WEBVTT - Protecting Workers From Burnout by Developing Emotional Intelligence Skills 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:06.800 Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. 0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:10.440 You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and 0:00:10.480 --> 0:00:14.040 Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio. Okay, so, a little over 0:00:14.080 --> 0:00:16.959 a decade ago, Candy Ween found herself at her doctor's 0:00:17.000 --> 0:00:19.040 office for what she thought was a routine checkup. But 0:00:19.160 --> 0:00:22.400 routine it was not. Her blood pressure clocked in at 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:26.120 two hundred over one ten. It's what's referred to as 0:00:26.200 --> 0:00:29.479 hypertensive emergency and leaving it untreated, Carol, can lead to 0:00:29.480 --> 0:00:32.080 a stroke, heart attack, organ failure, and even death. 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:35.200 It's unbelievable. She was ordered immediately to go on bed 0:00:35.240 --> 0:00:38.279 rest for three days, start xanax and blood pressure medication. 0:00:38.400 --> 0:00:39.279 Given that she had a. 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:42.400 Lot of work to do, she was reluctant to go home, 0:00:42.479 --> 0:00:45.280 and that she found was the issue. It was the 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:48.000 beginning of understanding what would become an incredibly important chapter 0:00:48.040 --> 0:00:50.160 in her life. And I have to say, getting ready 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:51.960 for this, this book, we've been kind of passing it 0:00:52.000 --> 0:00:55.720 around to colleagues and just talking about it and stress 0:00:55.800 --> 0:00:57.560 and kind of managing work. 0:00:57.960 --> 0:00:59.800 Well, we got doctor Candy Ween's with us right now. 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:02.680 Senior fellow and director at the Master's in medical Education 0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:05.720 program at the University of Pennsylvania. She spent many years 0:01:05.760 --> 0:01:10.000 since then researching burnout and stress resilience. Doctor Ween's welcome. 0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:13.200 Before we get to that doctor's appointment that was so pivotal, 0:01:13.400 --> 0:01:17.240 pivotal in your life, take us earlier to your childhood, 0:01:17.240 --> 0:01:20.000 because you've got a really interesting story and it's certainly 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:21.400 related to your book. 0:01:22.600 --> 0:01:25.479 Yeah, thank you, and thanks for having me on. Yes, 0:01:25.640 --> 0:01:29.720 So my story is maybe perhaps unique to everyone else's story, 0:01:29.760 --> 0:01:32.560 but we all have a story about our childhood and 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:34.480 the ways in which we learned how to deal with 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:38.440 stress and the ways that we learned how to cope 0:01:39.400 --> 0:01:42.880 and potentially what might make us vulnerable today. So in 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:45.680 my case, I was raised on an Indian reservation by 0:01:45.720 --> 0:01:48.080 a single mom. My parents divorced when I was five. 0:01:48.360 --> 0:01:50.600 I had a number of adverse childhood events when I 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:53.160 was younger, which contributed to some of the things that 0:01:53.200 --> 0:01:57.600 I experienced. But one of the things that is really 0:01:57.640 --> 0:02:01.440 foundational to my pattern of coping with stress is that 0:02:01.800 --> 0:02:05.840 I grew up very much as an insecure overachiever. Insecure 0:02:05.920 --> 0:02:09.320 meaning that because we lived on welfare and Medicaid and 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:14.160 food stamps and often suffered from food insecurity. I was very, 0:02:14.280 --> 0:02:18.720 very insecure about my future, my financial future, and I 0:02:18.760 --> 0:02:21.560 was aware enough to know that if I needed to 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:25.520 work hard to break the cycle of poverty in my family. 0:02:26.040 --> 0:02:28.000 And so I knew that I wanted to go to college. 0:02:28.280 --> 0:02:32.280 I was quite motivated intellectually to want to learn, but 0:02:32.480 --> 0:02:35.400 I wasn't in the right circumstances. Long story short, I 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:37.240 moved in with my dad when I was twelve, and 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:40.600 the conditions changed. I went from getting almost absent school 0:02:40.639 --> 0:02:43.720 because I wasn't in the right environment to getting straight 0:02:43.760 --> 0:02:46.600 a's living with my dad, and so that started another 0:02:46.680 --> 0:02:50.440 pattern for me, which was this need for external validation. 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:55.960 I really I thrived getting recognition for the hard work 0:02:55.960 --> 0:02:58.680 that I was doing. I learned that the harder I worked, 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:01.399 the more I got recognized for my work, and that 0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:05.360 set me on a path to potentially overachieve my way 0:03:05.720 --> 0:03:09.320 through things, including having three jobs in college while I 0:03:09.360 --> 0:03:11.799 was going to school full time paying for it myself. 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:15.760 All of that set into motion this pattern of overworking 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:20.240 and trying to protect myself from going back to the 0:03:20.320 --> 0:03:23.080 life that I once lived when I was younger. So 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:25.959 that's all of what kind of contributed to this workaholic 0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:28.720 kind of approach that I had to work. And then 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:31.760 when I had that life threatening health crisis that woke 0:03:31.800 --> 0:03:34.920 me up in twenty eleven, that was really the result 0:03:34.960 --> 0:03:39.320 of me working on overdrive almost all the time. For me, 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:42.120 and I hear from many of the people that I 0:03:42.160 --> 0:03:45.800 interviewed today, burnout was the baseline. We didn't use the 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:47.960 word burnout a whole lot back in the nineties and 0:03:48.000 --> 0:03:51.240 early two thousands, but I think that's what I was experiencing. 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:53.880 I just wasn't aware exactly what it was and what 0:03:53.920 --> 0:03:54.720 it was doing to me. 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:56.360 You know, It's interesting. We live in a culture and 0:03:56.400 --> 0:03:57.960 I feel like I grew up in a family where 0:03:58.000 --> 0:03:59.760 it was like, yeah, work hard, that's what it's supposed 0:03:59.760 --> 0:04:05.600 to be at You're a workaholic. It's a good thing, Like. 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:05.560 Like that was a thing until like a few years ago. 0:04:05.760 --> 0:04:08.760 Well that's a really good point, right, And I do 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:11.480 wonder you know, we thought with COVID that maybe we 0:04:11.480 --> 0:04:13.920 were thinking balance, Yeah, look at what we can do. 0:04:13.960 --> 0:04:16.599 We can actually have a better life. I want to 0:04:16.600 --> 0:04:18.640 get to what you know, part of your title is 0:04:18.920 --> 0:04:22.400 about emotional intelligence and helping us out when it comes 0:04:22.440 --> 0:04:25.960 to being burned out. What exactly is emotional intelligence? 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:30.280 Yeah, emotional intelligence is a set of competencies that have 0:04:30.360 --> 0:04:34.520 to do with our awareness of ourselves, mostly our emotional 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:38.599 self awareness, but includes other awareness aspects, the ability to 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:42.840 regulate or manage ourselves, our behaviors, our thoughts, our emotions, 0:04:43.400 --> 0:04:47.120 as well as our ability to understand the social environment 0:04:47.200 --> 0:04:49.800 that we work in. Like so, for example, understanding the 0:04:49.800 --> 0:04:52.479 politics of the team that I might be working on 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:55.520 or within my organization. But it's also being able to 0:04:55.560 --> 0:04:59.520 work very effectively in that social or in that political environment. 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:04.000 So it's self awareness, self management, and then social awareness 0:05:04.120 --> 0:05:05.680 and relationship management. 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:09.560 What about the idea of I don't know, perfection being 0:05:09.560 --> 0:05:14.240 the enemy of good, Like the idea that when something 0:05:14.320 --> 0:05:17.880 is done, it's done. And I think that that's what 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:19.640 a lot of people struggle with at the workplace. I 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:22.960 think is and it really can burn people out because 0:05:23.000 --> 0:05:26.479 it takes so much time and energy. Is these incremental 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:28.680 changes that are not that important to a certain project 0:05:28.720 --> 0:05:29.560 that people are working on. 0:05:30.760 --> 0:05:34.039 Yeah, so perfectionism is one of the traps that I 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:37.039 write about. I write about a number of self inflicted 0:05:37.080 --> 0:05:40.839 stress traps also known as thinking traps or in the sciences, 0:05:40.839 --> 0:05:44.640 we call them cognitive distortions. It's meaning that we think 0:05:44.680 --> 0:05:48.720 about something that causes us to overwork or causes us 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:51.039 to put more effort into something than we need to. 0:05:51.440 --> 0:05:56.520 Perfectionism is one, Imposter syndrome is another. Having overly high 0:05:56.600 --> 0:06:01.800 expectations of ourselves, having overly expectations of other people, even 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:05.640 being overly engaged in our work. All of these things 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:08.839 are stories or assumptions that we operate under and that 0:06:08.960 --> 0:06:12.200 cause us to feel more stress or amplify the stress 0:06:12.279 --> 0:06:16.320 that is caused by whatever we're experiencing and sets us 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:17.799 up to be prone for burnout. 0:06:17.960 --> 0:06:19.919 What's the balance, though, because man, you're going to have 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:23.479 First of all, media is a stressful industry. The clock 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:25.359 is ticking, You got to hit deadlines. It's just the 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:27.239 way it is. Stuff is thrown at you last minute, 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:29.120 or news develops, and you just got to kind of 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:30.960 roll with it. I would say that there's a fair 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:32.680 amount of us who kind of thrive on that, and 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:35.440 that's part of the fun of the industry. Having said that, 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:40.640 what's the balance between a stressful situation that leads to 0:06:40.680 --> 0:06:43.960 burnout to Yeah, you're going to have days where you're 0:06:44.000 --> 0:06:46.320 stressed and that's just part of a job and a 0:06:46.360 --> 0:06:48.680 work life. So how do you kind of get your 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:50.160 head around what's good and what's bad. 0:06:51.240 --> 0:06:53.840 Yeah, you know, in professions like yours, where you have 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:57.120 pretty much high intensity almost all the time and a 0:06:57.120 --> 0:07:00.279 lot of things coming at you unexpectedly, that those type 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:03.320 of jobs do require quite a bit of recovery time. 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:06.479 Recovery in the form of sometimes it's micro recovery, so 0:07:07.080 --> 0:07:10.640 shorter breaks throughout the day, reconnecting with your family or friends, 0:07:10.680 --> 0:07:13.640 even for a couple of minutes, if you can, going outside, 0:07:13.680 --> 0:07:16.080 whatever it is for you that helps to renew your 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:20.480 energy levels and your spirit. For other people, it's taking 0:07:20.520 --> 0:07:24.000 extended periods of time. So if you think about recovery, though, 0:07:24.520 --> 0:07:27.360 one of the things I encourage people to focus on 0:07:27.520 --> 0:07:31.040 is when you're recovering, watch what you're doing to comfort 0:07:31.080 --> 0:07:35.400 yourself versus really renew yourself. Comfort yourself as in like 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:40.400 you know, binging on some program or eating junk food, 0:07:40.600 --> 0:07:42.840 or doing something that feels good in a moment but 0:07:42.880 --> 0:07:46.600 doesn't necessarily really renew your energy levels, like a good 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:49.440 night's sleep with an hour or two of deep sleep. 0:07:50.320 --> 0:07:52.520 So you know, I recently said to somebody, I feel 0:07:52.560 --> 0:07:54.120 like I walk in the door and I'm always behind, 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:55.560 and they're like, that's a good thing. They mean to 0:07:55.560 --> 0:07:58.320 get lot going on. Having said that, I do think 0:07:58.360 --> 0:08:01.119 about leadership and all of this and how a leader 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:03.400 needs to look at Yeah, hey, gang, we're going to 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:07.120 have a tough week. We just need all hands on deck, 0:08:07.160 --> 0:08:10.559 if you will, Versus wait a minute, this is too 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:13.600 much for my team and they're going to break. So 0:08:14.120 --> 0:08:15.880 advice to leaders are what they need to know. We 0:08:15.920 --> 0:08:17.120 have about a minute or so left. 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:19.680 Yeah, I call it the sweet spot of stress. We 0:08:19.720 --> 0:08:22.240 all need to know what our personal sweet spot of 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:25.119 stress is. And for a leader recognized for the team, 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:28.360 how much can we push the team to really perform 0:08:28.480 --> 0:08:32.920 under intense conditions without them slipping over into the distress 0:08:33.000 --> 0:08:37.080 zone where it's going to negatively affect their performance. So 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:42.280 it means tuning into your employees having open conversations around 0:08:42.559 --> 0:08:46.400 stress levels are going to escalate in these high intensity periods, 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:48.800 and we're going to take recovery breaks together. We're going 0:08:48.840 --> 0:08:50.800 to do things to support each other so that we 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:53.200 don't all slip into distress at the same time and 0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:54.240 potentially burn out. 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:57.640 Hey, doctor, weens, we do have time for one more question. Now, 0:08:57.800 --> 0:09:00.600 what's your strategy, I mean, what do you do? How 0:09:00.640 --> 0:09:02.840 are you going to you know, decompress after the work 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:03.559 day this weekend. 0:09:04.559 --> 0:09:07.000 Oh that's a great question. Yeah. So I haven't seen 0:09:07.040 --> 0:09:08.760 my son for a couple of days. He's been busy 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:11.160 with soccer in school, and even though I've had a 0:09:11.240 --> 0:09:13.520 lot going on, I am just so excited to see 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:16.400 him and hug him. Honestly, like that's one of the 0:09:16.400 --> 0:09:18.360 things that renews my spirit. And just being able to 0:09:18.400 --> 0:09:20.439 look him in the eye and hear about his week. 0:09:20.720 --> 0:09:23.680 That to me reminds me of why I do the 0:09:23.720 --> 0:09:27.200 work that I do and helps me just really renew 0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:27.720 my spirit. 0:09:28.160 --> 0:09:29.679 Tim and I were just talking and we said, that's 0:09:29.840 --> 0:09:31.120 the one thing like in the middle of the day 0:09:31.160 --> 0:09:34.160 off like all of a sudden, you know, your kid calls, 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:36.040 or there's pictures or something you look at, like it 0:09:36.080 --> 0:09:37.920 really kind of recharges you in a big way. 0:09:38.000 --> 0:09:40.160 Nice reminder of like really important stuff out there. 0:09:40.280 --> 0:09:40.960 Yeah, exactly. 0:09:41.080 --> 0:09:42.880 Absolutely, you gave us some great respective. 0:09:43.080 --> 0:09:44.800 You gave us some great things to think about as 0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:47.120 we go into the weekend. Doctor Wiens, thank you so much. 0:09:47.200 --> 0:09:50.160 Doctor Candy Weens, Senior Fellow and director of the Masters 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:54.240 in Medical Education program at the University of Pennsylvania, joining 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:56.800 us there from Philadelphia. Her new book it is called 0:09:56.800 --> 0:09:59.960 Burnout Immunity. How emotional intelligence can help you build, resilient 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:01.920 and heal your relationship with work.