These 3 things are burning you out (and only one is your boss)
What really causes burnout? It’s not what you think.
In this deeply honest conversation, your intrepid cohosts Alexis Zahner and Sally Clarke unpack why burnout keeps rising globally despite decades of research, media coverage, and “awareness” — and why it is never an individual weakness or failure.
Drawing on Sally’s work in burnout prevention including her latest article for Fast Company and Alexis’s lived experiences across marketing, government, and consulting, we explore burnout as a perfect storm of three intertwined layers: societal narratives that glorify work and rugged individualism, organizational cultures that reward unsustainable effort while undermining autonomy, and the internalised beliefs we carry about our worth, productivity, and “being a good worker.”
Together, we dive into the gap between what organisations say and what people actually experience, the existential dimension of burnout when our values and potential feel trapped in systems that don’t change, and the courageous work of self‑knowledge and self‑compassion needed to reclaim agency without pretending systemic issues don’t exist.
This episode is for leaders, professionals, and high performers who feel disillusioned, exhausted, or “soul‑crushed” by the way work currently works — and who want practical ways to rethink burnout beyond individual resilience and wellness programs.
In this conversation, we explore:
Why burnout is never a sign of personal weakness, poor time management, or not trying hard enough — and why it disproportionately impacts top performers, high‑achievers, and deeply responsible people.
Burnout as a “perfect storm”: how societal, organizational, and internalised layers interact to create chronic stress and disillusionment, often in ways that are invisible until people are already burning out.
The organizational drivers of burnout, from heavy workloads and poor leadership to bureaucracy, friction, and hypocrisy cultures where wellbeing messages don’t match lived reality.
The slow‑burn version of burnout: when work is not just “too much” but too misaligned, too inefficient, and too full of rework — draining spirit and motivation even when you care deeply about what you do.
Societal narratives that venerate work and conflating self‑worth with job title, prestige, or salary, including generational dynamics and cross‑cultural differences between places like North America, Australia, Japan, and the Netherlands.
How internalised stories about being a “good worker” or a “good girl/boy/person” can keep us stuck on the hamster wheel, over‑accepting responsibility and outsourcing our values to organisations.
The existential dimension of burnout: the painful gap between the career and impact we hoped for and the reality of how work feels — and why cynicism, disillusionment, and “what’s the point?” are key warning signs.
Self‑knowledge as a burnout antidote: practical reflection questions to unpack where your beliefs about work came from and whether they actually align with how you want your life to look and feel.
Why self‑compassion is not indulgent but essential when disentangling self‑worth from productivity, prestige, and external approval.
Concrete steps leaders can take right now: friction audits with their teams, small systems changes, and genuine role modelling of healthy behaviour instead of “do as I say, not as I do.”
Why this matters for work and leadership
As Alexis and Sally highlight throughout the conversation, how we understand burnout fundamentally shapes how we lead, design roles, and care for ourselves and our teams. When we frame burnout as an individual problem — something to be solved with more grit, better time management, or yet another wellness initiative — we overlook the real leverage points for change.
When leaders and organisations recognise burnout as the outcome of structural friction, cultural hypocrisy, and internalised narratives about worth, they can start:
Auditing work for unnecessary friction, bottlenecks, and misaligned tasks instead of simply asking people to “do more with less.”
Aligning what they say about wellbeing with what people actually experience day‑to‑day, closing the gap that erodes trust and engagement.
Supporting employees to develop self‑knowledge and self‑compassion, not as a way to cope with toxic cultures, but as part of redesigning work to be sustainable, humane, and high‑performing.
Reframing burnout in this way is not about blaming organisations alone or bypassing personal responsibility; it’s about seeing the whole system we swim in, so we can create more courageous, honest, and sustainable ways of living and working — together.
Three questions for reflection
As you listen, you might want to pause and reflect on:
What stories did you grow up with about “being a good worker” or “being a good person”? How do those narratives show up in how you work, lead, or push yourself today?
Where do you notice friction, rework, or wasted effort in your day that leave you drained — not because the work is meaningful and challenging, but because the systems around you are inefficient or misaligned?
If you fully believed that your worth did not depend on your job title, salary, or productivity, how might your decisions about work, boundaries, and leadership start to change?
Learn more about Sal’s work on burnout and sustainable leadership and read the full article on the three layers of burnout causes at her website, salcla.com. And read her latest article for Fast Company on the topic right here.
Transcript
Alexis Zahner (00:15.449)
Yeah. No, other than we might just want to give a bit of a natural pause just for Humanico to be dropped and then we're sweet. Cool. All right. Shall I welcome and ask what we are talking about today, then? I'll ask you. Beautiful. Okay. Welcome to Live and Work More Human. We are talking about a topic today that
Sal (00:24.43)
Cool. Awesome.
Sal (00:31.33)
That sounds great, yep.
Alexis Zahner (00:41.913)
I think is pretty prevalent for many of us now, but certainly the Data Seams show has been an ongoing challenge and one that's kind of on the rise is if I'm right there, Cell. But tell me, what are we talking about today and why is it so important that we're having this conversation at this particular juncture right now?
Sal (00:58.038)
Yeah, it's a really big one, Lex, and it is unfortunately just growing. You know, I've been working in the burnout space for a long time now, and it's been quite a while since my own burnout. And unfortunately, despite all the research, the media coverage, the awareness of the term, we're still not getting to a point where we're really meaningfully preventing burnout. And one of the reasons might be is we're not really deeply understanding the causes.
and so what we're gonna talk about today really are the sort of three three key framings of causes for burnout that we need to understand in order to be able to really address it at organizational levels also as individuals. So that's that's what we're gonna smash into today.
Alexis Zahner (01:36.622)
Mm. Love it, Cell. And it's really interesting because reading your article and your research in this, I think a lot of us think that burnout comes from individual mismanagement of our resources, right? Like we're we're poor at time managing, we're poor at resource managing, whatever it may be. But you talk a lot about burnout being a perfect storm and a sort of confluence of factors. So run us through it, Cell. What are some of the factors that contribute to a person experiencing burnout?
Sal (02:07.265)
Yeah, great question. Like, so I think the main thing to understand first up is that burnout is never an individual weakness or failure. It's never a result of not trying hard enough. In fact, it tends to happen to top performers, top talent, people who are incredibly responsible and incredibly capable. so really what it is are three sort of layers that I think are often quite invisible to us. And so this perfect storm is about what's going on at a societal level.
At an organizational level and then at an internalized level. So let's start with organizational, because I think that's one that we are seeing an increasing awareness of in the media that you know our organizations are often creating cultures and systems that are just giving rise to us burning out. And there's causes looked at like you know, just a really heavy workload, poor leadership, not getting enough recognition, not experiencing enough sense of control in what we're doing in our day-to-day.
And so we're getting this sort of increased awareness of what organizational sort of c components are that are leading to people experiencing chronic stress that eventually leads to burnout. And I think particularly when we see this kind of hypocrisy in organizations between, we really care about our people, they're our biggest asset. We want you to experience well-being, but still just rewarding presentedism, rewarding people for really just slogging themselves in an unsustainable way.
Alexis Zahner (03:11.096)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (03:28.345)
It's interesting, Cell, because I have a bit of a theory at this organizational level why we see this happening. And in particular, why maybe certain leaders are more likely to lead organizations to a point of burnout in their employees as well. And I think part of it comes up from the internal and part of it comes down from the societal. And when you have leaders, I think, who are also maybe achievement-oriented or used to really pushing themselves as well, because of that internalized sort of
narratives that they might have about what work means to them. And then also that sort of societal pressure kind of becomes this perfect storm in the middle where everyone gets sucked into that vortex, doesn't it?
Sal (04:08.053)
It really does. And I think this is the societal piece is really important for us to understand as well. Cause we c when we kind of zoom out from the organization to what you know, how do our societies legislate and regulate about work? How do we think and talk about work in our societies as well? And I think when we've grown up in an environment in which work is really prioritized and perhaps the most important thing, all of our accomplishments at school as we grow up, there's all this pressure to kind of get certain grades so that we can go to a certain
Alexis Zahner (04:12.92)
Yeah.
Sal (04:34.823)
you know, university or college and end up in these professions that are really prestigious. And I think this kind of veneration of work at a societal level, we end up internalizing. We take on these messages. And I think particularly at this point in sort of the landscape of work, a lot of our senior leaders are kind of my age or older, so we're Gen Xs. And we've really drunk the Kool-Aid on the conflation between work and self-worth.
Alexis Zahner (04:45.302)
Yeah.
Sal (05:00.637)
so there's a lot of people I think who are in leadership roles who struggle with perhaps younger generations coming through and setting boundaries and saying, I'm not going to be, you know, flogged in that way. I'm not going to do that. and then there's this, I think, really difficult sort of conversation that I'm having increasingly with leaders about understanding that no, that's not laziness. That's just them wanting to have a sustainable and healthy life. And I think it's really important for us to understand that is actually possible. We can redesign work in a way that is actually
Alexis Zahner (05:00.865)
Mm.
Alexis Zahner (05:12.183)
Yeah. and then there's
Alexis Zahner (05:26.115)
Mm.
Mm.
Sal (05:28.705)
sustainable, enjoyable and also productive and still kicking those KPIs.
Alexis Zahner (05:33.686)
It's interesting too, so, because both of us are having this conversation currently from Australia, which is a very much westernized culture. But I know that you've lived a period of time in Europe. We've both lived a period of time sort of in North America. I've spent a very short period of time in Japan as well. And I think the societal level culturally is very different across the landscape, depending on where we live as well. And I wonder like, what was your experience at a personal level like
Was there a difference for you in different cultures around how we experience things like overwork and that cultural expectation at that societal level?
Sal (06:08.493)
There's certainly a really strong aspect of sort of national culture that feeds into it. There's also professional cultures. So for example, you know, having worked as a lawyer in London and Amsterdam, but also spent time in Morocco and North North America, and these are all like, you know, you know, n equals one. It's just my own experience. but it is, I think, in the the research as well, there is quite a significant difference in how we create our self-identity from one place to the next.
Alexis Zahner (06:12.825)
Mm. Mm.
Alexis Zahner (06:31.928)
Yeah.
Sal (06:32.361)
What I experienced, I'm curious about you, but like North America was definitely an an area where I felt like work was incredibly central. But also ironically, people are very poorly protected by the legislation and regulation there. So you're you you center your entire sense of self-identity around your work. What do you do? Are you in a hustle culture? Are you kicking goals? Are you sort of you know maximizing your your impact through your work?
Alexis Zahner (06:43.959)
Yes.
Sal (06:56.363)
but at the same time, you know, job precarity is enormous in these places. You can be fired on the spot and go from this incredible sort of prestige that you've accomplished to being, you out on the streets again. I think in countries that I've experienced, like the Netherlands and and Australia, where there are you know a bit more sort of rigorous protections around labor laws, that perhaps there's a slightly different way that we view how conflated our our work lives are with our sense of self-identity.
Alexis Zahner (06:59.959)
Yeah.
Sal (07:26.195)
But again, I think it is something that we are we have seen a shift over the last fifty or sixty years culturally from people participating in society through religion and sports and community activities, really just w, you know, whittling it down to just being work and everything else is very much subordinate to that.
Alexis Zahner (07:26.413)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (07:36.045)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (07:42.626)
Yeah.
I do think we have moved towards this kind of ideal of a rugged individualism culture, sp especially in the Western world. But just going back to your earlier point, then, because I do think it's an important discernment here, I sort of homogenized North America culturally, and that's certainly not the case. I lived specifically in Canada, where there are a lot more rights around overwork. We also just have a different system for public health and things like that, which our colleagues in the United States don't. And that's also, I think.
Sal (07:55.309)
Mm.
Sal (08:03.693)
Mm.
Alexis Zahner (08:14.745)
Part of the bigger the picture, depending on the sort of state of the environment in which you live outside of work as well determines how important or how central work has to be to your life as a necessity. You know, if you're reliant on private healthcare and things like that in countries where those things aren't publicly offered, that drastically changes your perception and necessity of work in your life.
Sal (08:38.647)
Absolutely. I've got a lot of friends in the United States who get their healthcare through their workplace and their family also relies on that same healthcare. So it really does mean your hands are tied to a large extent about your sense of agency and autonomy, like can I leave this job? No, the power there's a really huge power imbalance as a result of those kind of sort of cultural societal situations.
Alexis Zahner (08:41.035)
Yeah. They work, yeah.
Totally.
Alexis Zahner (08:59.895)
Yeah, absolutely. And now, Sal, I want to dive into the organizational side of it a little bit more because I do think that's where as individuals and as leaders we have a lot of power to drive some change here. And something you mentioned in your work and in your article is sort of the hypocrisy culture as well, the the gap between what organizations say and what they actually do. And I just want to talk about this for a moment. What sort of damage is being done when employees are
bringing an expectation to work and it's not being met, or in fact, in a lot of ways, they might even feel like they're being exploited by their workplace here.
Sal (09:34.646)
Yeah, it's really interesting to see. I think there's this kind of wave when people enter an organization of hope, of expectation, particularly when you're a fresh graduate and you're sort early in your career. there's often a lot of incredible energy and potential that you bring to that environment. And then when what is expressed in the messaging doesn't match your lived experience, that decimates your sense of engagement, that willingness to really, you know, show up, to give your best self, to learn, to evolve.
Alexis Zahner (09:40.481)
Mm.
Sal (10:01.745)
can be very quickly undermined when organizations are not matching what they're saying to what they're actually genuinely doing in practice. And a lot of it, unfortunately, is also quite invisible or difficult for leaders to sort of see immediately. They might be saying the right things and they may actually be a really great leader in themselves and how they lead the individuals. But when structures and systems within the organization are not functioning optimally, when people are experiencing a lot of bottlenecks, a lot of pushback, and just not feeling a lot of sort of autonomy or creativity.
Alexis Zahner (10:07.64)
Mm.
Sal (10:30.477)
Perhaps there's a lot of wasted time. I think that's a really big one for us at the moment. When we're feeling like, you know, maybe if say I'm working 40 hours a week and 20 of those I could be using much in a much better or more effective way, that's gonna really sandpaper away at our sense of commitment and openness. and that has a massive impact in terms of how much organizations are really just getting out of their people. So there's fairly obvious, you know, organizational consequences, not to mention the
Alexis Zahner (10:55.169)
Yeah.
Sal (10:58.721)
the harm caused to individuals in those situations who are experiencing prolonged chronic stress.
Alexis Zahner (11:03.961)
And that's a very interesting point because I think we often assume that burnout is a result of too much work or too much expectation on the individual. But oftentimes it can be the result of the wrong work being put on people and additional friction that actually needn't exist that for whatever reason maybe we haven't had the time and the resources to slow down to actually audit what we're doing and sort of see the necessity of that. So
I can say as someone who's worked, for example, in government for a period of time as well, where there feels like there's so much bureaucratic red tape, you often feel like you're spinning your wheels doing so much work and rework to actually make little progress. And I wonder, what does the research tell us or what is the experience of people who come to burnout from that kind of place?
Sal (11:48.162)
Yeah, it's interesting, isn't Because I think we really conflate burnout with just this sort of insane overwork. And as you know, like I was working eighty hour weeks as a lawyer. So my story's kind of that very sort of corporate, very sort of narrow idea of burnout. But I think what we're seeing increasingly is just this kind of like the low, slow burn of burnout, where it really is just you know, it's really dis a disheartening experience, particularly when we feel very motivated. We've put a lot of time and effort into our studies and we want to have a particular kind of career and potentially have an impact, be living our values, and when that
Alexis Zahner (11:52.587)
Yeah, yeah.
Alexis Zahner (12:08.675)
Yeah.
Sal (12:17.919)
slowly starts to materialize that awareness that actually this is not going to be possible in this organization. It just has this kind of like almost slow leak effect, I think, on people's sense of energy, motivation, and willingness to be there. I it is something that I think we, you know, and again, organizations, there's a lot that can be done in terms of what how we can start to change work in that way. But what you said, I think, is so key, Lex. It is so often about slowing down. And unf we live in a time, unfortunately, where that is just something that is
so deeply uncomfortable and also not normalized in many organizations. Anyone I think who's pushing back and saying, hey, we need to redesign this is probably going to be getting quite a lot of pushback about that because who has time for that in this quarter? You know, think that that's just that's just not a priority. And it gets kicked down the list and kicked into the future indefinitely.
Alexis Zahner (12:57.832)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (13:05.751)
Definitely. Yeah, and and lack of time is really the killer of change, right? But something that's interesting, you made a really valid point there. And that is that I think often that friction is just the spirit killer of a highly ambitious person because we have so much potential and so much to give and we feel like we're not able to utilize that. And it is soul crushing when you're someone who has potential yet to be realized.
Sal (13:18.935)
Hardly.
Sal (13:30.35)
Absolutely. And this is where I think, you know, I've often thought about burnout as, you know, according to the World Health Organization definition, we have three, you know, dimensions of burnout: exhaustion, cynicism, reduced professional efficacy. I've often thought of there being actually a kind of existential component to burnout as well. And it's exactly what you've just described: is this kind of gap that we experience between what we'd hoped our work lives might be and what's actually happening for us. And I think when we're
Alexis Zahner (13:38.019)
Yeah.
Sal (13:58.22)
feeling like we have this energy and we want to be living our values in what we're doing and having an impact, having a legacy that we want to have and that's just not materializing, it really hits us at an existential level. Like what's the point? You know, wh who even am I? What what am I doing here? It's really I've had so many conversations with people who really r resonate with that sense of kind of disheartenment that they go through on the journey to burnout.
Alexis Zahner (14:18.457)
Totally.
Alexis Zahner (14:22.673)
I would say I've totally had that cynicism experience at work. Certainly as a young marketing consultant, you know, 15 odd years ago now, I came into the industry with so much excitement and so much to give. And I just felt like I was kind of ground down in that, in those first initial roles that I left the industry for such a period of time. And it's only till sort of more recent years that I've kind of come full circle and a back consulting and and in writing in that space, ironically. So I totally see where how
Sal (14:47.713)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (14:51.091)
Well, I mean, this is maybe d tooting my own horn horn here, but like how disappointing to not have excited people with a lot of potential in that industry for that 10 year period. Like how much are we missing out on when people feel like they they don't have the resources to actually bring their potential to the fore? It's disappointing to think about.
Sal (15:10.047)
It really is. And I think this is probably a really good moment for us to sort shift also to the discussion around the internalized component of the the root causes of burnout. But before we do that, I do just want to highlight what you've said there, Lex, because I think there are industries like law, for example, where they're simply still relying on the prestige around that title to churn through people and to attract people into law firms and attract people into the profession.
Alexis Zahner (15:16.544)
Absolutely.
Alexis Zahner (15:27.692)
Yes.
Sal (15:33.212)
knowing that simply because of the volume of people who are still interested in, you know, and doing an amazing profession, you know, seeking justice is a beautiful beautiful thing, and there's a lot of people who are willing to do that. But because of the numbers, they can still get away with that churn culture and I think a really damaging toxic culture. So I think it'll be really interesting to see whether there are tensions that shift as different industries perhaps drop in the level of interest they're able to generate surely because of, you know, salary or prestige.
Alexis Zahner (15:45.569)
Yeah, they can.
Sal (15:59.814)
Whether there is more pressure to create a healthier culture. But we'll see how that goes. But I think it's also you're speaking to this kind of societal piece. Now, when we grow up in an environment where work is venerated, it's all about the hustle culture, the first question you get asked at a dinner party is, what do you do? Then we start to internalize those messages. We start to conflate our self-worth with our salary, with our title, with what we're doing in the work environment.
Alexis Zahner (16:03.236)
Mm. Mm mm.
Alexis Zahner (16:16.451)
Yeah.
Sal (16:25.451)
And once we've sort of swallowed that pill, it becomes very difficult to avoid burnout because we will simply take on more, we will do everything we can to meet the responsibilities that we have. Often leaders subconsciously or otherwise will see this and feed us more responsibilities so that we do end up getting to this point where work is really overwhelming. And because it's the single point of failure, it's the entire, you know, thesis upon which we base our self-identity, it's really uncomfortable to acknowledge that that's no longer tenable for us.
Alexis Zahner (16:50.743)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (16:55.811)
Yeah. Yeah. It's I totally resonate with that so much, though. And like interestingly, before we started this conversation off-air, we were having a conversation about my last 12 months' experience in just that. And it's interesting because you can know this to be the case and you can feel at some level that you do hold worth outside of your title and your status and your achievements. And you can still really struggle to detach yourself from
from that hamster wheel as well. The things can be happening sort of simultaneously. And it takes you to sort of have that self-knowledge, which is I know is a term you use a lot in your work, to kind of audit yourself in the moment to sort of see if the the balance is there or not.
Sal (17:36.514)
And without getting too far off track, Lex, I think with your new book, this kind of this dichotomy, this paradox of, you know, understanding things, knowing things to be true, do I work in this research every single day of my life and I'm still very much susceptible to these like dangling carrots and shiny things and how I want to be seen and perceived that makes it really challenging for us, I think, to make you know, ubiquitously healthy decisions for ourselves.
Alexis Zahner (17:41.634)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (17:49.623)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (18:00.31)
Yeah. Totally, totally. And so let's talk about that a little bit more, Sal, because I think, as you've said, there's a lot of worth wrapped up in the internalized messages we have around burnout. Certainly, I grew up in a household that was very a blue collar environment. So work ethic was something that was spoken about in a lot a lot in my household. You know, you be a good, loyal employee, you work hard, and that's how you kind of demonstrate your your own and how you hold your own in the world. And sort of how damaging
Sal (18:15.692)
Mm-hmm.
Alexis Zahner (18:29.919)
Are some of these internalized ideas that we have about work at an individual level? And what are some of the sorts of things we might be able to do to start unpacking that for ourselves?
Sal (18:38.913)
Yeah, it's a really important question because I think it's one of those things that often when I enter a room and I start to talk about this self-knowledge component, like really examining where our beliefs about work have come from and whether they really truly align with what we how we want our lives to look and feel. For a lot of people, there's this kind of deer in the headlights moment of like, I've never even thought about I that's just I've just breathed that air in. It's very normalized in our society to think a particular way. And it almost feels a bit countercultural to start to investigate those things.
Alexis Zahner (18:52.665)
Mm.
Alexis Zahner (18:58.435)
Totally.
Sal (19:07.041)
And yet it's one of the most powerful things we can do as individuals is to start delving into those kind of reflections. You know, where did I take these on from? How did my parents or my caregivers think about work? What was the kind of vernacular about work that was used in my in my home life, but also at school? how important were grades and accomplishments to my sense of self-worth and my approval at an early age? These kind of questions sort of help us, I think, unpack to what extent those kind of ideas are genuinely ones that we hold ourselves. And that might be true, but
where to what extent these are actually we've taken them on and and and perhaps we can peel those back and start to look at well what what is actually important to me, what are my values and how do I want my life to be? So I think that's a really important starting point. having conversations around these kind of things with people, doing some work with a a coach or therapist to start to unpack that. And then translating that into our decision making. Okay, well, I've got a bit clearer on, you know, what what matters to me. How do I then translate that into my day-to-day life and into my goals, into where I am in five years and ten years.
So there's a lot of different sort of practices I think we can do. What I love about them all though, Lakes, is I think these kind of conversations are often just so liberating when we start to see how we've been kind of, you know, chained in to some extent by the societal norms that we experience. We can start to unshackle ourselves from those, free ourselves up for a more genuine, and I know you hate this word, but I'm gonna use it anyway, authentic life. You saw it coming.
Alexis Zahner (20:14.859)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (20:28.09)
Authentic. I knew you were going there. No, it's such a good point though, because I still remember the first one of the first sessions I had with a coach, probably coming up to a decade ago now. And the moment that he asked me the question, like, what do you want your everyday to feel like? And it felt quite like a profound question because I sort of only knew work and life to feel always on stress, like hustle, like that's just what I
Had assumed work needed to be liked in order to be successful. And while I was achieving a lot of external success metrics, I felt really exhausted all the time. I felt like because I was so depleted all the time, I couldn't connect with the people around me. I didn't have time to experience sort of joy or gratitude. I just felt like I was at this monotone all the time, borderline dissociated. And I just assumed that to be normal. And so I think for many of us,
if we're running on autopilot, oftentimes we can tell you what we don't want. Like I could tell you I don't want to feel stressed. I don't want to feel exhausted. I don't want to feel upset and irritable all the time. But I also can't tell you what it is I actually do want to feel because we've never even stopped to give ourselves the opportunity to ask that question.
Sal (21:41.614)
Absolutely. I think at this point in sort of the work landscape, it's really uncomfortable for us to start to regulate our nervous system, to breathe out, to slow down. Simply a level of discomfort that we experience with stopping the hamster wheel. I think this is where the self-compassion piece is also really important. And it's awesome to see the sort of building pile of research that's coming out around how important that is, because I think that's where we really need to start. When we're looking at some of these beliefs that we have around work.
Alexis Zahner (21:48.889)
Totally.
Alexis Zahner (21:54.945)
Mm.
Sal (22:08.865)
We also need to look at the beliefs we have around ourselves and our own self-worth. Because if we're making our self-worth contingent on our work accomplishments, we're setting ourselves up for burnout. We really need to start to come back to that sense of I'm actually inherently valuable for who I am, and I'm able and allowed to make this decisions that are perhaps not necessarily what my my culture might accept, but are simply what matters for me.
So I think being able to bring some self-compassion into it, self-awareness, and really starting to shift the narrative for ourselves is a really powerful step. And again, like it can feel a bit counterintuitive and counter-cultural. And I guess if that's kind of the story around, you know, the goldfish or that don't even know that they're swimming in the water, we're all swimming in that water and starting to see it is a really kind of revolutionary act.
Alexis Zahner (22:53.337)
I agree, so, and I will also say to anyone who is wanting to step off that hamster wheel, like it does take a lot of courage, especially when you're in a culture that doesn't support that. So we're not saying this is easy or that reclaiming that agency is going to be something that is simply done, but it is something that once we sort of slow down and start to audit where we can make change, we realize there is a level of reclamation of agency in some ways. that
Sal (23:02.637)
Mm.
Alexis Zahner (23:22.069)
we can do at an individual level. And I sort of just want to flip now, Sal, back to the organizational level because I know we have a lot of leaders listening to this conversation who are also saying, okay, well, I am in a formal position of power. So I do have the privilege and the opportunity to see what systems change might be available to me at my level. And most certainly you do, it might not seem obvious, but if you are a leader of even a small team, there are huge things that you can do to start to make change beyond
Putting it back on your employees with things like wellness programs and and those sorts of things. And that's a whole other conversation. but what advice might you have, Sally, for a leader listening to this about some of the things they might do to start creating a burnout free or a change in culture around burnout?
Sal (24:07.629)
Yeah. Two simple steps, Lex. The first is to have a team audit. So sit down and just take a couple of hours to ask your team what's causing you the most friction at the moment? What is giving you the most pushback in your day? Where are you experiencing just frustration? So how can we sort of change those those systems? And often it's quite a subtle change. It might be a certain sort of messaging.
for really urgent matters, making sure that that goes through one particular channel and other stuff goes by email. You know, these these kind of conversations around how we're communicating with each other on a day-to-day basis. I've seen so often, it sounds so simple, but I've seen profound change happen in teams where they just simply make a few small changes like that. But it starts with a leader opening that conversation and then seeing through the actions that are identified. And the other thing, role model. Role model the heck out of really good behaviors.
Alexis Zahner (24:51.233)
Mm.
Sal (24:57.837)
So that might be, you know, scheduling all your emails, anything you do after 5 p.m. or before 8 a.m., schedule. So nothing is going to people outside of those hours. And also just, you know, taking breaks, going for a walk between meetings. I all too often I think the leaders think, well, I need my people to do that, but I'm just gonna get some more emails done here. We really need to be leading by example. The leadership shadow is enormous. People
Alexis Zahner (24:57.943)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (25:04.878)
Mm.
Alexis Zahner (25:17.581)
Yeah. You really need to be leading by the candle. The leadership shadow is enormous.
Sal (25:22.847)
really look up to you, they look at what you do and they role model it subconsciously often as well. So just take, you know, take that opportunity to lead by example and create that different culture. you'll be amazed, I think, how many people's lives you can profoundly change by living yours a little bit better.
Alexis Zahner (25:41.484)
I also just want to add to that by saying I'd I'd argue it's almost impossible to see change within your team as a leader if you're not role modeling that behavior. Because for example, only recently I've witnessed this isn't in an organization where the leader was saying, you know, don't come to work if you're sick, just use your sick days and them themselves showing up, showing up to work totally sick, just gotta battle through this. It's like that if if you're demonstrating to us that that is not a viable thing to do.
Absolutely no one is going to do it because there's a social contract and and guilt and shame associated with that if I'm the one person who's so sick I don't want to come to work, well of course I'm gonna show up if that's what's being modelled to me.
Sal (26:22.311)
That is such a beautiful example of a micro example of hypocrisy culture at work, Leg. So thanks for highlighting that. Yeah, classic.
Alexis Zahner (26:26.593)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's just it's it's the most simple way to start seeing change, isn't it? Just be what it is you're saying you need people to be.
Sal (26:36.383)
Absolutely. And I think it's something that all of us as leaders, whoever we are, like let's do a little bit of self reflection right now. Like, am I actually doing that kind of thing? 'Cause often we are doing it and we're not even aware. So starting some conversations and some self reflection is really important around that too.
Alexis Zahner (26:50.615)
Yeah, I love that sound. And now I just say the senior leader level or that sort of organizational level to reduce burnout at some of those root causes, where's the most important place we should start? Is it culture? Is it structure? Or is it helping people to understand the stories that they tell themselves?
Sal (27:06.935)
Great question. I would like to say we can do all three at once because I think we sort of we tend to we tend to think of these things as like we have to hit stop and everything has to just completely, you know, the production line. Exactly. Everyone's so exactly. There's actually so much that we can be doing while we're still in motion. So I would say at one level, we'll start a a working group at a senior leadership level around what we can be doing in terms of s systems and structures. this is often just a matter of just like a pulse check among your people about what's
Alexis Zahner (27:18.297)
Tools down and we fix it. Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (27:32.633)
Mm.
Sal (27:36.941)
causing the most friction where you're seeing, you know, the most time wastage and sort of inefficiencies for them. Because people want to work more efficiently. This is the thing. We need to empower people to be doing this. So doing that at one level, working with sort of really middle management as well to give them some training and being able to lead better and role model better behaviors is a really important sort of point. And I think also as much as you know wellness programs alone are not going to be enough, but giving people some support, maybe some group coaching, but some guidance on
Alexis Zahner (27:44.728)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (28:03.906)
Yeah.
Sal (28:06.903)
how they can look after themselves better and be setting healthy boundaries, having conversations, all of these small things. I think there's there's so much we can do when we start to build training and support into the day-to-day for people and it's part of the the employee journey as well. we see enormous benefits at cultural level as well. So I think there's I would say all of the above and if you have any, you know, reach out to us if you have any questions about what that needs to look like.
Alexis Zahner (28:28.901)
Say all of the above. and how to maybe you know, reach out to us if you have a question. Yeah. Definitely. So more than enough in there, I think, for anyone listening to get started with. And where can people find more about burnout and the three levels of sort of burnout that you've just spoken about, or the three sort of causes of it? where can we get more information about this?
Sal (28:47.757)
Absolutely. So link to the article in the show notes and obviously my website, SALCLA dot com. come find us. And I think a lot of the conversations that we're having on Live and Work More Human are also really instructive. Thinking of, you know, a l a number of our recent conversations around, you know, meeting culture, friction, these kind of things are also really instructive as well. So get out of it.
Alexis Zahner (29:00.152)
Yeah.
Alexis Zahner (29:09.241)
Absolutely. Well everyone, thank you for joining us for another conversation on Live and Work More Human. My name's Alexis and today you've been joined with my delightful co-host Sally Clark and we will see you for another conversation very soon.
Sal (29:21.869)
See you next time.
