From Burnout to Balance: Managing Workplace Pressure Effectively

Episode Transcript

Patricia: Hey, everyone. Welcome back. It’s Julianna and I again. Julianna from Daring to Succeed and Patricia here from The Uncommon Career. We are talking about the high pressure work environment that we live in. How do you manage it? How do you diagnose it? What do you do? When is it time to call it quits? So Julianna, so awesome to be here with you again.

Julianna: Absolutely and I think this topic is so needed because we talk about it a lot in the world but I think there’s so little discussion about how to actually handle it like how to actually deal with all this pressure because you’ve got a lot of voices that are like oh well you know you can’t have it all or this is just life or just push back but how do you actually do those things, which I think based on the conversation we had before we started recording, we are going to be going into all of that.

Patricia: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I was just telling you, Julianna, oftentimes I meet clients at the point where we’re in burnout, nearing crisis, right? Like nearing the edge of burnout where it’s like, you know, what do I do? Right. And a lot of this is, you know, I was telling you, it happens through coaching, right? Figuring out like, okay, let’s figure out, What are we doing? What are we not doing? How are we feeling? What’s the emotion? Is it positive? Is it negative? Where are the biggest pressures coming from? And when it comes to finding some solutions, when we’re at the point of burnout and crisis, we just feel stuck. Like, I don’t know, can you give me some advice? And every time I promise you, if you’re in that place, I’m going to give you advice begrudgingly because I’m like, no, you have the answers. You know what you need, right? But when I do give you any sort of advice, and it’s almost kind of like, I’m going to throw it out there, but it’s for a purpose, knowing that that’s not what’s actually going to move forward, right? Usually it’s like, no, because, well, that won’t work because, right? Because we’re already in that burnout. We’re already kind of well past that. So we’re going to back up. Imagine that you’re in this situation, you know, when you watch a movie. and you’re watching and you’re like halfway in and the protagonist ends up in this crazy situation. They don’t know how to get out of it and it’s this climax moment. But then all of a sudden the movie starts rewinding, right? So we’re going to go back to the moment where it’s not crisis, to the moment where you’re realizing, gosh, this is high pressure work. Can I really do this? And let’s start there, Julianna. What do you think when it comes to high pressure work, where do you think that comes from?

Julianna: Yeah, it comes from a lot of different places. I think there’s sort of two obvious places, right? One is external, the other is internal. So if we look at the external first, that’s often the company culture, the team culture that you’re in, and possibly even your interpretation of what’s happening at work. Because obviously the both of us have coached people who are I’ll say in situations where they’re feeling high pressure but when we work through with them we find that okay maybe it’s a misunderstanding or miscommunication and it’s a manageable situation. But there’s also those external pressures that are real, right, where the company has actually either intentionally created a high pressure culture, or accidentally, that’s just the leadership team you’ve got, that everything is fire, fire, fire. Or it could be internal, which I think actually, Patricia, I’ll turn things over to you to talk about because your insights on like those internal pressures are so, so good.

Patricia: Yeah, no, absolutely. One of the pieces I noticed is we live in a higher pressure world. Let’s just admit that flat out, right? So that is there. It is not a figment of your imagination. However, how we respond to that is a responsibility that we have that sometimes, for better or for worse, sometimes we don’t actually know we have a level of control that we truly have. And B, sometimes it’s just so much easier to do the work, the fires, right? Put out the fires that are in front. But if you look at the Eisenhower matrix, there’s always the urgent and important. These are all the things that we typically focus on. You log in, you see your email and you immediately have 51 tasks, right? And 24 projects. That is the immediate and urgent. But then there’s the important and urgent. Then there’s the important, but not urgent. So that’s where your… high impact lives, that’s where your well-being lives. And, you know, when we lose sight of the fact that there is the important, but not urgent, and we don’t pay attention to those things, like for example, knowing what your manager’s priorities are or your leader, right? And knowing what their leader’s priorities are, because technically the way to succeed, we’re talking about learning the game and playing to win. The way we succeed is we make our leaders look good. Now, that might sound a little cheesy. That might sound like, what? No, my job is to do the personal best that I can do. But if you think about it politically, right, if you are helping your team to succeed, you’re helping your leader to do well, then that’s going to relieve the pressure from them. And therefore that relieves the pressure on you. So it’s helpful to kind of, to do those things. So when we talk about internal I’m thinking, let’s look at the ways in which we can be strategic, look ahead, right? So if you already feel a little bit of pressure, let’s release that pressure by figuring out what is the pressure either on your leader or on their leader. But then there’s going even deeper internally. And that is, Julianna, you talked about interpretation, right? And in the same vein, there’s interpretation and perception, right? Like how do you perceive the environment around you? Do you perceive that everything’s on you? Do things depend on you? Do you feel like if someone says, hey, who’s going to do X, Y, Z, that it’s assumed that you will do it? And if you’re assuming when they didn’t say that you would do it or taking on volunteer roles, then that is a red flag of, oh, you’ve either created a perception that you are the go-to person for this or perception or no perception, you feel the responsibility to have the success of the entire ship when there’s really a team behind you. So that’s like one piece. And then the last piece is kind of stemming from that, right? When we have this internal message that says, I need to work myself into the ground in order to be valued, right? consider, you know, this part of the coaching that we go through is like, where does your value come from? Does it come from the impact you make? And the fact that you do make impact, oftentimes we make this really big impact in our organizations, and we don’t see it unless we’re burning ourselves to the ground. So unless I’m working, I don’t feel like I’m creating value. And that’s just not the way that value works, right? So there’s that perception. And then from that come micro behaviors, right? So if you feel that you are only valuable when you work yourself to the ground, you’re automatically instinctively going to take decisions and, you know, engage in behaviors that will lead you there because otherwise you won’t feel valuable. So now we’re talking volunteering for things. Now we’re talking not saying something when the leader says something because what you have to say is not valuable, only the work you’re able to do. So that’s a really big differentiation of like, what I have to say, what’s on my mind is not valuable. I just need to work for you. And that’s kind of, it can be really dangerous. And I think that’s a lot of where this external pressure or internal pressure comes from. But again, I’m going to go back to Julianna’s point. It is not just you. We do live in a higher pressure environment. So it’s really a combination of two that you want to look at.

Julianna: Yeah. And I think even a lot of the internal pressures are cultural. Right. Like I’ll I’ll go back to your example of volunteering for things that is. It work culture expectation that has been like baked into our minds because it’s seen as I’m the team player, I’m the person who’s going to help out. But to your point, Patricia, if if that’s coming from a place of I need to do this because no one else can do it as good or I need to do this because no one else is volunteering. That’s actually not your job to solve. That’s your boss’s job. Right. So if if you perceive and maybe there actually is a problem where there is no one else as reliable as you on that team or knowledgeable. That may be your your burden to bear because all the work gets assigned to you, but the problem is actually your bosses. because the problem is that your boss isn’t developing the rest of the team to be equally as good as you. Or perhaps they can’t be developed in which case that your boss should be able to find people who can perform at the same level as you instead of expecting you to do all the work for everyone.

Patricia: Oh my goodness. Yeah, Julianna. I mean, in education, you know, we had, you know, different faculty, we had staff members, and we had a dean, a VP, right? Same structure, different environment, same structure, the same thing applies in every single team. There’s going to be those people who just step up and do all the things. And there’s going to be people who just kind of hang back, right? And the reality is that you have a choice as to where on that spectrum you are. And if you’re on the spectrum of always volunteering for things, not only does that mean that, hey, I have a choice that maybe I haven’t taken, or maybe I’ve intentionally decided to take this, but now is the time. If this episode resonates with you and you’re feeling like, man, there’s a little bit of pressure, this is high pressure work, there’s a lot going on, there’s a lot of stress, now is a time to use the equity that you have built up by taking on so many projects and saying, I am not going to take up this particular project. And I think a lot of times we think of short term. Right, like right now is this project is there’s never going to be another opportunity, right? I would encourage you to focus more on the long term. So ask yourself by not taking this short term project or this project in the short term by not saying yes today. What long term initiative can I move forward? What long term skill can I build? And sometimes I’m going to be really honest here, sometimes that’s for, you know, bringing value to your current company. But sometimes if you are in really high pressure work, that is saying I’m going to take my equity that I’ve built up doing all the work all the time. I’m going to let other people take that or I’m going to advocate, advocate, encourage for other people to take that so that I can use that time to build a skill for my next job at another company where it might be a better fit.” And to me, that’s one of those pieces where we always think we don’t have enough time. But I promise you, if another project comes up, you’re going to probably find the time to do that project. So why not treat your professional development and your advancement and your wellbeing with the same type of you know, time management piece where you’re like, if you make time for that one project, you can surely not take that project and instead make time for your own development and for your own future.

Julianna: Yeah, I love that. And I’ll maybe throw out some real life examples of how you can do this, um, where yes, you should be focusing more on the future and what I call like the big bang for your buck. volunteer things where you want to volunteer for things that actually matter. So I know a lot of people who, and this is dating myself, before there were automatic transcripts of meetings, they would always volunteer to write minutes, or they would offer to help someone figure out how to use software. And not as part of their job, but, oh, I don’t know how to do whatever, this is so hard. They would Always try to be helpful in these small ways, which sure, that makes everyone’s life easier at the office, but it doesn’t make your life easier because then you become the go to for things that aren’t going to actually help the company reach its goals of whatever, whether it be the number of customers they have, the amount of profit or that they’re seen as an industry leader. These little things aren’t going to help you be seen as that person. So if you just stop doing all those little things, and like Patricia said, focus on the big projects, make that space for doing something big with bigger impact, you’re already going to find a whole bunch of time that you didn’t think you had.

Patricia: Yeah, no, absolutely. And that’s the part that’s hard too, right? Because in some, especially right now in this market, right, you’re making time But maybe you’re sitting with us and you’ve got your coffee and you’re like, oh my gosh, I’m about to chug the rest of this coffee because you’re getting on my nerves because there’s nothing I can do about it. There’s nothing I can do about it. And I’m over here like, well, make time and try this and try that. Sometimes you really are in such a high pressure situation and there’s so much expected of you that what do you do then? And I know, Julianna, you and I were talking about you know, making sure that you have done your due diligence. And we talked about having meetings with your boss and being really… And it doesn’t have to be a meeting. Maybe your workplace is more informal, but having these, you know, really clear conversations about, in order to get X done, I need Y resource. And that involves a certain amount of time. That involves a certain amount of, you know, teamwork, right? Who can… You know, we pull from a different department to support this. And it’s advocating for what you need in order to bring things forward. It’s not all on your shoulders, and that part’s really important to communicate. And then I think the other piece was, you know, you had talked, Julianna, about, you know, when everything is being assigned to you, the rest of the team doesn’t get development, right? And that’s one of the pieces where behind closed doors, in private conversations, I have told a boss, hey, I’m doing all of this. If I leave, no one else can do it. So I think it’s important that this other person or someone else, you don’t have to name someone, but someone else on the team take this on. Not just because at this point we are reaching my capacity, but also because if you don’t have a cross-trained department, your department’s going to fall if I get sick, if something happens to me. I’m not going anywhere, but you don’t want to rely on just one piece.

Julianna: Yeah, and I think that’s a really smart tactic to take because it allows you to show a different type of skill set. something that is seen as a more senior position in the team where you are then training and mentoring and helping other people become good at the work that the entire team needs to do. So it’s almost like negotiating that with your boss to say, OK, well, this work needs to get done. this has either always fallen to me or I do it better than everyone else or you know whatever the reason is that it always goes to you or you don’t even need to talk about the reason but this has mainly fallen to me to Patricia’s point there needs to be contingency so anybody on the team can do the work or at least one other person so How about I pair up with people to help them learn how to do these tasks? And then that way, in the future, you have many people to choose from, not just one person. It’s not even me. It’s the fact that you currently only have one person you can rely on to do this work, and it’s not SPURT.

Patricia: Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I’ve been in situations where there’s different ways of, like the old Red Robin, all these things, right? They’ll come up with all these creative ways to make sure that not just one person takes the hit. But what I find interesting, now this is a side topic, right? So we won’t go too deep into this, but I find this interesting. I see it all the time that there’s different parts of the spectrum, right? And seasoned leaders, high impact leaders will focus more on the honey than the vinegar, right? They’ll focus more on, let me encourage this person who’s not taking on a lot. Let me encourage them on this next project. Tell them what I see in them. Let them struggle a little bit. Let them fail a little bit. Give them the tools they need to succeed. And it might be slow in the beginning, but ultimately, long term, this employee is going to be so much more valuable and going to feel so much more valued. But then there’s the other side of the spectrum. where it’s very much like, okay, so that not everybody takes, you know, not one person takes the brunt of all the work or brunt of this or that. We’re going to do round robin. So it’s so surface level. It’s so transactional. You do it this year, you do it this year. And so one year is amazing and one year is terrible because you’re focusing more on you have to do half the work as opposed to, I believe you can do it. Here’s a resource to do it. Let’s develop you as an employee. and let’s coach you so that you can be good at what you do instead of so that you can take the work that nobody else wants. It’s very, very different reframe. I don’t want to go too far off, just want to give you an idea, right, of, you know, some of what me might be contributing is that, you know, sometimes if your leader is doing a more surface level transactional type of spreading of the work, it’s going to feel like it’s falling back on you because the work now is not getting done at the best possible level, right? And remember, that’s a leader problem, not a you problem. But Julianna, I know that you and I were talking about the external pressures, the internal pressures, and how when we’re facing these really high-pressure environments, high-pressure roles, we want to tackle both of them. It’s never just you. Well, I can’t say never, but often it’s not just you, and it’s often not just the organization. It’s usually a combination. It might be 70-30, 80-20, right? But it’s typically coming from both ends. But now that we’ve looked at both of those ends, How do we know when it’s just too much? Because sometimes it’s just too much.

Julianna: It really is. And you touched on this a little bit at the beginning where a lot of us don’t realize there’s a problem until we’re in the middle of the problem. So I’ll share a story of someone who used to report to me who um, fantastic, fantastic employee, but she would always come to me after she’s burnt out. So after she passed that point where Patricia, you said we need to rewind back to, to, to make that decision of, is it too much? And what she started to do with my support is. slowly find her rewind point. So what I mean by that is she’d come to me and say, okay, I’m burned out. We need to fix this. So we’d fix it. But then we’d also have the reflection of what, like, how did we get to this point collectively as a team, you and me, you yourself, me with how I assigned work to you, how did we get to this point where you were burnt out? And at what point could you have rewound to to have come to me proactively to say, I think this is going to be too much. We need to do something before I get to this point. Right. So that’s something that you can try to do either on your own or support from a coach to start looking at, OK. Maybe I’m not sure right now in this moment, in this stressful situation, but maybe this can be learning for the next time and the time after because this is going to keep happening until you get to that point where you realize okay these these are the signals that I’m getting either externally from family and friends or internally from my body or like my brain that something’s going on and I need to pay attention and have that reflective moment then But if you’re in the midst of it now, it’s probably already too much.

Patricia: Yeah.

Julianna: Not necessarily to walk away and like quit your job and everything, but it’s you’re probably already in a point where you’re like, I can’t handle this. And that’s when you have to do something about it.

Patricia: Yeah. And there’s a progression to crisis and it’s very slow. It’s like boiling the frog, if you’ve ever heard of that term. It’s very slow. At first it feels like a jacuzzi, feels like a sauna. This is exciting. I can do this. Look at all I’m doing. And soon you’re like, man, I’m getting a little bit tired, but it’s okay. We’re going to go back to the exciting. And by the time you realize that you’re in full burnout crisis mode or you’re just burnt out, you’re done. It’s harder to come back. It takes a while. We’re not robots where we’ll have a new part put in and now we’re good as new. There’s a process and a healing that happens. And so a couple of things that you can do to diagnose kind of like where you are in the process is to notice the signs of healthy pressure versus unhealthy, chronic, toxic pressure. Healthy pressure is I had a rough day, but then I spent some time at home. I got some rest, whether with family or friends or just away from the office. And you were one, able to unplug. And two, when you go back to the office, you feel like it’s a new day again. That’s healthy pressure that you can rebound from with a weekend or a day. That’s healthy pressure. There’s also healthy pressure in a season. Maybe you’re really tired because if you’re in education throughout the semester, if you’re in corporate throughout the quarter, you realize, man, that was a really busy quarter, but wow, I really learned a lot. You maybe take a long weekend and you feel like, okay, I’m ready to get back to our normal pace, which is again, normal, not more of the same. All that’s healthy pressure. If you feel challenged and like you’re growing, that’s healthy pressure. Where it starts to become unhealthy is if you’re feeling challenged, but in a way that feels, I don’t want to say hopeless, but like you’re not growing. You are just being challenged and more challenge and more challenge. And you feel like, not only am I not growing, but I can’t, I can’t do this. This is too much. That’s an unhealthy level of pressure. If you have a rough day at work and you think back and you realize it hasn’t been a rough day, it’s been a rough life. I go home, I’m not even truly there for my kids. On the weekend, my brain is going on and on. I wake up at two in the morning and I’m thinking about work and it’s not a good like, oh, here’s an idea. It’s a, dang, I missed this again, or we’re not going to get this done. And it’s been on my mind for two weeks. That’s unhealthy pressure. So those are some of the really small things you can look at if you’re starting to get migraines, if you are you know, not motivated, if you’re detaching yourself, all of those are signs. And then also externally, right? Julianna, I know that you’ve got tons of signs that you can share in terms of like, how can we tell externally if our culture is just more than what we are really looking for in this season?

Julianna: Yeah and it’s sometimes it’s not even hidden like I think a lot of people when they come to me asking about like what should I be looking for they’re expecting some like secret codes that people are using in their terminology but um Some companies are actually quite upfront about, oh, we expect people to work really hard. I mean, there was a recent example of that in the news that I won’t call it the company, but they were pretty transparent, even publicly about these are the expectations we expect our staff essentially to live at the office and give their whole life to the company. Well, that’s a pretty clear sign and a question for you to have to decide, is that something you’re willing to sign up for? Um, but usually they, the companies will tell you what they expect. Now, most of you out there listening, especially if you’ve been in the workforce for a while, you know, there’s always a little bit of separation between what they say the culture should be and what it is in reality, but it should give you a good gauge of what that expectation is. you can also look to what your boss does for that expectation. And leaders who are listening out there, yes, all of your staff are watching you and mimicking you. So, you know, if your boss is constantly working overtime, whether you’re conscious of it or not, that becomes ingrained into you as Oh, shoot, that’s an expectation is that if my boss is always working overtime, even if they don’t say it, even if they say, I don’t want you working overtime, that’s an expectation that we’re absorbing as social creatures. And other things could be just the praise that we get for the type of work that we’re doing. Right. So if if the people who are being praised are always putting out fires or always task focus, not impact focus, to take a term from Patricia. you can kind of tell where that priority is with the company, whether they’re more focused on, yeah, just get it all done. We’re just going to keep loading on negative pressure onto you until everything’s finished. Or if they are really focused on the impact of the work itself, no matter how you get there.

Patricia: That’s really good. You said two things. You said multiple things there actually, but there was two that I was like, oh, these are good, right? You talked about secret codes, right? That everyone’s looking for a secret code. And what I find very curious, right? And I’ve always found this curious, even with myself, is I can know the thing to do But knowing it and putting it into practice and reiterating and analyzing it and actually changing behavior in accordance to the thing that you’ve learned is a completely different story. We as humans don’t typically… Well, I don’t want to say as humans, but as humans in the United States and especially in the workforce, we don’t typically take time for those things. We need to carve out space. And this is where I think when we talk about coaching, I feel like everyone’s like, it’s okay, I can DIY it. And I’m like, okay, you’ve had 15 years in the workforce. How’s that gone? You know, myself too, like I used to think I can DIY it. And it’s so much more beneficial to have a carved out period of time, not only to have a carved out period of time, right? If that were it, you can coach with a monkey, right? But like, it’s carving out that period of time, being able to get asked the right questions, being able to have someone who’s going to focus you and say, okay, What is the goal you’re trying to accomplish right now? And if that goal is discerning what part is internal, what part is external, and what can you do about your overall situation when it comes to high pressure work. For example, it’s figuring out, let’s lay out a plan. Let’s help you stick to your plan. Let’s make sure that you keep the time needed in order to diagnose, analyze, and reiterate your plan, adjust. And this includes behavior change. And when you’re talking behavior change, my goodness, It takes a long time. And so imagine a tapestry, right? If you go really, really close to it. there are fine fibers that are interlaced and interwoven in very exact specific places. But when you step back, it’s this beautiful image and you can’t really tell what’s going on in the weeds. And so as someone who is always in the weeds of your work, you need to be able to step back and look at those pieces. So that was a secret codes where I was like, you’re right. There’s no real secret to it, right? Everything we talk about here But really where it lies is in the work that’s done behind the scenes, the reflecting, asking the right questions, sticking to your plan, all of those pieces. And then the other thing you mentioned that was so interesting to me is you were talking about the underlying expectations and norms, right? 70%, we all know this, right? No, again, no secret here. 70% of our communication is nonverbal, right? And so even though I’m talking to you, Julianna, and 70% of my conversation to you is nonverbal, I need to be aware that 70% of your conversation to me is also nonverbal. And what we do often is if we’re not intentional, we can absorb all of those nonverbal, quote unquote, suggestions and take them as sacred, as something that’s fact, take them as fact. And now it’s like, oh, like you said, they took the day off. They never are they… I wish they took the day off. They’re working and sending emails on the weekend. That means I need to work and send emails on the weekend. But you were never actually asked to do that. And you could potentially have a much better answer on Monday morning. So this is where like that underlying expectation and norms can be. You know, we can analyze that, we can build a plan out for it, and literally track behavior. How many times did you make a decision based on an underlying and unspoken expectation and norm, right? And we literally track that, and then we talk about those patterns, and then we slowly change behavior. But again, that takes time to do.

Julianna: Oh my gosh, as usual, we covered so, so much today. And I feel like it was a really heavy topic because it’s about all of that pressure that we feel. And it’s really hard to escape no matter the industry, no matter like the situation. For everybody listening out there, Patricia, what’s your one key takeaway that you want to send everyone off with?

Patricia: I think the biggest thing. is just kind of encompassing all that we’ve talked about today, the fact that there is a balance of control, right? Part of it is external and part of it is internal. And while we don’t know what the company or the environment, how they are going to react, we can we can choose how we’re going to anticipate, act, and then respond, right? We have three instances where we can have more control over the outcome or over where our future goes. We can anticipate and think long-term. We can then act in the moment and have, you know, make those decisions and create those habits. And then we can also respond to what is presented to us in the best possible way. And that’s all that we can do. So that’s my big takeaway, I think, is become more and more aware of that balance and that will help you decide if it’s time to change or time to altogether move from the organization.

Julianna: What about you? I think I would probably focus on if you’re in that position where you know you’re in that high pressure environment, you’re not yet where Patricia talked about having to decide where you go with that pressure and you still want to see if you can right the ship, we’ll say, just have the conversation with your boss. It doesn’t have to be antagonistic. It doesn’t even have to be, like Krishna said earlier, a formal sit down. It can just be, look, I’ve got a lot on my plate right now. Are you open to a discussion about it, even before having the actual talk? Just a gauge, because that is probably a really good way to see if you’re in a situation that they expect you to be high pressure, right? Because if you say that and their response is, well, that’s what we expect here at ABC company, you’ve got your answer and you better go figure out if that’s what you want in your life. But if they’re open to having the conversation, try to come up with creative solutions with your boss to see, like, is there work that can get moved? Is there a level of quality that you don’t need to necessarily hit? Because I remember working with one person who’s like, this is a 30% effort. Please don’t put in your full effort for this one. Like, I just need it done. versus okay this is really important, we need to give it our best. So having that conversation just to clarify and make sure you’re not absorbing all these signals that are false signals and working yourself up, just having that conversation I think can really make a big difference.

Patricia: Yeah, that’s really helpful. Two high impact minutes in the last few minutes here of our conversation. Well, everyone, thank you so much for joining us today. This was a tough conversation. When you feel stuck, it’s really hard to find a way out. But I hope that today’s conversation gave you a couple different things to think about, a couple different ways to approach this. And of course, you can always reach out to Julianna and myself on LinkedIn and start a conversation and see what’s going on.

Julianna: Yeah, thanks so much for tuning in. We’ll see you next time.