I’ still got it!

I have not studied or spoken about burnout in some years now. So I was a bit nervous when my colleague referred an organization to me to talk through their workforce’s experience of it now. The introductory call went swimmingly, three of us women leaders connecting around both challenges and the emergent possibilities.

As I wrote my follow up email (below), it struck me how the past ten years of learning, integrating, and application have coalesced solidly, and I can easily pull on the knowledge and expertise ad hoc. Wow, how rewarding. I document here for myself, so please feel no need to read it all.

I wish you all this firm, ongoing consolidation of experience, learning, and connection. We really just never know when, where, and how we can help one another. I hope you are offered the opportunity often, and that you may take advantage of the chance to connect in service.

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Dear (Leader Woman #1),

Thank you and (Leader Woman #2) so much for the call today!  I had so much fun thinking through the conundrums—your organization is definitely not alone!

I will forgo reiterating how I understand the challenges, and just list the ideas and resources that came to mind.

These notes are as much for my own future use (in case we end up doing anything together) as for you all.

1. Goals and trade-offs.  Analogy to adult children and aging parents. Different stakeholders will have different goals, and to maintain healthy relationship we must disclose and negotiate—preferably early and often, and ongoing.  What goals can we agree on, and then what are we each/all willing and not willing to do to achieve?
2. Appreciative inquiry and motivational interviewing:  to query members of the group, start with what’s good, what we want to keep.  What makes you want to be here, what do you get out of it, how are your relationships great, how is the work meaningful to you?  Get people to tell stories, get specific, describe how it feels in their bodies, and how it relates to their core values, personalities, etc.  If engagement is low, ask how it could be just a little better, what needs to happen?  Encourage people to get personal, to do their own inner exploration. Too often when we are unhappy and burned out, we don’t attend to what’s good and how to leverage or expand it.
3. Intrinsic motivation:  When we do things for ourselves, aligned with our own goals and values, we are much more engaged.  Drive by Daniel Pink describes this phenomenon, as well as how organizations can maximize it for workers.
4. Managing Transitions by William and Susan Bridges.  Determine what has ended and let people grieve it.  Shepard them (and ourselves) through the middle space post-loss and pre-new norm.  Engage people in the co-creation, or at least be transparent and reassuring about the plan/map
5. Polarity Management by Barry Johnson and Navigating Polarities by Emerson and Lewis.  The company is Polarity Partnerships.  I have not worked with them directly, but I have received permission from them to share their proprietary framework in my writing and publication.  I learned about them in my leadership training, and I use this framework all the time in both professional and personal perspective taking.
6. Honesty, sincerity, empathy, compassion, and accountability.  These are core requirements of leaders when initiating conversations meant to help those they lead in any project—to win hearts and engage minds.  Unless leaders can fake it well and indefinitely (in which case you might as well care, right?), workers can sense when they are not the priority.  Based on all of my study, it’s when we care for our people that we meet our goals–it’s the only way to get everybody rowing together, with their backs into it—because they are in it for both themselves and for one another.  I couldn’t think of him during our call but Simon Sinek is my hero for this concept.  His books Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last are consistent repeat listens for me. 
7. Give and Take by Adam Grant dovetails well with Drive, addressing not just burnout but the benefits and costs of competition, etc.  
8. Generational communication and mutual learning.  I am 51, Chinese-American, and a mom.  Most of my patients are white men within ten years of my age.  I no longer teach medical students or residents, so my exposure to younger folks is limited at work.  But I joined a gym where most of my now friends are about 20 years younger than me.  I am fascinated, lifted, and considered wise. 😜 My point here:  It will be fantastic if the elder leaders in any organization can shift from seeing their juniors as lazy and gritless (which is the traditional attitude since forever) to fresh and innovative, and full of new potential.  We elders do well when we own our strengths and wisdom, imparting them kindly and in service of developing our juniors, rather than lording it over them and making them feel small.  We can engage and engender trust and respect, thereby more effectively calling forth effort, loyalty, engagement, creativity, and quality work.  It’s about relationship and psychological safety—interpersonal effectiveness and leading by example.
9. Embrace the discomfort of feedback.  Do not take it personally. Look for patterns (and if the issue is a person, address that person kindly and compassionately).  See it both objectively and subjectively, from the perspective of those giving it.  Find the nuggets of truth in every response and address those.
10. My favorite book of all time is The Art of Possibility by B and RS Zander.  Each chapter title is a catch phrase that reminds us how to show up our Central Selves (essentially collaborative) rather than our Calculating Selves (socialized to be competitive–these are my own oversimplifications), to ourselves and one another.  I use these phrases every day in leadership, doctoring, parenting, friending, and writing.

We are all human, emotional beings with the capacity for logic and reason—but we think we are the converse.  So when we rationalize something one way and others do it differently, we think we are reasonable and they are irrational.  The truth is that we all have our own priorities and mental mapping systems, many of which we are not even consciously aware of ourselves.  So the more we can approach one another (and ourselves) with humility and curiosity, the more we can connect and co-create easily and effectively.

Both Bridges and Johnson offer services that may be relevant and helpful to your organization.  

Please find attached the slide deck of my most recent presentation to judges of the US 7th Circuit Court.

Here are a few blog posts that came to mind during our conversation today:

1. Inclusive Leadership
2. Attune and Attend
3. A5R:  Attune, Attend, Assess, Adjust, Adapt, Repeat

I’m happy to reconnect whenever you think I can be of more help.

Best wishes to you both and your whole organization!
Peace–
Cathy Cheng