140. From Burnout to Brilliance with Jimmy Burroughes

💭 What are the tell-tale signs of burnout in the workplace?

Jimmy Burroughes helps senior leaders to step off that ledge of feeling burnout and create a high-performance culture for improving work life integration. 

In this episode, Jimmy shares his personal journey from being an Army officer to becoming a leadership coach, highlighting the toolbox of resources that he gained from his colleagues who have longer tenure and experience than him.  He also discusses the concept of burnout and how it can be prevented by redefining what success looks like for you.

🎧 Download this episode to learn how to bring burnout and performance management together for optimal workplace success.

🌐 Connect with Jimmy:

• Website: https://jimmyburroughes.mykajabi.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmyburroughes/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jimmybleadership/
• Beat Burnout - Ignite Performance: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CNJ9XGQ1

Books Mentioned:

• Turn the Ship Around by L. David Marquette
• Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
• The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:26

Hey, everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. I'm greatly honored today to be joined by Jimmy Burroughes. Jimmy is the CEO and founder of Jimmy Burroughes leadership, and he's also the author of a book called "Beat

Burnout: 0:39

Ignite Performance". And that's what we're going to explore today. This dichotomy, which I don't think it has to be a dichotomy. Let's explore that today, between burnout and performance. How do you manage burnout? How do you manage performance? And how do you bring all of that together? I'm really curious about where our conversation is going to go today in that regard. He's also the host of a podcast called The Ways of Working podcasts, which is also really quite interesting as well, and please do check that out, thinking about the way ways of working are changing the world. And they do change all the time, regardless of pandemics and all this kind of stuff, the ways of working evolve over time. And the more that we think about that, the more we get intentional about the ways of working, the better we can be as leaders, and the better we can be as organizations. So today's focus,

though, is Beat Burnout: 1:27

Ignite Performance. So without any further ado, and Jimmy, please do introduce yourself to the audience. And tell us a bit about your background, and what led you to be focused specifically around this topic of burnout.

Jimmy Burroughes: 1:41

Thanks, Mick. I'm not sure I can introduce myself any better than you really have. So I'll say first of all, lovely to be here. And, you know, the reason I guess I'm on this show, and that I really love podcasting is that it's a great way of sharing a journey that I've gone on through my life that has led to now me getting to do my life's work, but in something that I'm deeply, deeply passionate about. And that is, how do we help senior leaders to step off that ledge of feeling super burned out and create a high performance culture for them and their teams. And we're not talking about high performance sports here, we're talking about getting your weekends back, enjoying your work again, and creating incredible business results. So it's really practical stuff that is really focused on making a big difference to the lives of you and your team. How did I get to this point, there is a long story. The short version of it, though, is my first job. 20 odd years ago, I was an Army officer. And I went through the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, when there was not a lot going on in the world. And by the time I finished my training, there was a whole lot of spicy stuff going on in Iraq. And so my first job out of training was landing on a commercial jet in Kuwait, hitchhiking up to Bosnia, and becoming part of the British Army's logistic resupply efforts for the combat troops that were in an operating around Bowser. And as a young 23 year old, that was a fair amount of responsibility, first job out of university to have that put on my shoulders. And I think from that point forward, you know, I was realized that leadership is a huge responsibility, a huge privilege and a huge service. And I took that through the next 20 years of my career through becoming a GM in a large organization in New Zealand, and running various functions. And then it finally moving into the world of consulting, and now running my own consulting organization, working with businesses around the world on helping them to build a high performance culture. And I'm sure we'll dig into some pieces, but that's how I ended up here and my background.

Mick Spiers: 3:46

So Let's wind the clock back to Iraq, then I think that's a example that most people can picture in their mind, but have never experienced themselves. So tell us about what you learned about yourself and learn about others when you're in Iraq.

Jimmy Burroughes: 3:59

You know, it's interesting, because when you go through military officer training, you're taught that you have to lead troops in battle, you know, that's what you're trained for, is to be the leader at the front saying, you know, follow me, and I know what the plan is, and we all need to go do this. And when you hit the real field army, actually, it's very different. And the first thing I remember encountering when I got to Bosnia was a sense of imposter syndrome. You know, I was this literally shiny brand new product who had been pumped out of the training system. And I was meet and I was, you know, fresh, clean shaven, more 24 hours clean shaven in a new uniform with new gear. And I looked around all these people on the airfield in Scheiber, which is the airfield about 20 kilometers outside Bowser, and they all had beards and they had these kind of glassy eyes and they were dusty. And they looked like men, you know, there might only be one intake ahead of me in Sandhurst, and but it meant those three months of difference meant that they had become men in a war. And I was this kid turning up and I felt like oh, my God, I'm, you know, I don't deserve to be here. I'm not up to doing this. And I got I felt that pang of imposter syndrome. And I felt it a number of times through my career, where I was always promoted into roles where I was probably the youngest or one of the more kind of junior members of the team with the least experienced and expected to get up to speed really quickly. And when I ended up in my GM role, I was 10 or 15 years younger than most of the people at the same level as me. And so there was always kind of I was like the one having to show that I could do it and perform. And that was a real leadership lesson that impostor syndrome is a reality, no matter how talented you are, no matter how fast you get promoted, and often, because you get promoted fast, it can stoke up some of those inner demons that you struggle with. I think the other real lesson I learned coming out of the training system versus being in the field army was the need for not being the expert, as a leader. And I think so many leaders feel like they're the ones that have to have all of the answers, solve all the problems, come up with all the ideas and be the reference point for their team and almost like the lighthouse for their team to guide them all on everything that you do. And I learned pretty quickly, probably within the first two or three weeks of my career, that there was an expectation of officers to make decisions, yes. But not to be the expert, because you were in command of even the most junior soldiers had been around longer than I had. And actually, some of my more senior soldiers were 15 or 20 years into a career. So they knew a lot more than I did. And my job was to say, Okay, this is what we've got to do, who's got some ideas? Let's throw some ideas out there. What else have we missed? What else could we do? What options have we got, and assimilate all that stuff, and then make a decision on it? And I think that was a core skill that has stuck with me through my corporate career, and now my consulting career, and it's something I teach in our programs, because I think a lot of leaders get stuck upon that, well, if I don't have the answer, people are going to think I don't know. And actually, the strength in leadership is saying, Well, I've got some ideas. But there's also 10 52,000 people around me who might also have some ideas, and one of those ideas might be better than mine. And if I use that idea, we're gonna get a better outcome. So it's leveraging the experts around you and moving from that expert leader status to being more of the enabler leader, that they're probably the two big lessons the imposter syndrome and moving away from being the expert.

Mick Spiers: 7:26

Yeah, there's probably three things I want to unpack there, Jimmy. And I want to start with that experience of let's say parachuting, right? So you're parachuting into an organization. And the example that you gave in the military happens a lot, but I want to bring it to a corporate context. So people can also imagine that it can happen to them at any stage in their career as well. So yeah, young officer ends up in charge of a bunch of troops, you could end up with troops that are 20 year experienced soldiers, and y'all don't even have you know, facial hair yet. As you mentioned, you're fresh out of college, you're fresh out of training and who you are all of a sudden, you're in the leadership role. Now you might be thinking i That's the military, but have a think about that. Have a think about that in the workplace. Jamie mentioned, as a GM, he landed in that situation where he was 15 years younger than some of the others around him. It could be though, might have nothing to do with age, it could be tenure, right? So you could be working for company X, you had had headhunted to go into Company Y, you get parachuted in, and all of a sudden, you're in a leadership role, but you're in a leadership role of people that have worked for that company for 15 years, 20 years, etc. Tell us more about that journey of what advice you could give to people that do end up in that situation where you've got that situation where they all these people around, you are far more experienced than you in that field or in that company. And all of a sudden, you're the one that's supposed to be the leader, tell us more?

Jimmy Burroughes: 8:50

Yeah, you know, it's so fascinating to me that we are preoccupied many of us are preoccupied with, I'm new here. And there's people who have more experience than me here. And I see that as a threat. To me that's like, it's almost counterintuitive. But if we were to see them as a pool of resources, or a toolbox, instead, it's the difference between start being, you know, being a builder and turning up to a building site, opening your toolbox. And you've got one tool in there, which is you versus opening your toolbox. And it's full of all the tools and lots of different variations and attachments and fittings, and whatever. And you've got a couple of experienced builders there who can show you the way. And we often become really preoccupied with, oh, well, I've got my tools. And that was the reason I got this job. And they put me in this job because of my experience. And so I have to show everybody how good I am. When in reality, as you move up the ranks in leadership, you actually start to become judged on your performance far more, by the way you create results, not by the things you do. And so instead of being that, and essentially I was having a chat with a CIO actually earlier on in the week, and he says, you know, I'm a pretty good programmer, but I don't do programming anymore. And if there's a programming issue, I don't go and roll my sleeves up and start programming again, what I do is I call my head of development, and we have a conversation about it. And we throw the ideas around, and I can ask them good questions, because I've got some experience in that area. But when it comes down to the infrastructure and the networking stuff, I know nothing about that, because I'm a programmer. And so I have to lean on my head of networking and infrastructure person for advice, and he helps me make decisions and that's a good thing because I Actually, when it comes to the programming stuff, I'm probably biased and probably expressing too much of my own opinion, versus those people who were Oh, don't forget, I was a programmer 10 years ago. I'm a CIO now. So my programming knowledge is not current and contextual. And so when you go into these situations, as a senior leader, you maybe you're parachuted in. And one of the things we often see when people move into GM roles, as they suddenly go from being a technical expert to a general manager, or maybe in order to get that next promotion to the exec table, you have to go cross functional, you of course, you're not going to know everything, and you can't be the expert. And you could agonize about not being the expert, or you could say, Hold on, I've just been gifted this incredible toolbox of people who I can lean on. And I can use my skills and my experience to ask good questions. And I can help choose the right tools. And I can decide which tools we're going to use for this job. But I don't have to have all the answers that I don't if you've come across the book, turn the ship around by L. David Marquette, and he uses this great story where he talks about the first day he goes on the boat. And he was like, Well, I was the captain of the ship, I was a very decorated officer. And I was pretty smart. And then I realized it was 134 people on that boat. And so it was me one smart brain versus 135, smart brains working together, which is going to be more impactful. And my job was just to make sure that they did their jobs really well and supported them. So I think there's always this piece in your leadership career, especially as a senior leader, where it's letting go of that identity of being the expert, or the individual sort of guru, and saying, How do I tap into this toolbox of talents around me, and how I produce the results, not by what I personally do?

Mick Spiers: 12:00

So there's some really powerful reframing there, Jimmy, I love the metaphor of the toolbox. I think that's really powerful. You're not there to be a tool, you're there to be someone that helps people co create, because they've all got different skill sets. And you spoke about the selection of tools that you now have in the toolkit. So how you going to create an environment where those tools can orchestrate together and create something that's greater than, than any of those individuals could have done themselves. Right, the 135 that you mentioned, it's not about what one person can do. It's about what could have all of these 135 diverse people with diverse backgrounds and diverse skills, what could they do together that they couldn't possibly do by themselves? So it's a really, really strong reframing. And to be able to understand that that is your role. You don't have to be the answer to every question. But asking good questions and staying curious and drawing out of all of those people? The answer is the way, the thing I want to unpack a little bit further is the identity, the feeling of self, the ego, and all of that, because you use the word at one point, I'm here and I have to prove myself, right. So I'm the new kid in town, I have to prove myself, how do we get past almost I don't mean ego in a negative way. He had just this feeling or need to prove ourselves, how do we get past that?

Jimmy Burroughes: 13:15

Like most things in leadership, there is no black or white answer. It's a gray world. And depending on what is driving, and I liked the fact that you clarified ego is not a negative thing. Ego is just that voice that lives inside you. And so really it is to understand what's driving that ego voice that I do have to prove myself versus I was chosen for this job, because they believe I've got the experience. I'm clearly here because I know what I'm doing. And I know what I'm talking about. My job is now to find the best route through this opportunity, this problem solving session, this meeting this, whatever it is, that is going to create the best business result. And so it's letting go of the I have to prove myself to how do we get the best result. And it's D personalizing from it all being about you to actually being about the result that we're trying to achieve here. And often we get no impostor syndrome is very inward focused. It's very, we call it a scarcity response. It's about absorbing energy, like, what about me? What about me? What about me? And that's what we want to say is have an abundant response, which is, what about the solution? What about the world? What about the team? What about the people? How do I make sure I'm making sure they're supported. The other thing that keeps coming up for me when we talk about the need to prove yourself, if we spend all of our time trying to prove ourselves, we're probably trying too hard. And actually, that creates anxiety responses. And those anxiety responses actually diminish our performance quite significantly, when we go from thinking with our prefrontal cortex up here in the cerebellum, which is behind our forehead. That's our what we call our wizard brain. And when we're feeling anxious about proving ourselves or we're in a stressful situation, or we're feeling like the imposter, because our ego is talking to us saying you're not good enough, and you probably gonna get found out and you need to prove that you're good enough, we start to activate a piece of our brain at the back called the amygdala or our lizard brain. So we go from being a wizard to being a lizard. And that is not a great place to be if you're trying to be a high functioning executive, because you can't do the best decision making you can't articulate yourself as well. So it's about getting really present and not being anxious about what people might think or do or say, but as you're going, how do we manage right now? And how do I make the best decisions that are going to create the best results so externally? Losing your energy versus sucking your energy in from everybody else in the room because you're trying to protect and make yourself look good.

Mick Spiers: 15:32

There's lots of things bouncing around my head right now, Jimmy, I love this wizard to lizard thing, right? This is really powerful. And the counterproductive nature of the more I tried to prove myself, the chances are you're, it's actually going to backfire. Because your focus is on the wrong thing, right. So we all kind of I think most people know that now that multitasking doesn't work. Same thing happens with your brain. If the whole time if your brain is focused on what am I doing today to prove myself? Well, your focus is not on the right thing. And if you're able to pivot and realize it's actually not about you, it's about those around you and the environment you're creating, where they can do their best work. And how you do that, then you can unlock the full potential of your brain to focus on we were in fact you can bring the most value is really interesting. And then with the whole imposter syndrome situation, you can now start that reframing process of No, I am enough, and I'm here to lead people. I'm not here to prove anyone proved myself to anyone, including myself, I'm here to lead people.

Jimmy Burroughes: 16:35

Well, you got there didn't you got the job. So you're clearly good enough. That's the irony of this whole situation. And I know you mentioned that you have some coaches and concern consultants who listen to the podcast. And to me, it's that senior leadership step up is kind of like that moment where you go from being a one on one coach to being a group coach. Because when you're a one on one coach, it's you with your impact for as many one on one sessions, as you can do in a week. So let's just say round numbers, 40 sessions a week, you could potentially do you limit yourself to what you can personally do. When you become a group coach, you start to create a community of people who can contribute ideas and thoughts and insights to each other. And immediately, there's an exponential increase in impact that a coach can bring by moving from one to one to group. And it's the same with senior leaders. If you're the only one doing the work, then you're producing, let's say, best case in the world 60 to 80 hours worth of man hours or human hours of work. If you've got a team of 30 people and your puppet mastering all of them in a genius way, like a conductor of an orchestra, well, then you're going to create what's up 860 times 30 1800 hours of Matt human hours of work? Well, that's a significantly greater amount of output and productivity than just you trying to do everything yourself and you being the one who is the answer, and the solver and the dealer of all the problems, it's also less stressful.

Mick Spiers: 17:56

Very much so, we're definitely going to hit towards that kind of stress in in a moment for sure. And you're right, regardless of who you are, you're only ever gifted 24 hours in a day, there's only so much you can do. I don't care if you're Superman, Batman or Iron Man, there's only so much that you can individually do but what you can do when you're inspire others into meaningful action is far greater than anything you could do individually. I'm gonna say the other one Jimmy that we don't always think about is the Safa cating effect that you're having on those people, right? So not only now you're going to be limited and and capped by your own capacity, but if you're in that situation where you've set up that level of dependence, where everyone is relying on you for the answers, where they're waiting for you to tell them what to do, etc, you've also suffocated their productivity as well. Alright, so because now they will be spending, you know, seven and a half hours of their eight hour day feeling like they had not empowered then they can't get on with it, they're waiting for you, etc. So you become the choke point, you become the suffocating or the suppressing element of everyone, not just yourself, how does that sit with you?

Jimmy Burroughes: 19:05

I'm, so yes, and more, you know, if we're the one that is the kind of use it like the bottleneck, and allergy, and we're the bottleneck for every decision, every problem, every idea, every solution? Well, you're gonna spend all your time working on that, not on the cool, sexy stuff that you want to be working on. And this is one we hear quite often from me as I'm going, I'm so busy, but I really want to be working on those strategic projects. But I'm always dealing with some trivial issue over here, because Oh, I wish my team could just solve it. Like what have you asked them to try and solve it? Or they can't, you know, and we get into those types of conversations. But then by you being the one who solves all the problems, you create what I mean, when our brains are very prone to drug addiction, we create a dependency culture of well, the boss will solve it. Or if I try and solve it, the boss is only going to redo it anyway, so I won't bother to solve it. I'll just go to the boss for the answer. So we create this dependency culture, which then stifles innovation stifles curiosity stifles exploration. And so again, you're kind of going down this death spiral of you're going to become busier and busier and busier because you're trying to do everything and they're just going to sit back and take their salary and probably become disengaged and then look around for a job that is more of a challenge.

Mick Spiers: 20:14

I'm going to come back to ego again. Now. We said the word dependence in that direction. I feel like at least for some people, I've recognized this that then if you do become that point of dependence, there becomes a badge of honor with it as well. And you start the story, the start telling yourself about yourself is that you're now the key to success of this business, you've convinced yourself, you've convinced yourself and it almost becomes intoxicating that people need you. And it feels nice to be needed. Jimmy, it feels nice to be needed. But remember, you created that dependence, they're dependent on you. And now you're somehow becoming dependent on that intoxicating feeling of feeling important, feeling needed, feeling like you are the key to success.

Jimmy Burroughes: 21:00

We all want to be loved, right? So that we can take that as a given, what you've just described to me is the magical effect of dopamine. Dopamine is the success or the reward chemical is the one that is released when we do and achieve something that's fantastic, it's the one that's released when we fall in love. It's also the one that's released when we take drugs like heroin. And actually dopamine is an opiate like heroin, and fentanyl, and all of those other very, very addictive drugs. And it's the drug that also social media and things like that play on to say, Oh, you've got a notification, and you get that little hit of excitement that dopamine makes you feel good. Unfortunately, as individual contributors, and people who are drawn to be the expert, we are addicted to that sense of dopamine, we are addicted to the Oh, I did something, I take something off my list, I solved a problem for the team, I'm irreplaceable. I am the center of this business. And you know, I don't mean this in a flippant or derogatory way, because it's a really addictive chemical, and it's controlling you. So you have to have the rationality of thoughts to say what is actually the purpose of my job is the purpose of my job to solve all the problems to do all the things or is it to lead the team. And then when I notice those little tendencies creeping back in for me to go, Ah, this is the dopamine drug kicking in, and I'm finding myself doing something that I enjoy doing, because it's my expertise I got famous for doing because I got promoted because of that, and I'm good at it. You know, I was recognized for that previously. And I want that sense of recognition. Again, I want to be the superhero who saves the day. And actually all that is, is your drug addiction talking to you. And so we can look at that from a third party perspective rationally and go, Oh, okay. So this isn't the purpose of my job, my purpose, and my job is to find somebody who can do this for us now. And I need to let go of that addictive need and feed my addiction with the results my team are creating. And that is a really hard thing to do. It's like saying, I'm going to buy heroin for you. And that's a tough thing to do. But over time, what you'll see is if you can manage that and hold the addiction back long enough, the team starts to produce and you get the rewards and recognition from further up the business, which then drags you further up those levels that you're looking for.

Mick Spiers: 23:11

Yeah, this is really powerful, Jimmy and now I'm starting to like, unpack it even further, in my mind, this hero complex, you spoke about being the superhero, etc. I think in some cases, it even gets to the point of unintentionally, I'm gonna say subconsciously catastrophizing, a situation, so that you can save the day, and then getting the dopamine hit from when you save the day, you're with me like so?

Jimmy Burroughes: 23:34

Oh, completely, yeah, I've worked with leadership teams previously, where the executive loves crisis management, because they've all come up through the operational world, you know, they were really good operators. And now we've had COVID, and supply chain crises and immigration challenges, talent challenges, and it's another crisis that we can just all get our hands dirty and get stuck in. And they forgotten that they're responsible for leaving a business. And so they're all busy meddling, and essentially, what it should be the GMs and the business unit leaders roles, and they've forgotten to be a governance organization. And it is, is that feeding that addiction, it's that it's super almost manifest crises, because then we get to solve crises. And if we're the superhero that solves that crisis, then we feel good about it. And every good wow, didn't you do a good job to get us through that one. And that's pretty hard to let go off, right? Very hard to go, let's go from wartime to peacetime leadership didn't work for Winston Churchill. And it hasn't worked for a lot of leaders, they've been superstars in conflict, but when the times change in peacetime leadership is required, their skills are not quite suited. And that can be scary for a leader to go, I'm really good at delivering under high tempo and high pressure. But actually being an executive is about slowing the pace, slowing the cadence of the business, because every 1% increase you do is a 10% increase for your managers and a 50% increase for your doers. So you've really got to control the cadence of the business and part of that is going deprioritize stripped back, take the noise away and don't become fixated on doing and doing and doing and doing because actually, this generates extra cadence for everybody else.

Mick Spiers: 25:07

Yeah, I might put a little pivot on that, that when he said slow the cadence, I'm gonna say channel the cadence, right? So get rid of the chaos, make it more efficient. So it's so yeah, okay, slow, the cadence. I'm with you on that. But it's also about directional. It's also about how we're going to channel all of that energy in the same direction instead of him saying The five different directions. Yeah.

Jimmy Burroughes: 25:28

You're exactly right. That was what I mean. So instead of everybody running around with their hair on their fire or hair on fire, trying to do 50 things at once, let's just focus on, Let's do five. And let's do them really well, because the game of multitasking, you mentioned earlier, multitasking doesn't work. So if you've got somebody who's just bouncing from meeting to meeting on different projects every day, they're never going to be as efficient as if they're just trying to focus on one thing. And so we want to channel as you say, channel a cadence. I like to slow things down as well with executive teams, because they tend to be at high tempo. And yes, I'm not saying be lazy and don't deliver. But every increase of thing, one thing you do creates this, like tail will ripple effect across the business that other people had to get involved in a lot more.

Mick Spiers: 26:07

Yeah, that's a good thought. And I love the reframing that you had before about stopping and thinking about what is my job? What is my job? I think all of us should maybe ask ourselves that question. We're going to say maybe daily, but at least once a week, just stop and go, What is my job? And am I really focusing my energies on what my role is right now? I think that's really powerful. And in a weird way, I think that's going to be a good segue for us to go towards this topic of burnout. Because we're, what we're talking about is a manifestation of stress. It's a manifestation of energy going all over the place. And we'll start getting us prone to these areas of burnout. But I want to hear from you, Jimmy, how did you then decide, okay, where I'm going to channel my energies towards beat burnout, and in any night performance by beating burnout? Tell me more about that.

Jimmy Burroughes: 26:55

Yeah, you know, the unfortunate way that I ended up doing what I do now is that when I was in that GM role, unfortunately, it just became a situation of I burned out in 2017. And if I give you some context for what that role was, like, it was in the office by seven, finishing seventh most days, and then starting the day job, because it was just meetings, after meetings after meeting very challenging politics situation, very difficult working environment, because the business was going through multiple transformations all at the same time, I was also traveling extensively. So I was on a plane, probably two or three times a week going into our various different markets. And then what I noticed was that a lot of my peers were just starting to leave either signed off on sick leave, or stress, or were taking time away to kind of recuperate. And so the work would just be shifted around. And because I was the young gun, it was all given to me. Another thing give me give me another thing, I was running the cash cow part of the business, which was essentially supporting some of the other parts of the business that were not making as much money. So where there was no high expectation of delivery. And then all of a sudden, one day, there was a legislative change, which meant that half of our bottom line disappeared overnight. And the challenge from the CEO was, well, Jimmy, you need to find out a way of fixing that ASAP. And, of course, being the highly driven, motivated person I was I went all out to try and do that didn't take a day off. And two and a half years, we'd go back to the UK to see my family and work through the night. So I could be awake in the day in New Zealand, and then would be with my family in the daytime would be traveling overseas and would wake up at three in the morning to present a board paper and then go into a day of meetings and negotiations. So really incessant tempo. And at some point, I just felt my energy levels starting to flag my drive. Why are we even doing this, like everything I touch is broken. And every time we unpack it, somebody gets blamed normally me for identifying this thing that's not working. And then there isn't really an appetite to fix it is like, well, you know, it's broken. And we just have to deal with that. There's no appetite to fix it. And we certainly couldn't be innovative, because we were very traditional centered business trying to do transformation, but being very traditional at the same time. I just woke up one morning, I was like, You know what I don't, I don't think I can do this. And then they can do it anymore. I'm so tired. And there's no point and I can't even really make a decision. I was wading through mental treacle through golden syrup or like wading through quicksand, really struggling to think and deal with this. And I was exhausted. Now I'd been living on caffeine and sugar for many, many months, ending my day with excessive wine and rum to kind of calm down from the stress of all the big day meetings and everything that's been going on. I was doing an MBA at the same time. So that was another thing that kind of commitments for weekends and evenings. And I thought this is I'm done. I haven't got anything left to give. And that's the difference, I think between burnout and being stressed is when you're stressed. And when you're tired like you can you can come back burnout is when there's nothing left, you have nothing left to give. And so I quit and I ended a marriage I left my home, I ended the job I left New Zealand as well and moved back in with mum and dad for a few weeks to try and work out basically how did all that happen? I need to put myself back together. So I spent about six months trying to work on myself and learn about some of the causes and contributors to how that had happened. And as I was going to meetings and talking to people and starting to reach out to my network, I've set up a thought I'll set up a consulting business and see if I can make a little bit of money along the way. It was just talking to people about my journey, and they were like, oh my god, me too, you know, what was it? Oh, really tell me what's going on for you. And I'm like, oh my god, I just don't see the point in this and my networks not working properly, everybody's leaving, and we can't do anything. Our hands are tied, and I can't remember the last time I had a vacation. I was like, wow, okay, and how are you dealing with that? And they're like, Well, I don't know, I'll just take a vacation. It's not working, though. And over time, this turned into what would you like some help with that, and some coaching. And then eventually, some businesses started reaching out for program development. So how do we help our people deal with stress and resilience and burnout? And how do we build high performance cultures, and then that became the business that we now have today, having kind of iterated all the material that we were developing over the last six years into a body of work or the ways of working program, it got to the point where people were saying, Well, is there a book to go with this, and I was like, oh, that's probably a good idea, we should probably have a book to go with it. So we essentially took all the best bits of all the programs that we do, and distill them down into five chapters of the most meaningful things. And you talked about that dichotomy, right at the start, I don't see it as a dichotomy, I see it as a thread. And at one end of the thread is burnout. And the other end of the thread is high performance. And all we need to do is just move you along that thread by doing small, incremental, and compounding actions that make a difference. And that's what the book in all of the work that we do now is around saying, I don't want you to go through what I went through, I don't want you to have to leave a job, leave a home, leave a relationship, leave the country, I want to keep you working, I want to keep you paying your mortgage, I want to keep you married or in that relationship. I want to keep your relationship with your kids, I want to get you healthy again. And I want to see you get that promotion, hit those numbers, meet those targets. And if we can do that, then we've made it more successful.

Mick Spiers: 32:08

Thank you for sharing that so openly and transparently, Jimmy, it was really amazing to hear regale that story. And congratulations on getting yourself through it first of all. The second part that I was thinking there was around you, you then started to share your story with others and realize me too, there's a lot of people out there. And there's probably people listening to this podcast right now that if they took a look in the mirror, they'd go hang on a second, am I exactly what Jimmy is talking about. And now thank you for the work that you do to help people on their own journey of discovery around this. That's the first thing I'd like to say. Then listening to this two things I want to unpack and I'm still in my mind trying to decide which one to go first, I'm going to go around the dichotomy, which I agree is not a dichotomy. But here's the interesting thing. When I listen to your story, that Jimmy burrows that you're talking about, that's waking up at 3am and doing meetings, etc, etc. There'd be a societal lens on that societal expectation of oh, that Jimmy he's such a hard worker. He's a high performer. And then you're telling me that Jimmy also his brain is mush. He's feels like he's walking through treacle, he's drinking rum at night is walking around on caffeine and sugar, etc, etc. So the extrinsic look at that looks like a high performance individual that is knocking it out of the park and the intrinsic, what's going on inside you is far from high performance. Tell us more about that.

Jimmy Burroughes: 33:39

Yeah, it's a challenging situation. And in my mind, I've rarely come across a disengaged unenthusiastic, non motivated person who's burning out, you know, most of our burnout, people are highly motivated, highly engaged high performance really want to make a massive difference to their family, their lives, their friends, their network and their jobs. They want that result. And so they push incessantly at the cost of themselves to produce and they judge themselves really toughly, right, they're like, Oh, I'm not producing, I need to do more. I didn't quite get to the end of that today, I'll stay on a bit longer. I'll give it my weekend, I'll give it my evening, I'll give it my time. And my friends, I won't go to the gym. And over time, it's those little decisions that start to stack up. And it is like a descent into addiction you know is that one drink becomes a bottle becomes two bottles becomes a bender becomes a lifestyle, and you don't notice it initially. But then it becomes harder and harder to produce the same stuff. And because you're tired, you're a bit cloudy, you can't make those decisions, you push a bit harder, and you stay a bit longer. Because you didn't get through what you needed to get through. You skip the gym, and you grab a takeaway, and then you're a bit tired, because your blood sugar's all over the place as well. And people do start to perceive the difference. And one of the things that my friends noticed was I ballooned in weight I put about 25 kilos on and so I was significantly bigger than I was walking heart attack waiting to happen. And people started to notice, but only near the end. Because you're so passionate and driven and motivated. You need to keep appearances that right you have to still deliver you push yourself even harder at the expense of yourself more and more and more. And that is almost like it's like the Coriolis effect and as the water goes to goes down the plug hole, you're in a war will pour will have descending towards burnout. And you need to put the brakes on by doing some things differently. Otherwise, you get to the point where there is no return and you can't get back just by stopping for a weekend break or a vacation, unfortunately.

Mick Spiers: 35:41

So even there, there's two things don't unpack. This is really interesting. I'm loving this conversation, Jimmy. So what I'm aiming at here is about do we need to fundamentally reset societal goals, expectation or picture of what high performance looks like? Because the picture that you're talking about is one that repeats itself time and time again, and it enrolls almost become self propelling that if I'm not working 1214 16 hours a day, I'm not a high performer, whereas we know we can't perform at an optimal performance for that period of time, should we? And there's a lot of talk about things like four day workweeks, and all this kind of stuff, should we be really resetting and going, actually, the high performers, the person that can focus their energy for 90 minutes at a time? Well, let's go extreme and go three hours, even that I think is a push. But someone that works for only three hours a day, I'll put it extreme, I'll go someone that only works three hours a day, but achieves amazing outcomes. Isn't that a high performer? Not the person who worked 16 hours a day and is completely stressed out and their brain is mush, and they're not making good decisions anymore? Where do we need to redefine what high performance looks like?

Jimmy Burroughes: 36:49

Yeah, you know, I'm so aligned with what you're saying. And it reminded me as you were talking of a case study that they did at Toyota, which was they do an estimate on how many widgets can we produce in an hour. And let's say we're going to do 100 widgets in an hour. And if you do 95 widgets, then there's an investigation into what could be improved. If you do 105 widgets, there's an investigation into where were you cutting corners, or what was not going quite right. And I think the same analogy applies in our society, our vision of success is, well, I need to earn X $1,000 a year. But if somebody earns more than me, then they're more successful. And is that really true. And one of the things I keep playing with at the moment is the concept of natural selection. You know, if you go back in prehistory, natural selection was if you were the fastest or the best hunter, or the best looking, then you got to pass on your genes. And I think we've transplanted that now for the size of our bank balance and the cars we have on the houses we have, and society is constantly bombarding us with messaging that we have to be successful. And success is basically you have to be rich, to be successful. And we all kind of get caught up in that brainwashing. And so I think a lot of the reasons we push ourselves harder and harder and harder is because we want to be successful, when, in reality, our measures of success could be very different things. In reality, our success could be how much time do you get spent with the kids? How many sports days did you go to? How many evenings did you get to go on a date with your partner, when was the last time you took a holiday and you actually didn't need that holiday, you just look forward to it. If we shift our perception of what success is for us, and we do an activity in in the program, which is essentially build a life by design, but that life by design is one of the new success factors that you're going to start judging yourself against versus just am I getting accolades at work and promotions, and bonuses, because amazingly, when I start focusing on the life by design stuff, the accolades and promotion start to come more readily because we're more refreshed, and we're more ready to do those things. And I think society has deliberately skewed us to working excessively. And if let's use one very, very practical example, it was the let's all work from home during COVID. And for most of us, we wake up at let's say, there's a user a very generic pray, we wake up about six or 7am. In the morning, we get ourselves ready, we then drive to work or transport ourselves to work for 30 to 60 minutes, we do a working day. And then we repeat the same in reverse. And then COVID came along, and we all started working from home, and we're like, Well, I've done my morning stuff, I'll just sit down at the computer now then. So I'll be at my work 30 to 60 minutes earlier. And I don't need take a lunch hour because the kitchen is just here. So I'll just grab something, and I'll keep going on at the end of the day while I'm home. So I don't get a commute to kind of decompress. I'll just walk from my kitchen table to the lounge, and I'm home. And so we immediately gave two extra hours of our day to our jobs without even realizing it. And then we wonder why we got tired. And because we were tired, we a bit groggy we didn't perform that day. And the cycle that we talked about earlier starts to repeat itself. So I think now we're back in this work from home hybrid or work in the office context, we need to be really careful, especially as senior leaders about some of the expectations we set around working hours because we do want people to refresh. And there's some great case studies and research from various organizations about the importance of refresh time, which I won't go into at this point. But it's very interesting that when you give up that time that you should be in downtime, it actually has an impact on your uptime performance.

Mick Spiers: 40:16

There's huge lessons there, Jimmy. the first one around redefining success, redefining what high performance looks like. And then to get on to this point you're talking about at the moment that we're not I always think about on this one is Olympic athletes, Olympic athletes do not train at 100% capacity 100% of the time, they are very intentional and deliberate with their refreshing and they re energizing, and the rest time is as important to them as their training time. And yet in, let's say, industry, we don't seem to have fattened, that we just go well, eight hour day, 12 hour day and, you know, be as productive as you can for 12 hours straight doesn't work like that.

Jimmy Burroughes: 40:56

And how often does the Olympics happen?

Mick Spiers: 40:58

Every four years, right? Yeah.

Jimmy Burroughes: 41:00

Right. So we've graduated runner up with an increasing level of intensity once every four years, not once every day. And I think we forget that as well. Right, we're expecting to perform at a Olympic standard, day in day out for every day of the year.

Mick Spiers: 41:14

That's a good one for us to think about. So reset our definition of success and high performance and re set our definition of rest versus performance, get that balance back in. The other one I want to unpack from what you said before also is how it crept up on you. Like you spoke about gaining weight over time, and people didn't even notice initially until you said towards the end men, people and all what happened to Jimmy, what can we do to recognize the signs earlier, so it doesn't get to that point.

Jimmy Burroughes: 41:44

So one of the activities that we have people do is called the 80%. Line. And it's basically if you think about you, when you're working at 80% capacity, write out a little narrative or a series of bullet points, which describes you at 80% or below max? And how are you talking? How are you speaking? How are you thinking? How are you feeling? What are you doing? You know, are you turning up to meetings fresh? Are you going to the gym? Are you eating healthy? Are you doing all your hobbies? Are you hanging out with your kids and your partner? So that's the 80% or below line. And then we say write out what it looks like when you're 100% or more. And obviously, it's impossible to be 100% or more. But you know what I mean, you know, the maxed out version of you? What does that look like? Same criteria. So what are you doing thinking, feeling saying practicing, we get that contrast analysis. And then we get people to actually walk around with that and do a little of self assessment on themselves, and then go, Well, how many of those 100% Plus things am I ticking today. And if I'm ticking too many, then I know it's starting to creep in. And I know I've got to do something to pull it back. So I'll give you the perfect example. I know when I don't go to the gym three days in a week, then I know that there's something that needs rebalancing. Because I'm giving up my gym time I'll because I'll just take that meeting. And I'll just slot that in there. And I'll just I'll push that out of the way, and I'll go later. So if I don't go to the gym three times in a week, I know I'm too busy. I'm gonna have to think about that. And I have to reprioritize or stop or reassess my priority focus. But I also know if I don't go to the gym, I get more shirty and more aggressive and more angry and I'm less productive. And I can't think as clearly so I use more caffeine, and it's like little spiral starts. And so notice what your some of your trigger activities are, do you find yourself arguing with your partner more when you're in the 100%? Well, if you've had an A fight three times this week, then or maybe I'm a little bit over the line. So it's having this contrast analysis is a really good way to just catch it before it gets too late. Now, that's not to say that, obviously it's too late once you've had the argument, but what we're saying is you've got to try and find those little moments where you're like, Oh, I'm in the pivot to a danger zone. And once you're in the danger zone for too long, it becomes harder and harder and harder to pull yourself back. So it's spotting those little 80% line points where oh, I've crossed the line. Well, actually, I'm crossing the line in five or six of these, I might have to take a bit of a moment to reassess.

Mick Spiers: 44:06

I like this concept of baseline behavior, baseline activities, whatever you want to call it. So where am I spending my time? What is happening? Is it in the normal barrier? Or is it in the out of norms barrier? How am I expressing myself? What am I feeling right now? Am I finding that things that normally wouldn't irritate me or all of a sudden nope, irritating me a lot. Alright, so all of these things, noticing and naming them, I think can really help us but it's those every human bank being on this planet is different. So it's about noticing and naming for yourself. It's your baseline. It's not societal baseline. It's your baseline. Yeah, that's really cool. What about then the leader then doing that for others? Right. So you said that your friends and others noticed much later in the picture? If we're a leader of Team players, what is our responsibility? What is can we do for others to help them on their own self awareness?

Jimmy Burroughes: 44:56

There's no reason why you can't run the 80% activity with people and encourage them to do it. I think, you know, if we go let's get to brass tacks basic skills. One of the things that we know really helps to counter burnout individuals is having a meaningful connection and one on one discussion with their manager on a weekly basis and the optimal is about 10 to 15 minutes per employee per week. Now that sounds like a lot to suddenly there's oh my god, oh my God, I don't have time to Read, let alone have 10 to 15 minutes with with every member of my team, but that could be two minutes every day for five days. It could be hey, let's walk to lunch and have a chat. It could be let's have lunch together, let's grab a coffee. Let's do our one on one as a walking meeting, and these one on ones are not a whip. They're not a work in progress meeting and ops meeting. They're Hey, how are you how's things and as a leader, making sure that you're listening for persistent patterns of pain, that was PPP, persistent patterns of pain or persistent patterns of excitement. So I'm really excited because we're renovating the house this weekend, or we're painting the kids new nursery, or we're off camping for the weekend. And if they're camping every weekend, or they're getting time to relax, if they're painting and renovating all the time, is that tiring them out so they're not fresh for Monday. So that's a persistent pattern, persistent pattern of pain, or the wife and I are fighting at the moment is really tough for all my kids got cancer, and we're really worried, oh, my mother's dying, persistent pattern of pain. So we're looking for these persistent patterns and you're reading the tea leaves and going well, this person is doing the work. But I can see some other things going on behind the scenes that could be a bit painful, or could be tiring them out. So that could be a trigger. Let's just check in on that. So you've got to have those regular conversations to know what the ups and downs are equally if their performance is starting to falter. So you know, our Mick used to be you know, he was my top performer he was always outselling everybody, outperforming everybody delivering more than anybody. And he suddenly dropped off the boil. Wonder what's going on there. So having that presence of mind to go Oh, is Mick got disengaged? Is Mick tired, has Mick got something else going on at home that's distracting him right now is Mick looking for another job or is Mick's so tired and burned out the there's nothing left to give and making those choices. And again, as a leader, if you're doing it 10 to 15 minutes, every single week, you start to see the patterns is very hard to see if I do it one on one now and I set your goals for the year and we'll do another one in six months. There's a lot of stuff. A lot of water has gone under the bridge in that time. So it's about those little and often just checking in checking in. We call them care conversations. But it's that hey, how are you know who really how are you conversation or just what's going on for you right now? What's happening in your life that you're excited or worried about?

Mick Spiers: 47:39

Yeah, now this is really good. So taking the time, do the check ins, pay attention, establish that baseline behavior? What is baseline for Jimmy? What is baseline for making then being able to notice a name when something Oh, okay, that was unusual. Yeah, that was an unusual reaction. I haven't seen Jimmy rock like that before. All of these are signals. And if you're paying attention, you might be able to help someone to identify before it's a runaway train is what I'm hearing there. Jimmy, that's really cool.

Jimmy Burroughes: 48:05

And I think as well, you know, not because we're experts and superheroes, not feeling like you need to step in and do something about it either. So you know, it could just be MC has been renovating the house and he's getting a bit tired, because he's working all weekend and you know, building a new deck or painting bedrooms or whatever it might be and comes in a bit tired on Monday. It's not to go to Mick oo Mick, maybe you should think about not doing the renovation because you're looking tired today. That's not going to help, but instead saying, Hey, Mick, how are you feeling? How was the weekend? What tell me about what's going on? Wow, that sounds pretty tiring. How are you feeling for the week? Do you need any extra support? Is there anything that's gonna get in a way of you delivering this week? Just reach out to me if you're having a struggle. So it's almost like saying, I know, but I trust you. And I know you've got this, and I know you're going to work on it. But I've just got my eye on you. And you're just letting them know subconsciously that you care enough. But you're not stepping and go right? Well, we need to fix this because I need that as a leader, I need to make sure that you deliver for me, it's not about that. It's about the human connection, not the I'm the boss, you're the employee connection. We call that person before position.

Mick Spiers: 49:08

Yeah, I love that. And it's an element of empathy there and and an element of empathic concern, which needs to be you need to tread carefully with that one. But the one thing I'd say there, Jimmy, when I listen to that is think about what response from you is going to serve them best, right? And fixing their problem may not be the way to forward it could be just to be there for them and hold space for them. Yeah, it's really, really powerful. Jimmy. All right. Look, this has been an amazing conversation. There's in my head. There's multiple things I'd still like to explore with you, Jimmy, but we've been going for some time. So I'm going to get and draw this one to close your eyes. And maybe we'll have you back on the show one day to unpack the rest of this conversation. But I'd love to bring us to a close now with our Rapid Round. So these are the same four questions that we ask all of our guests, Jimmy. So what's the one thing you know, now that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Jimmy Burroughes: 49:58

This is something that probably sounds quite flippant, but it's there. We're all pretending to adult. And you know, when I was 20, I was very intense, young, probably still quite intense. But I was this very intense young man who was absolutely determined to get it right all the time. And as I've aged, I'm still you know, I'm still drawn to that tendency. I have to try and get it perfect. But it's to realize that nobody else really knows what's going on either. And we're all just winging it and trying to make it work and hoping that nobody finds out so I think is that I wish I'd known that when I was in my 20s, I'd probably chilled out a lot more for those 20 years of my life.

Mick Spiers: 50:33

Love it. Excellent. All right. What's your favorite book?

Jimmy Burroughes: 50:36

I have to. There's a really awesome book that I read all many, many years ago called Shantaram. And is the story of an Australian convicts who escaped from prison and moved to India and ended up as a makeshift slum doctor in Mumbai. And I think it's this beautiful story of adventure and reinvention, and transformation of values and the fact that people can change. And I remember, I got it in a hostel in Thailand, and the lady who gave it to me said, Well, this is the only book I've got, because I was trying to do a book swap. And if you don't take it, I'm going to read it again. And that was enough of an endorsement for me to take it. And so I read it and I was gripped, and they've made a really bad TV conversion of it. But it's a really good book. The other book that I love is the culture code by Daniel Coyle. Obviously, I have my own book, which is all about high performance culture, which I can't promote. And plug is my favorite book, although probably is, but Daniel coils work in culture aligns really closely with some of the beliefs I have. And it's really, practically and simply laid out, which I also emulate and admire.

Mick Spiers: 51:38

Yeah, wonderful. All right, what's your favorite quote?

Jimmy Burroughes: 51:40

If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far go together. It's an African proverb. And it's always stuck with me that also that which doesn't kill me makes me stronger. But that's kind of ironic when I do what I do. So we'll go for the first one.

Mick Spiers: 51:51

Oh, that's one of my favorites as well. Brilliant. And finally, Jimmy, how do people find you if they would like to know more? There's been so many nuggets of gold in today's discussion. And there's probably a lot of people listening to this podcast right now almost self identifying going, Oh, or from some of those things Jimmy's talking about that sounds like me, how do people find you if they'd like to know more, find your book, find your services, and get in contact with you.

Jimmy Burroughes: 52:17

So either through LinkedIn, Jimmy Burroughes, relatively easy to find, I'm pretty active there. And I share most of the things we're doing. Or if you want to go a little bit deeper, you can go to jimmyburroughes.com and there you can find out about the ways of working program about the book, beat burnout, Ignite performance, which is available through the website in a variety of formats. And you can also access the podcast that we have the Ways of Working Podcasts. So we'd be thrilled for anybody who has felt that, you know, what I've said is them, if you just want to have a nerd out conversation, as you can probably tell, I kind of enjoy this stuff. And I could probably talk for the rest of my life about it. So if you just need a conversation if you just need some help. And if you're thinking Christ, I'm the one who's on the ledge right now, and I just need a bit of support, then please know that there are people like Mick and I out there to help you. And we hear you when we see you. And we're here to help come we'd love to support you.

Mick Spiers: 53:10

Oh, thank you, Jimmy. It's been just a wonderful conversation. I love listening to you today. Thank you so much for sharing so openly your own journey. Congratulations on getting through that journey yourself. And thank you so much for the work that you do to help others to self identify, to get that self awareness and to work on their own level of burnout and that relationship with burnout and performance. absolutely adored this conversation. Thank you so much for your time today.

Jimmy Burroughes: 53:35

Thank you Mick for a really interesting interview and podcast. I genuinely appreciate it. It's lovely to come on somebody who asks deep and thoughtful questions that make me think as well. So that's always fascinating as a guest and I hope it was useful.