yet speaking up or they haven't got to the point where they're speaking up. But if you know them, you can identify when they're starting to hit that stress or potential burnout phase.

Thank you, Nikki Autumn.

I would say for the employee, communicate. You have to be willing to have the conversation that you're stressed beyond what's normal in approaching burnout. And I think for the employer, you have to be open to receiving it and create the environment where it's okay to say, you know, I am, I'm getting stressed. You know, you can't be defensive and.

Just yeah, thank you for that.

I would say something a little bit similar to what you know, Nikki shared, which is, you know, as an employer leader, listen and hear the person. So take time to really get to know your employee or somebody in the workplace and then provide them the right level of support, which might just mean listening, you know, and hearing them out. Personally, I think don't jeopardize your own values and your boundaries and share them and talk about them, you know, I go to bed at 9:30pm so if you call me at 9:35, I may not answer.

Sure.

You know, so communicate those boundaries so other people know and they're not guessing and that will lead to more comfort, less stress, stress, less burnout.

Thank you, honey.

John, I think from the employer side, transparency, don't hide what the job is. I've said that, you know, several times. I know it's more difficult than you know, in practice than it is to say and from the employee side, take ownership. It is your career, it is your name, image and likeness. It's your job. If you just want a job, just do the job and maybe be open about that. If you want a career, you gotta, you gotta step up and you gotta, you know, avail yourself of opportunities.

There's a personal responsibility there at some point. Well, listen, thank you all of you for sharing kind of your own perspective on some of this stuff. There's no doubt it's a problem and I think it's gotta be addressed from both sides. It's not a one side or the other, which unfortunately most of what you read online in the media is, I mean literally there was ones that said, is it the employer's fault only? Yes. Saw it over and is it the employee's fault only? Yes. And depending on what you're looking for, you're going to find it. Right. I think that's ridiculous. It's a, there's a two way road here. I'm not going to say it's 50, 50, it's probably 100%. 100% as we were talking about earlier. Right.

Those two could be sitting in the same, you know, same office. It's 100%, employer, employee, and they're right next for sure.

And I don't know that we'll be done with this conversation. I think there's so much more to kind of dig in on. Both from a legal perspective, a leadership perspective, whether you're in the public sector, private sector, it affects absolutely all of us. So thank you for sharing that. We're going to be doing more of these. The next one is actually going to be on the subject of accountability. We're going to figure out exactly how we're going to address that. But on November 8th at 11 o', clock, if you're watching this, make sure you tune in, register for it. There'll be a link soon available to register. We'll have some more guests to talk about. How do we actually teach our leaders to properly hold people accountable and not use it as the end Result of I'm going to fire you and that's the way I hold you accountable, because that's not what accountability was originally meant to be. So. But again, thank you all for tuning in. We are actually broadcasting live from my backyard for those of you that haven't seen this one before. So I appreciate you guys coming all the way over here. I think it's kind of a cool setup in order to have just kind of a chat about something like this. And we're not leaving the cameras live for the cocktails that happen afterwards. I'm sure we'll continue this discussion. There is some talk about doing this more often. Right now we're doing it once a quarter, I think, is what we're doing it. I think the consistency matters. We're probably going to go to once a month here pretty quick and we'll do Leadership Live on a more ongoing basis. So if you're interested in, interested in joining us, whether it's live or virtual, please reach out to me. You, you can text me, call us, or you can reach out to Leah that even though she's not on camera, most of you know who Leah is. And if you don't, just look up, Leah attached the qualigence and you'll quickly identify who she is because she's all over social media. But again, thank you, everybody. Thank you for tuning in. This video will be out in, in social media land. It'll be on YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook if you want to watch it or please share it. And we'd love to see the comments and maybe we'll add it again as a topic here coming up before the end of the year. So with that, Leadership Live is over for today. It's now time for cocktails. Thanks, everybody.

An aspect of offering hybrid or fully remote work as an incentive or taking it away as a, as a form of performance improvement. And you need to be uniform in its application, right? Because the alternative is you're retaliating against someone if you can't establish a lawful reason for the form of discipline. And so it factors in with burnout because folks, a lot of the folks that want to work remotely also want more constant feedback. They want more mentorship, they want recognition. There it is. It is, it is in conflict. It is in conflict going in. And so I think we as employers again need to realize you have to be mindful of retaliation claims. You have to be mindful of. You didn't allow me to take time off. You didn't provide me with at the wage and hour FML paperwork that I see more and more and more. And I think statistically has been on the rise for many, many years.

I think that's going to cause burnout for employers having to deal with all that crap. Autumn, you were going to say something?

Yeah, I was just going to add to, you know, when the pandemic hit, burnout spiked. For me, my head went to. Everyone's head goes to. You don't know when to shut off. You know, you start and everything kind of blends together in your day. But for me, my head went to, like, the feeling of isolation and how much I missed my co workers. And for me, a stressful work environment is when, like, I'm in my four wall, like by myself. Like, I don't have any human interaction. You know, I don't have somebody to go get feedback from or bounce an idea off of. And so, you know, for me, it got to a point where I was like, I'm starting to feel the weight of this, like, being here. And when it was appropriate, I, like, went to my boss and I said, hey, I need to come back to.