Wellness and Wealth
Wellness and Wealth
Burnout, Boundaries, and Becoming a Better Leader with Dr. Jacqueline Kerr
Burnout isn’t just exhaustion; it’s a slow shift in your identity, boundaries, and belief system that many women entrepreneurs don’t recognize until they hit a breaking point. In this powerful conversation, behavior scientist and burnout survivor Dr. Jacqueline Kerr joins Wendy to unpack the early warning signs of burnout, the difference between passion and self-sacrifice, and why women leaders are especially vulnerable.
Dr. Kerr, one of the top 1% most-cited scientists worldwide, shares the behavior-change strategies she used to rebuild her own leadership after leaving academia, along with practical tools you can apply today—whether you’re leading a team, a company, or your own home office.
You’ll learn how to:
• Identify burnout before it becomes a crisis
• Set boundaries that support creativity, not guilt
• Break perfectionism, people-pleasing, and the “always on” habit
• Lead yourself (and others) through times of change with more compassion
This conversation remains deeply relevant in 2025, as women continue to navigate hybrid work, entrepreneurship, caregiving, and the pressure to be everything to everyone. If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, resentful, or stretched too thin—this episode is your reset point.
Connect with Wendy Manganaro:
Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Wellness and Wealth. I'm Wendy Meganero, your host, and we have another great topic today. We're going to be talking about managing burnout so you can lead through turbulent times with Dr. Jacqueline Kerr. Jacqueline Kerr is a behavior scientist and burnout survivor. She is in the top 1% of cited scientists worldwide and received over$56 million in funding from the National Institute of Health to research health behavior change solutions for individuals and communities. Dr. Kerr left her position as a public health professor in 2018 and now hosts the podcast Overcoming Working Mom Burnout, where she interviews researchers. Her TEDx talk, How to Stop Burnout Before It Starts, explains how burnout is a multi-level problem and provides actionable solutions that we can all use to change the social norms around burnout based on behavior change science, leadership training for women leaders to learn about leading through change, managing change, and leveraging change for transformational organizational change. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I love talking about burnout. I'm an anti-hustling bride person. I had to learn how to do that because of burnout. I think this is always a good topic to talk about because I don't think female entrepreneurs realize when they're steamrolling into it and don't even know it's happening. I'd love to start with the question of what does being a leader mean to you?
SPEAKER_00:I think it's important as leaders that we are role models for healthy work habits, particularly when we're entrepreneurs or leading a startup that go, go, go, sacrifice everything. People can be passionate and engaged and still burn out. Some people get confused as burnout being, oh, you don't feel fulfilled by what you're doing, which can be the case. There are so many different profiles of burnout. I think it's so important that we're paying attention to some of those mental and physical symptoms. Everybody ends up, they can't get out of bed, they can have a total mental health breakdown, they can be in the doctor's office with illness symptoms because they have not realized that chronic stress takes over. And that makes sense to me because we're like the frogs in the pot of water and it's just boiling and we're getting hotter and hotter. We don't realize it. So I think that's why, as leaders, we can often be burning out and potentially be the source of pressure on others who end up burning out. One is recognizing your own burnout symptoms and learning how to manage them as a leader, role modeling healthy work habits where you're not on 24-7, because that 24-7 culture is the one that disadvantages women who are likely not to be available 24-7. So that's a really important part of the problems with that type of culture. And then just realizing for productivity, we need focus time. We need times when we're resting as a leader. You want to be most creative and innovative. If you're always disturbed by notifications, emails, or meetings, then you're not going to be your best creative self. Being a leader is about being able to embrace change because your employee needs are going to be changing all the time. Your business needs are going to be changing. Then we have huge social crises that hit us. We have to be able to be creative and flexible in our responses to those things. And that's what leading change is all about. Having processes that allow you to include the people who are being most affected by these changes and for you to support them. Sometimes we don't know what to do in these situations. And I think that's really important as a leader to admit what we don't know, to be open about our blind spots and be comfortable with that. Because in that process of making mistakes and learning for others, that's also what creates trust and psychological safety, which is the basis of leading change. The world is going through turbulent times. Having processes that turn chaos into opportunities for learning and improving is so important. Sometimes we are using mental models ourselves, but also our organizations can have protocols and work processes that are out of date. Talk about remote work, changing how we work. But if we're not intentional about how we recreate a virtual office, proximity bias is going to occur and we're going to have problems. It's being able to adapt to change, but being intentional about how you support new change and new processes so that everybody benefits from it.
SPEAKER_01:And that's what I was going to ask about. There are many of us who've been entrepreneurs for years, so we know the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. There's always been a false belief in if I have a corporate job, I have a steady job. It comes from the days where you had one career and never changed. You went to school for one thing, stayed at a company for 40 years. I was going to ask you what you're seeing as far as new leaders coming in, because the transition for any leader going from corporate America to their own business is a very different process. There's a stability of I get up, I work. I can't imagine if the burnout rates skyrocketed through COVID because even if you didn't work for somebody else and just worked in your own home, learning how to separate all of that out so that you have work time where you have family time and it's not so a mesh that you feel like you're never off.
SPEAKER_00:There's so many elements to that. A great question. McKinsey and Lean have reported the great breakup, particularly women leaders leaving organizations because they're disillusioned by the lack of leadership opportunity. Many of these women have helped their colleagues with their mental health. They've served on DEI committees, they're never paid for those things, they get exhausted, but they're so disillusioned and still know. Well, if I don't do it, nobody else is gonna pick up this mantle. That type of feeling is having women exit the workforce. Lack of autonomy is a huge part of why burnout happens. That's why it's different in some ways for a CEO, although they have different pressures from the board. Lack of autonomy is related to burnout. When you become your own business owner, you gain control. That can be helpful against burnout, but then you're responsible for everything. Recent data on a state of burnout report out of Australia was saying that some people who are doing more remote work are burning out more. And again, if that's because they're trying to make up for lack of proximity, feeling like they have to be always on and always responding because they feel judged for not being there if you don't have agreements around what are our collaborative hours, what are the hours you work. If somebody can show their calendar with no hesitation about what's in there, and it says, okay, I'm not going to respond at this time because this is when I'm picking my kids up. But here's when I do respond and do my work. That sort of transparency from leaders as role models is so important. Once you're in a home running the business, I had that transition myself. A lot of people end up saying, I need to stay here because of those benefits, even if those environments are extremely toxic. For me, a couple of things happened that others might relate to. When you leave a corporate place that has been the source of your problems and now you're in charge, guess who's the source of your problems? Your inner critic, my inner critic, oh my God, she's this witch, and she swooped in and told me how worthless I am, that I'm a throttle fraud. It's so difficult. My self-belief has actually been lowest in my whole life, now at 50 years old, having had this very successful academic career. So that transition, I think, for people can be really challenging. The skills that make a business and the time period that it takes to actually have a successful business is multiple years. The skills are all new. It's a tough transition to make. And I certainly am feeling the same if you've not been experienced in actually having to sell yourself and sell something. That's a huge mental transition. I found that very hard because I realized a lot of my work went through a blind peer review process. So it wasn't about me as the scientist, it was about my science. That was really challenging to have to lead. Even the things you read at the beginning about my bio, I would never say those things when I was in academia. And nobody knew I was in the top 1% because there was usually a Nobel laureate scientist next to me who was even better. It's interesting, those personal self-belief transitions plus the selling and business skills. If you're working from home, it depends too on your resources. I know there was a lot of people working from home who didn't have stable internet connection. They don't have a separate room or office to work from. And I interviewed a dad recently for my podcast. I'm trying to learn from active participating dads, as well as how do you help moms when they're playing that role. And he had to take the interview on a cold day on his balcony because he had no option for a quiet space away from his kids in his house. That's part of the stress that can come. But if you do have those options, then really try to make transitions between your workplace and your work times of day, you have to be really formal in those transitions, even if that's leaving the house and walking around the neighborhood and coming back going, okay, end of day, start of day. So those things can help. But I think most people have felt that working from home, because of the flexibility it provides, the future workbook talks all about how to create flexible, fair workplaces. It's really about the flexibility in when you work, even more than where you work, so that you can fit the kids' doctors' appointments into your day and that you can fit your exercise into your day. Those are all things that have made it easier for people, especially if they're not having to commute. There's a really important way of laying out your day in terms of what are the rocks that you want to put in your day that are the non-negotiables so that your day can succeed. And again, if that's putting your exercise time in at a certain time of day so that everything else happens around that, that's the way we can start to prioritize ourselves and some of these health behaviors that can help us manage stress.
SPEAKER_01:And I'm curious, as you're talking about those, of somebody else who's starting the business. If you don't have those priorities in place, you're like, where did my day go? It took me a long time as a business owner to go, oh, okay, I have to do all of those thinking things. I do interviews in the afternoon because I am what my best mentally for being creative in the morning. So that takes time because all of a sudden you need all of these extra skills. You may be wonderful in what you did, but if you don't understand social media or if you're not used to being visible, all of those things need to be taken care of. I'd love for you to share a little bit about your own journey and what has made you a better leader now that you realize that you went through, and it sounds like the imposter, because I think every entrepreneur goes through. Well, female entrepreneurs seem to go through that more than male entrepreneurs. You could have years of experience, and all of a sudden it's a little bit harder because women are taught to take a backseat. What helped you make the switcher to become a better leader and your own business?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I think that's so important what you say about we are taught to play small, be quiet. That was the context in which I was brought up. I was an enthusiastic and outspoken child. So I was constantly being told to be quiet and to keep my opinion to myself from fear of my parents that I would be overstepping some mark. Even though I had a lot of confidence in my science, it was much more about the scientific process and those tools I was using and the results of my science that proved things versus like, oh, it's all about me. That's definitely very challenging. I remember going to a weekend workshop all about branding. The women were sharing what their superpowers were. And I was so motivated and inspired by these women really saying exactly who they were. That was inspirational. When it came to me, I was like, I'm a behavior scientist. That's what makes me different in this world. I had felt like I was leaving my science behind, but suddenly I was like, no, that is who I am. I also had a business coach. So again, business coaches are so important and helpful in this process. I had a business coach who helped me frame myself as a burnout survivor. Although I'm an expert in public health and behavior change, I know there are academics like me who have had 50 years' careers only studying burnout. And I know I'm not them. So it's very hard for me to call myself that burnout expert. But I was very comfortable saying I'm a burnout survivor and a behavior change scientist, and these two things I can put together. I value somebody else's expertise, and I'm not going to pretend to say that I am them. That was always something I learned from my science. I know what I know and I know it very deeply. But I also know that means I don't know what the next person knows and their depth of knowledge. I was very aware that we each have our expertise. And I think that's important in our business leadership, finding that place where you sit and go, this is who I am. This is where I'm unique. Another tool that I used to help me get there was improv comedy. When I started doing improv comedy, I just needed to get out the house, to get away from the family, and I needed to laugh. I needed to have a break. Through improv comedy, it was great. It was really all about, it's not necessarily about being funny. It was really all about can you express emotions fully on stage? And so that's what we would practice. Be angry now, be sad now, be happy, and you make all these emotions come out of you. It was just fantastic therapy in itself. What I realized was that when you step onto the stage and someone else gifts you with a certain line, the way you respond is the only response that could ever have possibly been, because it comes from you and your experience, and nobody else would have ever had the same response. And that made me go, oh, I am unique, right? Because that I often felt like, wow, there's so many people that can do these things or know about these things. But that's really helped me think about that when I get nervous about writing something or declaring something, I'm very much saying, Do you know what? Nobody else is gonna have come to it. Nobody else has had the same experience as me. So I know what I'm gonna be saying is unique, it's different. It's gonna be something that people haven't heard before. So I think that definitely helps me in terms of spending a lot of my time delving deeply into the literature around diversity, equity, and inclusion and how that intersects with burnout, trying to learn from the stories and experiences of what are the realities they face every day. Instead of saying I'm an expert in their reality, which I can never be, I can provide you these processes that come from science and this universal understanding of how human psychology works and how we move people along these processes to create change. Change feels risky and uncertain. It's a lot harder than people think. That's what I'm trying to empower women with now. I think I've definitely learned a lot of compassion that was missing from my leadership as very results-driven, focused and ambitious, never admitting my own weaknesses, seeing those as weaknesses as opposed to being human and vulnerable. I've learned a lot about that. I bring that now to the mentoring that I do of scientists. I bring that compassion much more than I ever did when I was in academia. I think that's also what I bring to my leadership for other women leaders. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And that's really important to understand. We don't have to be anybody else. In my early career, I used to think I had to have every answer about social media. No one does. Everybody has their own expertise in marketing. The other thing that's really important that you said is that it didn't mean that I didn't continue to learn and from others so that I could offer what I've learned. I used to think I had to have an answer on the spot. It took me about two years to start saying to clients, especially when it was a new social media, one of the 5,000 out there that nobody really knows about, but that client would be like, Have you heard about? And I'm like, Oh, I'm supposed to know. And I didn't. I would say, no, but I'll research it for you and let you know if I think it's a good choice. Always feel like I had to be on. It was insane to always think that because nobody is in yet. We set these expectations for ourselves that nobody else would. I'd love to know for you what are the warning signs, especially in female entrepreneurships, that letting they're starting to let their businesses run down instead of them leading their business.
SPEAKER_00:I do think it's back to that 24-7 culture when you're feeling like you have to respond immediately versus setting boundaries around it, telling your clients, I respond between these times because I want to be present when I respond to you. That's my focused time for responding to you as a client. These are the boundaries that we need to set, not only for ourselves, but also so that we show up as our best selves for our clients. I choose my clients because I want my clients to respect the life I want to have. I think that's really important. There's lots of business solutions out there now with signature programs and online training programs that entrepreneurs can provide, so that it's not just one-to-one time that you're charging and billing for. You're maximizing your knowledge, delivering it remotely or through group programs, so that you're not only dependent on one hour of your time being one hour of your billing. I think those types of things can help. The symptoms are when you aren't able to switch off and when you are constantly trying to respond to inquiries very quickly. That's what's so difficult about this intersection between burnout and entrepreneurship. When you're in this entrepreneurial stage, you want to say yes to every opportunity. And when you're in burnout, you want to say no to most opportunities. Burnout is about reducing your time commitments, saying no so that you can really gain control of the yeses that you have. One thing is for women to be very careful in that transition phase between being burned out from corporate and trying to start your own business. Because if you're in burnout still, you're not going to have the energy to say all those yeses to every opportunity. So there definitely needs to be a time where you quiet quit at your job, where you take some time to step back. You're still in your job doing the minimal that's required, but you're trying to re-energize before making a change to something else. So you definitely need those times of rest and re-energy. And then you also need to address your burnout tendencies that come from your personality. I call them tendencies because that means we tend to do them. They're not traits. Think about traits, and it's like, that's who I am. I can never change. I'm always a perfectionist, I'm always a people pleaser. These are all things we can work on when we become more aware of always saying yes, overgiving, and people pleasing, like you said, everything had to be perfect. You always had to the perfect answer immediately. So we need to work on how I catch myself doing that and how I transition into putting my needs first and saying no. I turn up every day as my best, and I can never be perfect. Those are mental transitions you also need to be making. It's being aware of where you are in that process. Unfortunately, most people realize they're burnt out when you're in the more severe states of burnout, physical symptoms, hair loss, adrenal fatigue, things like suicide ideation, feeling that desire to escape. So kind of earlier signs that it can be really helpful is resentment. When what you're doing turns into being resentful for what you're doing, we all have parts of our business that we don't like doing, but that feeling of resentment, that feeling of rumination, those are two things that can really indicate to you those are very early signs of burnout and can be early signs of relationship problems as well. That's why you need to pay attention to them. When people understand the stages of burnout, in fact, there's two psychologists, Freud and Berger and North, and their stages of burnout start with the need to prove yourself. That's stage one. Many of us as female entrepreneurs could stand on that stage and say, Yes, I feel a need to prove myself. That comes from our personality tendencies, but also because to do twice as much, to get half as far always had to reprove ourselves. And women of color, much more so. No wonder we assume the next stage is working harder, avoid conflict, you change your values because trying to prove yourself and succeed, then you start to withdraw and maladaptive coping, maybe too much alcohol, eating. Once you see yourself going through those things, that's where I think it really is about knowing your value before you step onto that stage. And also knowing that working harder, working 24-7 isn't the answer. More focus time that's not interrupted is more valuable than being available 24-7.
SPEAKER_01:I believe that most people who get to burnout stage, they're so in it they have no choice but to make a change instead of looking at the early signs. And especially as when we do that with our health, then when we're ready to blow up, then we're like, oh, maybe I need to pay attention because it becomes our norm. We allow it to become our norm because we just go, well, this is how it is. Once we take it, whatever reason, whether it's because we have a trauma or because we take a step back and go, how did this become our norm? Which brings me to our last question. When women, whatever stage they're in of burnout, realize that they're there, what is the initial first step they can take to get through that? Because I really do believe we tolerate things much longer than we need to. So I'd love to say what's that first step to get them back from burnout to being a leader.
SPEAKER_00:That description you had of what we do to ourselves is so important. It's basically kind of being a martyr and we feel valued, important, self-sacrificing, and everybody needs us. It brings us something, otherwise, we wouldn't do it. It makes us feel better. In some ways, I think we even feel a little bit of comfort in feeling we're a victim. That sort of self-pity is part of that. But I think what really helped me in that process was when I read Glennon Doyle's book, is basically saying, would you want to be a martyr to motherhood? And is that the role you want your daughter to also have? I was like, no, I don't want my daughter to have my life and ever be a martyr to motherhood. Why am I role modeling that to her? So I think that's one way we start to say, what are we getting out of playing this role and be really honest about it? It there's a bit of ego in there too, right? And then say, is that the role model you want? So there were mental shifts like that. Then there are practical exercises you can do. Number one is to look at the shoulds. How much are you doing out of obligation versus love for doing it versus it brings you energy or versus it is impactful for your business? How does it make you feel when you do it? Do you feel absolutely yucky? And does it come from guilt and obligation? When I looked at that and started to realize how much I did things purely out of obligation for that feeling that society has put on us through our upbringing, through social expectations of mothers being available 24 or 7, of being the martyr mother, and then being the perfect worker too. Those are the pressures that we have. Once you start to say, okay, I only do volunteering in my kids' school because I care how the other mothers look at me. Once we can actually start to say, I'm not actually doing it, my kid, but sometimes you are, but sometimes you have to say, okay, I'm in a season of saying no and not volunteering. When I have better energy, I'll come back to that. Sometimes we do gain energy from the things that we're doing that are volunteering that are our free time, but maybe that's not the time to be doing it now. Creating a list of your yeses and no's, keeping track in a small Excel file or a tally sheet every time you say yes and every time you say no. And of course, the no's you notice more because you potentially feel guilty about those. But you have to start realizing, well, I'm saying no because I'm being asked to do so many things that are not in my priority list, they're not in my values list either. So starting to get a handle of the yeses, we often say yes without even being asked and without even realizing we've said yes and volunteered ourselves without being asked. So you get that mental transition and the tracking. Another thing I did was write down everything I was doing. I was working with a parenting coach. I was saying, okay, I'm a bad mom, I'm a bad wife, and I'm a bad boss. She said, I write down everything you do every day for everyone for yourself, everything you do every week. So I just wrote down everything I did. And then she said, now look at that list. Is that the list of a bad mother? Is that the list of a bad wife? Is that the list of a bad manager? I realized I was doing so much for all my employees, for my kids, for my husband. I really had to fact check that messaging I was giving myself about being bad. Look at that list and imagine somebody thanking me for doing all those things. Other people aren't necessarily going to thank you, but you can thank yourself. So I did. I really had to sit down and go, thank you for doing all those things. And what that transitioned into is going, I wonder what my husband's list would look like if he wrote down all the things he did. So I started to write down all the things he did for me, the kids and our family. I wrote him a letter and said, Thank you for doing all these things. And please let me know if I've missed anything on this list. He was like, Nobody has ever thanked me for anything I've done my whole life. I didn't believe that. I thought I did, but he didn't feel like that. And the power of doing that was something that definitely changed. Like in my TEDx talk, one of the first things I talk about is not being able to thank my husband for taking my daughter to the pediatrician. I had booked the appointment, had a work meeting and was at home making dinner. He was so proud of having taken her to the doctor. And I was like, I can't thank him. We had this big fight, and that's when I realized where I was at in burnout. Now, every single day we're like, thanks for doing the dishes, thanks for picking up the kids. We noticed everything that we each do. So that ability to look at that list and realize, you know, how much you are doing, and be grateful that others do those things for you, but also thank yourself. You can't always wait for someone else to thank you. You have to give yourself that credit too. That's fabulous.
SPEAKER_01:And I was sitting here thinking, as you're saying that it's true. When you say thank you, it makes a difference into all the for yourself too, because and I do love reading the bios of my guests because it's so important for the guests to hear. Sometimes we forget what we've done, but it's powerful to be able to say, I've been able to do this. This is the gifts that I have and to share with others. Those key things and practical ideas are important because I don't think we take enough time. And sometimes we listen to negativity instead of saying, okay, this is the reality. I want to thank you for being on the show. We could talk a lot longer, but I know you have an offer for our guests. I'd love for you to share about that, and I will have all of the links in our show notes.
SPEAKER_00:People can go to my website, drjaquelineker.com, and there's so many resources there. There are behavior change guides to the behaviors we've talked about today. There's my podcast, articles about burnout, blogs about burnouts, and some of my burnout webinars. People can sign up and get a free guide to managing their. Their own burnout and managing burnout of their employees. But also, if they're struggling to lead burnout initiatives or DEI initiatives in their company and they're feeling stuck because change is more difficult than we realize, there's a free guide to help unlock what might be going on and to help you moving from that sort of stalled change process into actually saying, okay, here's some other things we can do to move forward. Thank you so much for being on the show today. It has been wonderful.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much for having me. This has been fun. If you love what you heard today, please leave a review. If you need more self-care tips and reminders, we will have another show very shortly. Make sure you subscribe. Have a great day and abundant week.
