Burnout is a common buzzword used today. But do you know the definition of burnout? Burnout in the workplace has been considered an epidemic since the pandemic, and has affected many professionals and executives.
Since burnout was only recently defined by the World Health Organization, many people don’t truly understand it or its implications on your health. In this episode, you will learn more about burnout and how to recover from it.
Our host and CEO Porschia, alongside our guest, Cait Donovan, will share their insight on the impact of burnout in the workplace and how individuals and companies can address it.
Cait Donovan is an International Keynote Speaker, host of “Fried – The Burnout Podcast,” author of the book “The Bouncebackability Factor,” and an acupuncturist with a master’s degree in Chinese Medicine. Her creative burnout recovery solutions have been featured on podcasts and online magazines such as “Forbes”, “NPR,” and “The New York Post.”
What you’ll learn:
- The difference between stress and burnout
- Three essential components of burnout as stated in the World Health Organization, and how burnout affects your brain
- The biggest challenges executives and professionals have with burnout in the workplace
- Tips and suggestions to help with your burnout recovery
- How companies can address burnout in their organizations
“Your manager is not supposed to be your therapist. So how do we give managers tools to support people without making managers feel responsible for ending somebody’s burnout?” ~ Cait Donovan
As a thank you for listening to this episode of the Career 101 Podcast, we are sharing our FREE master class – Career 911: Solving the Top 5 Challenges Executives and Professionals Have! It’s a training based on solving the common problems our clients have experienced to reach their goals. You can get access to the master class here!
Episode Transcript
Porschia: [00:00:00] Today, we are talking about burnout 101 burnout in the workplace with Kate Donovan. Kate Donovan is an international keynote speaker, host of fried the burnout podcast, author of the book, the bounce back ability factor, and an acupuncturist with a master’s degree in Chinese medicine. Her creative burnout recovery solutions have been featured on podcasts.
And online magazines such as [00:01:00] Forbes, NPR, and the New York Post. Hi Kate. How are you today?
Cait: Hey, Portia. I’m so excited to chat with you, chat with your community today. Thanks for having me. Well, we
Porschia: are thrilled to have you with us. You have such an impressive bio, Kate before we jump into burnout in the workplace, we want to know a little more about you.
So tell me about seven year old
Cait: Kate. Seven year old Kate was almost to the point of hyperactive, always bouncing all over the place, was a budding gymnast, and was always very proud of herself for winning the I Read the Most Books This Summer award at school. So I was an, sort of an athlete nerd hyperactive.
I love it.
Porschia: I love it. I, I think that I might’ve fallen into the athlete nerd. I wasn’t hyperactive though. I’m an introvert. So I was on the quiet [00:02:00] side. But that’s very cool, Kate. What did Kate want to be when she grew up?
Cait: I always wanted to be a doctor ever since I was three, I told my grandmother, doctor was the plan.
Love
Porschia: it. Love it. And I guess as you got older, did you think about what specialty in medicine you wanted to have? Or was it just just doctor? That was it. Just,
Cait: it was doctor. And then I got a, almost a full ride to Boston university in the pre med program. And after two years I quit to go study acupuncture.
So that was a big
moment.
Porschia: Yes. Yes. Well, I think we should dig in there, Kate. Tell us about some highlights or pivotal moments in your career before you started the business that you
Cait: have today. So that big shift was the first big pivot. Even that was not my career necessarily just yet.
I was still in school, but I was always on track to be a doctor. And once I started actually going to school for it and digging into the, you’re going to have to [00:03:00] kill yourself until you’re 32 to get there. Messaging that I was getting from school. I was like, I don’t, I thought I don’t want that. I happen to have this amazing Professor at the time who’s the world’s biggest scholar of Taoism and I said, Livia, what am I gonna do?
I wouldn’t like literally what am I gonna do? And she said we’ll study Chinese medicine instead I said, what the hell is that? And that started a love affair with Chinese medicine that stays true to this day. It helped. I was a real big neophyte with Chinese medicine. I fell into it and thought the whole world should know about it because it made everything make so much sense.
Chinese medicine doesn’t really have this idea of not making sense somehow of why something came up in your body. Western medicine is either we know the exact start to finish or eh, maybe it was this. And Chinese medicine always has this beautiful holistic way of looking at your life and your body and your [00:04:00] actions and your emotions and your history and creating a narrative around what’s happening with you.
So that was, first big shift. I finished school and moved to Europe there’s, that’s a side story about love. Just, we’ll just assume that everybody gets it. Moved to Europe, got married and started an acupuncture career in Poland. After six years, moved to the acupuncture to Prague. So I started businesses.
I’ve never really worked for anybody else. I’ve been working for myself the whole time, starting businesses in foreign languages in foreign countries. And then I burnt out because that’s exhausting. Wow. Wow. And
Porschia: so here I am. Wow. From Poland to Prague there’s a lot there. Yeah. I want to ask you something because it sounds like you are a risk taker and fearless to start these businesses and move to foreign countries.
You’ve done a lot in your career [00:05:00] already. What would you say has been your biggest career challenge so far? Before starting, the current business that
Cait: you have now, the biggest career challenge was moving into the business that I have now, because I had to go through the emotional process of not having my identity be Caitlin Dunn of an acupuncturist.
And that’s what it was for 15 years. And I held on to it really tightly. So moving, of course, I’m still an acupuncturist. That doesn’t go away. But that took up so much of my identity that I found myself still introducing myself to people. I was at new networking events, trying to build a different business, focused on something else.
And I kept saying, hi, I’m an acupuncturist. And they’re like, where do you practice? I’m like, I don’t. That’s what I was. So letting go of that identity was difficult from an emotional perspective and also from a, almost a financial perspective with this sort of [00:06:00] sunk cost fallacy. I spent all this time and money on this master’s degree education.
I still have to own it. So I had, there was a lot of different sort of pieces coming together there that were challenging to move through.
Porschia: Wow. So What made you initially decide to start the business that you have now focused on burnout?
Cait: I burnt out, that’s the easiest, that’s the shortest version of the story.
It took me quite a long time to recover and when I went through burnout and was recovering, this was about 2016, at the time, all of the burnout research Was on corporate workers and hospital workers and here I was this entrepreneur who at the time was working 25, 30 hours a week seeing patients that I loved in a city.
That’s easy to live in. We had enough vacation time. We had a good relationship like there was no [00:07:00] obvious. Reasons for me to burn out. So I kept reading through the research and saying this doesn’t fit me. So what’s the missing piece of the narrative that I can help bring to light so that people can understand themselves?
Because it’s can be really invalidating to read through what burnout is supposed to be and say, I know that this is what’s going on with me, but these assignments that you’re giving it don’t make sense in my world.
I completely agree.
Porschia: You mentioned invalidating. And I would also add that it could be very intimidating and confusing, I think, yeah, people to understand burnout. And I’m excited to dig in with you today. My background is in psychology. So I have an undergraduate degree in psychology and a master’s in IO psychology.
And so burnout, at least back When I was studying the DSM was not in there. And to even define burnout is one [00:08:00] step to define it. And understand it I think is difficult for people, especially when there aren’t those parameters set up. And then it’s well, who do I go to, to talk about this?
Because it’s not in the DSM. So is it my, therapist? Is it a psychologist? Is it a medical doctor? Yeah, I definitely can see that invalidating and I think, intimidating and confusing for people. And I was telling you earlier before we started, recording that I mentioned this topic to some of our listeners and just people in our community.
And they were so excited because even though now I think burnout is a buzzword. I still don’t think a lot of people really understand it. Kate, what are
Cait: your thoughts on that? I agree. And I think part of the problem is it wasn’t until May 2019 that the World Health Organization developed a definition and it’s the first definition.
And we’re still in that stage of it being the first sort of a fish. Of course, researchers have been defining it over time, but within the medical literature, it’s only been four years. You studied psychology, [00:09:00] that four years doesn’t even count. And, it’s, it doesn’t mean anything yet and I believe that the definition needs to evolve and is incomplete.
So this podcast is focused on careers. The definition of burnout within the World Health Organization is also focused on the workplace. So it says these three components must be present and it’s related to your workplace. Okay. And I’m thinking stay at home moms. Yeah. Yeah.
Porschia: Definitely a lot broader than that.
I agree. Yeah, exactly. So that’s a good place to dig in. Can you tell us more about the World Health Organization’s definition of
Cait: burnout? So it says that there need to be three components present simultaneously, and they have to be related to somehow with the workplace, whether that’s related because of your productivity or because of the causes or whatever, that’s what they’re saying is the thing that really makes it different from, say, depression.
But the three components are, number one is [00:10:00] emotional and physical exhaustion. Which to me is like a crazy thing to say, because we just went through COVID. All of us are emotionally and physically tired at the moment. So how do we define that in our lives? And that’s really unclear in the definition.
In my work, physical exhaustion means that you can’t keep up with old you. And or old you items now cost you more than they give you. So if you were someone, like you said, you were always an athlete, if say you are someone who finishes their workday, goes for a 5k run just to clear their head. It’s a half an hour.
You’re out and back. It’s no big deal. You feel refreshed when you come back when you’re burnt out. You can barely get it done if you leave at all, and if you do manage to do it, you come back and you feel worse, it makes you more tired, and this is most obvious, I think, in former athletes that are like, but I’ve always done this, it’s what, why [00:11:00] isn’t my body, what is going on so the physical exhaustion should be, you can’t do the same things that you normally do in your day.
The emotional exhaustion piece I don’t this word, emotional bandwidth, but it, to me, the emotional exhaustion piece means you’re living so close to the end of your dynamite stick all the time, that things that shouldn’t set you off are setting you off. And it’s the, it’s things that you’re like, why am I doing this right now?
What is ha, that your reaction is not commensurate with the problem. But you cannot hold back, like you can’t stop yourself. So that’s how I describe those two and how I help people find them. But if you look at the World Health Organization definition, you’re like, what does that even, what does that mean?
The second part of it is cynicism and depersonalization and not connecting with people. So it’s this combination of being overly negative, [00:12:00] being unable to change that and feeling alone and feeling separate from everyone. This makes much more sense when we start looking into what’s actually happening physically in the body.
So the brain of someone who has ADHD and PTSD smashed together looks like the burnt out brain. There’s less prefrontal cortex. There’s a bigger amygdala. I’m saying these things to you because you know what they are. So for those in the audience that don’t have the background that Portia has when you are…
In a state of chronic stress for an extended period of time, thus making it chronic, the front part of your brain will actually lose some cells. This is due to lack of proper activity. It’s due to lack of proper blood flow. There’s a couple of different reasons. That interferes with your ability to Engage in, quote unquote, executive functioning.
You can also call this adulting. So this is ability to make [00:13:00] decisions, to initiate new tasks, to self motivate, to connect with others, to regulate your emotions. So this all starts coming together and creating a fuller picture when we start looking at the neuroscience behind what’s really happening. So we have physical and emotional exhaustion.
We have cynicism and detachment. And then the third piece, they say, is like a lack of productivity. So again, you’re unable to do the same amount of work. You don’t have enough focus. Maybe you have some brain fog. There’s this inability for you to do the job that you have normally done. But, we’re not looking at what the expectations of your job are.
How many of you, during COVID, were working three jobs? Because Susan moved to Florida and started working remote for another company. And Joe left to take care of his kids because there was no teachers and he decided to homeschool. And, all of a sudden… You’re doing everybody’s job [00:14:00] and then the pandemic ended and then you were still doing everybody’s job, your productivity drops.
It should drop because you’re not supposed to be able to do 300 percent all the time. So there’s this question in here of what is expected and what’s really going on. And then all three of those components in the workplace. I know I dug into that a little bit, deeper, but I wanted people to understand really how this all comes together.
Thank
Porschia: you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I love it. And I think it will be very helpful for our listeners. So Kate, many of our clients who are executives or professionals, I’ve found that they use the terms stressed out and burned out interchangeably. And I was listening to a recent episode of your podcast and you said stress is a part of burnout, but burnout isn’t necessarily part of stress.
So please tell us more about [00:15:00] that.
Cait: So you can have plenty of stress without ever burning out. There’s a certain amount of stress that’s incredibly beneficial to you. It’s actually great for your body to be exposed to different pathogens sometimes and for your immune system. and fight against it. That’s a good thing that your body does.
It’s not a bad thing to be in a temperature that’s not uncomfortable for you. So your body has to warm you up or cool you down. All of those things are stressors. They’re normal. They’re supposed to happen. There are also, you can also separate stress into eustress and de-stress. Eustress is not just the letter U, it’s eeu before.
I know you know that. But for everybody out there it’s like eustress almost. Eustress is good stress, happy stress, things that you are excited about? I call this excited often in my business because that anxious and excited feeling gets mixed up. Things, a big promotion is eustress.
Sometimes traveling for [00:16:00] vacation is eustress. You’re getting something good out of it. And then there’s distress. Distress happens when you are being treated poorly. When you are interpreting a situation as being treated poorly, even if. You’re not when you, when your boundaries are being violated, when you are in a state that is not safe on a regular basis, and when you have an internal driver that
pushes you further than is necessary because of a fear of a lack of worth. I know those were a lot of big statements. Yeah. So really, stress in and of itself really depends on where it’s coming from and how you’re reacting to it, that relationship. But you can still be stressed for a long time and never have burnout.
And when you are just stressed, You know that it’s just stress because you can take a day off, you can take a mental health day and go back the next day and feel great, or you can take a long weekend with your [00:17:00] girlfriends or with your partner and come back and feel refreshed and ready to go and excited about your work.
When you’ve stepped into the burnout phase of stress, when it’s been going on unmanaged for an extended period of time, you lack the ability to recover and rejuvenate. And this is where we find this sort of fine line. You end up, you go on vacation and you’re on day seven, maybe eight, if you’re lucky, and you’re thinking to yourself.
I’m not ready. You think you need a couple nights sleep, so you get them, and you’re still waking up in the morning feeling like you cannot pull yourself out of bed. So it’s this ability to regenerate and recover allows you to stay just in a place that’s like kind of normal human life. When you lose that ability, you’re officially in burnout.
[00:18:00] Whoa.
Porschia: I think some people are going to have to go back and listen to this podcast twice, Kate, because you are dropping a lot of gems, I think, and just a lot of really thoughtful statements that I think, people might need to sit with for a while. I’m going to be honest with you. It was difficult for me to realize that I’ve burned out multiple times in my career.
I even had a health scare. And I think my husband would probably agree that I’m just now trying to [00:19:00] recover or come out of a burnout experience since, finishing a master’s degree and, running a business, running a podcast, all of that stuff. And a lot of our listeners are wearing a lot of hats and doing a lot as well.
How can people deal with the feeling of. stigma or shame for being burned out, especially because, people feel that pressure of having to have it all together
Cait: all the time. I think this is an especially astute question because those of us that burn out tend to be the high achievers in the room.
We’re not burning out for no reason. We’re burning out because we’ve been pushing ourselves for so long. And sometimes because other people push us from the outside. It’s not, there’s always internal and external things about burnout. So I want to get that set out there right away. The thing about that shame is that one of the things that shame sits behind is also that driver to push yourself to feel worthy.
So the shame isn’t [00:20:00] just about the burnout. So understanding that You might be only tapping into that feeling of shame now because there’s something happening and before you were able to cope with it through overwork and high achievement, that shame is still the same shame. It’s still the same emotion.
Which is, Brene Brown loves to tell us that in order to get through shame, we first must name it. This is one of the reasons that my podcast has a private Facebook community. Because I find that people really do need a minute to come to terms with the fact that they’re burnt out because they always feel like it’s their fault.
When people go through big health scares and something really goes wrong, it can be easier sometimes to say, well, I didn’t create this. I didn’t do this. But when it’s burnout, we often have a level of fault that we’re attaching to [00:21:00] ourselves. That ends up being unhealthy. One of my main goals is to teach people that kind of nobody’s really to blame for your burnout.
There are reasons that it happened. We need to look at the entire web of causation so we can unwind you from it. But having blame in any space is not really useful. We have to remove blame so that we can remove shame. And we have to talk about it and be validated so that we don’t feel alone. But in safe spaces.
If you don’t trust your boss, that’s not the first person you should be talking to.
Porschia: So much there,
Cait: Kate. I know. I told you I was going to keep it short and sweet, but there’s so many things. I love it.
Porschia: First, to your, the very last thing you said about, confiding in your boss about the burnout.
If you don’t have a compassionate boss that really cares, sometimes we’ve even had clients, who have bosses who kind of use that against them. Yeah, exactly. To your point about the safe space, I’m so happy to hear that you have that Facebook community for [00:22:00] people to talk to about that. And then I really liked what you said about the internal and external aspects of burnout and the fact that Owen is to blame for your burnout, at this point, if they’re, if your clients are talking to you, it sounds like they’re acknowledging it and ready to move forward through it.
Great on the career one on one podcast, we focus a lot on the workplace, as what are some trends or patterns with burnout in the
Cait: workplace? I see it happening more and people having less and less understanding of what to do about it because it is a buzzword.
Managers are. Not reacting well and also because managers are not psychologists and not therapists. They’re not reacting. Well, they don’t know how to handle it And like you said even therapists many of them were not trained in it either because when they trained it was not a thing So one of the biggest trends I see is this huge need for an educational component around what is burnout?
How do [00:23:00] we talk to each other? How do we face it? What do we do about it within? What is actually applicable in our job spheres? Like your manager is not supposed to be your therapist. So how do we give managers tools to support people without making managers feel responsible for ending somebody’s burnout?
So I see this as a really big trend. And the other trend that I see, have seen since COVID is people working. Multiple jobs because other people weren’t hired and that being one of the really big drivers, but you thought you could handle it for the first four months, so you thought you could handle it for three years.
You can handle having the flu for two weeks. That doesn’t mean you should handle having it for six months.
Porschia: Yeah, absolutely. So from your perspective, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve seen executives and professionals have with burnout? Whether that be addressing it, for themselves to recover or like [00:24:00] talking about it and working with maybe team members like you were alluding to and helping people to get that support.
Cait: From the executive level, I think the most difficult thing is facing it in yourself and understanding that if you are burnt out as an executive, your burnout is contagious, and it’s going to spread through the company, and acknowledging that and then handling it, getting help to handle it, because you should not handle burnout on your own, is A really hard thing for people who have made it that far in their careers to swallow.
So that’s a massive challenge. And I think the next big one is other people being believed inability to have conversations about burnout because we don’t have the proper vocabulary or the proper responses prepared is our biggest struggle right now. People do. Are walking around saying I’m burnt out when they’re just stressed and other people are walking around saying they’re fine when they’re totally burnt out.
I, I was recently with a company and one of the leading managers said to me, [00:25:00] well, there was just no signs of this person burning out. And then we went through an hour long session and they were like, Oh, there, there were, Oh, there were signs. I didn’t know what they were. So just right now, I think the biggest challenge is an absolute lack of.
of awareness and knowledge, which is not anybody’s fault because this is all fairly new ish information.
Porschia: Yeah. So what are some tips or suggestions you’d give to someone who will say wants to recover from their burnout at work?
Cait: If you are wanting to recover, one of the first things I ask people to do because it’s a low hanging fruit is skip the resentment journal, skip the gratitude journal and go for a resentment journal.
The Resentment Journal is a copyrighted thing of mine, so this is something I created, but you can do one on your notebook. The idea is this. Start writing [00:26:00] down all the little things that are wearing on your ability to manage your emotions, the resentments, the angers, the frustrations, the irritations, the anger group of emotions, we would call it in Chinese medicine, and then dig into them a little bit and figure out if there’s a solution for them.
The solution is likely to be either drop it completely, This is, should always be the first question. Does this thing even need to be done? Do I even need to talk to this person ever? If the question, if the answer is no, drop the thing. Take it off your plate. We call this life pruning. We’re cutting out the things that you don’t need to be feeding with your internal resources.
Then we go through and find out, does it need to be delegated? Should I update a tool that I’m using? Or At the bottom, is there an internal or an external boundary that needs to be put into place? The more you objectively look into these difficult combination of [00:27:00] emotions, the easier it will be for you to buy back your time and your energy and your peace.
So I’m going
Porschia: to buy the Resentment Journal, and I think everyone else should too and as you were talking, Kate, I realized something in myself that I think I’ve probably seen in some clients as well is sometimes as the leader we think we’re becoming the martyr, right? So I think I’m going to be burnt out to protect the team from being burnt out and nobody else is going to be burnt out.
I’ll just take it on. And so when you were talking about the resentment journal, I was very present to that fact in myself and I’m sure other people might experience it as well. So Thank you. Thank you. Everyone’s going to go get the resentment journal, but are there any other tools or systems that you recommend people use for, burnout and
Cait: burnout recovery?
One of my favorite free tools is either using, there’s three different names for it, Yoganidra, which [00:28:00] is not actual moving your body. It’s called sleeping yoga, scanning your body. Meditation is also called a body scan, or it’s called non sleep deep rest. So these are all techniques, progressive relaxation, things like this, that you’re using in your body to get in touch with your physical form.
It’s a somatic experience. It’s a body based experience where you are learning to calm yourself down in a way. That allows you to increase your resilience. What’s interesting about these techniques is that the parts of the brain that are not connected the way they should be during burnout will reconnect while you’re doing these practices.
So doing them for at least a month at a time will actually improve your cognitive abilities, will increase your executive functioning and will decrease an overactive amygdala or like fear center. Great. Great.
Porschia: Which is wonderful. Yes. Yes. We all, I’m sure could [00:29:00] utilize that. So this is another question that kind of comes up.
I’ve seen people discuss let’s say someone is, working through their burnout recovery. How long do you think it would take for an executive or professional to implement some of these tools, systems, maybe work with a coach like you or a therapist or whatever they’re doing, but just to implement that and then start seeing some results.
Cait: So my work works. I work on a three month basis with people, but my goal is not to have you finished with your burnout recovery at the end of those three months. It’s for me to get you off the starting block so that you know what you need next. I work with therapists really frequently. I think a lot of times both of us are needed for different things.
So you can expect a minimum of three months for your kickoff of your recovery. But you should expect your recovery to take somewhere between 12 and 18 months if you have support [00:30:00] during it. If you’re doing it on your own, it can take anywhere from 2 to 5 years. Which sounds wild, but there are so many things that you are not going to notice, so you won’t be able to change because your brain is not online the way that it needs to be.
You lose a certain level of interoception, your locus of control moves outside of you, so there’s all of these factors that really require a second person to be on your team to help you through it.
Porschia: Wow. It’s very deep stuff, guys. Very deep. So Kate, how do you think companies can address burnout in their
Cait: organizations?
This is a massive question. We could do an entire episode on this. One of the things that I’ve started to do is Talk to different levels of employees throughout companies in a keynote and then leaving them with [00:31:00] some learning snacks that I send out week after week for five to six weeks after so that they’re implementing some of the things that we talked about.
But the biggest challenge, like I mentioned before, is a lack of information. Well, not that it’s not available, but it’s not in the companies. So the lack of knowledge of how to talk to one another and how to bring people back on from a burnout recovery and how much time to provide people if they need something, I think we just don’t know what to do.
So we need to first start, just have the conversation, bring somebody in. Have them do a talk, get the conversation going, send out a survey, get the employees feedback and figure out what the next step is from there. Every company is going to be a little bit different, but sometimes you really need that initial tornado to get things kicked up so that you can figure out what the most impactful motions will be within your company because they’re going to be different from place to [00:32:00] place.
That is
Porschia: very helpful, Kate. So now tell us more about
Cait: your business. My business has a couple of different pieces. The biggest piece is the keynote space. So that’s what I do most. That’s where most of my income comes from. And it’s my favorite thing to do. I love being on stage. I love being in front of anything between 12 executives to 2, 000 people in an association.
I love all of that. So that’s my favorite space. And then move into the one on one coaching and the consulting. So those two are balancing each other out. I do enough of both of those to keep me happy, but not too much to burn me out. And then we have the podcast, which is its own sort of leg of the business.
And the podcast just, we just recently passed half a million downloads, which was a very exciting. Yeah, it was a very exciting time. So that’s that’s got its own little space. So I’m either, and then [00:33:00] writing books. So I’m somehow creating content for people in one way, shape or form, whether it’s to big crowds, one on one, small groups, the podcast or
Porschia: books.
Wow. Well, congratulations on all of that. It’s just very it’s just so admirable. There are so many words to it, and I think I really like your business model and how you’re touching people in organizations in different ways. So I admire that about you, Kate. Thank you. We’ll be providing a link to your website and other social channels in our show notes.
So that people can find you online but what is the best way for someone to get in touch
Cait: with you? LinkedIn, honestly, is the best way for people to find me. My LinkedIn handle is KateDunovanSpeaks and that’s the easiest place. Unless you’re a real creeper, I’m going to respond to you. Love it.
Porschia: Love it.
No, no creepers allowed, guys. So just two more questions that I really want [00:34:00] to get your insight on. You’ve got this really I think amazing background. What is your definition of career
Cait: success? My definition of career success is doing something that fuels me as I give. So for a long time I burnt out because I was giving, giving and I wasn’t taking, sometimes the fuel was given back and I didn’t even take it.
So right now I like to be in those spaces where I’m getting as much as I’m giving in that same moment and maybe that’s through an emotional exchange and maybe that’s a financial exchange and different, it comes in different ways. That. Plus having the time and financial freedom to go to lunch on a Wednesday at noon, because I can, instead of being like, well, my calendar’s too full.
So time, freedom on my calendar is really a huge part of my success. And the last piece is being able to enjoy my husband and my family because you can’t, it’s hard to enjoy your people [00:35:00] when you’re so wrapped up. In what’s going on. So if I’m successful, but it’s interfering with my ability to enjoy my people, it’s not as successful anymore.
Porschia: Agreed. And so my final question for you, Kate how do you think executives or professionals can get a positive edge in their
Cait: career? Right now, so many people are saying vulnerability is the answer here. And I think sometimes people are almost taking it so too far. So I think. Instead of going straight into vulnerability, I think Remembering your own humanness, and the fact that your energy is not a quantum field, I mean it is a quantum field, but it’s not like it’s just going to recreate itself all the time, and that you need care in order to continue.
Leaning into that a little bit more, remembering how human you [00:36:00] are will help you remember how human your people are and will create an easier way for you to connect with them without having to think about being vulnerable and being empathetic because When you’re forcing an empathy, it’s not empathetic.
So focusing on humanness, so we get back to the basics of inclusion and belonging, just on that very basic level, starts with recognizing that you’re human too and fallible and that’s all okay.
Porschia: Wow. I love it. You’re so deep, Kate. I love it. So you’ve shared a lot of insights with us today, and I’m sure our listeners can use it to be more confident in their careers and out there in the workplace.
We appreciate you being with
Cait: us. Thanks so much for having me. [00:37:00]
