Speaker 1: Do you ever feel like life is just one problem
Speaker 1: after another. You finally feel like maybe there's a break,
Speaker 1: and then bam, another problem. This is how it is
Speaker 1: for many of us. But there is a better way
Speaker 1: to respond, a way of responding that brings greater ease
Speaker 1: into your life and returns some of the energy that
Speaker 1: the problems drained from you. We are hosting a free
Speaker 1: live masterclass on Sunday, February called Learn the Spiritual Habit
Speaker 1: to unlock energy and ease in your life, even if
Speaker 1: each day seems to bring a fresh pile of problems
Speaker 1: in it. I will teach you how to tap into
Speaker 1: the resources that are already within you so that life
Speaker 1: feels less like a never ending fight and more like
Speaker 1: an ever evolving dance. You will learn the number one
Speaker 1: source of unhappiness that drains your energy and keeps you
Speaker 1: feeling stuck, and a simple mindset shift you can make
Speaker 1: right away so that life doesn't feel like such a
Speaker 1: constant struggle. This will be a live event and you'll
Speaker 1: have a chance to interact with me and with each other.
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Speaker 1: and register for this free event again. That's when you
Speaker 1: feed dot net slash live. And I really would love
Speaker 1: the chance to meet you and see you there. I
Speaker 1: had just turned forward e when we spoke last time.
Speaker 1: You know, some of these symbolic ages I feel like,
Speaker 1: really help us ask the questions around am I where
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to be in my life? Welcome to the
Speaker 1: one you feed throughout time. Great tinkers have recognized the
Speaker 1: importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity of pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us
Speaker 1: our guest on this episode is Leah Weiss, a researcher, lecturer, consultant,
Speaker 1: and author. She teaches compassionate leadership at the Stanford School
Speaker 1: of Business and is a principal teacher and founding faculty
Speaker 1: member of Stanford's compassion Cultivation Program, conceived by the Dalai Lama.
Speaker 1: In two thousand nineteen, she co founded Skylight, a company
Speaker 1: that specializes in using the latest neuroscience and behavior change
Speaker 1: to empower high performing leaders and managers to prevent burnout
Speaker 1: for themselves and their teams. Hi, Leio, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I am happy to have you on. As we were
Speaker 1: talking before this interview, you were on the show almost
Speaker 1: four years ago to the day. Just just kind of
Speaker 1: interesting that we talked at this time and amazing that
Speaker 1: it's been four years. So I'm really happy to have
Speaker 1: you back on. I'm really happy to be here and
Speaker 1: continuing this conversation we started many months ago and in
Speaker 1: a very different climate that we're in today. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: our basic topic is going to be oriented around the
Speaker 1: idea of burnout, you know, workplace burnout primarily, but we
Speaker 1: know it extends well beyond the workplace. But before we
Speaker 1: get into that, let's start like we always do with
Speaker 1: the parable. There's grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and
Speaker 1: they say, in life, there are two wolves inside univers
Speaker 1: that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and
Speaker 1: thinks about it second and looks up at their grandparents says, well,
Speaker 1: which one wins, And the grandparents says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd love to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. I think in terms of
Speaker 1: how I hear that in my life. One of the
Speaker 1: ways that this really resonates with me is acknowledging the
Speaker 1: degree to which we're influenced and shaped by our surroundings,
Speaker 1: and that we want to be thoughtful about that. I'm
Speaker 1: a parent of three young children, and so we talk
Speaker 1: a lot about the navigation of being a friend to
Speaker 1: people who need support, who are in distress, but also
Speaker 1: understanding what you need to thrive so you can be
Speaker 1: that end and I think one nuance I would say,
Speaker 1: when I read this parable again in advance of our conversation,
Speaker 1: is it really caught me these words good and bad?
Speaker 1: Because I think the way that I tend to think
Speaker 1: about this is tendencies that pull us in directions that
Speaker 1: are connective, supportive, inducive of compassion or fear based scarcity,
Speaker 1: and I don't know that labeling them is good or
Speaker 1: bad helps us in actually navigating these currents that we
Speaker 1: all have. So it would be interesting to talk that through.
Speaker 1: And then for the other side that you asked about
Speaker 1: in my work, how does this influence? How does this relate?
Speaker 1: I think I spend my time now working within companies,
Speaker 1: helping to set up teams, climates of ports in the storm,
Speaker 1: within organizations that are now navigating a lot of change
Speaker 1: and even often toxicity. How do you think about feeding
Speaker 1: the positive not just within yourself but collectively? So I
Speaker 1: think that it really does come to the heart of
Speaker 1: what do you do when you're navigating things that are
Speaker 1: problematic and how do you create mutual support so everyone
Speaker 1: can move towards the proverbial best selves healthier selves together? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that idea of good and bad is really interesting.
Speaker 1: It's brought up a lot, and I've said a lot
Speaker 1: of times on this show. You know, I've always loved
Speaker 1: the Buddhist phrasing of these things as skillful and unskillful actions,
Speaker 1: like I feel like that speaks to you know, what
Speaker 1: we're really saying. More. But it's kind of a boring story.
Speaker 1: The grandparents said, there's an unskillful wolf and he was
Speaker 1: sent away to corporate training. And you know, so I
Speaker 1: thought where we might start is with you and burnout,
Speaker 1: because I think you suffered. I don't know if this
Speaker 1: is how you would say it, but you certainly had
Speaker 1: a case of it, and I'm wondering if you could
Speaker 1: kind of share what that was, like, what happened, and
Speaker 1: you know, sort of how you made your way out
Speaker 1: of it, and I think that will lead us then
Speaker 1: into talking about this more generally. Yeah. Absolutely, I'm happy
Speaker 1: to share. I think, you know, for me, what is
Speaker 1: so interesting, at least from the vantage point of today,
Speaker 1: is to uncouple kind of what happened externally and internally.
Speaker 1: For me, that led me to kind of realize at
Speaker 1: some point a few years ago that I just I
Speaker 1: don't want to go on this way. This isn't how
Speaker 1: I want to work, how I want to parent, how
Speaker 1: I want to be in the world. I had just
Speaker 1: turned forty when we spoke last time. I think for
Speaker 1: me that was actually, you know, some of these symbolic ages,
Speaker 1: I feel like really helped us ask the questions around
Speaker 1: am I where I'm supposed to be in my life?
Speaker 1: And for me, I think what I was seeing was
Speaker 1: I was working in a way that was not sustainable,
Speaker 1: that I was missing elements of my children's life because
Speaker 1: I was traveling or preoccupied when I was there. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of what I was hooked by um
Speaker 1: to use another kind of Buddhist psychology term, when I
Speaker 1: went back to Stanford to work full time after graduate school,
Speaker 1: each of us kind of has currencies that we buy into,
Speaker 1: and for me, this kind of academic research, understanding kind
Speaker 1: of contributing in that space was so exciting, but also
Speaker 1: it led me to work around the clock, let go
Speaker 1: of a lot of what I now know are the
Speaker 1: science of burnout, you know, tipping from starting to let
Speaker 1: self care go, displaced frustration from work into other elements
Speaker 1: of life. And then, of course, like for me, as
Speaker 1: someone who I identifies as a practitioner as someone who's
Speaker 1: trying to work on myself, like I'm sure everybody listening
Speaker 1: to this podcast can relate to, spent many years in
Speaker 1: doing meditation retreats, cultivating skills that it really hurt to
Speaker 1: admit weren't working in this environment, and compounded by you know,
Speaker 1: living in Palo Alto, one of the most expensive places
Speaker 1: in the world, having three children, being a breadwinner for
Speaker 1: our family. And I think then for me, what I
Speaker 1: experienced was very similar to what a lot of people do.
Speaker 1: One of my mentors was the one who really made
Speaker 1: me see where I was at, and that often is
Speaker 1: the case. It's hard to self diagnose when we're burned out.
Speaker 1: It's our loved ones, a close colleague who calls us
Speaker 1: out and says, you're not the version of yourself. You
Speaker 1: know what's happening. So she called me out as kind
Speaker 1: of the frog in the pot over time, and I really,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I remember that breakfast viscerally, where
Speaker 1: I felt it and I saw it, and then you know,
Speaker 1: that's kind of the first step. But that's also where
Speaker 1: the work begins. And one of the things I've been
Speaker 1: really interested in is playing both sides of this equation
Speaker 1: of when do you make decisions around I need to
Speaker 1: change my external circumstances, which like, who in the world
Speaker 1: isn't thinking about that now? With the great resignation? Right?
Speaker 1: So when do I decide this fit isn't working? When
Speaker 1: do I decide this is me I can quit, I
Speaker 1: can move, but this is my stuff that's going to
Speaker 1: follow me wherever I go? And how do you uncouple
Speaker 1: all of this and understand what you need to do?
Speaker 1: So being a nerd, I've been working in the space
Speaker 1: of burnout and compassion fatigue for many years, but I
Speaker 1: started to take this lens more looking at the question
Speaker 1: around how do you think about culture of workplaces, of
Speaker 1: our communities? And how I had guided so many other
Speaker 1: people through this question of am I in the right career?
Speaker 1: Am I in the right location in my live in
Speaker 1: the life I'm wanting to live? And then asking all
Speaker 1: of those questions of myself and letting myself off the
Speaker 1: hook for like I can't expect myself to meditate my
Speaker 1: way out of this, and what if I allow myself
Speaker 1: to also come to a conclusion like this isn't where
Speaker 1: I want to raise my kids, This isn't the work
Speaker 1: that I want to be doing. This isn't the way
Speaker 1: I want to be doing it, and let that part
Speaker 1: of the equation open up, which I think is interesting
Speaker 1: to look at now because that's where so many people
Speaker 1: are right because we can move now, and people are
Speaker 1: quitting their jobs now and there's other jobs available, or
Speaker 1: that perception the set of questions. If you feel like
Speaker 1: this is not my beautiful life that you're living right now,
Speaker 1: how do you start to go through that process in
Speaker 1: a way you're not blowing everything up irretrievably, but kind
Speaker 1: of in a thoughtful way, asking the right questions, in
Speaker 1: experimenting with steps that you're not gonna completely end up regretting.
Speaker 1: I think that question is so fundamental to so many things.
Speaker 1: Is this something that I need to change in the
Speaker 1: outside world? There is this something I need to change
Speaker 1: inside myself? Is that a little bit of both? And
Speaker 1: I think this is why I have often said I
Speaker 1: think the Serenity prayer sums up so much of what
Speaker 1: life is about. Right should I accept this or change it?
Speaker 1: And the wisdom to know the difference is really the
Speaker 1: hard part. What things for you helped you or still
Speaker 1: help you? And sorting that question out, you know, how
Speaker 1: do you go about when you find yourself at one
Speaker 1: of those points and you're looking in those two directions,
Speaker 1: what are some of the tools or ways, thought processes,
Speaker 1: whatever that help you find that wisdom to know the difference.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there's always some element of having quiet,
Speaker 1: some version of of prayer jubu prayer in my case, meditation,
Speaker 1: if you will. Like, there's those elements. But I think
Speaker 1: what I've really been leaning into as well, you know,
Speaker 1: just getting back to the like embodied elements of life,
Speaker 1: like cooking with my little kids, walking a ton, knitting.
Speaker 1: I've been knitting so much, gardening, like putting physicality front
Speaker 1: and center and and slowing down to do that, and
Speaker 1: taking when that feels odd to move back and forth
Speaker 1: between the pace of ideas and screens and zoom meetings,
Speaker 1: you know, hour after after hour, and it does feel
Speaker 1: jarring to be back into bodies and relationships and listening
Speaker 1: more deeply. And I think even taking that kind of
Speaker 1: discomfort of transition as an important daily practice has been
Speaker 1: huge And just like so many of us, you know,
Speaker 1: sleep in the last few years with the pandemic, you know,
Speaker 1: we were already an insomnia world, but how much more
Speaker 1: so now, and you know, experimenting with like what happens
Speaker 1: when I take screens out of the equation, when I
Speaker 1: go back to paper books, when I draw, even though
Speaker 1: I'm a terrible artist, but I draw because of the
Speaker 1: process feeling, you know, grounding all the things we're baking
Speaker 1: in the world, all the things that were like reclaiming.
Speaker 1: I think this physicality has kind of shared. That's been big, big,
Speaker 1: big for me too. Yeah, I think the other ideas
Speaker 1: in the spiritual direction world, and I was trained as
Speaker 1: an interfaith spiritual director. The word discernment is used a lot, right,
Speaker 1: and that's what we're kind of talking about. And I've
Speaker 1: more and more become convinced that discernment kind of has
Speaker 1: to happen in community. It really works much better when
Speaker 1: I'm not discerning all by myself, when that discernment is
Speaker 1: happening by me processing it with other people. Obviously the
Speaker 1: right people, the right circumstances, but still a really valuable
Speaker 1: part of the process. I want to go back for
Speaker 1: a second though, before we move on to you. You've
Speaker 1: got this role at Stanford, You've got children, you're the breadwinner,
Speaker 1: your husband still I think in school and you are
Speaker 1: doing work that feels monumentally important to you. You are
Speaker 1: working on compassion research that is sort of backed by
Speaker 1: the Dalai Lama, right like, so, I mean you've landed
Speaker 1: in some ways like dead set into like all right,
Speaker 1: this is it, and yet there were still aspects of
Speaker 1: burnout for you in there. Did that make it harder
Speaker 1: to figure out because the work did feel so meaningful,
Speaker 1: Oh you're good, or yes it did? I think it
Speaker 1: made it harder to recognize that even a culture that
Speaker 1: is a group that's come together around a shared value
Speaker 1: with noble ambitions can still have toxicity and challenge in
Speaker 1: how to operate and how to function together that you know,
Speaker 1: since that time, now I'm well aware, like even if
Speaker 1: you look at the research like toxicity and cultural problems
Speaker 1: and nonprofits where we're aligned on purpose, they can be
Speaker 1: pervasive because there's a sense of you self sacrifice and
Speaker 1: you sublimate the how you're doing things underneath the importance
Speaker 1: of the mission. And I think I was personally very
Speaker 1: predisposed to that, and I think that culturally that is
Speaker 1: a big part of the experience and it's even more painful,
Speaker 1: you know, And I see this. Even I do a
Speaker 1: lot of work in healthcare these days with the pandemic.
Speaker 1: When people who are purpose driven there in a line
Speaker 1: of work because they want to help others and then
Speaker 1: they feel divorced in there how they're executing that work
Speaker 1: from their core values. I think there is an extra
Speaker 1: layer of what we're calling moral injury that happens and disillusionment, right, because, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot to say about that. And then I
Speaker 1: think for me it was a lot of self doubt.
Speaker 1: You and I felt like I was in layer upon
Speaker 1: layer of kind of worldviews that didn't align with me
Speaker 1: as a mom, a woman. You know, academia is not
Speaker 1: known for notoriously being friendly to women, nor is Buddhist
Speaker 1: organizational structures. Um, you know, it's a lot. But I
Speaker 1: also want to come back to what you said. I
Speaker 1: think so profoundly this point about discernment in community, and
Speaker 1: when I went to Boston College for my graduate degrees,
Speaker 1: that was something that really jumped out at me. Not
Speaker 1: that we didn't have community in the Buddhist world that
Speaker 1: I was being raised in, but I think the way
Speaker 1: in which it's understood is really unique and profound, and
Speaker 1: I think that was something that gave me kind of
Speaker 1: strength that amidst feeling overwhelmed, feeling like I'm in my
Speaker 1: dream situation and it's not working, but there was access
Speaker 1: to some amazing people around me, even swimming in the
Speaker 1: same culture that was dysfunctional. Or remember one of my
Speaker 1: mentors described being in academia is kind of like being
Speaker 1: in a mafia oriented place because you have to like
Speaker 1: hook yourself onto the people with power. But if you
Speaker 1: start getting powerful enough, then you become a magnet for
Speaker 1: other people who want your turf and you know all
Speaker 1: of that. When I first heard, I was like, this
Speaker 1: is bananas, and by the end I was like, that's
Speaker 1: pretty astute. So anyway, the people who are swimming in
Speaker 1: this kind of dysfunctional toxicity but have their heads on
Speaker 1: not necessarily just straight, but they have some practice. They're
Speaker 1: grounding in those people that you can come back to
Speaker 1: to figure out who am I? What does this mean? Together?
Speaker 1: Is everything? I want to get to where you are now?
Speaker 1: And I have some questions about that, But I feel
Speaker 1: like before we do that, it would be helpful to
Speaker 1: talk about burnout a little bit more. What are we
Speaker 1: talking about? What is it? How do we know when
Speaker 1: we have it, Like I mean, I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot that we can sort of cover in that area,
Speaker 1: and then I'd love to talk about how your current
Speaker 1: experience compares to your old experience and the differences there.
Speaker 1: So maybe we'll just start with that very simple question,
Speaker 1: like what is burnout? Yeah, burnout is this combination of
Speaker 1: emotional exhaustion, dehumanization, and a lack of self efficacy. So
Speaker 1: those are like the academic words to describe them, and
Speaker 1: it's also part of the World Health Organization definition and
Speaker 1: more plain terms. I think a way to think about
Speaker 1: it the emotional exhaustion, that feeling of like at the
Speaker 1: end of a long day, you just don't have anything
Speaker 1: left to give. You can't hear about another person's problem,
Speaker 1: you know, the version of you that wants to show
Speaker 1: up to others is depleted. The d personalization goes in
Speaker 1: both directions. So one of the kind of textbook ways
Speaker 1: people describe it as like the physician who has become
Speaker 1: kind of a cynical rude, like no grace or tact.
Speaker 1: They're just like going to get right to the question
Speaker 1: without thinking about how does that impact too, So it
Speaker 1: can be the side of depersonalizing others, but it can
Speaker 1: also be depersonalizing yourself, and they often happen together. So
Speaker 1: if I'm treating you from a cynical kind of dehumanized perspective,
Speaker 1: I'm probably also thinking of myself in that way and
Speaker 1: the people I'm surrounding myself. And then the third part
Speaker 1: is a lack of self efficacy. This is I think
Speaker 1: the actually trickiest part for building health out of burnout,
Speaker 1: because the more burnt out you are, the less you
Speaker 1: feel like you can shape your environment. So then all
Speaker 1: the options from where would you change yourself change the
Speaker 1: situation seem impossible because there's no efficacy. You feel like
Speaker 1: a victim in the world's happening to you as part
Speaker 1: of the illness itself, so you can't recognize the help
Speaker 1: that is available to you. So you put those three together.
Speaker 1: One of the ways I often talk about it that
Speaker 1: people find helpful is it's not a binary you have
Speaker 1: it or you don't. It's a spectrum. And so early
Speaker 1: burnout often looks very similar to workaholism. Middle burnout is
Speaker 1: like middle stages when you're losing your habits of self care,
Speaker 1: when you're snapping at your loved ones at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, and then later stage burnout, you know,
Speaker 1: significant behavioral changes, either significant depression or anxiety, loss of hope,
Speaker 1: complete apps. There's physical symptoms that happen along the way.
Speaker 1: With all this. When you're burned out, you're amygdala's enlarged.
Speaker 1: You're like old lizard brain. As people often kind of summarize,
Speaker 1: the amygdala is bigger in your cognitive resources. Your ability
Speaker 1: to think and problem solve is smaller, like literally your
Speaker 1: brain functionality changes when you're burned out, which is also
Speaker 1: really interesting. And then when you think demographically, women, people
Speaker 1: of color, those of us who don't have a partner,
Speaker 1: there's higher risk. And then in the context of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: you know, we've been seeing mass exodus of women from
Speaker 1: the workplace, and I've been really looking into this a lot,
Speaker 1: and the rates of burnout are much higher, which makes
Speaker 1: sense given all the contextual factors. Parents are higher than
Speaker 1: non parents, women are higher, and so forth. So there's
Speaker 1: all these other layers and features of the individual, but
Speaker 1: also the environment that feed into burnout, And how do
Speaker 1: we determine burnout from something like depression or anxiety, particularly
Speaker 1: if burnout eventually manifests itself in depression and anxiety. Is
Speaker 1: there any way to sort of tell the two apart,
Speaker 1: and is it important to tell the too apart? I
Speaker 1: guess it's a great question. I think by the time
Speaker 1: you're experiencing the anxiety and depression symptoms of burnout, it
Speaker 1: would be indicated to get mental health support. You'd be
Speaker 1: at the upper end of the burnout spectrum, and so
Speaker 1: you would want to be seeing a professional. Have the
Speaker 1: professional do the differential diagnosis between burnout or generalized anxiety
Speaker 1: or depression. One thing that people say you see in
Speaker 1: the literature, it's like, is there a sense of it?
Speaker 1: It gets more acute in the workplace or more acute
Speaker 1: Sunday night blues or anxiety. You know, so maybe you're
Speaker 1: you feel like yourself on your vague cations in the
Speaker 1: evenings and the weekends, but you see your reactiveness heightened
Speaker 1: in the workplace. That could be an indicator. But for
Speaker 1: listeners who are experiencing this kind of depression anxiety, the
Speaker 1: upshot is basically you want to talk to a professional
Speaker 1: anyways and work with them to determine, you know, because
Speaker 1: it might be that you want to have medication or
Speaker 1: a certain kind of treatment alongside doing a whole discernament
Speaker 1: process around your professional context in path. Yeah, as somebody
Speaker 1: who has had depression in you know, different forms for
Speaker 1: a long time and somebody who may have suffered burnout
Speaker 1: at different points, the relationship between the two is very
Speaker 1: difficult to figure out right say, Like, well, depression often
Speaker 1: to me looks like what burnout might feel like, which
Speaker 1: is particularly a lack of enthusiasm of anything that takes
Speaker 1: energy from me, right, So it's like that's one of
Speaker 1: its signal things, is like anything that takes energy causes
Speaker 1: me to be like no, which work gets implicated in right,
Speaker 1: work can be one of those things. I think that
Speaker 1: question around you know, how do you respond on off
Speaker 1: work times is an interesting one. What about compassion fatigue?
Speaker 1: Because you also say this is not the same thing
Speaker 1: as compassion fatigue, so I certainly know that is something
Speaker 1: we're hearing a lot about talk about how burnout and
Speaker 1: compassion fatigue are different from each other. So the interesting
Speaker 1: thing with compassion fatigue, And I'm sure you've come across this,
Speaker 1: but I think for listeners it's it's good to kind
Speaker 1: of lay this out when you start reading about compassion fatigue.
Speaker 1: One of the first things that you start coming across
Speaker 1: is people saying it's not actually compassion that's fatigued, it's empathy.
Speaker 1: And the reason this is important is basically the neuroscience
Speaker 1: of understanding how our brains and bodies respond to chronic suffering.
Speaker 1: We have built into us these if you remember back
Speaker 1: to psych one oh one, the ideas of mirror neurons
Speaker 1: and the mother infant mimicry that from the time humans
Speaker 1: are newborns, they read and mimic the parents facial expressions.
Speaker 1: So we have wired in these emotional kind of tuning forks.
Speaker 1: One of the things that has been really interesting with
Speaker 1: the advances and neuroscience in the last decade is we
Speaker 1: see that people who are chronically exposed to suffering, if
Speaker 1: they're responding from a place of empathy, there's a tipping
Speaker 1: point in which, like our brains and bodies can't stay
Speaker 1: empathically attuned all the time, we hit a point of
Speaker 1: overwhelmed and collapse where our compassion and goes away. So
Speaker 1: that becomes interesting. So let's say in the beginning, it's
Speaker 1: useful if I'm with you, Eric and you're talking about
Speaker 1: a problem that you're facing, it's useful that I have
Speaker 1: this ability to mirror you to understand and respond. We're social,
Speaker 1: we've evolved to be like tribal in some way. Mutual
Speaker 1: support is part of survival. But at some point when
Speaker 1: it gets eric times a thousand that I'm surrounded by
Speaker 1: suffering that I can't solve, then the pain response in
Speaker 1: my brain that's mirroring hits a point where it's not
Speaker 1: signaling all the time. It like doesn't function anymore. When
Speaker 1: we talk about compassion fatigue, we're actually talking about empathy fatigue.
Speaker 1: And then what's interesting about that is that there's compassion
Speaker 1: because it's different than empathy. There's a way that we
Speaker 1: can respond to other people suffering that doesn't get depleted
Speaker 1: and used up. Is the thought behind it. And and interestingly,
Speaker 1: this is a thousands of years old intuition from wisdom traditions,
Speaker 1: right like the idea that you could participate in contemptleing
Speaker 1: of support of others imist massive suffering. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: so many stories all the way back to wisdom traditions
Speaker 1: canons about people who who did that. So the idea
Speaker 1: then borrows on what does it mean for us as
Speaker 1: people to learn to respond with compassion rather than empathy.
Speaker 1: What is the difference, What is that feel like? How
Speaker 1: do we train ourselves? How do we train our physicians
Speaker 1: and healthcare providers to do that? And then therefore, how
Speaker 1: do we kind of solve this problem of compassion fatigue.
Speaker 1: So this is a discourse I've been a part of
Speaker 1: since I was in grad school right after September eleven,
Speaker 1: studying all the rise of burnout and compassion fatigue in
Speaker 1: healthcare and first responders and all of those kind of studies.
Speaker 1: And I think the implications for us today are fascinating.
Speaker 1: No matter what our line of work is, in the pandemic,
Speaker 1: all the uncertainty and pain and anxiety that we were
Speaker 1: all navigating lens of like hitting a tipping point with
Speaker 1: that where we can't engage skillfully anymore. So what does
Speaker 1: that even mean for me? Is you know, a parent
Speaker 1: navigating schools closed and changes in workplaces and YadA YadA.
Speaker 1: So you know, back to your question of that compared
Speaker 1: with burnout, the way I would think about it is
Speaker 1: we need to both from the individual side, train people
Speaker 1: to understand how to respond with compassion rather than empathy,
Speaker 1: which in some cases means retooling, taking on feeling the
Speaker 1: other person's pain and having a responsive way of engaging
Speaker 1: with them. But that has an understanding of a type
Speaker 1: of boundary and support of both people, the person in
Speaker 1: pain and the other person. Um So it doesn't become
Speaker 1: dehumanized and cynical, but it has a wisdom of understanding. Me,
Speaker 1: getting overwhelmed by your problem isn't gonna necessarily help you,
Speaker 1: especially if I'm here to be in a role where
Speaker 1: you need me to not be crying alongside you about
Speaker 1: your diagnosis. You need me to hold the space to
Speaker 1: be able to be clear. That's a really interesting idea.
Speaker 1: They're the empathy versus compassion and I kind of want
Speaker 1: to go deep down that whole, but I'm going to resist.
Speaker 1: But I have one question on it, which is do
Speaker 1: you find often that people earlier in their career start
Speaker 1: from an empathy perspective, like that's what comes most naturally.
Speaker 1: Then one of two things happens. Either they move into
Speaker 1: quote unquote empathy fatigue and they become cynical, or they
Speaker 1: figure out how to do this with compassion and they
Speaker 1: move into sort of this wise healer mode. Is that
Speaker 1: the general path? I think that is a really good
Speaker 1: way to summarize it, and when you said that, it
Speaker 1: made me think of I remember when I was in
Speaker 1: grad school doing my clinical training. I was one of
Speaker 1: the settings I worked at was a Boston Center for
Speaker 1: Refugee Health and Human Rights, which is headed by this
Speaker 1: incredible physician who does work with refugees from around the world.
Speaker 1: Like it talked about someone being immersed in so many
Speaker 1: unimaginable kinds of pain and trauma on the daily and
Speaker 1: I remember walking out of the hospital with him at
Speaker 1: the end of one of the days and I just
Speaker 1: kind of asking him how he was or how he
Speaker 1: felt about his day. He just came back to being
Speaker 1: so grateful to be here and what an incredible world,
Speaker 1: what an incredible opportunity. Like he was, you know, coming
Speaker 1: from that wise healer perspective, and I was the angsty
Speaker 1: you know, clinical training, like overly empathic to the point
Speaker 1: where it's probably annoying to be the recipient of for
Speaker 1: the folks I was working with at that point. I
Speaker 1: think that's right. And I think the other thing that
Speaker 1: reminds me of from the neuroscience perspective is, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the studies I often talk about in my
Speaker 1: keynotes is when we brought a group of meditation at
Speaker 1: Spurts to Stanford, put them in an fMRI machine, had
Speaker 1: them do compassion meditation, and the reward regions of their
Speaker 1: brain light up, not the pain empathy regions of the
Speaker 1: brain light up. And I've always said and felt like
Speaker 1: I would love to do the studies where we do
Speaker 1: this across traditions, right like, because every wisdom tradition has
Speaker 1: some version of compassion contemplative practice. How interesting to see
Speaker 1: what that looks like as a way to motivate the
Speaker 1: rest of us to cultivate. All Right, we've talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about what burnout is, maybe some of what
Speaker 1: it's not. Let's talk about some of its causes. And
Speaker 1: I know that you sort of delineate causes kind of
Speaker 1: at three levels. I've seen in some of your work,
Speaker 1: which I think is interesting. There's an individual level you
Speaker 1: talk about, a team level, and an organizational level. And
Speaker 1: I suppose if we were to take it one step further,
Speaker 1: we'd say there are societal components also, but walk us
Speaker 1: through those. What the causes are? You know? Kind of
Speaker 1: each of those levels. You know, a metaphor that I
Speaker 1: find helpful for framing comes from the godmother of burnout research,
Speaker 1: Dr Maslock, and she uses a metaphor of if you're
Speaker 1: trying to understand burnout, what people typically do is analogous
Speaker 1: to looking at cucumbers in Vanagar barrels and being surprised
Speaker 1: that they turned into pickles. So it's non sensical to
Speaker 1: just look at the individual level, not meeting that there's
Speaker 1: nothing we can do as individuals, and there's not contributors,
Speaker 1: some of which we can address, some of which are
Speaker 1: intrinsic to who we are, our demographics, you know, as
Speaker 1: I kind of mentioned before. So if we start from
Speaker 1: the individual level, it's what are our habits around mindset,
Speaker 1: professional fulfillment, How clear are we on our values? How
Speaker 1: aligned do we experience our lives and our work with
Speaker 1: our values? All of that can contribute to burnout or
Speaker 1: resilience at the group level, let's say the team level
Speaker 1: in a workplace. You know, when this comes back to
Speaker 1: the profound point you raised about discornament in community, the
Speaker 1: role of the community, kind of our work family, the
Speaker 1: people we spend the most time with, interact with the most,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of back to the parable. Do we
Speaker 1: have a version of our relationship that is supportive, compassionate,
Speaker 1: We care about them, we know about their values, We
Speaker 1: believe that they're wanting to support us. We feel that
Speaker 1: way about them, or is it the opposite. Do we
Speaker 1: see them as a threat to our advancement even survival?
Speaker 1: Do we not trust them? You know, there's all these
Speaker 1: interesting studies, but if you have one workplace friend, you're
Speaker 1: going to be healthier, more engaged, advance more if you
Speaker 1: can build that at the team level, like this microcosm
Speaker 1: import in the storm that is massive for your resilience,
Speaker 1: and then the broader culture within the organizations we function
Speaker 1: in and how do those impact are Our value is
Speaker 1: our ability to be socially attuned to others, our ability
Speaker 1: to feel like we could do our work and feel
Speaker 1: like we're being seen and rewarded. All of that that
Speaker 1: there's fairness. Interestingly, like people often hear about burnout and
Speaker 1: they think working too many hours is one of the
Speaker 1: biggest precipitates. Actually, one of the biggest precipitance is feeling
Speaker 1: like we're out of alignment with our values, or that
Speaker 1: our workplace isn't fair, people are rewarded for bad behavior,
Speaker 1: or there's inconsistencies. We talk about being this great culture,
Speaker 1: but in practice we're actually like, you know, live and
Speaker 1: let die. So you can do work at each of
Speaker 1: these three levels. I spent the first very long part
Speaker 1: of my career focus on what can you do as
Speaker 1: individuals mindfulness, mindset, framing, emotional intelligence, social intelligence, all really
Speaker 1: good stuff. But if we start looking at applying even
Speaker 1: that like next level to you, what does it mean
Speaker 1: to bring yourself awareness into the team. So if you
Speaker 1: and I are a team with five other people, that
Speaker 1: we can then share what are our triggers, what are
Speaker 1: our values and how do those align with the work
Speaker 1: that we're doing together. How can we support each other,
Speaker 1: and how can we even tactically, you know, do things
Speaker 1: the way we allocate work, the way that we assign
Speaker 1: blame and credit, the way we help each other actually
Speaker 1: be off when we're on vacation, because that comes down
Speaker 1: to your team often like do you have a way
Speaker 1: of give and take? And then at the culture level,
Speaker 1: there's so much to do, but it's tricky because it's big,
Speaker 1: it's a morphous, and it takes a long time. Three
Speaker 1: years is like what the number that most experts give
Speaker 1: to a culture change project in an organization. So if
Speaker 1: you want to talk about BANG for your book, focusing
Speaker 1: on the team level, I think is the way to go,
Speaker 1: which is why I'm putting my attention to there. Build
Speaker 1: your community, older support, get that interactive part. But it's manageable.
Speaker 1: We a team of eight can make a decision today
Speaker 1: to try something different and do that tomorrow. We don't
Speaker 1: need to go get sign in, you know, buy in
Speaker 1: and approval from a lot of different people and all
Speaker 1: the alignment and socializing that comes with a culture change project. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that resonates with me for a variety of reasons. But
Speaker 1: one is sort of a middleway kind of guy, right
Speaker 1: between the organizational and the personal. What's there the team? Right,
Speaker 1: But to your point, it's influenceable our organization maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit, but it's going to be kind of hard.
Speaker 1: But we have more influence on the team, and it
Speaker 1: also addresses some of those issues that are slightly more
Speaker 1: important than the personal. This gets back to discernment questions, right.
Speaker 1: You just mentioned like you know, if I have teammates
Speaker 1: who are toxic, Right, there are people I know in
Speaker 1: life who see nearly anybody who doesn't agree with them
Speaker 1: as toxic. Their self awareness is such that it's like,
Speaker 1: if you don't agree with everything that I think, then
Speaker 1: you're you know, I've labeled use the problem. You're the
Speaker 1: toxic person, right. And then the other extreme would be
Speaker 1: the person who you know thinks that doesn't matter who
Speaker 1: it is out there. You know, Genghis Khan could be
Speaker 1: on their team and they're like, well, I really should
Speaker 1: work on my ways of relating to other people from
Speaker 1: a place of loving kindness, right. And so it strikes
Speaker 1: me again, is you know, how do we find this
Speaker 1: middle ground. Do you find that it's helpful to start
Speaker 1: with the individual work and be sure that you kind
Speaker 1: of have that in place, or is it really something
Speaker 1: you can start kind of at all levels. You know,
Speaker 1: when we're talking within the context of a team, we
Speaker 1: wanna remember that power structure influences. So the team has
Speaker 1: a manager or a lead, and that person will realistically
Speaker 1: have an outsized influence on the culture of the group.
Speaker 1: And what's particularly tricky is often the folks who are
Speaker 1: middle managers are at very high a likelihood of being
Speaker 1: burnt out themselves, so theyre stressed, they're probably not at
Speaker 1: the top of their interpersonal game. Maybe they've been trained
Speaker 1: to be a manager or maybe they became a manager
Speaker 1: because they were a good individual contributor, but they never
Speaker 1: like learned the kind of art of managing other people's
Speaker 1: work social intelligence, communication skills. So to come back to
Speaker 1: like your question, the methodology that I've developed and work
Speaker 1: with is a combination of the individual and the team.
Speaker 1: So the individual needs to get back and understanding that
Speaker 1: they can see of where they're at with their burnout,
Speaker 1: their strengths and weaknesses, and not just they're burnout in general,
Speaker 1: but they're burnout proclivities and they're burnout specifically in this workplace, right,
Speaker 1: which is an important part of the question We're coming
Speaker 1: back to you before. How do you determine what's me
Speaker 1: what's the environment? So having that understanding what's environmental, then
Speaker 1: at the team level, understanding where's my team at with
Speaker 1: respect to burnout? Are we all clustered at the high
Speaker 1: end of the burnout spectrum? Is it arranged? Are some
Speaker 1: of us in actually like a pretty solid space? How
Speaker 1: can they help the others? What's the role of the
Speaker 1: manager in supporting resilience or contributing to burnout? And then
Speaker 1: what I've been finding a lot of success with is
Speaker 1: if you take some of this data and share back
Speaker 1: with the team. Hey, group, here's where you're at with
Speaker 1: your sense of belonging and psychological safety and burnout. So
Speaker 1: each individual doesn't have to take the burden of saying
Speaker 1: I don't feel safe here, or these are the ways
Speaker 1: that this team is not working for me. But you're
Speaker 1: laying it back at the group level, but anonymously, so
Speaker 1: you're starting point is the group to address this shared
Speaker 1: problem that no individual has had to stand up and
Speaker 1: own or blame the others for. It's just this is
Speaker 1: what is in this group. And then giving a methodology
Speaker 1: within team health. There's four pillars, and based on where
Speaker 1: you're at, we suggest you work on the belonging psychological
Speaker 1: safety component first, or we suggest you work on structured
Speaker 1: rest because you're all exhausted. Nobody's getting any time off.
Speaker 1: There's some basic kind of stop gaps you can take
Speaker 1: rest up and then address you know, the next and
Speaker 1: the next, And thinking in terms of the science of
Speaker 1: behavior change, which is don't do everything at once, pick
Speaker 1: a keystone habit and work there as a group. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just sort of answered a question I was going
Speaker 1: to ask, which is a lot of discussions about team
Speaker 1: efficacy these days seem to have boiled down to psychological safety.
Speaker 1: I'm not that focused on teamwork or corporate work anymore,
Speaker 1: but I see that phrase all the time when when
Speaker 1: people are talking about team psychological safety. And my question
Speaker 1: was going to be, is that all there is to this?
Speaker 1: But it sounds like you just identified four pillars that
Speaker 1: are important, psychological safety and belonging being just one of them.
Speaker 1: The other three you mentioned, I guess R and right,
Speaker 1: is that just kind of a team culture around what
Speaker 1: hours we work, how much we work, supporting each other
Speaker 1: in being able to take time off. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: most kind of tactical of the four elements, and and
Speaker 1: it really is around also just having the basic conversations
Speaker 1: like I've got little kids, I live on the West Coast.
Speaker 1: The hours that I really want to carve out and
Speaker 1: need to be with my family are this and yours
Speaker 1: are that. Because you're in another time zone and this
Speaker 1: is your life. Like, having some structure around those basic
Speaker 1: conversations goes a long way, because people are driving each
Speaker 1: other mad with the meeting invite, like you know that
Speaker 1: is my Friday at five, Like, but you're in another
Speaker 1: time and especially in this global workplace right, So it's
Speaker 1: some of that very tactical coordination or having blocks and
Speaker 1: processes in place, um, i'd say slightly more like nuanced.
Speaker 1: But also important is autonomy, So getting that balance right,
Speaker 1: which is gonna be different for each individual on a
Speaker 1: team of do you have the right amount of support
Speaker 1: and flexibility. If you're being micromanaged, that's probably driving you bananas.
Speaker 1: If you're untethered being told to do things that you've
Speaker 1: no support or resources work, that's also really bad. So
Speaker 1: autonomy is a collective process of resourcing and teamwork that
Speaker 1: is so often a big part of what's driving people
Speaker 1: into the ground with burnout. You know, they don't have
Speaker 1: to be deep conversations, but get some really productive work
Speaker 1: done on this autonomy place pretty quickly. And then the
Speaker 1: other pieces awareness self awareness, understanding your own values, understanding
Speaker 1: basic tools of emotional and social intelligence, but doing that
Speaker 1: at the team level so triggers values alignment, all of
Speaker 1: that work. And so these four when you put them together, um,
Speaker 1: you know, are are really they capture a lot. You
Speaker 1: look at the literature and all the different precipitants of
Speaker 1: burnout or resilience. So psychological safety, super important, but not
Speaker 1: the whole story. And also I think so many people
Speaker 1: get it so fundamentally wrong, thinking like, oh, if we
Speaker 1: want to build psychological safety, we should all, you know,
Speaker 1: share really really vulnerable stories that are traumatic for ourselves.
Speaker 1: And actually, like, when I work with a team to
Speaker 1: build psychological safety, the starting place often has to be
Speaker 1: the sanctioning around let's come to agreements around how we
Speaker 1: want to be together and what we're gonna do when
Speaker 1: there's microaggressions and when people deviate. Because you can do
Speaker 1: all the work to share and be vulnerable, but if
Speaker 1: you haven't made agreements about how you're going to respond
Speaker 1: when someone is getting pushed out of that group for
Speaker 1: whatever element of their personality or whatever is um is
Speaker 1: at play, then you can't build the psychological safety. So
Speaker 1: that's also part of I'm like, no, this is not
Speaker 1: about trust falls and sharing all of our trauma with
Speaker 1: each other. It's also like naming norms for like how
Speaker 1: do we want to be respected and respect others and
Speaker 1: what will we do when those are transgressed to signal
Speaker 1: that we're not going to be complicit. But there's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with the good old trust fall, is there? No?
Speaker 1: I mean we all who doesn't. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: I keep trying to talk Chris into one with just
Speaker 1: me being there to catch him, but he won't. He won't,
Speaker 1: he won't go for it. Um, he's not having it. No,
Speaker 1: he's probably taking lots of notes about team culture based
Speaker 1: on this. I want to ask a question about job
Speaker 1: satisfaction a little bit. This sort of ties in and
Speaker 1: if if I'm straying too far outside where you feel comfortable,
Speaker 1: just say, I don't know. But I see a lot
Speaker 1: of people and what they feel is that their work
Speaker 1: isn't meaningful. And what they often mean by that is
Speaker 1: that it's not directly helping another person in like say,
Speaker 1: helping starving children, and so they feel like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: don't feel like my work is meaningful, and I'm always
Speaker 1: torn by that by by sort of going yep, you're right,
Speaker 1: you really should pursue that because that's the path or
Speaker 1: are there other paths? And this gets back to our
Speaker 1: question before do I change myself? Do I change the situation?
Speaker 1: But what our paths to make work more meaningful? Assuming
Speaker 1: that we're in generally a good situation, right, generally like
Speaker 1: we're doing work that's at least like somewhat challenging, somewhat interesting,
Speaker 1: you know that can engage us. But the bottom line
Speaker 1: mission isn't say philanthropic. I love that question. I think
Speaker 1: coming back to probably work you are well familiar with
Speaker 1: from the spiritual direction is you know, the values work,
Speaker 1: getting really clear about values and then taking that from
Speaker 1: the abstraction and looking for the opportunities to walk the
Speaker 1: talk on those values. So maybe we're not working to
Speaker 1: end world hunger, but one of our core values is
Speaker 1: around community or compassion and really explaining what are the
Speaker 1: opportunities within the work I am doing, the people I
Speaker 1: am interacting with, how can I lean into expressing that value?
Speaker 1: And then one of the ideas that we talked about
Speaker 1: in the academic language of extra role behavior, So what
Speaker 1: are things that are not part of my core job
Speaker 1: description that energize me, that bring me meaning, that helped
Speaker 1: me feel connected with who I am and want to be.
Speaker 1: And often it's a little bit of investing in those
Speaker 1: and coaches and managers can really help the people that
Speaker 1: they're talking with to identify not just the values, but
Speaker 1: what are the opportunities. And it's amazing how many times
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've seen this that you have someone who
Speaker 1: realizes they want to learn some skill and service of
Speaker 1: a core value. They start to spending an hour a
Speaker 1: week and it changes everything around for them. So this
Speaker 1: is a place where you know, and having taught NBA
Speaker 1: students at Stanford for years, I'm always saying like, don't
Speaker 1: look at it like you're losing time from this person.
Speaker 1: If you're bringing them alive, then you are doing the
Speaker 1: right thing, but also doing the smart thing for the business.
Speaker 1: So look for the values, the extra role behavior, which
Speaker 1: means you need to know each other, have real conversations
Speaker 1: and have honesty to the point where people, can you
Speaker 1: know the work that's just like they're always procrastinating, it's
Speaker 1: miserable for them. Can you get to an understanding of
Speaker 1: what that is, why that is, and then within the
Speaker 1: realm of reason respond Yeah. So I want to bring
Speaker 1: us back around to where you are today. So we
Speaker 1: described you burned out at Stanford, you know, overwhelmed. There's
Speaker 1: something you've talked about that I think is really important here.
Speaker 1: You talked about how, in addition to all that happening,
Speaker 1: there was an enormous amount of internal criticism of yourself
Speaker 1: because you felt like, based on all the spiritual practice
Speaker 1: you had done, that you shouldn't feel this way. That
Speaker 1: you should be able to meditate your way out of it,
Speaker 1: or you should be able to you know, have enough
Speaker 1: equanimity to handle it. So take us from here. I am,
Speaker 1: I am in this place of I recognize I'm burnout,
Speaker 1: I'm overwhelmed, I've got all this internal negativity happening, And
Speaker 1: maybe give us the short version of you know how
Speaker 1: you got to where you are today, and then maybe
Speaker 1: we could talk a little bit about today, because the
Speaker 1: thing I'd like to hit today is you've gone from
Speaker 1: one classical place where people can burn out, which is academia,
Speaker 1: to another classical place where people can burn out, which
Speaker 1: is the startup world. So I want to talk about that,
Speaker 1: but but walk us through the change process a little bit. Well,
Speaker 1: I first have to comment, like I just I want
Speaker 1: you as a spiritual director. I feel like I could
Speaker 1: benefit from these conversations as therapeutic. I think you're really
Speaker 1: picking up on things about my experience that it's taken
Speaker 1: me a long time too. In some of it, I'm
Speaker 1: still definitely grasping the to formulate. Well, long story short,
Speaker 1: A couple of years ago, we came up from California
Speaker 1: to visit UM some of our friends who lived in Portland,
Speaker 1: who for years had all been saying, you guys really
Speaker 1: need to be in Portland, like all the things we're
Speaker 1: hearing from you about as a family that you're struggling with,
Speaker 1: like and just hearing this from two of my oldest
Speaker 1: friends in the world, my husband's oldest friends. So we
Speaker 1: came up and I just had this like physical feeling
Speaker 1: from the moment we got here of just like decompression.
Speaker 1: You know, I've experienced that in a few places in
Speaker 1: the world where I've gone before that you know, it's
Speaker 1: like a cellular shift when you get off the plane
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And you know, I think fast forward
Speaker 1: to today. I was just talking about this this weekend.
Speaker 1: I was taking a walk with a very close friend
Speaker 1: who's a physician public health officer, and was just saying,
Speaker 1: for me, it's so powerful that, um, you know, the
Speaker 1: places I've lived in the past, um and it had
Speaker 1: my kids in schools like I didn't feel people around
Speaker 1: me to the degree that I do now, where there's
Speaker 1: so many folks who have similar academic backgrounds or kinds
Speaker 1: of choices about where they've taken their careers. A lot
Speaker 1: of other families that are like ours, with the mom,
Speaker 1: you know, working a ton and the dad working a
Speaker 1: ton to support the family and home. So when we
Speaker 1: came up this weekend, decided, oh my gosh, let's just jump,
Speaker 1: let's just do it. Our oldest son was starting kindergarten
Speaker 1: the next year. Is like, if we just do this now,
Speaker 1: he can kind of come right in the process. So
Speaker 1: we did. We just moved really really quickly. And since
Speaker 1: that time, I've seen, you know, so many people in
Speaker 1: the context of the pandemic do this. It did seem
Speaker 1: a bit bananas, I think, to some people in our
Speaker 1: life to just make the change so quickly. But I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm traveling so much anyways, I can travel
Speaker 1: down to Stanford as opposed to traveling to go see
Speaker 1: clients wherever, and then also taking some of the financial
Speaker 1: pressure off, which sounds ludicrous for someone you know, but
Speaker 1: coming from California anywhere is less insane. So there was
Speaker 1: that whole side of it. Now to your point about
Speaker 1: the startup world, yes, it's another kind of microcosm. Less
Speaker 1: than four percent ad venture money goes to women founders,
Speaker 1: including if it's a woman and man co founder, So
Speaker 1: me and my co founder, my former superstar student from
Speaker 1: Stanford two women too, Moms. We are definitely not in
Speaker 1: a system that is like set up buyer for us,
Speaker 1: but I think this discernment and community, Like my co
Speaker 1: founder is one of my dearest friends who I think
Speaker 1: has more character and integrity and social intelligence than pretty
Speaker 1: much anyone I've ever known, including a lot of like
Speaker 1: spiritually well known figures like you know, and not to
Speaker 1: overly put her on a pestle, she's just a really
Speaker 1: good person who we can talk about everything together. It's
Speaker 1: like my other marriage. And so there's a lot of stress,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of alignment and values, a lot
Speaker 1: of ability to have real talk, and a lot of
Speaker 1: shared commitment to the team that we're building is gonna
Speaker 1: walk the talk. We're not going to be an organization
Speaker 1: dealing with team health that is a hot mess internally.
Speaker 1: I've lived that you know country song before, I'm not
Speaker 1: doing it again, um, And she has her own version
Speaker 1: of commitment to that. So, you know, I do feel
Speaker 1: like I have the right resources in place, but there's
Speaker 1: a lot of stress, a lot of frustration, and you
Speaker 1: know also continued like doubt that I'll have to work
Speaker 1: through around being a middle aged woman in a role
Speaker 1: that is not conducive, but I kind of excited to
Speaker 1: do that on behalf of like that's most of the
Speaker 1: world we're not, you know, and if we can't build
Speaker 1: team health or think about organizational health and perspective, a
Speaker 1: middle aged parent like I don't feel confident that a
Speaker 1: twentysomething you're old non parent is going to do it
Speaker 1: in a way that works for me or anyone I know.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to lean into the discomfort and hopefully
Speaker 1: have enough support and clarity about what I need to
Speaker 1: do from having lived through kind of untenable nous before. Yep.
Speaker 1: Somebody I interviewed recently in one of their books, was
Speaker 1: talking about age. They were talking about patients. But the
Speaker 1: thing they said which I thought was really interesting was
Speaker 1: they quoted some study where, you know, far more businesses
Speaker 1: they go on to be, you know, a certain size
Speaker 1: were started by fifty year olds and twenty five year olds.
Speaker 1: Like it's just our cultural lens, is you know, twenty
Speaker 1: five year old startups. But if you zoom out from
Speaker 1: just Silicon Valley and you look broadly, you go, okay,
Speaker 1: being fifty or in your forties or is not an impediment.
Speaker 1: It can actually be in a lot of ways of benefit.
Speaker 1: You and I are going to talk for a couple
Speaker 1: more minutes in the post show conversation because I do
Speaker 1: want to go a little deeper into entrepreneurship and burnout.
Speaker 1: Because you're an entrepreneur, I'm an entrepreneur. I think we
Speaker 1: could have some interesting conversations, but we're out of time
Speaker 1: for the main episode. So listeners, if you'd like to
Speaker 1: get access to Leah and I's post show conversation, add
Speaker 1: free episodes, all kinds of other good things and the
Speaker 1: joy of supporting something you care about, go to one
Speaker 1: you feed, dot net slash joint. Leah, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming on. It's been such a pleasure to
Speaker 1: talk with you again. Thank you for having me. It's
Speaker 1: been great to spend time with you and your listeners
Speaker 1: and so appreciate the community that you've built and being
Speaker 1: able to visit. And just in case people are interested
Speaker 1: in the work that you're doing with building team resilience.
Speaker 1: What's the name of your company, Skylight s k y
Speaker 1: l y t E perfect. We'll have links in the
Speaker 1: show notes where people can go through and learn about
Speaker 1: that work if they like so. Thank you Leahs. If
Speaker 1: what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider
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