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.

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, 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 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 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 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.