Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hey everyone. Welcome to the episode. So ask a ram flips the script one step beyond podcast. Guests and listeners submit their questions and ask a ram anything. Questions can be music, life stories, business, leadership, advice, how to make the best vegan omelette, you name it. Aram will unpack your questions and leave you with info you can apply before we get to it. Please rate, review, and subscribe. I recently took a leave of absence because I was burned out. Managing my team takes a lot out of me. I'm socially awkward, and I tend to take things personally. I'm returning to work next month. How do I avoid burnout?
[00:00:42] Speaker B: You got to focus on the legs of the chair and making sure that you're really, really attuned to the different stages of burnout. So what I mean by that is the legs of the chair have to do with diet, exercise, sleep, and social. If you've got all four legs of that chair, that means you can take a load off, you can sit down, you can sit in a chair that has three legs. So if, like, one of the legs is broken in the chair, but there are three of them are sound, you can still sit in the chair. If a chair only has two legs, you can sit in it and take a load off, but it's gonna require that you use your tag two legs to stabilize it. A chair with one leg can't even sit in it. It's more work to sit in it than, than to just stand. The idea of standing, that's just a person who's managing a lot of stuff, managing a lot of stress. So we can stand, human beings can stand for long periods of time, but you've got to sit down just to, like, rest, recuperate, and all that. And if you're carrying around a lot of weight or holding a lot of things, you need to sit down more often.
So if you think about the legs of the chair from a self care perspective. So diethyde, exercise, sleep, and social, we require some combination of those to have those four legs. I won't go into a huge conversation about it here, but what I would say is, if you want more information about it, go check out the rest of our material. We got a lot of stuff on there about it. And of those four things, I'd say the most important front line is sleep. Sleep is the most important of those four things. And sleeping effectively the right amount. Not too little, not too much, but around understanding the stages of burnout. To really understand burnout is you got to understand, like, what is the thing that slips and then what to do about it. So there's three stages of burnout, mild, moderate, severe. And at each one of these things, a p is what slips. It's what I call the three p's. So in the first one, it's our patterns. When we were in mild burnout, our patterns of self care slip. And so that's like how we take care of those four legs of the chair.
When people start getting mildly burnt out, which happens to most professionals like two or three times a year, it's usually around the end of a quarter or around times where you're like really hustling to get something done. It is not at all weird to get burnt out multiple times a year in a mild sense. And so know when your patterns of self care start to slip. And when I slip, I don't mean they're gone for a day, but if they're gone for a prolonged period of like more than ten days to two weeks, then you can say that leg has been impacted, the leg is gone. When you're in mild, the first thing that you want to do is reassert your patterns of self care right away. So if like, let's say you've gone off in your diet for two weeks, two weeks. Going off your diet is a lot. It's like a lot to get into a bad habit of eating off. Whatever your chosen diet is, you got to get it back right away. So as soon as you notice your patterns, uh, are shifted for more than a two week period, reassert them instantly and keep them stable. And you have to keep them stable, like in perpetuity for a long time, otherwise you're just going to slip back. But the other thing to do is as soon as you can, take one four day long weekend, so take a Friday and a Monday off as well. And during those four days, do not interact with your phone or your computer more than an hour a day. So you could do half an hour in the morning and half an hour at night or an hour in the morning and an hour or an hour at night, but no more than that. And that includes like, don't be like texting with people and like doom scrolling or any of that stuff. Just leave it alone. After four days, you'll be fine. If you put your patterns of self care back into play. If you don't do that or if the stress gets worse and your patterns don't improve, then you're going to go to moderate burnout. But maybe you do all that and then you get into moderate burnout. Anyways, because your stress is increasing. The p that slips here is performance. And that means that what you're doing, even though you might still be working a lot or even more, it's that your output isn't as good and it impacts in two ways. So people can either become avoidant or hyper vigilant. If you're avoidant, that means you're avoiding parts of your job or all of your job. And for some people they might be doing everything else but avoiding this one thing. And emails are typically the place where they start showing up. They start taking forever to respond to emails, or emails with people that they don't particularly like, or they start being avoidant of dealing with people they don't like. So people can become avoidant when they're in moderate burnout or they can become hyper vigilante. Hypervigilant is like you're doing stuff at a crazy pace, like super fast. As soon as something comes in, you handle it. So your output either stays the same or increases. But it's that the output isn't very good. There's lots of errors, lots of shortcuts, a lot of indulgences, and people can become hyper vigilant and avoidant. So it's that kind of terrible combination of both. If you find yourself in that space, then taking one long weekend is not enough. But also waiting until you've got a two week vacation is like nightmare scenario. Don't do that because you're going to get even more burnt out. The best thing to do is to take five long weekends in a three month period. Two of them should be four day long weekends and three of them should be three day long weekends. So think of across a quarter. Put them in your schedule. Take those long weekends and do the thing with your phone as well, where you only have like 1 hour within a day. If you do that, and you also put your pattern of self care back into play, then you'll be fine, like within a few ish months. Moderate burnout is experienced by most professionals every couple of years. It's usually around getting a promotion or getting a major project done, or going through a really turbulent time in the business. It is important to address this though, and it's super important not to try and wait it out until you're like annual vacation. Cause you're gonna, it's gonna get worse. The last is severe burnout. The p that slips here is personality. So you're not the same person, you're showing up differently. And that means that our ability to manage our emotional labor has dropped because our patterns of self care, especially our sleep, aren't in play. So you become reactive, avoidant people who are typically very gregarious either become like way more so, or become like, quite silent. People who are typically not gregarious and quite silent become like, almost absent. It can make people come, like, explosive, highly touchy, highly defensive, or completely, like, not care at all.
Severe burnout used to be, like, relatively rare in the workplace, but it's increased quite a bit as one of the results of COVID And so what happens here is you have to actually take a longer leave of absence. Minimum should be two weeks, but I'd encourage people, if they can, to take six weeks. And of course, it also means patterns of self care get put back into place for a minimum of two weeks in a stable condition. And there's usually some kind of delegation that needs to go on, forced delegation or collaborative delegation. So either you work with your boss to delegate or they just delegate for you. And finally, what should happen is some kind of outside source of therapy, and it should be like short term cognitive behavioral therapy if you're in this space. So first thing is, watch those legs of the chair. You know, it's the pillars of self care. You have to keep those in place. If you don't keep them in place, you're going to get burnt out and you're probably going to get into stages of burnout no matter what, like at least in a mile. But you gotta stay really aware of those self care pillars. And then after that, really understand those three p's and how that shows up for you. And then if you see yourself slipping from one stage to a next stage, then you got to do the work to get back. When it comes to burnout, I really encourage people like, get behind in the driver's seat here. Do not be a passenger in your own health. You have to take accountability for identifying when you're getting burnt out and applying these strategies.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: I'm a new manager and have my first direct report. How do I give a year end review?
[00:08:18] Speaker B: For a year end review, it's important to know that nothing on there should be novel information, so it shouldn't be something they're hearing for the first time. So this is what I mean by it. When you're giving someone year end review, it should only be based on things that you've talked to them about before and that they have a chance to either continue to grow in. So, for example, if you give them good feedback, they could take that and replicate it and do it more and get even better at it. Or if a scenario where you want them to improve, like they haven't been doing great in something that they can adjust to your feedback and execute on it. So you always want to say, like, give people feedback directly and clearly throughout the year and then the annual report should be, what's the contrast between that? Has there been any level of change? Like have people like blown it out of the water and totally nailed it? Or have they changed by a degree? If it's. If you haven't talked to them about it in the year, then you can't surprise them on the review with it because they don't have any ability to interact with that feedback. Putting something on someone's review should be taken really serious. It's in writing. It usually has something to do with how well they're compensated. It could have something to do with whether or not they get promoted later on. So always make sure that anything on there, whether it's like really good stuff or things that are challenging, that you've spoken to them about it before and that it's something that they have a chance to interact with in a meaningful way ahead of time. That also means if you're giving someone feedback for the first time like a week before their review, it should not go on there. It has to be something that they've had time to work on. Beyond that, you can give people new opportunities, seeing things that you'd like to see them grow for in the next year. Like, hey, I'd really like to see you improve in this area or grow in that area. But it shouldn't be from a place of critique of things that you haven't talked about in the past. It should only be about setting new goals based on what you discussed in that review or you had discussed about in the previous year.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: My new direct report was a colleague going for the same promotion as me. They've said they don't think I'm qualified and have had an all around negative attitude toward the whole team. Should I exit this person?
[00:10:24] Speaker B: If it's been more than six months, then yes, you should exit them. So things like this are really common and I could imagine myself on either side of this conversation. I have been promoted past friends and have had to lead people who are friends and ive also been in that situation. So I kind of understand both sides and I also kind of put myself in the place of being like, it should have been me or I should have been there. So I think its a pretty understandable human experience. However, it should not take someone more than six months to adjust and shift. So perception follows change by about eight months to a year. So if something changes, people's like, recognition of that change and acceptance of that change tends to lag behind. Like, as an example, if you're around someone every single day and they're growing their hair out, you're not going to notice that they're growing their hair or how quickly their hair is growing or any changes to their hair until one day you notice it, because you've seen them every day, you're not noticing it. Um, you're not noticing every day change, but if you were to see that person, like, once every three months, you would totally notice it. So when you're just around someone a lot, you're not going to notice those changes. And then one day, perception is going to catch up with it. So for a lot of kinds of change, we can kind of allow that eight months to a year to catch up. We can give people that space as long as we're consistent in our behaviors. But when it comes to something like this, you shouldn't give it more than six months because the work is not yours to do. The work is theirs to do. In this case specifically, I'd give someone ish around six months to let their, like, acceptance and perception of you as a leader catch up. But I wouldn't give them more than six months. Six months is like a really nice window of grace, especially if you've been consistent in your leadership. So if it's more than six months, I'd exit them.
[00:12:08] Speaker A: Am I stuck without true career growth? I've worked for my company for four years. I've received generous pay increases well above the norm and have grown personally. But I've never received a promotion or a change of title. Should I approach my leader about my career growth?
[00:12:25] Speaker B: Yes, and be prepared to be told that there's nowhere to put you. So not all companies have the ability to promote people. Like, if you're in a small company and there's not, like a position, it's not uncommon for people to not get promoted at all. And people can stay in positions for long periods of time. If your comp has gone up that much and you're basically given more comp than would be, like, an industry standard, that's probably the case that you're in. There's just not a position for you. So some companies are just small, so it's just kind of like a flat hierarchy. There's not a position to go into, and they would just be like making some fake title for you, which honestly works against people way more than it benefits them. Having just some, like fake VP title or something, that's meaningless. But the other side is maybe you work in a big company, but there are people who are blocking promotion. And when I say blocking promotion, it's just there's someone above you or to the left or to the right of you who are going to be in that role for a long time. And they could be awesome professionals, wonderful people, but they're like mid career or, you know, they've got a number of years left and there's just nowhere else for you to go. You should definitely go and talk to your boss about it, but you got to be prepared to be given a really clear and direct no and that there's good reasons behind it. And then you have to decide, what do you want more? Do you want to be in a company that treats you well, you have a good company culture, you like what you do, or do you want that title more? I believe that career growth is way more about taking on new things and being invested in things than it is about getting to the next title. So if the answer is no, then why don't you just ask for some stretch assignments? Be involved in new parts of the business, like see things. See and be involved in things that you wouldn't have been before. That's way more important than the next title. And it's portable too. But if the next title is something that really matters to you, or those opportunities to learn and do new things aren't there, then you should go for a new job.
[00:14:12] Speaker A: You and Monica travel a lot. What's your favorite city and why?
[00:14:17] Speaker B: I don't want to answer this question myself. What's our favorite city? I have. We should say what's our favorite city for work? And then what's our favorite city for travel? You go first for work.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: Definitely New York City.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: I think so too. But why?
[00:14:31] Speaker A: It's just a cool city. Great vibe. Great restaurants, great shopping. It's fun to hang out. We have friends there. All the reasons.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: Which restaurants?
[00:14:42] Speaker A: Annixie, annexie, Coletta, Delyse and Saracen.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: Top notch. All of them. Shout out to Pete. Walk together. Consulting one of the dudes. Great city. So cool. You want to shout out, any stores?
[00:14:57] Speaker A: Any stores in New York? Screaming Mamie's vintage.
[00:15:00] Speaker B: Great city, right?
[00:15:01] Speaker A: Iconic. Yeah.
[00:15:02] Speaker B: Okay. I knew we'd hit the same city. What about just for travel?
[00:15:06] Speaker A: I'm inclined to say Rome because we went there most recently, but I have to say Paris it's romantic. The food is great, beautiful.
The south of France. So close.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: I'm, like, torn between Rome and Paris. I love both the food in Rome.
But you just said the food in Paris.
[00:15:31] Speaker A: If the answer is based on food alone.
Rome.
[00:15:35] Speaker B: What's that restaurant we went to in Rome?
[00:15:37] Speaker A: Yeah, campo di Fiori.
[00:15:39] Speaker B: Okay, I have an answer. I am going to say Rome because we stayed at that vegetarian hotel, Hotel Raphael.
And that was sick. That was a vegetarian hotel. I love that. At a beautiful rooftop terrace and restaurant. And that restaurant that had the vegan menu. And everyone, like, this is not a vegan restaurant. But they have crazy amounts of vegan things on the menu. This place is, like, killer. Unbelievable. Really good. And then, plus all the vegan gelato that's, like, identified as being vegan is super sick. And then, like, it's a great town to be around, to walk around ever around every corner, something cool. I'm gonna go roam.
[00:16:19] Speaker A: I agree with you. Change my answer.
[00:16:21] Speaker B: Whoever asks that question is a genius. I love you. Okay, bye.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: We want to hear from you, our audience. To submit your questions, send us a message. Drop us a DM or a comment on our social channels, our channel.
