Does it feel like an increased number of people around you are experiencing burnout? Since the start of the pandemic, burnout levels have been increasing across all levels of organizations. At the end of 2022, the data showed that 33% of Canadians reported feeling burned out, while that number doubled among workers in healthcare.
Why is this happening? What is burnout and how do we recognize it? More importantly, what do we do about it?
Julia Somody, psychologist, and leadership coach has been diving into the impact burnout can have on individuals and as a result, organizational well-being. Sharing a fresh perspective on work/life integration, Julia brings a wealth of experience, insights, and strategies for sustainable well-being.
Whether you are recovering from burnout or creating an intentional practice to avoid hitting that wall, this episode is informative and enlightening.
Website: juliasomody.com
Does it feel like an increased number of people around you are experiencing burnout? Since the start of the pandemic, burnout levels have been increasing across all levels of organizations. At the end of 2022, the data showed that 33% of Canadians reported feeling burned out, while that number doubled among workers in healthcare.
Why is this happening? What is burnout and how do we recognize it? More importantly, what do we do about it?
Julia Somody, psychologist, and leadership coach has been diving into the impact burnout can have on individuals and as a result, organizational well-being. Sharing a fresh perspective on work/life integration, Julia brings a wealth of experience, insights, and strategies for sustainable well-being.
Whether you are recovering from burnout or creating an intentional practice to avoid hitting that wall, this episode is informative and enlightening.
Website: juliasomody.com
Cindy Thompson - A Resilience Project Podcast
Building Resilience Among Humans One Conversation At A Time
EP97: Julia Somody – Strategies For Sustainable Well-being
Cindy Thompson: Hello, friends. I am Cindy Thompson, and this is ‘A Resilience Project.’ This is a space where stories are shared and possibilities are discovered. I invite you to partner with me in cultivating resilience among hu How many different masks do you wear? What do I mean by that? Many of us have a mask or persona that helps us to fit in or meet the perceived expectations of others.
Cindy Thompson: Does it feel like an increased number of people around you are experiencing burnout? If you have, it is an astute observation, because they are. Since the start of the pandemic, burnout levels have been increasing from the bottom of organizations to the top. At the end of 2022, the data showed that 33% of Canadians reported feeling burned out, while that number doubled among workers in healthcare.
Why is this happening? What is burnout and how do we recognize it? More importantly, what do we do about it?
Getting on top of burnout rather than ignoring it, is critical for sustainable wellbeing. Sometimes it can seep into your life so gradually that it feels like a new normal. Ideally, we are aware of the early warning signs and take steps to mitigate the long-term impact of stress.
Julia Somody psychologist and leadership coach has been diving into the impact burnout can have on individuals and as a result, organizational well-being. Sharing a fresh perspective on burnout, Julia is on the podcast talking about why burnout is so prevalent and why we need to re-consider our approach to work/like integration.
Full disclosure, I fired so many questions at Julia on this topic, with an ambitious agenda for the limited time we had, but I think we managed to cover a lot of ground.
If you are challenged with finding balance, keeping your head above water while maintaining several hats, this episode is for you.
Here is my conversation with Julia.
Cindy Thompson: Julia, I really am grateful to have you here today to be in conversation on "A Resilience Project" with me.
Julia Somody: I'm so excited to be here talking to you, Cindy.
Cindy Thompson: Thank you. It's so good to have come to know you over the last few years, the work that you're doing out of Vancouver. As a psychologist, now as a coach, I just feel like you've been diving into the topics that are related to the podcast about wellbeing, about even topics like burnout, which I'm hoping we'll dive into today and to be able to cover off some of the things that we need to think about now. The fact that we have come through the pandemic, we're now in a different phase of recovering and calming our nervous systems, but also thinking about what we need in the workplace, but for us personally.
Julia Somody: Sounds like something I delve into pretty frequently.
Cindy Thompson: This is why I wanted to have you here today. Can we start with just how would you describe burnout? Sort of a brief overview of what people might be looking for and to understand it for themselves.
Julia Somody: Sure. So in psychology, burnout typically is defined as exposure to a long period of time to chronic stress and stressors. In addition to that, I would usually add that, for me, burnout is slightly different from being overly stressed. So, stress is usually having too much of something. I find with burnout, it's having a lack of something. So, for example, a lot of us could handle a lot of work on our plates. But if we have a lack of resources, like a lack of available time in order to do that work well, or a lack of support, then that's where we start to experience burnout with a lot of these lacks. So that's how I define it.
Burnout also has three kind of major characteristics that will differentiate it from stress. They're useful to spot and keep our eye out for in not only the workplace, but in home as well, because the other important thing to remember about burnout is that it doesn't occur in a silo or in a compartment. It bleeds into every area of our life, which is what makes it so difficult to recover from if we're in full burnout.
So the three main characteristics that we often see are: a feeling of physical and emotional exhaustion. This is, even if you've slept well, you don't feel rested, you start dreading the day ahead.
The second one is a cynical world view when generally we're optimistic. And a lack of empathy, and this is usually the one that's pretty unnerving for folks, because usually they'll feel very connected to people around them, very optimistic, and all of a sudden they're feeling pessimistic, they're going through what we call depersonalization, which is where you start to detach from the people around you and the things you care about. Their irritability goes way up, their patience goes way down. That's the second one that we want to look out for.
The third one is what's called a lowered sense of self efficacy, which is our own feeling of personal accomplishment or self competence. And this actually has no reflection on competence. It's how we're feeling, and that's often an indicator of burnout. We start to feel increasingly overwhelmed by things that we could usually handle. We start to feel like we're not doing a good job. All of these things compiled together with the very real lacks that are in either our workplaces leads to this feeling of burnout.
Cindy Thompson: Mm hmm. And I'm curious, Julia, have you noticed some trends or statistics that suggest people are tired and that our nervous systems are exhausted?
Julia Somody: There was a lot of burnout that we saw very early on, a huge steep increase early on in the pandemic. I saw this on two levels. I do most of my work is workplace psychology. So I work a lot with leadership development. So that's where most of my direct experience with this was.
Leaders that I was working with who I'd worked previously with who are A type ambitious go getters all of a sudden starting to experience some of these signs. And my hunch, or kind of my understanding of this, is with the pandemic, there were so many restrictions. That I talked about there being a lack of things that contribute to burnout. There was a huge lack of control, a lack of autonomy, a lack of agency, a lack of flexibility, a lack of ability to pivot in the way that these leaders usually would. They really started to experience this burnout.
The other level where we saw it hugely was staff. I was brought in and still being brought into a lot of organizations and other coaches and folks who deal with leadership development and team development are being brought in the same way where we're talking to staff about building resiliency, building capacity, because we saw huge increases in numbers. In Canada, to give you just an idea, at the end of 2021 35 percent of workers reported feeling burnt out in the workplace.
Unfortunately, those numbers haven't decreased a ton. The last stats I read from Mental Health Research Canada were at the end of 2022 in December, and they still found that over a third, so 33%, so only a 2 percent decrease still reported feeling burnt out at work. And that number doubles depending on some occupations. Healthcare in particular, we saw a doubling of that number. It's higher in transportation. It's higher in teaching. It also hits different populations differently. What we saw was especially for folks who were in marginalized for non dominant populations. This was higher as well. As an example, throughout the pandemic, I think in 2021, the stats showed that a quarter of women were considering leaving their jobs related to either burnout or childcare needs at home or a mixture of the two. And it really has ramped up in the pandemic, and unfortunately, those numbers haven't decreased a ton.
Cindy Thompson: Hmm. That's a bit alarming, isn't it, to see that they're not coming down. I think more things have opened up. We do have more autonomy again. What do you attribute that to? What do you think we need now?
Julia Somody: As I mentioned, I really see burnout linked to lacks. And the biggest one that I think we've seen is control. Now I think what we're seeing is a huge lack of balance and a lack of stable working environments. And in some cases, a lack in terms of resources, support, and consistent and collaborative leadership. So these are the areas that I would really start to look at.
Like I had said, most of the time when I was brought into organizations I'm being brought in to either work with a leader, which I think is actually a really important role and area to focus on, or I'm being brought in to work with their team. And with their team, often what they're asking me to do is teach my team individual coping strategies that they can do to cope with burnout.
The Nagoski twins have written an excellent book called "Burnout" that highlights six different categories to help individuals cope with burnout. But studies are showing that burnout is more about unhealthy workspaces than it is about individuals not being able to take care of themselves. People often know what they need to do, but they don't feel that they're able to do so within their workspace. Where I think we really need to start to shift our focus is to encompassing kind of both levels of change that are required to recover from burnout. Yes, looking at are there any individual components that we can change that we can augment resiliency, that we can build capacity, but also how do we create more resilient workplaces? How do we make changes on the organizational levels? How do we make changes to culture? How do we make changes to leadership? That's where I think it's really needed and my hunch on why we're still experiencing it to such high levels.
Cindy Thompson: Mm hmm. This is a big topic. I don't think we're going to have time to dive into all of it.
Julia Somody: Yeah. I know. It's a big can of worms. I wish I could just wave a magic wand and make psychologically healthy workspaces.
Cindy Thompson: Yes. Wouldn't that be beautiful?
Julia Somody: Yeah.
Cindy Thompson: Well, I'm thinking about it from both lenses and we are hearing more and more around even the next generations coming up, what they're looking for, what they feel they need at a workplace to stay more personal satisfaction, more being noticed, recognized for what they're doing. I do think culturally there's a shift happening even with these next generations coming up and what they're looking for in staff retention and well being. Any thoughts on that?
Julia Somody: Oh, absolutely. I think we didn't experience it as much in Canada, but in the States the great resignation was a real thing. What we saw there with that staff were no longer standing for toxic workplaces. Yeah. There was a lot of research that came out and was published mostly in MIT Sloan that was talking about the top five reasons people left jobs and toxic culture was right there at the top. Disrespect, non inclusive, unethical, cut throat, abusive, job security was number two, not having clear or stable job security, failure to recognize performance. As you said, recognition is right in there. Then the other two are high level of innovation, so not having the adjustment time to deal with that innovation, and then a poor response to COVID, which I think a lot of companies really struggled with.
As you say, I think there's a shift in what people are wanting from their workplaces. There's a shift in the types of values people are attributing to their workplaces and what they're wanting their lives to look like. I think it's a very healthy shift moving away from having such a strong singular identity with work and this defines who I am and I have to put all my focus into this, to embracing our multiple identities. You know, who we are as partners and parents and family members and neighbors and responsible citizens and what we love to do for hobbies and having more of a well-rounded lifestyle, I think is really being embraced. And so workplaces I think need to start to adjust to also embrace that change and see it as a real positive one that allows staff to recharge, show up, and be more engaged, be more involved, have more voice, rather than see it as something negative. If they're practicing, say, detaching from technology or taking care of their physical health through exercise.
Cindy Thompson: Mm hmm. I can't help wondering, when we couldn't see family, when we couldn't do some of those things, get together with people, or do the things we really wanted to do, there were a lot of restrictions and our autonomy was taken away in those respects. How much do you think could be attributed to just us re evaluating what's important to us today?
Julia Somody: I hope that's the case.
Cindy Thompson: Yes, right?
Julia Somody: Yeah. I do think that organizations that I work with that are doing it well are having those big talks, are having more transparency, making more intentional changes, as you're saying, reflecting on what we've gone through over the last 3 years and individuals that I work with, a lot of them are doing the same. I think what we're doing in a good way. I really hope this is what it's coming from is a learning from, as you say, what we've had to cope with and try to adjust to at such a rapid pace over the past three years.
I do think for some organizations, it is a wake-up call. I do see others going back to their old ways. And I think that's dangerous mostly for the organization because the world is not the same. And as you were mentioning don't want the same things. We're wanting differences in our lives, differences in our workplaces. And workplaces that are too rigid in their belief around what makes a functional workplace I think are really going to be struggling in the long term and those who are taking part in what you're talking about, these reflective practices, these innovative practices, bringing in creativity, bringing in reflection and collaboration are the ones that will start to really thrive.
Cindy Thompson: Mm.
Julia Somody: We did see this already in the pandemic. I wrote an article in 2021 for "Business in Vancouver." I interviewed a bunch of leaders in BC. They all happened to be women. It wasn't my intention. They were women leaders running organizations that were doing very well.
It was things like collaboration, putting in reflective practices quite deliberately. One's reflecting, one's collaborating, one's gathering all the information, being very agile with their decision making, allowing themselves creativity in their thinking processes, and having transparency with their staff. Transparency, not meaning sharing every little thing, but really including their staff in every decision point so that they were not blindsided. They were feeling like they were involved in the decisions and then investing in their people. Which is always what we find. It is what helps an organization thrive.
Cindy Thompson: You can't go wrong when you invest in the people.
It makes me wonder about vulnerability, Julia, because as I've been really studying and leaning into resilience and well being, I think about the importance of us being in community, asking for help.
Even for leaders to show vulnerability, to say, "I'm having an off day. I apologize in advance. I may not respond as well as I typically would." Or to acknowledge that they're struggling with this new change and to model that it's okay to not be okay sometimes. And how does that set the stage for others to then ask for help?
Julia Somody: Absolutely. I think you're really highlighting something really important, and that is leaders need to be models. And as you're mentioning, bringing in vulnerability in an appropriate way. There is inappropriate vulnerability it's not appropriate for a leader to come into a meeting and say, "I don't know what I'm doing with the company, we're bleeding money," like that is a responsibility shifting. But shifting responsibility from yourself to your team, and that's not appropriate vulnerability. In that case, someone needs to hear that message. In that case, it would be going to a peer, going to a mentor. And then with your staff, as you're mentioning, sharing your humanity and modeling that's okay, maybe even going beyond modeling and deliberately asking staff, creating practices for staff check ins. Starting maybe with yourself or maybe allowing, encouraging others, to start encouraging, finding those voices. Modeling taking breaks to recharge, modeling zero tolerance for toxicity, modeling trust in your staff, modeling boundaries is a really big one.
For example, a lot of organizations that I work with will really want their staff to start to disengage from technology at certain times because they can see it has a very unhealthy impact on their productivity and their overall well being, and then yet the leader will send an email at 11 PM. We have to model those same things.
I think that's really a shift that might be controversial. I've heard a lot of thought leaders talk about this topic of kind of staff no longer embracing or welcoming the way workplaces used to be and demanding change and that being a really positive thing. There's lots of conversations going on right now about. That you don't need to move into leadership. I see this, especially in tech or in sales, if you're an excellent software engineer or developer or salesperson, they move you into management. I don't want to be a manager of people. I want to keep doing my technical role. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Where I see potentially a bit of a controversial shift is the message I'm still hearing is, there's nothing wrong with that. Some people want to work to live, not live to work. If you're a leader, the idea seems to be still that you have to live to work. And I don't think that's necessary. I think there are ways that leaders can start to embrace these and model these. Both for their staff and also for their own protection, because when a leader burns out, the ripple effect of that is enormous.
Cindy Thompson: Mm hmm. I think about we're all leaders, really, no matter where we are in the organization. I'd like to speak to the importance of people having a voice, because as you mentioned, when we have our autonomy or control taken away completely, we don't bode well in those circumstances, but when we have a voice, when we can bring ideas to the table as to what we might need.
An example that's coming to mind for me is, to be able to ask for a check in at a staff meeting? How's everybody doing? Before we just press into the business of things, taking even 15 minutes to do that actually can make a more productive meeting when you actually care about how people are as they show up.
I wonder about giving people a little bit of a voice to show up and ask for what they need because I think a lot of people are afraid to do that.
Julia Somody: Yeah, and I think, as you're mentioning, a leader who intentionally vocalizes that is a great way to open those meetings so we're going to do a check in. I'd love to hear 2 things from everyone. They could be work or personally related. How are you doing? What's happening for you and in your week? I've been working with organizations who have been implementing this to real great benefit. They started in the pandemic when folks were feeling really disconnected as a tool to help with team cohesion and team connection. And as you say, to demonstrate genuine care in their team and they've just continued, even though they're now hybrid or back in person, or still remote because they see that there's benefit to it.
I recently was listening to Adam Grant refer to a technique that he really uses that I thought was brilliant to help engage the more quiet thinkers or the folks in the room who might not feel as comfortable with their voice and an in person meeting. He makes eye contact. And this is based on some research in psychology that was done that when leaders make eye contact with folks in the room, they feel safer to vocalize what's going on for them and what he does in online meetings, which I think is brilliant is he'll just send them a little note, checking in like a private message saying, “Hey, I'd love to hear your thoughts. You usually have excellent thoughts. Please feel free to share them.” Just giving them a bit of a prompt, but in a way that feels inclusive and encouraging.
Cindy Thompson: Mmm. I like that. I agree. People who take a bit more time to reflect and think about what they want to say may not be the first to speak up and those that are more inclined to share their ideas are going to be the first to the table. And then the space is gone. Creating an opportunity for everybody to find a way to show up and to know that their, input is valued. Yeah.
Julia Somody: I think this is especially important with non dominant members of the population in workplaces. Most of my passion is women in leadership. Most of the research that I'm familiar with is through that lens. And in kind of male dominated workspaces, it can feel very difficult, in particular, for a woman to feel like she has a voice. In a meeting, there's research showing, and anecdotal, many pieces of anecdotal evidence that I hear about a woman attempting or trying to share a perspective, it being dismissed, and then a male colleague sharing exactly the same idea five minutes later, and it being recognized and applauded.
As a leader, again, having the wherewithal to proactively listen to, ask for feedback, ideas from folks who are non dominant on your teams, again, giving them that voice so that we can start developing these practices of being heard.
Something else I hear often, again, particularly from women, or and that we know from the research is very often folks I work with will speak very quickly and there'll be no room for anyone else to interject. With women, we often do this because we haven't been given room in a room. And there's a fear of, if I pause, I will be interrupted. But we also know from research that when people speak very quickly, we think they're smart, and to allow other voices.
Cindy Thompson: Hmm. I love that. It's really good that we're acknowledging this because when I imagine talking about resilience, these are important pieces of being heard, of letting people know what we need, showing up. And if we just are silos, if we just stick to ourselves and feel like we have to press on and cope on our own, then it doesn't bode well long term. It might be okay in the moment or short term while you assess what you need, but being able to show up in these ways, I love that we're talking about this in lots of different scenarios of what people might want to think about as they add in some new practices to what they're currently doing.
What about self compassion? Can we talk a little bit about that? Because I think about how hard we might be on ourselves in feeling like we just have to press on, keep sucking it up, white knuckling it through. What are your thoughts on that?
Julia Somody: Yeah. I love that you brought this up. I think what we've been talking about so far is compassionate workspaces. So having compassion for others, and what we know is that's easier to do than self compassion. As you've just alluded to, we often have this dual expectation where we have one set of expectations and understandings for others and another entirely for ourselves. We're much more critical on ourselves.
What we know from neuroscience is that there's actually different brain mechanisms that kick in with compassion versus self compassion that makes self compassion harder. Empathy centers kick in with both, but the difference with self compassion is that we don't have our social cognitive centers that kick in. Which means when it's someone else, we're able to recognize this is not my pain, this is your pain, and so I'm able to be there with you. And when we have that, a reward center kicks into our brain, that's more long term rewards. What that means is that we're able to show up with someone and hold their hand, hear what they have to say, tell them it's all right, and not always feel the need to instantly take that pain away.
The difficulty when it's our pain is obviously social cognitive centers are not engaged, which means that we feel enmeshed in our pain because we're no longer observing someone in pain, we're feeling the pain. Because of that, instant gratification reward centers kick in, and that's where we want to get the pain as far away from us as possible. So we engage in overspending, over drinking, over eating, over exercising, doom scrolling, whatever it is, it's going to distance us from the pain.
Self compassionate exercises really try to engage our social cognitive centers. When I'm working with someone with self compassion, it's very useful to engage in practices where we distance from ourselves. So speaking to ourselves in the second person, writing a letter to ourselves, using you language or addressing ourselves like darling or sweetheart or dearest in the same way that we might if it's a friend or a loved one.
Now that's self compassion as a whole. Self compassion in the workplace and burnout, again, it's using practices to shift the perspective. From the expectations that we seem to have of ourselves and the awareness that we have for ourselves to the awareness that we might have with someone else. I find that the major tool that I use with that is engaging in curiosity instead of criticism. Criticism, I find, shuts everything down right away. I'm hard on myself if I say you shouldn't do that, I can't believe you, I ate the whole box of Oreos, for example. Not really a workplace example, but just as an example. I have no information on why I ate the box of Oreos. If that's an anomaly for me, I don't know what was motivating that. All I know is... I can't do that again. I have rules around what I'm allowed to do and rules around what I'm not. That behavior is likely going to come up again because I haven't figured out what was propelling it.
If we engage in curiosity, I might ask myself, much like I would ask a child or a loved one: Why did you eat the whole box of Oreos? That's weird for you. Were you tired? Were you hungry? Were you lonely? Were you bored? And if it's any of those things, can we target that actual motivator, and it doesn't mean don't have any Oreos. If you're hungry, have a sandwich and have some Oreos. If you're tired, have a nap and see if you want some Oreos when you wake up. If you're lonely, let's invite a friend over and let's have Oreos together. It's engaging in curiosity about now that I'm in pain, now that I am suffering, because I just ate an entire box of Oreos, what would be useful? Should I go for a walk? Probably feel pretty uncomfortable if I'm eating a whole box of Oreos.
In a workplace example, it might be, wow, I've really been staying up late a lot working until 11 o'clock at night. And then the curiosity is, why am I doing this? What's going on for me? Where is this coming from? Am I feeling pressure from the workplace? Is this an expectation I have of myself? Do I feel like I'm not doing a good enough job if I don't immediately answer every slack ping that comes in? And then again, what does my pain need? I'm exhausted. I need to go to bed. And then I need also need to address the root, right? Much like we did with the Oreo example. So it's what do I need to ensure for myself, and hopefully within my organization, that I can move away from this behavior? Are other people engaging in this behavior? Do I feel safe enough? Do I feel like my organization is a space that embraces courageousness and courageous vocalization of issues. And if so, can I vocalize this? Can we start to look at changing some policies?
That's where curiosity and self compassion and compassion, compassionate workplaces, courageous workplaces. Because this takes courage to make these changes. It's hard. Criticism, either from self or from a leader, the leader shuts down that idea. Nope, just keep going. It's the way it's always been. It really shuts down the ability to be creative, to be innovative, to be strategic, to grow, and to start to create workplaces that are sustainable.
Cindy Thompson: There's so much here, and I feel like we could just spend two hours on self compassion, couldn't we? Because it's so important. Can I add in, maybe, Julia, around the piece of understanding at another level, where does that message come from? What is the story I'm telling myself about rest, about pressing on, pulling up my socks, just push through?
I'm doing a masterclass now, and self compassion is one of the weeks that we're covering that. I really encourage the participants to think about where does that message come from? Because I know personally my dad's message was that you just work hard. You keep pressing on. It isn't about rest. You weren't allowed to sit and watch TV. You weren't allowed to have a nap in the afternoon. You were lazy. And the name was associated with that. So what is the story? If I rest, am I being lazy? It's good to evaluate, just in addition to what you just mentioned, some understanding and does that story still work for me? Can I think for myself around how that's serving me or not serving me today?
Julia Somody: Mm hmm. Absolutely. I love that. A friend of mine who's a counselor, she told me, I love this question: Who taught you that?
Cindy Thompson: Mm, yes.
Julia Somody: It's the same question. Where is that story coming from? And to your point, a lot of clients, I think are sometimes reticent to go back and look at family because they think that in the stereotype of a therapist, blame family. And it's not to blame family. It's to again, use curiosity. Okay. Who taught you that? Where did you learn that? To look at what is influencing me that maybe has a deeper hold and some deeper roots? And then more importantly, what continues to impact me now? And what do I want to do about it? Do I want to perpetuate this story? Do I want to keep it going? Or do I want to explore alternatives?
Cindy Thompson: Mm. That's rich to be able to learn about ourselves in that way. It isn't about the blame game. You're right. It's more about understanding how these patterns develop. And whether we want to keep them or whether they can be shifted in service to us today and what we need now. I think of it like a roadmap we might've been given. And our parents, bless their hearts, gave us their roadmap for how to navigate life. Pull up your socks, carry on.
And yet we're finding our young people, the next generations coming up, are doing it very differently. And I've noticed that even within our own kids, they said, I don't want to work as hard as you and dad do, doesn't look fun to me. And yet, if you're doing what you love, that can make a big difference. So it's evaluating what we need along the way. I'm glad we're touching on some of these things.
Julia Somody: Yeah. I love that you're bringing up this idea of evaluation and because we've been talking about leadership and workplaces, this is exactly what's needed, right? Again, it's workplaces going and leaders going, where did I learn that this is what leadership looks like? Where did I learn that, or who taught me, or where is it from society that I'm getting messages around leadership meaning individual contributor, meaning silo decision making, or meaning more old school ways of focusing on performance over people?
That's also very important to ask ourselves these questions of where did I get this idea of what leadership looks like? Where did I learn what an organization has to look like when it's running, when it's functioning? Who even says my staff has to work nine to five or that we have to put in seven and a half hours? Lots of countries are starting to buck this trend and going to four day work weeks because they're being shown to be highly productive. And so having these questions with ourselves for example, as a leader, where did I learn that leadership meant siloed decision making? Or that I need to be as strong of an individual contributor as I did before I managed people?
How do we start to look at shifting from antiquated ideas around leadership that were developed 50 years ago that maybe aren't working anymore? Just like in the personal realm, something that used to be potentially an adaptive coping strategy that we had to have earlier on within an organization's growth and development maybe doesn't apply 5 years in. And so how do we evaluate that as we've been talking about, get creative, get open with where we want to go and how we want to grow and shift.
Cindy Thompson: I love that we're talking about it from both lenses because not only are we hoping to speak to the leaders who have that kind of influence and impact on the workforce that are working with them, the teams working with them, but also how do we show up in our own selves to be able to communicate well and in a healthy way and proactively what we might need. We need to understand that first, before we can ask for what we need.
We talked, Julia, about work life integration, and some of the healthy perspectives that you might be bringing to help us think about it differently.
Julia Somody: Sure. I think this leads really well to this conversation around like rigidity or openness or evaluation. Work life balance is an idea that we determine a percentage of our time that's going to be dedicated to work and a percentage of our time that's going to be dedicated to life outside of work. And I think that is also antiquated, and frankly a myth. I don't think it ever existed for a lot of people. I don't think that fair or realistic to say I'm always going to be dedicating this percentage of time to work and this percentage of time to life. It also says that work is bad and life outside of work is good. And I also don't think that's realistic for a lot of people. As you mentioned, a lot of people find joy in their work. It depends on the function of your work, but most of us don't hate our jobs.
Having that line drawn in the sand, I think is unrealistic. More and more in psychology, we're going towards work life integration, which is more fluid, which has more flexibility. So the idea is to be doing regular check ins. Say, okay, how do I want to structure my day or my week encompassing the demands of work, family, personal life and the myriad of aspects that are part of personal life? Do I have a big deadline coming up? Should I take more time to prep for that? This week, maybe that means working a little bit later. And then next week, maybe it's my daughter's soccer game. And so I'm going to leave early to go watch her game, or I'm going to make sure I'm carving out time for this medical appointment.
What I think that looks like in terms of organizations is allowing more of this fluidity and this flexibility. And allowing people more time off or time off differently, time off for childcare, for elder care, for medical appointments, for afterschool care. I know a lot of organizations started doing company wide shutdowns or Friday's off. These are big organizations like Mozilla and Bumble and Marriott and Vancouver Hootsuite, Shopify, LinkedIn.
Allowing this flexibility of time that we're focused and time that we're taking away to recharge. This idea of recharge time, I think, is really important in work life integration. And I've been looking more at this from the idea of flow and flow states. Most people think flow is really the state of losing all idea of time and being quite passionately drawn into an activity that we're doing. We think about it generally with art or exercise or kind of the sports that we're doing something like dance or paint and we just lose track of time or we're singing and it's so magical that we feel it reverberating throughout our bodies and we forget everything else, but the reality is that flow actually happens in four stages. And we have to pay attention to all four stages, because if we were just to stay in flow state, we would get completely depleted and exhausted.
I always think about our brains and our productivity and capacity, just like our physical capacity. So I run, I've done a half before, I've not done a full, but maybe I'll do a full or maybe an ultra one day, who knows . But I'm not going to expect myself to run for eight hours straight, and I especially would not expect myself to do that with the same level of productivity as I did my first 30 minutes. And yet we expect our brains to do that. That is simply not true.
There's been a lot of research done in many different areas, for example, with authors. And authors who make themselves write for eight hours a day, it takes them on average a year to finish a book. When authors write for 90 minutes and then take a half hour break and then go back for 90 minutes and maybe do that few cycles for four hours a day, they get done in six months.
And so we know that this is useful. This is across the board. And so if we come back to these stages of flow, the first stage is the struggle stage. And this is when generally we're feeling like it's very hard, we might feel out of control, we don't know where to start, we have fight or flight, our bodies are releasing huge amounts of adrenaline and cortisol. And it's meant to be a short period of time.
And then we go through release and release is having this objectivity we've been talking about. It's having this observation we've been talking about, detaching briefly from the situation to take the approach of the observer, and when we do this physiologically we have nitric oxide that flushes all the stress hormones out of our body and that's, after that, when we go into flow.
And then we have this expansion of awareness. We're very productive. We release endorphins to make us feel good and stop us from feeling pain. We release norepinephrine that makes us more focused, increases our attention, and we release dopamine that brings up curiosity and excitement.
And then after a period of flow state, we have to stop and have recovery. And recovery means complete detachment from what we've been focused on or what we're doing, moving away from the situation entirely. So in a workplace situation, what that means is if you've been writing a draft of something, you don't go check your email. That's written word, that's screens, that's more of the same. You don't go from some intense, deep thinking on a computer to a meeting on a computer. You need to take some time away from that. No screens. Ideally, using different parts of your brain to allow for that recharge.
And so when we're in recovery stage, we release serotonin, makes us feel good. We really consolidate the learning that we've done. And what we find is that when we come then back to the work after recovery, and we re-enter struggle, once we get to flow again, we're again productive. If we keep going, we go back into struggle and stay there longer.
And so we really want to encourage the ability to have this flexibility in the workplace, outside the workplace. This is what I'm working with a lot of leaders on right now is carving out time for deep work, carving out time for no interruptions, focus, turning off notifications, no Slack ping, no email ping, no texting, no meetings, letting people know these two hours or this morning twice a week is my deep work time. And what that allows them to do is then have the capacity and the time to do agile, quick work after that. I think that's very important at the leadership level, but also important to allow your staff to do the same and not penalize them.
Cindy Thompson: Hmm. Mm hmm. A really big takeaway from our conversation around prevention of burnout, self compassion, understanding how our brains work, the neuroscience behind it, and what we need to be able to be productive, but also take care of ourselves. That sounds like a beautiful balance.
I'm taking some notes on that because I work from home and it's so easy just to go into the next thing or keep going back and not take those breaks. I really appreciate what you just said, Julia.
Julia Somody: When I used to work in universities, a question that they ask you as a psychologist is what's your self care plan? Because there's a recognition that I am my service. And so I have to take care of my service. Otherwise it all falls apart. I don't think that's only true of helping professions. That's true of everybody. I really make sure I get outside, first of all. Movement and outdoors for me is huge.
I am fortunate with my work that when I am with clients we have dedicated times to our sessions and I have to walk the walk. And so I'm very, not rigid, but I'm pretty structured in terms of this is the time we have for our session. I am here for you during our session and here for you somewhat outside of our session. But I'm not available all the time. These are the times that I'm available. So putting boundaries around availability, boundaries around time when I show up. And then when I'm not with clients, I really take the time for myself because again, I feel it's important to walk the walk.
And one of the tools that I use for myself, but also, I do all the time with my clients is developing a resiliency resource or capacity resource. That could look differently for different people. Oftentimes it looks like a bit of a grid where we brainstorm ideas for stress processing, for resiliency building when we're not stressed. For myself, I often time batch these. What can I do within 30 seconds? If I've been doing a video session, I make sure to look away from my screen if I can. Roughly every 20 minutes for about 20 seconds at something 20 feet in the distance to just give my eyes a break. It's called the 20, 20, 20. There's things we can do within 30 seconds, smell a candle, dance around a living room. So, that's something that I do.
Cindy Thompson: Wonderful. When we're teaching it to others, we're regularly reminded of what we could and should be doing. As therapists also get that opportunity of going, yeah, I could probably do more of that myself as I'm teaching it to someone else. Thank you, Julia. I really appreciate you, not only as a new friend, as a thought leader, as a psychologist and coach, and the beautiful work you're doing to contribute to the wellbeing of people and organizations out there. I feel grateful that we could be in conversation to share this message with even more people through this podcast. So, thank you.
Julia Somody: Thank you so much for the invitation. I agree. I think it's really important to get as much of this message out as possible. I think what you're doing in holding space to talk about building resilience and help folks identify many different ways of doing that is, is a really beautiful thing. So, thank you so much.
Cindy Thompson: It's my honor and my pleasure. Thank you, Julia.
Cindy Thompson: Before we jump into reflections on this conversation with Julia, I have a favour to ask. If you have been enjoying this podcast, I would love for you to rate and comment on your preferred podcast platform. This helps us to know we are on the right track delivering the resources and stories that help you develop your resilience practice.
Now, let’s talk about Julia’s suggestions and wisdom she has shared with us.
First of all, I am so grateful Julia is doing this work and willing to spend time with us. I love her perspective on burnout being a Lack of something. Whether it is a lack of resources, lack of time to do your job well, or lack of control over your circumstances, if we don’t have what we need to mitigate our stress, our risk of burnout is much higher.
For anyone who has experienced symptoms of burnout, you can attest to the ways in which it will bleed into every area of your life. The ideal of course, is to prevent burnout by having the resources, time and boundaries to take care of yourself. For that reason I am so glad we also tackled what leaders and organizations can do to support the well-being of their employees.
Because Julia and I covered so much ground, I want to highlight some of the takeaways from this rich conversation.
- We all know that balance is important. Julia reminds us to embrace our multiple identities or roles. How much time would I like to dedicate to being a partner, parent, or employee to find balance? What is realistic?
- Continuing with the theme of balance, take time to recharge, get out in nature, read. This can include communicating to those around you what you need.
- Self-compassion is a big one! Julia invites us to take the lens of curiosity over criticism.
- If you drinking to much or eating too much, check in with yourself. Are you tired? Lonely? What might help here?
- I appreciated the idea of asking yourself “Who taught you that?” can shed light on where this belief came from and whether it continues to serve you.
- Evaluation – Is this belief or story I am telling myself working for me or is it causing further stress?
- Julia provided a model for productivity while also allowing for flexibility. The Flow model begins with the struggle stage, level two is release, then you move into flow and eventually stage four Recovery. I encourage you to land on this one and explore the benefits this can bring.
- Be aware of your resilience resource or capacity resource: what can I do for the next 30 seconds? I personally find this very effective. Once I get started it is often ends up being more than 30 secs. Just start somewhere!
Questions:
1) What is the story you are telling yourself about work/life balance?
2) Who taught you that, and how is it serving you today?
Quote: In the words of Betsy Jacobson, “Balance is not better time management, but better boundary management. Balance means making choices and enjoying those choices”.
And remember friends, Adversity is inevitable while resilience is a practice.
Cindy Thompson: Thank you for listening to this episode of ‘A Resilience Project.’ We would not be doing this podcast without you. If you or someone you know has an inspirational story or is helping to build resilience in their community, please e-mail me at cindy@aresilienceproject.com. In fact, e-mail me either way. I would love to hear from you. My hope is to feature an episode periodically on your letters of resilience. I'm very interested in hearing your story of how you have tackled hard things and what worked for you. With your permission, I hope to share some of these stories along the way with our listeners. Also, check out my website, aresilienceproject.com to learn more about our amazing guests.
Your presence here is important because together we are cultivating a village of resilient individuals. You are creating a space for their stories to be shared and a sacred space for learning to occur. I also have a favor - I would love for you to go to your preferred podcast platform, rate and review the podcast so that we will know how we're doing. I also would like to express my gratitude to the amazing team of volunteers that have jumped on board to support this project. You will find each of those beautiful people on my website on the team page.
As you go about this week, I invite you to think about one way that you can continue to grow your resilient muscle. What is one thing you can start with today? See you next week.
HELPFUL RESILIENCE INFORMATION
Definition of Resilience
Capacity to cope with and recover quickly from setbacks, difficulties, and toughness; to adapt well to change; and keep going in the face of adversity.
Types of Resilience - how the body deals with change and recovers from physical demands, illnesses, and injuries.
Physical Resilience how the body deals with change and recovers from physical demands, illnesses and injuries.
Mental Resilience ability to adapt to change and uncertainty.
Emotional Resilience ability to regulate emotions during times of stress.
Social Resilience community resilience – ability of groups to recover from difficult situations.
Areas of Life or Situations That Require A High Level of Resilience:
· Resilience in Adoption
· Resilience in Adults
· Resilience in Anxiety - Depression
· Resilience in Body Image – Eating Disorders
· Resilience in Change
· Resilience in Children
· Resilience in Chronic Illness
· Resilience in Death & Dying
· Resilience in Divorce
· Resilience in Immigration
· Resilience in Non-Profits
· Resilience in Marriage
· Resilience in Parenting
· Resilience in Post Secondary Education
· Resilience in Pregnancy
· Resilience in Racism
· Resilience in Relationships
· Resilience in Suicide
· Resilience in Teens
· Resilience in Trauma
· Resilience in War
· Resilience in the Workplace
Traits, Qualities and Characteristics That People with Resilience Possess:
· They are authentic
· They adapt to change and see it not as a challenge, but an opportunity
· They make commitments and keeps them
· They feel in control – strong internal locus of control
· They have close and secure attachment to others
· They set personal or collective goals
· They become stronger with the effect of stress
· They learn from past successes and mistakes
· They view themselves as survivors – Survivor mentality
· They have a good self-image
· They are confidence in ability to make good decisions
· They have a sense of humor
· They have an action-oriented approach to life
· They have patience around people
· They have optimism in face of uncertainty
· The have Faith or some belief in a higher power
Ways to build Resilience in People
· Create more purpose and meaning in all that you do
· Develop a good support system – supportive network circle that they can engage for help
· Maintaining positive relationships
· Work towards developing good communication skills.
· Develop the capacity to make realistic plans and to carry them out
· Maintain a well-balanced routine lifestyle of diet and exercise
· Practice emotional regulation to manage your feelings, impulses and emotions
· Practice good problem-solving skills to rationally develop solutions
· Find ways to help others
· Set time aside for journaling
· Develop new skills to respond differently to situations. ...
· Turn setbacks into opportunities for growth. ...
· Maintain a healthy perspective. ...
· Maintain Proper sleeping habits
· Practice meditation
Organizations that promote and support Resilience
Resilience Quotes