Introduction to Leadership Unfiltered

Speaker 1 0:01

Hello and welcome to another episode of Leveraging Operations and Leadership . This is the podcast where we help leaders to build high-performing teams by bridging the gap between leadership development and operational excellence . This week , I'm excited to introduce a new segment of the podcast that I have recently created , and this is the first episode . The segment is called Leadership Unfiltered , and this is where I am going to pull back the curtains and share unpolished , real , raw information about leading a team and what that looks like , or management in general . So this is no filters , no fluff , just moments that most leaders don't talk about , but most of us experience and if you haven't , you probably will this episode I want to talk about leading while on empty , so leading from a place of overwhelmed , stress and burnout . This is something that I have experienced more than once , unfortunately . So you know , I have figured out and I have learned some things that work and don't work , and I'm definitely going to share those with you within this episode . But I want you to know , first of all , if this is where you're leading from , then number one you're not alone . There's so many leaders that are leading from a place of overwhelm , and here's what I realize is is that we don't have to lead that way . A lot of this comes from , you know , a lot of outside pressures or different beliefs that we have , but what I've learned over time is is that there's ways that we could , we could lead without it leading us directly to burnout . Now let me say this we all go through seasons in life , in leadership , in our professional life , right ? So there may be times where you're working and you're trying to get that promotion and it may look differently , you know , than other times . So I definitely want to acknowledge that . But I want you to understand that if you do not really look and listen to your body and the warning signs , you define yourself in a really tough situation , which is what happened to me .

Personal Burnout Story

Speaker 1 2:43

So I was working on this job . I had got promoted up through the ranks and I thought it was all great , they promoted us or they promoted me . I didn't have any formalized training or anything like that . I was just put in this role and I was expected to succeed and I didn't know a lot , right . So I was in my early 20s . I worked the same way . I worked to get the position as hard as I worked .

Speaker 1 3:12

I continued to work that way when I was in this leadership role and what ended up happening is is that I got so stressed and so burnt out . I was in a place where every night , I would literally come home and cry myself to sleep . That's how bad it was . I had this job and in my head , all I was thinking about is that I have to take care of my family . You know , because , let's face it , bills are real , like responsibilities are real . We have to acknowledge that . So in my head I was like I can't . You know what I mean . I never thought about what happens if , god forbid , something happens to me and I can't continue to work . I didn't think about that flip side . I just thought about I needed to continue to work . I didn't think about that flip side , I just thought about I needed to continue to work , I needed to continue to show up . I didn't think about the fact that when I was working all those hours before I was hourly and now on salary None of that came into play . All I thought about was I needed to take care of my family and this is how I was doing it . So , literally , I would stress myself out at work . I would go pick up the kids . I have two girls . I would pick up the kids , you know , go home and then start that second part of my life . And kids don't really understand , right . All they know is mom has been gone all day . I haven't seen her . I need some me time . Homework still got to get done . They got to get their time where they're talking . You still got to cook . All the things have to get done .

Speaker 1 4:49

And by the time I showered and got ready for the next day , I got into bed . I was exhausted and the only thing I could do was cry Like I was so stressed and miserable . And this went on for weeks . I kept , you know ? Praying like God , what do I do ? Like ? Because in my head I was like I cannot quit this job . And one day I literally went into work and I got triggered . Because you know , when you're stressed and overwhelmed now , you're easily triggered , right ? So you know , when you're stressed and overwhelmed now , you're easily triggered , right ? So you know .

Speaker 1 5:27

We were called into a meeting and they were giving us additional responsibilities . Now , me and my team were already working all of these hours and they were giving us additional responsibilities and when I asked about staffing , they were saying that they didn't have staffing at the time and all of these things , and I just immediately was triggered . So I shut down in the meeting . I had no more questions . I went back to my desk , I typed up my resignation letter and sent it off , literally like just sent it off .

Speaker 1 5:59

I had no job , my finances weren't in a place where I could just quit my job , so it wasn't that type of you know situation . But I had allowed myself to get to that point where I could . I was beyond capacity , it was just overflowing . And then , you know , I gave two weeks . Two weeks went by . They came back to me you want to change it , you want more money , you want more , you know whatever ? Nope , nope , nope , nope , nope . Because for me all I wanted was to be out .

Speaker 1 6:37

And when I quit and I went home for the next week and a half I did nothing . I would literally get up , take the kids to school , come back , get in the bed and then , right before it was time for me to pick them up , I would get dinner started and then I would go pick them up and then come home and then we just started the rest of the day . But I was , I was miserable , I was stressed and I was depressed . I could see warning signs , I could see things that maybe I could have done differently , but I was ,

The Breaking Point

Speaker 1 7:05

I was done . I was , I was done .

Speaker 1 7:08

And I remember when I , one day , I finally decided I'm going to go to Bars and Nobles so it had been a week and a half I was like you know what I'm just gonna , I'm gonna get up , I want to go to Bars and Nobles and go to Bars and Nobles , and On the Scene it's this book by Wayne Dyer and the Power of Intention , and I don't know . It just spoke to me or whatever . So I pick it up and I started reading it and within the book , he started talking about the source , about being connected to the source . Now , for me , the source is God , we don't know what . For me , the source is God . So he talked about , you know , being connected directly to the source . And when you are directly related to the source , it talked about this flow . You know that happens , that's consistent .

Speaker 1 7:56

And so , you know , I started reading a book and , probably like two days later , someone that I used to work with before , a director that I used to work with before , she was like hey , girl , I heard you , you know you don't have no job , what you doing , and I was like nothing . She was like nothing . I was like , yeah , I'm doing nothing . You know , I'm just At this stage . You know , we talked a little bit . I was like I'm just trying to recoup or whatever , and she asked me if I was interested in a contract position . I ended up taking it and then eventually , once the contract ended , I , you know I stayed on at that organization .

Speaker 1 8:32

But you know , I said all of that to say this is , I allowed myself to get to a state because I didn't recognize the signs . I didn't know how to to combat signs . I didn't know how to combat that . I didn't know how to work through it . You know what I mean . I didn't know a lot of the things that I know now .

Speaker 1 8:49

So I want to share with you , because I know I'm not the only one , and hopefully we can get to before you actually , you know , resign or you know whatever , because it did put me in a place of stress , but it was a different type of stress . And then , after reading the book and getting the call , I was like , oh , it kind of opened my eyes in a different way , but we're going to talk about that because that is an interesting concept that I still believe in to this day . But

Post-Burnout Recovery Journey

Speaker 1 9:24

so I want to share with you five things that have helped me and when I look back from the first time I experienced burnout to the second time that I experienced burnout , when I put those things together and the second time wasn't as extreme , to be completely transparent , it just wasn't . I didn't get to the point where I just turned in my resignation and didn't have a job . It wasn't like that . So it was more control , because I put some things in place and stuff like that . But I want to share with you five things that I want to encourage you to do if you are leading from a place of empty or you're feeling overwhelmed , stressed and burdened . So these are some things that work for me .

Speaker 1 10:06

The very first thing is give yourself permission to pause . Part of the thing that caused me stress and overwhelm is I was in this state of always being on , even when I went on vacation , even when I took days off . You know , I had a cell phone , I had a laptop . I was still connected to the job . I gave myself no time to pause , even in the evenings , when I was at home with the kids , I was still thinking about work .

Speaker 1 10:32

So you definitely want to figure out how to give yourself permission to pause and start with . You know , if it's hard for you to say I'm going to take a week off and I'm not answering any emails and all of that stuff like that , if that is difficult for you because it was for me in the beginning I started doing short breaks , so you know I take half a day off , I'm not answering the phone , I'm not responding to any messages and during that time for me it was a time of reflection . So I need to get to a place where I'm not thinking about the job , I'm thinking about me and what it is that I want and need , even if , like I said , it starts with being micropositive , that's okay . But you need to get to a point where you have times where you unplug and then eventually you can start the place where you can take like a week vacation or what have you , and listen , if you say I'm going to give myself the afternoon off and you slip and you pick up a phone or whatever , give yourself grace , because you're just starting this process and not only do you have to get accustomed to it , but the people have to get accustomed to it , because you have trained people that it is okay to call you and text you and email you . We have to think about that as well . So , number one , give yourself permission to pause .

Speaker 1 11:52

The second one is understanding your non-negotiables . This comes back to what your principles are , and I talk about this a lot in my lead ops program . This is the very first thing that

Five Strategies for Preventing Burnout

Speaker 1 12:05

we do . We need to understand what your principles are , because your principles is what guides you , and then your non-negotiables is actually how you implement your principles . One of my principles is family first . Family is at the top of the list for me , and it's a non-negotiable , which means that I need to dictate what that looks like , and I didn't do a good job at that . So when I was an hourly employee and here's where I want to talk to you about seasons when I was an hourly employee and I would get paid time and a half to show up all of those hours , that was me taking care of my family , because financially , we needed a place to stay , we needed food to eat , and this is what helped me do all of those things for my family to keep us going financially .

Speaker 1 12:59

When I moved to a leadership role and now I am salary and I'm still working all of these hours what hit me was one day I sat there and I calculated what my hourly rate . So I calculated on average what I was working every week , what I was making , and I calculated my average rate and realized really quickly that I made less than the people that reported to me . Really quick . And this is real talk , right , we're unscripted . This is , it is what it is , and I'm like so what , what are the sacrifices for ? Before it was finances . I needed to take care of my family . Now , right now , what is it ? So , you know , I had to reverse because I was in a different season . Things look a little different .

Speaker 1 13:46

So for me , what I started to do is be more observant . I'm like , how is everybody else handling this ? And what I noticed was people weren't working the hours that I was working , and I'm talking about not just , you know , some of the people that were on the same level . I'm talking about senior management because at the time I was a manager , so I'm talking about senior leadership and executive management . So I noticed that the ones that had younger kids , they had no problems cutting out early , leaving at a decent time , not working late every day , and things like that . Or the ones that did work late , they were males and they had a wife at home that was taking care of the kids . Or they had grown kids that weren't in the home , so they were off to college or you know , living their life , but they didn't have to tend to younger kids . They were at a different stage in their life which allowed them to pour into the organization in that way .

Speaker 1 14:44

In terms of time , I was not , we were equal , we weren't the same . And I came to the conclusion was that I had to have some non-negotiables . So what I did was I set some parameters in place . Both of my kids were active in sports . I was like evening game and it is home , I'm going . So I started to carve out some things where I said , no , this is a non-negotiable , I have to be out of here by whatever time five o'clock 530 , because I have a commitment and it started with like that .

Speaker 1 15:18

But you have to know what your principles are that guide you , and then establish what those non-negotiables are . And over time , even though my principles haven't changed right , my non-negotiables have changed because the kids are not kids anymore , they're adults . So that's number two . First thing is permission to pause . Second thing is non-negotiables . The second thing is priorities what is important to you , what's a priority for you ? And I'm talking about in your professional life as well as in your personal life . You have to understand what your priorities are . Is it important to you to climb the corporate ladder ? Is that something that is a priority to you or not ? Is it a priority for you to go back to school ? Like ? You have to really think about what those things are , because what we're doing is we are building your leadership foundation . So here is where I am right now . So you need to assess what your priorities are .

Speaker 1 16:18

There was a time in my career where I decided that I wanted to go back and get my degree right , because I didn't get my degree right out of high school . I got married , had kids and you know , and I went back to school later on in life . So there was a time , right right after when I quit , I did the contracting and then they had a position . They had two positions . One was a management position , one was a a position . They had two positions . One was a management position , one was a coordinator position . I took the coordinator position because at that time I wanted to go back to school . The salary was almost the same as what I was making as a manager . So I was like , yeah , no , I'm going to . I'm going to take this because it's going to allow me the flexibility where I know I'm going to be out of here .

Speaker 1 17:03

You have to decide what your priorities are . What are your boundaries ? When I talk about taking the phone home and the laptop home , we have to establish boundaries and we teach people how to treat us . If every time somebody sends an email , I'm on there and I'm responding , now I'm training them that I'm always on . Think about what that looks like and what those boundaries are going to be , and start establishing them and having conversations . This is not a negative thing . This is something that's good for everybody , because when you establish those boundaries and you communicate them , everybody we are in alignment . We already know . You know you send me an email seven o'clock at night . You're not going to get a response back to the next day , and one of the things that I would do is , even if I was online , I would set the response to go out to the next morning , because if they see a response coming through in the evening , I'm just undone everything . Establish what your boundaries are going to be when you're on vacation . You should be able to be on vacation If you have a team .

Speaker 1 18:08

This is a part of building that high-performing team that I talk about in Lead Ops . Or , if you want to do individual coaching , the leadership shift , because this is shifting your mindset , where I don't have to do all of the things , I have a team . So number four is boundaries . The fifth thing is delegation . Since we're already talking about a team , the fifth thing is delegation .

Speaker 1 18:32

If you have a team , you need to be able to delegate to that team . This may mean that if you feel that if you don't have complete trust in your team when it comes to certain things , that's where you start . How do I start building that trust in my team , where I can delegate things to them and I can feel good about it ? We're helping them to either develop their skills , making sure that they're capable , making sure that you communicate , you know expectations and all of that stuff that we talk about in lead ops training . So those are my five things that I want to share with you .

Speaker 1 19:09

The number one is permission to pause . The second one is non-negotiables , which are based off your principles . Number three is priorities , four is boundaries and number five is delegation . Okay , so these are the things that I would start implementing if you are feeling empty , overwhelmed and

Final Thoughts and Next Steps

Speaker 1 19:32

stressed . I want to thank you so much for listening and if this podcast has helped you in any way , has resonated with you , I would love it if you could give me a five-star review and leave me a note . I would love it if you could give me a five-star review and leave me a note . Also , I'm going to be doing a Ask Me Anything segment , so you can text me your questions or you can email me any questions that you want answered on that episode of the podcast . Thank you so much again for listening and keep leading forward .