Full Transcript for Ep 34: Is Your Key Person About to Burn Out? With Clinical Psychologist Andrea Dobson

time. so in terms of when we talk about burnout. now from the other end now from the other side helping people getting back into into work most of the time how do they how can they recognize and have those conversations with their with their employees and with their managers around what works for them so that's that's basically what I'm currently doing and it's really I find it really helpful having been on both sides so knowing and what to point out to my clients, what is healthy and what isn't. Where does that kind of change where is that change between this is okay, this is you wanting to get ahead, doing your best and wanting to be seen and noticed by your by your superiors or by your manager. And also knowing well this might this might costing you too much. Maybe not now, but if you continue it might in the longer term. And at the same time yes, sorry Ann, yeah. Anne: So I was gonna break in and roll over as a kind of, as you've spoken there, you've reminded me of something. We talked just before we started filming about TV shows that reminded us of what you did. Because it's not a usual thing. People aren't very used to this. But it is represented in a few TV shows and a few books. And I would imagine that almost all of the watchers of this show will have read or at least heard of a book called The Phoenix Project. Did you ever read The Phoenix Project? Andrea Dobson: yes I have. That was actually the first book I read or was recommended to me to read when I just joined Container Solutions. Yeah. Anne: And obviously for the tech industry, the best example of the issues with the company of burnout and the advantages of spotting it and addressing it. it's almost so common within the industry that we know immediately it's like, you know, a single name, Brent. There's a character called Brent in the Phoenix Project who is everything goes through Brent and he's brilliant. But as a result, he's completely a bottleneck for the entire business. So they need to find the Brent and then help the Brent scale himself so that he stops being the bottleneck for the business. The most important thing that they can do, the book, is find Brent, help Brent. And it's not like... get rid of Brent, Brent go on holiday. It's like, how do you help Brent to scale himself so that he doesn't get, he doesn't quite burn out, but it's clear in the book, he's, he's Andrea Dobson: needs help. He's he needs he clearly needs help. And that's the interesting, we call this like the bucket. We always describe this within our within the counseling more as everybody's got a bucket. You never know when that last drop actually runs, runs over the over the rim and it just there's a floodgate that opens. Right. So and for Brent in this scenario, he might still had a few more bits to give, but that's for everybody different. Everybody tricks over at a different point in their life. And sometimes that could happen by I've had a client who's worked over 30 years without ever suffering from any problems until he realized there was a way out. And all of a sudden he realized how much he'd actually given in and done for the business. And all of a sudden it was enough. It was too much. So it's really important to understand for yourself where is my, when is my bucket full? And do you have techniques in place to empty the bucket, not at the top, but at the bottom? What have you got in place to release that pressure on yourself? Are there ways that you can do if the environment isn't supportive enough? What can you do for yourself to release some of that tension? there. So those are the things that we would we would definitely work on in in in counseling in in the sessions. what is what are techniques that can find your find your relaxation, find your peace and and and yeah, get back to who you are as a person. Anne: Because I've, so it's an interesting one. There's a concept in aviation, is that one of the ways that plane, aviation became a lot safer, planes becoming a lot safer, is that they started to sport something called near misses. So you go, well, actually that has not blown up yet. Those planes didn't crash into one another. The best way to avoid planes crashing, the best way to avoid the disaster is to spot when you're getting close to the disaster so that you can say, well, how do we learn from that and make sure that the disaster never, you never hit the disaster. You act before the disaster happens. And it's the same kind of thing with burnout. It's really hard for folk to roll back once they've actually burned out. They don't have the mental capacity to help solve the. problem anymore. But if you could spot it earlier, either if they can do it themselves, which is which is what coaching helps them to do, but also organisationally, which is what you kind of used to do at my at my at say the solutions, which is be aware be looking for the Brent. The interesting thing about about the Phoenix project was the solution wasn't Brent. in and of itself, it was the external person that comes in and helps the manager to spot the Brent and actually go, know, actually your main problem or your potential solution and problem in this business is one person who's very, very close to burnout. Andrea Dobson: Yeah, yeah. And not only that, the moment he leaves the business, you have known there's no knowledge. The knowledge goes with with this individual. So in a way it's like, okay, we have we have Brent and he seems to take everything on that nobody wants to take on. He has every and everybody knows where to go to. And in a way, Brent also allows this to happen. And Anne: Mmm. Andrea Dobson: not because He wants that, but it could be that Brenton himself had a habit or had a pattern for himself. He wants to be helpful. He wants to help other people. He might also feel nice when people come to him and ask him for help. He might feel important because of those things. So there are also individual factors that could contribute to. Having

a brand in the organization or being a brand and becoming aware of that. Are you struggling to maybe hand things over to other people because you are the only person you trust to do it right? And these are really important issues as well to address when you are coming, for example, to see a psychologist. What are the things that are keeping you in that pattern? Anne: Mmm. Andrea Dobson: So if you have found yourself to be in a burnout for the first time, it's really important to look back and are there patterns that might in the future cause you to maybe go back in feeling like that again? And stopping that in its tracks is just as important as recovering from where you are now. Anne: Yeah, I I'm a natural breads type person. I have, I burn it Andrea Dobson: Right. Yeah. Anne: all the time and I have multiple sclerosis as well, which means that if I get even close to the top, then I can just go blind or something. Literally. Andrea Dobson: Yeah. It's quite serious, isn't it? Yeah. So it's really important for your physical health to look after your mental health. Anne: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there are Andrea Dobson: Yeah. Anne: lots of different techniques that you can use, sometimes, as I totally recognize what you're saying there, which is it's very attractive to be the bottleneck. It's flattering to be a bottleneck. You feel important, Andrea Dobson: Absolutely. Anne: you feel needed because you are important and you are needed, but it's not good for you and it's not good for the business either. It's really bad. There are lots of techniques that you can use. And I'm pretty good and I still burn out despite the fact that I've really worked for it. I've read all the books and I'm very aware of this stuff, but it's quite easy to get gradually sucked into this kind of stuff. Andrea Dobson: Yeah. Absolutely. Anne: And it's not like there's one solution. As you say, there are things that you as an individual can do. You can do things like step back, look at how your time is being spent, have a think about. what things you're doing that you could delegate to somebody else or that you could train other people, knowledge that you have that you could hand over. So there's lots of things that you can do. Those kinds of things are hard to do once you get close to the top of the bucket because they need you to have a little bit of head space and all that kind of stuff. But even then, sometimes it's an organizational thing. Sometimes the organization is throwing so much stuff at you because it's almost you got yourself into this because you kind of said, to give me stuff, give me stuff. Andrea Dobson: Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Anne: Mm. Andrea Dobson: It's it's are you the person that when a request is made, for example, in a Slack channel, there's a job that needs to be done. Slack channel, we need this doing, and it's quiet, nobody responds. Are you that person that says, you know what, I'll do it. Are you the one, the savior? Are you the one who's taking all these things on board? And Yes, nobody else is stepping up, but also maybe they know that you would step up. or what would it mean if you do say nothing or say no? Will that mean something potentially for you, for your promotion? I don't know how the organization is set up in terms of how what's their culture like? Is that culture safe enough to say, you know what? Actually, I'm at the top of my My bucket is actually filling up. Is that something that feels safe to to say and to even acknowledge? Or is your manager somebody who does not respond to that? Is your manager somebody who says, What do you mean? We all do this. Everybody works hard. or is your p or is your manager somebody who is like, I can see you're working really hard. You've done quite a lot of over hours in the last couple of weeks. I think it's really important you take a couple of days off to rest and recover. So these things are quite important. They can obviously, if you've got a manager that says the latter and you're a brand, that can be quite protective for you as an individual. But if you are that brand person and the manager thinks it's the norm to work over hours, then that might be a cause for you to at one point do burn out. and understanding how these factors can interact for you is also about. what counseling can be about becoming aware of that and spotting these things and how to how to deal with those in a different way in what we would call more a healthy way, healthy way for you. So so those are all the reasons and all all the the different aspects that come into play when we talk about something that is as broad actually as a burnout, and it's not even recognized as an official disorder within our classification system we have. And that's not important either to see a counseling psychologist. You don't need to have a a a specific diagnosis. You can just come and and get help if you need it. And if you think you are struggling with this, getting help sooner than later is absolutely will absolutely help with the outcome. So definitely recommend seeking help if any of these things resonate with anybody listening to the podcast. Anne: Yeah, I could not agree more with you on that. because the Brent situation is much better dealt with if you can deal with it, which you can do early enough. If it's still a near miss, then you can go, you know, I think actually I'm getting a bit overloaded. So we've had a chat called Matthew Skelton is one of the previous folk that I've interviewed on this podcast. one of the co-authors of Team Topologies. And that book introduces a really, really good concept. It talks about cognitive load, is very closely related to burnout, but it also talks about team cognitive load. And I would say that they almost mirror what we've just talked about. If it's you individually, is your cognitive load, have you just got too much stuff in your head for you to step back? and organize it and go, well, actually, that could

be delegated over here, that could be doing, because once it gets too full, you can't move things around anymore and you can't do that anymore. Your brain is, know, cognitive load is really meant that you can't be part of the solution. But there are also things that are more difficult for you to make a change on. So team cognitive load is really coming from the outside. you it's more difficult for you as an individual to solve that. That's something where you really need your manager, your manager's manager, your manager's manager's manager to get involved in like, there's too much stuff going on and people don't have enough time to think properly about it. What do you think of team technologies? Andrea Dobson: Well, so it's a really interesting concept. I I think there is there is it's almost like a culture of patterns and people behaving in a certain way and getting trapped within within their thinking in in this almost group idea of this, for example, if you look at a stress thing at delivering a project, a high stake project that in some way will save the business from going under, people will then feel that pressure as a group as well and will feel that they have to perform and go beyond maybe what's healthy for them to deliver. And I think that's where you can see as a group that cognitive load really rising. And I think it's really hard in those types of situations as an individual to To stick your head out and to say, no, I'm not doing this. Because there will be an impact in terms of how is that group gonna accept that, that you're going to look after yourself where everybody else's, you know, jobs are at stake. So I think in that situation, I think it's really hard, and group pressure and and conforming to the group will take precedent. Over the individual need. And in that situation, I think livelihood is quite important and will take again precedent over some of your own personal needs. And sometimes that needs to happen. But when that pressure is gone, where are you then? Anne: Hmm. Andrea Dobson: Is everything then becoming a high pressure cognitive load? Does that cognitive load stay high? Or does it come down again? And that's where I think it's important to realize: wait a minute, is every next project a potential life-saving project? Does this cognitive load stay high for the rest of my life or for the rest of my career at this business? And those are the questions that I think at one point do need to come in when you do have a breathing room. Wait a minute. Is this Is this a situation where I wanna find myself in? And that decision you can only make, the individual can only make, if that is something that you want to do. Anne: Yeah, and you might think you want to do it at the start, but the likelihood is that... Andrea Dobson: It's exciting, isn't it? It's it's a bit exciting. It again, I think there's feelings of feeling important and feeling like things that you do matter. So, so having a shared goal or having a shared end state to work to can be super motivating, and therefore it's important to recognize whether this is something that really engages you because engagement is almost the antidote to burnout, feeling engaged and feeling that you're working towards a reward can be really life fulfilling and quite fulfilling and give you a great feeling after that. If that isn't the case, we I think you need to think about it. If there is no recognition or reward for all the effort you put into your into your work or the work that you have done, that can be quite disheartening and disengaging for in for individuals. So I I guess this this is a bit of an advice for both organizations and individuals. It's okay to have high stake projects and to put have pressure. And I'm I'm thinking about, for example, acquisitions, businesses that do acquisitions where there's a period of intense stress. but there's but there could be a a big reward at the end and people could really feel recognized and seen, make sure those people do feel seen and do feel rewarded. And and individuals to make sure that after a such a high intense period to take a bit of recovery time to feel that to f let your body system and stress system and cortisol come down. that's quite an important part for, to to monitor after. Yeah. Anne: So I'm now going to segues into, so we talked about burnout and how you get into that position and Brent, the search for Brent, I have to say I've been a management consultant of tech, management consultant for years and years on and off. And so much of my job was always finding the Brent and then helping them out because it was almost always, as soon as you go, well. ex is totally the bottleneck for the business and we, he's totally stressed out what we're do about it. And you work, all kinds of techniques to try and take stuff off him. But the earliest you can do it, the best really. And it's hard to do it internally. It's one of those things where it's useful to bring in someone from the outside who can say, no, it's not okay for this. It's not good for him or her, but it's usually him. It's almost always him. And it's not good for him. or her and it's terrible for the business because it's really an amazing reminder that so much of a successful business runs on the individuals in the business. And if you've got a brand, you've got somebody who's incredibly important, but on the verge of burnout, that really, really does impact the entire business. Andrea Dobson: Absolutely, absolutely. It's it's in terms of risk, I think you would describe it as a as a high risk for the business. Would that somebody whether it's burnout or I mean things can happen, people can get sick, people can decide that they don't want to do this anymore and leave. Anne: it's well, it's an interesting one, isn't it? It's, so at this point, I think we end the discussion that we've had about the problem. We've really defined the problem very well there, which is burnout, a problem for the individual, obviously, but a massive problem, Brent style for the organization too. Even if you can work out who the person is or they can self identify as the Brent, or you know who the Brent is, normally everybody else knows who the Brent is, what do you do about it? So on that cliffhanger, I'm going to cut in. Somebody important to you or important to your organization is about to suffer from burnout and it's going to cause you some problems. Well, what can you do about it? And what can you do about it if it's yourself? What can you do about it if it's your organization that's affected? on that cliffhanger, I'm going to split Andrea and I's conversation into two. And in the next episode, next week, We'll be looking at some of the tools that you have in your toolbox for solving this problem. And in fact, we'll be concentrating a lot on my favorite one, and I think Andrea's favorite one as well, which is psychological safety. How is that a useful tool in this circumstance? So hopefully I will catch you up again when we answer that question. We ask and hopefully answer that question on next week's episode of. Asynchronous and unreliable. Thank you very much indeed.