Intro  0:02  
Welcome to building better managers, the better manager podcast with Wendy Hanson, where we talk with top leadership professionals about strategies you can use today to create a happier, highly engaged and more productive workplace. Now, here's your host better manage your co founder, Wendy Hanson.

Wendy  0:24  
Hello, everyone, I hope you're having a wonderful day. If you've listened to this before building better managers, you know that we speak to experts who who study issues that make a big impact in organizations. Those are the people who I choose to partner with on these because we want to keep learning. Have you or anybody else you've ever talked to say? I'm so stressed, or stress is burning me out? Have you ever heard that? Well, I have a lot being a coach, people talking about being burnt out. But stress is complex. And today we're going to talk about what happens when it turns to burnout, because that's really a different story. And we'll talk about the recovery process, what employers can do what we can do. And I have a fantastic guest, Kate Donovan, who this is her life's work is about burnout. So let me tell you about Kate. Kate Donovan is an international speaker. She's the host of fried the burnout podcast and author of the book, the bounce ability, the bats ability factor. She told me I could mess that up. So I did about stability factor. And she's 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, and in companies such as the New York Public Library and PepsiCo, so she knows what she speaks. And that's why she's the expert that we have on today. Welcome. Welcome, Kate,

Cait  2:13  
I am so thrilled to have this conversation with you, Wendy, of all people who has done so much work and dug so deep into how we create better managers. And this is, this world of burnout is sort of a new frontier for people. So I'm thrilled to share this space with you.

Wendy  2:31  
Oh, thank you. I've listened to a number of your podcasts. And what I really appreciate them about about them is the science behind them and the research behind them. You know, you just don't stay like this, you really go deep on two things. So I did another

Cait  2:46  
degree. Yeah. When I was digging into this, when I started doing my research, I had a master's degree in Chinese medicine. And I did another bachelor's degree in bio behavioral health with a focus on stress and burnout on purpose so that I would be able to backup the things that I'm saying, with actual science with actual current research that I didn't have access to 20 years ago when I finished my degree.

Wendy  3:14  
Because it changes right and so much, especially if you're doing anything with neuroscience the brain? Exactly. They up on it all the time. Wow. Thank you for sharing that. I'm, I'm Tripoli impressed now. With all you've done. Yes. So let's let's level the playing field here. What's your definition of burnout for people?

Cait  3:34  
I always start with the World Health Organization definition. Because I believe that if we're going to have a real conversation, we all have to be starting at the same starting point. And I do not. Caveat I do not fully agree with the current definition. But I do think we still have to start there. So that we're at, you know, we are at that level place. Burnout, according to the World Health Organization, May 28 2019 has three components, the first of which is physical and emotional exhaustion, this like massive umbrella of physical and emotional exhaustion like, right, I mean, that means everything. The second is cynicism and detachment. So a sense of feeling alone or being negative, my grandmother would have called this being a negative Nancy, apologies to any nancies out there. And the third is feeling a lack of impact, or really strong drops in productivity.

Wendy  4:29  
So if you joined the World Health Organization as a member that got to play with your own definition, what would How would you define burnout for folks?

Cait  4:39  
The other little thing that they have a tail that they have on the definition is that this is distinctly a workplace disorder. And this is the part that I really disagree with because I know people that work basically at home so we take mothers or caregivers of various types who also experience burnout and Unless we're gonna start calling the home a workplace, then this definition needs to evolve a bit. That's number one. Number two, because the symptomology of burnout is so broad from person to person, I think we need to get a little bit more specific about what it means to be physically and emotionally exhausted, exhausted, because how many of us are tired? Like raising hand emoji? How many of us have a short emotional bandwidth? Frequently raising hands, like so what are we actually talking about? What does this look like? And how do we know and so I think that the current definition is missing, quite a bit of of nuance that we would need to inject one of the most common symptoms of burnout is tired, but wired. It's being exhausted all day, and then laying in bed and having your brain kick in, and then you can't sleep because you're thinking about all the things. Why aren't we talking about that? Yeah, yeah.

Wendy  5:55  
I love that. Yeah. But you're tired, but wired, and you can't and boy, I hear that from a lot of people, too. I go to bed at night, and I can't sleep because I can't stop my brain. So that part of burnout, yes. No, it fits in that bucket very well. Now, what are some of the things that in your research that you've learned that change in the brain when somebody's burnt out, and I love that you brought in the social part, as well as the work part, because oftentimes, it's that combination, right? You're a parent, you know, a mom or a dad, you got kids, you got work. So it's, you can't separate that out. So you can't separate verification for a soul.

Cait  6:37  
Yeah, you can't separate it. And you also have, right now a huge number of people in the sandwich generation. So you have young kids and aging parents, at the same time. Tell me that work is the only thing that matters to you. If you got up this morning, and your son puked on his shoes, and your mother fell and broke her hip, you think you're going to be productive at the office today? That's just not reasonable.

Wendy  7:01  
Right? And those are two great examples of real life experiences that somebody's probably out there today.

Cait  7:07  
So I think we need to really offer people a little bit of grace around this process of burning out. And I lost the question if I'm honest, if we kept talking and then I forgot the question.

Wendy  7:23  
I got you waylaid on this Yes. How the brain

Cait  7:26  
how the brain changes. So the brain this, this really fascinated me. And it was one of those articles that came out in Psychology Today or something, I read it. And the title said your brain shrinks under chronic stress. And I was like, okay, journalist. Sure. Let me go read that study. So I did. And then I read about 40 more. And then I was like, oh, so actually, the front of your brain, the part that's responsible for what we call executive functioning, right, as a child executive functioning means learning how to stay in line, what your turn, follow five step instructions, manager, emotional reactions, etc. As an adult, its manager emotional reactions have some patients connect with others have empathy, decision make and task initiate. So like, people like to call this motivation, but it's really just getting something started is part of executive function. The part of your brain that's responsible for this, when you are under chronic stress, actually loses cells. So we lose nerve cells in this part of the brain, it gets measurably smaller minimally when I mean, we can measure it, but I'm talking millimeter like tiny amounts. This blew my mind. First, because this tells us that when people are telling you that they really can't, they can't think I had a client once asked me, Kate, am I getting stupid? And I said, Yeah, a little bit. Like a little Yes, a little bit, you are getting stupid your memory goes. So your hippocampus where your memory is also shrinks, which is that's wild, right? So you don't have access to words and information. And then on top of that there's a part of your brain called the amygdala, that's two little pieces. And they are responsible for scanning your environment to judge whether or not you're safe. That's their basic function. Of course, you know, we're doing we're not doing graduate level, amygdala research right now. But their basic function is to just be a scanner and say, Am I safe? Am I not safe? Do I need to engage my stress response or not? That part of your brain instead of shrinking grows? Whoa. So that part of your brain becomes hypersensitive and hyper vigilant. So you start to miss interpret some signals as a lack of safety, which turns on your nervous system more frequently than it needs to be turned on. Normally the front of your brain, that executive function would regulate that emotional reaction. So if you're walking in the forest, and you see a stick, sort of coming out of the ground or a route And your first thought is, oh my god, a snake. your amygdala fires up. But then your brain goes, Oh, no, that's just a stick and you say, oh, okay, and everything calms down. The communication between these two parts of your brain, when you're burnt out is wonky. It's not working properly. You can't regulate it and your emotions are on fire. So your behavior can be erratic when we talk about this emotional exhaustion. To me, the thing that I hear most frequently is, I know I'm being a jerk, and I can't help myself. I'm being unkind to people. I'm being unkind to my colleagues. My partner should hate me if they don't already, but I can't. I can't I can't seem to control myself.

Wendy  10:41  
Yeah. And a lot of people may have heard about amygdala hijacks, yes. So if your amygdala is really going to be on overtime, talk about a big hijack, say a little about that, please.

Cait  10:56  
So when you are in an amygdala hijack, you're in this kind of scenario where everything that you see feels like a threat to you. And not everything that you see just visually, but everything that your nervous system can interpret. So sound feels scary, space feels scary, how much peripheral vision feels scary, the person in the room with you feels scary, everything feels scary. And then you're like, I have no idea why I'm anxious. Meanwhile, your amygdala is on fire. And you you're the front of your brain that is supposed to be able to calm it down and say, It's okay, we've got this, this is a safe room with nice paint, we can turn down the volume, we can ask that person to leave, we can go to the bat, like we have a lot of solutions here. That part of your brain is not working.

Wendy  11:41  
Right. Wow. Wow. And the fact that as you get a little bit more of a veteran in the world, you know, and in it really, it begins to get scary. So when you have you have the the amygdala issue, you have the remembering issue, and you're and then you and then you get yourself all riled up.

Cait  12:03  
And you can blame it on age, right. But that's not necessarily true in this scenario. The other thing that's interesting about this is the brain changes are very similar to post traumatic stress, and to ADHD. So there's a lot of overlaps in the brain patterns between these things.

Wendy  12:19  
Yeah. So what can we do? You know, God, this sounds awful. We need to have some prevention. What can we do? Okay, what studies have you done there that we could like, help us with this

Cait  12:34  
one of the easiest, cheapest, because it's absolutely free ways that we can help ourselves is something called non sleep depressed, which you can get in the form of body scan meditations, also known as yoga nidra, meditations, this is sleep, this is not actual poses, this is literally laying in your bed, and having someone tell you to relax your jaw, and let your eyes fall into their sockets and relax your shoulders. And until you melt and feel like a pile of butter. Those types of deep relaxation techniques, when practiced on a regular basis, help the brain to reinstate its normal functioning. So the brain is plastic, we can get back a lot of this function. But we do need to convince ourselves somehow what we need to train our bodies to interpret safety long enough for our brain to be able to come back online.

Wendy  13:28  
And there's so many of those apps out there.

Cait  13:31  
Yeah, Insight Timer, comm app, YouTube. It's I mean, this is the first thing that I tell everybody, because burnout is such a big scary thing. And I'm like this is your first step is a free app. Right? Right. Start there, go and do before bed. Don't try and do it in the middle of the day, when you're all hyped up, try and do it before bed. Get a deeper amount of sleep, give your body some chance to recover and rejuvenate. Give yourself a month, things will start to clear up. Yeah.

Wendy  14:01  
And I think those apps before bed, you know, I listened to the stories on calm. And they write it in such a way that helps you to go to sleep, you know, and then some of them 10% As the yoga nidra. So that you can always be doing a body scan. Yeah. And if you're following it certainly budget asleep. Yes. Who wants to keep scanning their body all day? You know, I've never made it through a live yoga nidra class in yoga without sleeping. And that's totally acceptable. Right? We feel free

Cait  14:32  
to fall asleep. You're not doing it wrong. If you fall asleep, people get nervous about that. Right. Exactly. Exactly. That is that is it? 100%

Wendy  14:42  
Yeah, yeah. Cool. All right. So we know we know some things that we can do to prevent this. What else should we know?

Cait  14:50  
One of the most important things that is really counterintuitive is to figure out where you need to place by boundaries by using resentment. This is my favorite topic. I love doing this. And people are always like, Well, why do you start with resentment? Well, we just told you what kind of state the brain is in when you're burnt out. I want you to tell me how likely you think gratitude is in that state. Right? Unlikely. So the lowest hanging fruit is likely to be some form of anger, irritation, frustration, resentment. So why don't we work with the lowest hanging fruit the thing that is most accessible to you, because that's what you're experiencing. So I help people take resentment, and break it down through a series of questions that we call the question sieve and turn it into Okay, well, what boundary needs to be in place? So the first question of the question sieve when you figure out what you're feeling resentful about, or who you're feeling resentful toward? Or does this thing that I'm feeling resentment about? Does it even need to be done?

Wendy  15:57  
It's a pretty simple question. But it's pretty profound. Yes. And painful and painful. Does it even need to be done? Yes.

Cait  16:05  
A lot of times, it doesn't. Not maybe not a lot of times, to be honest, I think it's between 10 and 20% of the time, the answer is no, it does not need to be done. That's what we call life pruning, you just cut that thing right out. We don't need it. We don't need to feed that part of the bush anymore, folks. Cut it out. We don't need those leaves. They're taken up energy that is unnecessary, not helpful, and impeding other growth. So let's get rid of it. Yeah, you have to deal with the guilt. Yeah, of letting it go. But I promise you, I'd much rather you have that guilt for a few weeks, then have that resentment for years.

Wendy  16:43  
Because what is resentment do to your brain, if it keeps hanging out there.

Cait  16:49  
The most important thing I think physically, that resentment does is creates tension in your body, which impedes your blood flow. When your blood flow is impeded, especially through your neck where we hold all that tension. It's one of the reasons that the brain loses cells because it's not properly nourished, because it doesn't have enough brain flow. Because our brains, our muscles are too tight to allow the blood to flow freely.

Wendy  17:14  
Yeah. So boundaries, and I was reading something recently about boundaries. And it's really our own responsibility to set the boundaries for ourselves. And we always, and I, in the past have thought, well, I can't have these boundaries. Because I there's expectations. And I'm also a very responsible person. Yeah. So and it kills me. So what do you do if you're in that kind of position?

Cait  17:40  
Boundaries are tricky, because first in a lot of things that you'll read online will say, here's the script, you just say no, or whatever it happens to be, there's a script that you can say to someone, but you don't feel comfortable saying the script. So the first step really in boundaries is figuring out what's actually going on, which is why we start with resentment. If you look at what you're resentful for, and start to dig through it, most of the time, you'll come to a space where you realize that you've over given somewhere. And when you've over given, then the boundary that you're working on, is a self boundary that says, I don't need to engage in this practice in order to be worthy.

Wendy  18:22  
Could you say that, again,

Cait  18:23  
I don't need to engage in this practice, in order to be worthy.

Wendy  18:31  
I think that resonates so much with people. And I'll because we're all trying to prove that we're a good team player, you know, we're, we can make big contributions. And if we keep looking at that, it will just create more stress and more anxiety.

Cait  18:48  
So we start to dig through first, when we're going through we start with resent when we start to dig through all these places where we have to do an internal boundary, which is where do I need to pull myself out a little bit, and not give more energy than is being asked for? Because it's that extra energy that you give that's not being asked for, that no one actually appreciates. And the resentment comes from the lack of gratitude. Can't they see all these things that I'm doing? Yes. And they don't care because nobody needs it done. You're the one that wants it done. No one else cares. And that's a harsh thing to face. But incredibly useful, because when you can start cutting things out and pulling yourself back you're like, Oh, I do have energy for myself, Oh, I can engage in self care. Oh, I can actually finish this project that I thought was not doable. Oh, right. You start to buy yourself back some some energy. And then sometimes when you're digging through that, you start to realize that you're being exploited a little bit. That's when the external boundary comes into place. But what people need to understand about boundaries is they are two parts, not one. The first part is a request. And the second part is your response to whether or not the request is met. So telling someone, please don't email me after 6pm is not a boundary, that's a request. What you do when they email you after 6pm? Is the boundary. If you respond, you broke your own boundary. Yep. So your job if you say, I'm not going to be taking emails after 6pm, I'm going to close down my computer, and then somebody forgets, or is malicious or whatever. It doesn't matter what their intent is. And somebody emails you at 815. If you open that email that's on you.

Wendy  20:46  
That makes so much sense. Yes, I had somebody not too long ago that was in our company who wrote me on a Saturday night at 7pm. Have a holiday weekend, then. And I was out in the world. It's like, no. And then I used that same strategy is like, oh, right, first thing when we get back from the holiday, but I'm not going to respond to this on Saturday night where I'm sitting there dinner, yes,

Cait  21:13  
absolutely not going to respond. And the longer you spend in this boundary sort of space, the less frequently, you'll actually open that email in the first place. I sometimes don't see when somebody emails me outside of hours or on weekends, because I don't open it. Right, because I know I'm not going to respond to it. And because I know, my my own tendency is to want to get things done. So if I see it, and I don't respond to it, now it's in my brain.

Wendy  21:44  
And you need some brain pruning then and then I need some brain pruning,

Cait  21:47  
right to get it out of there. So I just have learned to not bother myself with it. Yeah. I had I wrote an email to someone, I bought something online. It was an online product. So available to download 24 hours a day. I purchase it or download it. I'm using it in my website with some sort of like sales page template or something like this. I don't remember exactly. And I had a question about colors. I emailed them Friday at 2pm. I wasn't expecting a message right away. I didn't care when they wrote back to me, I figured it's a small company, it might take a week or so. So but I sent the email Friday at 2pm. They wrote me back at 515 really quickly. So three hours and 15 minutes. I was like, wow, this is great. And I wrote back just to thank you. Their automatic responder said, it is so difficult for us to focus on our families when we're getting a constant barrage of emails because we care about our customers so much that we don't want to leave people hanging. So if you could take care to only email us between 9am and 6pm. Eastern Time. Meanwhile, you have a global internet based company, you think somebody in the middle of Singapore is looking up your timezone. Right now, it is not my job to manage your boundaries.

Wendy  23:00  
That's so true. Oh, and with our global marketplace out here, you though, can't talk about timezone. No. Yeah. Oh, such a great thing. So So we're talking about, like how we can keep our boundaries and be responsible for it. But as an employer has somebody that has a team, what can they do to help their team with, you know, trying not to fall off the berm, the burnout? Cliff? Yes,

Cait  23:28  
I think this is a really sticky space. Because I, on one hand, understand that managers have so much influence over how we feel every day. And on the other hand managers, I know that you're not a therapist, I know, I know that you don't have every single piece of knowledge that you need to interact with every single different personality you have on your team. And I know that most people, people that aren't lucky enough to work with your company, a lot of people don't get proper training to be managers and leaders. So you have even less skills available to yourself. So first, if you're a manager and you have something going on in your team, please grant yourself a little bit of grace. Because this is not easy. So I'll start with that. The second thing I would like to say is, be careful with your high achievers. It is so easy to let the high achievers Fly, fly, fly, fly, fly. And those are the ones that come crashing down hard that you end up replacing with three other people. Yeah, that's so true. Yes. So be careful with them and spend a little bit of extra time digging into what really drives them and helping them figure out what enough is because they will take on four jobs. And it's not your job to they you might not be able to control this completely. But if you bring attention to it, and you're you're at least looking at it out loud with them. At least it's a conversation Asians. So if they get to a point where they start to feel like they're going to tip over the edge, they can talk to you high achievers, not likely to talk to you about it. Because high achievers can achieve everything. So they're not, they're unlikely to mention it. But in the case that I've done enough work in this country, at least, that somebody has heard something somewhere and thought, Oh, my God, I might need to talk to my manager about this. I'm in danger. Fingers crossed. That's what I'm going for, you know, that that conversation can happen because you, as a manager have been open enough to say, Hey, listen, I see you doing a lot of things. How are you check in? What's going on? What kind of support would be best, you know, really, really pay high attention to your high achievers. And the last thing I would say would be pay close attention to Team riffs. Because resentment is a diagnostic factor in personal burnout. And in team burnout, too. And when you start to be the I'm the one that always does. She never does. He always does. When you start to start to hear a lot of the nevers and the always, there's a team, a system wide team level issue happening, that if not addressed, multiple people will burn out.

Wendy  26:15  
No. Yeah, it's so true. Wow. It's like a bad virus or something. Yes, it's contagious. It is contagious if I start whining about somebody else, and, and really, I think that's what makes a positive culture and accompany and reminding people and as chief of culture and community, you know, it's like, all the time, my culture committee is coming up with great ideas, because it's like, we need to be compassionate towards each other, and we need to reach out to each other and be grateful. And all these things will help build that up. But I love you pointing to the overachievers. And, and, and, you know, what are you trying to prove? You know, you don't have to prove anything.

Cait  27:00  
But you might feel like some of the overachieving comes from a, almost an addiction to stress that's from an epigenetic level from a genetic and epigenetic level this, when you have severe trauma, either during pregnancy, your mother during pregnancy, or the generations before that, that adjusted your stress response system, because there are particular epigenetic changes that happen on your stress response system, you need to be stimulated more than other people, because you don't have. So we talked about the stress hormone cortisol, and everybody says, well, when stress is high, cortisol is high. Not always true. There are some people whose cortisol is too low. And in order for them to go through a full stress cycle, they really need to spike it up. So they overreact and weighs on it. Not always from a psychological perspective, but from a biological and physiological perspective. Wow. Yeah, stop, right. Yeah.

Wendy  28:02  
The more you know,

Cait  28:03  
I know it can be scary. But we go back to yoga nidra being a really good plan, or body scanning or non sleep deep breaths being a good plan, because that helps people be more in touch with their physical sensations with their bodies, that allows them to ride those stress waves a little bit differently.

Wendy  28:20  
So those are some things that, you know, for managers to be aware of, and be able to speak to is really important. Yeah. What else should we know in organizations? Okay, you know, what, what else will help us through this, because I'm hoping, I hope I'm doing a prediction here, that things are gonna get better, you know, that, that the economy is gonna get better, you know, the global economy, we're going to, we're going to move in the right direction. And so there won't be as much stress in one way, but then there'll be more stress on other things, because we're now doing more with less. Yeah, because a lot of a lot of teams were, you know, downsized a bit. And now managers are all doing the work as well as training and trying to support people in the work. So what else can we do in as in an organization to help this? So we're not, we're not stepping over burnt out people.

Cait  29:17  
I honestly think that the work that your company does, is the thing that needs to be promoted most right now. I think focusing on building quality managers that have some coaching skills that are less hierarchical and more cocci. Yeah, that makes a huge, huge difference. So this to me is, I mean, I really rely on your work for this. I think that you are the missing piece. I think your company is the missing piece to what we really need in order to readjust how we see each other in the workplace. There's these the traditional hierarchies are not going to last too much longer. So if we don't learn how to function a little differently, and how to motivate people properly, and how to have that space for compassion, like you were talking about before, nothing is going to change. Because right now there's so many things that are based in fear. Because we're given KPIs, and we're saying, in a meet these are die. That's what it feels like sometimes. Yeah. But I think that your work is really the crucial key that everybody needs more of, to protect us from burnout long term.

Wendy  30:29  
Yeah, no, I would agree, you know, just from all the feedback that we get there, people are like, wow, now I'm able to see, you know, what I have been doing, and I can look at my team differently, I can be more consistent, I can take more time to reflect and not feel that I always have to be doing doing doing, you know, and then we have programs so that new managers don't know what they don't know. And sometimes they're not if they're learning from somebody else may not all be because, you know, not everybody has good coaching skills. So there's a lot of people that want to join our coaching team. And since I've been coaching for 25 years, I was like, Sorry, we don't call that coaching, you've got to have gone to a program been certified, they're not going to let you be an acupuncturist, because I've been sticking needles in people feed for years, you know, yeah. So you really want to have somebody who has known it, who has done the business. So that's what I'm really proud of, thank you for acknowledging that what we do in this company is to be a thought partner, because everybody needs a thought partner, if we were going to have less burnout, yes, if people had somebody to talk to that was safe, and and then they can go to their manager and make a request because they know how to do that. A

Cait  31:49  
min. As I was, as you were listening to some of my episodes, I was doing the same to yours. And I was thinking, Oh, thank God, they exist.

Wendy  31:59  
And I was saying thank God, Kate exists. And she does all this studying because it really does help us to understand. And we've coached so many engineers over the years. And for everybody, not just engineers, you have to say why, yes, this, this is just not a nice thing to do to be grateful to watch out for your people to find out. I got asked that very recently about why do we need to know so much about our people on our team? Well, because you won't be able to see any changes maybe in their behavior. If like you said earlier, they're that sandwich generation, they're taking care of kids, they're taking care of their parents, if you don't know that, and then all of a sudden, they're just not the same. They're not. They're not producing in the way or they're not their effect is different. You won't know what to ask about. How's the family? God? How are you doing? Yeah,

Cait  32:52  
it's the simple things at the end of the day, people Yeah, and people have to know, message out. Yes, yeah. People have to know that you have their back. On some level, that's what creates people are so up in arms about psychological safety. Right now, psychological safety is not about making sure no one's ever offended, or everybody always feels perfect. psychological safety is understanding that people have your back.

Wendy  33:18  
Yes, yes.

Cait  33:20  
It changes everything when you feel like you're not alone out here.

Wendy  33:23  
Yeah. So true. And a company that where it's okay to fail, it's better to fail than not to try

Cait  33:31  
because somebody's got your back. And somebody will, your manager will stand up for you and say it was worth a try. And the you know, like, this is such a critical component that so many people get wrong. People are trying really hard to do very fancy things about psychological safety. It's not that

Wendy  33:48  
hard. No, no, it's not. It's not just, yeah, listen, support people. Provide a safe environment for them to ask questions and not feel like you want to ask this customer. seems dumb. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. We could talk for days. We could talk for days. Yes. We might have to do this again in the future. I feel a part two coming on. I love a part two. Yes, yes. So everybody, I hope you got as much out of this as I did. And that in the show notes, we'll we'll put links to social media and things so that you know where to find Kate. She makes it very easy to find her and talk with her Facebook groups and things which, which I so love, and and go to our website better manager.co And you'll see a little button that says you want to talk to somebody. Just be curious. That's one of the things that we need to do in life. That's a primary coaching skill. You know, Kate brought that up to being curious, just be curious and get on our website better manager.co and press the little button and have a conversation with somebody because we want everybody to be successful at work. We want folks to not be stressed and not go so over the edge that they're in burnout. And you know, we'd love you to call Kate and have her help you. But we hope that you can get some help before you get to that terrible burnout state. So what else would you like to share with folks about how they can hear about you? And then look at your Facebook site and everything? Kate?

Cait  35:30  
I think the best place to find out all things burnout, from my perspective is the podcast fried, the burnout podcast that's got links to everything. You can search it for topics that you want, we've done over 200 episodes. So we've covered if you have a question, we've probably answered it at some point. And I think that's the best way for people to dig in a little bit further, if they're thinking, Oh, got a little nervous when you said some of those symptoms back there. Yeah, that's the best place to go.

Wendy  35:59  
That's place. Okay. And I have to say it's in the top 1% of all podcasts. So she's got a great audience out there in the world. And people are listening. Thank goodness. So pass that on to your colleagues and friends, to listen, go go out for a walk together and play the podcast and be able to talk about it afterwards and say, Wow, did you hear that? Yeah,

Cait  36:23  
I actually had a company do that. Instead of a book club. They did a podcast club, and did like a series of top 10 episodes of fried, they asked me for a list. And they couldn't afford to hire me at the time. So they they had they listened to a podcast and then had a discussion. And that was their method of like, starting the conversation. I thought it was fabulous.

Wendy  36:43  
Yeah. Great idea. Yeah. Because you know, and then and then eventually they'll come into some money. And they'll say, we have to have that. Exactly. Yes. We have to put ever on our big summit meeting. Yeah. So good. Well, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom today. Thank you, everybody. Please, please take heed of some of the the ideas and advice that Kate shared because it will make a difference in your life and with the people that you serve. You know, we we all serve the people that work on our teams to make it a better place, as well as our customers as well as our families and everything else. So don't burn out. Yeah, keep keep. Keep it together here. And if you need anything call, Katie. Yes. All right. Thank you all after the most marvelous day. Bye bye.

Intro  37:35  
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