Notes on Resilience
Conversations about trauma, resilience, and compassion.
How do we genuinely support individuals who have experienced trauma and build inclusive and safe environments? Trauma significantly affects the mental and physical health of those who experience it, and personal resiliency is only part of the solution. The rest lies in addressing organizational, systemic, and social determinants of health and wellness, and making the effort to genuinely understand the impact of trauma.
Here, we ask and answer the tough questions about how wellness is framed in an organizational context, what supports are available and why, what the barriers are to supporting trauma survivors, and what best practices contribute to mental wellness. These conversations provide a framework to identify areas for change and actionable steps to reshape organizations to be truly trauma sensitive.
Notes on Resilience
117: Breaking the Burnout Cycle, with Jasmin Dennis
Burnout is an occupational phenomenon officially recognized by the World Health Organization.
So, what happens when workplace cultures keep us from addressing it directly? Can leaders really create space for authentic conversations about wellbeing?
Wellness expert Jasmin Dennis shares a powerful framework for identifying and preventing emotional burnout through compassionate leadership, showing how leaders can address different manifestations of burnout—lack of energy, decreased productivity, workplace detachment—by tackling one manageable slice at a time.
We explore what happens when leaders themselves experience burnout and why it's essential that wellness initiatives include everyone from frontline employees to top executives. Jasmine shares how simple phrases like "tell me what's going on" can transform workplace dynamics, and why embedding compassion into organizational systems ensures these values persist through leadership changes.
Whether you're a leader struggling with a burned-out team or someone experiencing emotional exhaustion yourself, this episode provides actionable strategies for cultivating environments where well-being is prioritized and compassion drives success.
Jasmin Dennis is a seasoned expert in creating and implementing transformative workplace wellness programs. Her efforts focus on preventing burnout, boosting employee morale, and reducing healthcare costs, all while fostering environments where teams thrive.
You can learn more about Jasmin on her website or YouTube channel, and you can connect with her on Linkedin.
Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.
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Producer / Editor: Neel Panji
Invite Manya to inspire and empower your teams and position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in well-being, resilience, and trauma sensitivity.
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#trauma #resilience #compassion #MentalHealth #CompassionateLeadership #leadership #survivor
Why the World Health Organization, in 2019, did a study that burnout is not a buzzword, it is an occupational phenomenon. Because of what you just brought up, I'm not going to go to my boss and tell my boss how I feel today.
Manya Chylinski:Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, manya Chylinski. My guest today is Jasmine Dennis. She's a seasoned expert in creating and implementing transformative workplace wellness programs. Today, we talked about identifying emotional burnout, the role of compassion in leadership and how to champion workplace health and wellness. You're going to really enjoy this conversation, jasmine. I'm so excited to have you on the podcast.
Jasmin Dennis:Very excited to be here.
Manya Chylinski:Before we dive into the topic, what's one thing that you've done in any area of your life that you never thought you would do?
Jasmin Dennis:Oh gosh, I have to tell you that skydiving you did. Moons ago I was with a company and they had a golfing club, a skydiving club, and I thought how hard can that be? Because this guy, who's gonna be there with you, he's gonna fear for his life. So he's got to be careful. And I tell you, I went through every single emotion a human being could go through. I bet you did yes, and I promise God that if you ever get me through this, I'll never do it again. Never, never, done it again.
Manya Chylinski:Well, hey, you took a literal leap of faith. That is amazing.
Jasmin Dennis:Yes, what else could scare you as to be out there in the open? And it's not a soft landing if you miss.
Manya Chylinski:Yeah, oh, my goodness, wow, wow, wow, wow. Thank you for sharing that. We are talking about compassionate leadership today and before we hit record, you and I were talking about how important compassionate leadership is to identifying and preventing emotional burnout in the workplace. Tell me more about that.
Jasmin Dennis:Oh, first of all, you have to dissect what is compassion right. It's empathy, it's learning to listen, it's creating a safe space for someone. So a compassionate leader has to literally be conscientious about the work environment and how they are going to show up every single day, because in order for burnout not to happen in the workplace, compassion has to be the cornerstone of that workplace and creating a culture where compassion thrives.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, and I'm fully in agreement with everything you just said. Question though if a company is dealing with a lot of burnout in their executives and their teams, what are some steps they can do to become more compassionate or to tune into their compassion? To become more compassionate or to tune into their compassion, to change that environment, because it seems to me that companies kind of get stuck in these cycles, and what's a way to get out of?
Jasmin Dennis:that. Well, the first thing I would tell a company right off the bat they have to know to identify emotional burnout. Okay, to know to identify emotional burnout Okay. If they can't identify that themselves or their team or their employee is in emotional burnout, it is not going to help. So that is why I always paint a visual picture of burnout pie.
Manya Chylinski:The burnout pie. Tell us about that.
Jasmin Dennis:If I walked up to you and said you know, you said Jasmine, you know I really like apple pie, the burnout pie, tell us about that. If I walked up to you and said you know, you said Jasmine, you know I really like apple pie, I really like peach pie and you know I'd like you to bring one over to me. You know, come by and bring me a pie, please do. By the way, yes, yes, if you eat that pie in one sitting, you're going to be sick. Now, the pie comprised of a lot of stuff long ingredients that's good for you, long ingredients that are not good for you. However, if you slice that pie, let's take it for the burnout pie. Visual enough so the compassionate leader can see to say I am going to rule and develop this culture of being a compassionate leader by looking at that burnout pie and the slices. I've always said not more than eight slices. How do you eat an elephant, little bites at a time, right? Yes, yes, I say to someone don't you look and you see your staff, and this happened where a whole section of that company is in burnout based on their actions. So you see the pie slices you'll have. You know, for instance, lack of energy, you'll have no productivity, detachment in the workplace, stability in the workplace. You'll have just chronic stress in the workplace.
Jasmin Dennis:I say to that leader by being empathetic, by being conscious of how you're running your team, do a checkup from the neck up for everyone. Create a space where your employees are going to feel safe to come in and say you know what, today I am not at my best, I didn't sleep well last night, and so that's a key. If it's a compassionate leader, there's that first key to helping that individual. Most leaders will look past that you didn't sleep last night. They're probably going to ask that person oh, were you up watching TV? Are you sick? No, you ask that individual to say tell me.
Jasmin Dennis:When you say, tell me a story, or use the word tell me what's going on with you, tell me why you didn't sleep last night. Don't assume that you know why that person didn't sleep last night and that person feels safe enough to say I really don't know, or maybe I missed my deadline at work, or maybe I don't when I go to work. I don't understand why. I feel I'm not a part of that team. And so a compassionate leader will start to say okay, I'm going to work on that slice of pie, because that is what I can control. Yes, yes, can't control the whole pie, not yet anyway.
Manya Chylinski:Right, I want to add to what you said. I've I talked to a lot of people about the concept of resiliency and compassion, and something I've heard from coaches and consultants and employees is how rare it is for a leader to actually ask and listen to the answer of what is really going on with you. What do you really need? How can I help?
Jasmin Dennis:Yes, and that is what you find. A compassionate leader will slowly work through their team by helping them one slice at a time. There's going to come a time when that leader is going to recognize that that person is out of the burnout pie. Their productivity is high, their energy is high, people are not yawning every two minutes. They feel like there's an open door policy. That leader create a really nice space for them to go in and share. They are not driven by the demands of the job and all of a sudden they're wondering. And if they take stats of this from when they start working on that pie, they're going to realize that all of a sudden something has changed here. The numbers are up in as many sick days off.
Manya Chylinski:I want to dig a little deeper into this. What if the leader themselves is struggling with burnout? In some workplaces there's so much pressure and we've shrunk in the workforce, but people are taking on more responsibility. What happens in that situation if the leader is burned out and maybe can't even identify what's going on with the team?
Jasmin Dennis:Excellent. This is why, in creating a workplace health and wellness program, you find some companies will think you're only talking about the employees and not themselves. You have to lead by example. And so, therefore, in creating this wellness program, I start with the leaders. I say tell me how you feel Before I start to create a program for your employees. I want you to tell me how you feel. I want to know if I need to deal with the leader before I attack, because this leader has to lead by example and I'm going to have to give strategy. Of course that applies to the burnout pie. Of course that applies to the burnout pie.
Jasmin Dennis:I'd say okay, how do you feel when you wake up in the morning? Do you have anxiety leading your team? Do you have constant pressure of your team not producing, and how does it affect you? How do you feel? So, in getting to the leaders and sometimes I do a program where the leaders I start off with the leaders first, sometimes program where the leaders I start off with the leaders first sometimes, and sometimes I want the leaders to be a part of it, because I want the employees to understand that leaders are humans as well.
Jasmin Dennis:They're human, they have frailties, just like anyone else. They walk, they talk, and if you find a space where they're vulnerable enough to show that yeah, I might have been irritable with you yesterday and be smart enough to go and say I apologize, I know why I was irritable with you yesterday. I promise to do better. And it starts off when a leader acknowledges within themselves that they're not superhumans and that they do have the same aching pains that we do have. They have that sense where they figure okay, I'm not going to be judged by my staff or my higher ups, we're all here together. And that's when I when I find, when I speak to leaders, they feel good when everyone is on the same page.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, and what I'm hearing as you're saying this is building this underlying trust in each other as team members.
Jasmin Dennis:Yes, and you find that it works. You know, really like we all have our times when we feel me included and I have this visual that I walk around with me, and the reason I created the burnout pie is because I want that visual, because I want to stop and say okay, jasmine, why are you driving like a mad maniac on the street to get the disappointment? Driving like a mad maniac on the street to get the disappointment? It's not worth it. What is there that is propelling you to be anxious ahead of time? Because remember our actions today. If you come home and you say my son is crying today and I don't want my son, kids would normally say no, there's nothing wrong. However, tell me, tell me, make it in a storyboard, tell me how you feel today. They will tell you that they had a rough day at school or a rough day at work.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, I feel like when you say tell me how you feel. There are some workplaces where, where that would be a hard sell and we still have that division of work, is this place, it's professional, and home is where you have your feelings, and never the twain shall meet.
Jasmin Dennis:That is so true. That is why the World Health Organization, in 2019, did a study that burnout is not a buzzword. It is an occupational phenomenon where, because of what you just brought up, like I'm not going to go to my boss and tell my boss how I feel today Well, if that continues, if that continues, the end result is not good. So it's all an education program and when I go in, I either say my Jazzy, health and Wellness can help you do that, or we can train someone. So it is consistent. There's got to be an era where you work it down, and I know there's some tough workplaces.
Jasmin Dennis:I've often said health and wellness is not a sexy word. People think when you talk wellness, it's about weight loss and it's about all those stuff. It's about the whole. On my website, the logo is a circle and I did that because it's a circle of life. All go through the circle of life and it's all in educating. Some companies do it very well, some companies are open to do it.
Jasmin Dennis:Some companies start the program and it falls by the wayside because another boss will come in and another leader will come in and think very different, and I'm telling you, I've seen leaders that are not compassionate at all. None of the words of compassion ever flow through that person's vein, so that person's going to have a toxic work environment. I heard on someone's podcast and they gave an analogy of the rider and the elephant. I'm going to equate the employees as the rider and the leaders as the elephant. And it might seem that the employees can lead the leaders, but it's not so, because it's so ingrained in the workplace and in the communities and even in the household.
Jasmin Dennis:The husband might say I'm the leader of this house, the community, you know they have different tiers of community. And in the workplace they might say well, I am your boss and this is what goes. Just have to like the elephant, one company at a time, and try to educate them that in this phase that we're in of real, real burnout stress, we need to have a different mindset. So it takes a different. I might not be qualified to change some of the minds of some of these leaders, but hopefully, if you drop a nugget and you give a hint and if your department is constantly lagging behind, we're hoping that it will change. We can only hope that it changes. Takes more than me to go in and change the minds.
Manya Chylinski:Yes, Well, you mentioned something very interesting that I think about a lot, which is you can get a new leader come in who decides they're not going to necessarily do some of the old programs or what have you, or they're going to ignore them. And I think about how important it is to embed compassion into the culture and into the systems so that one person might have a different approach, but they can't upend the whole system. But they can't upend the whole system, and if they are toxic, then they somehow get moved out of that role much more quickly. I want to see these things become just so much more embedded versus. It depends on whether you have a good manager or not.
Jasmin Dennis:Absolutely. They have to have some form of a metric If they want this compassionate leader in the company. It has to be a part of their blueprint so that the leader that is coming in is going to say oh you know, of course they're going to give their input for changes, right. Of course they're going to give their input for changes, right, but it's to have a series of an open door policy. It's not hard to have an open door policy, right, it's to prioritize employee well-being. How do you do that? You might say, okay, I'm going to have you know, this is the way it works. We encourage our employees to go out and do some laughing yoga, which I really. You know, the mind does not know the difference whether it's real or unreal. So this right, but I'm going to go with that because I've done it myself and it works. Is that leader going to encourage that person? Because this is non-traditional, right, this is non-traditional. Okay, you break time, you're free. They might see one person out there doing that laughing yoga and it starts with maybe just a chuckle. And the more you, if you try it, Manya, the more you laugh. I get myself when you have friends and you know the tears running down because you're laughing so hard. Yes, you can do that, and it's become a part of the fabric of that organization, so someone doesn't come in and just take everything away, right? What do you think we're missing in leadership training and in how we're bringing people up through the organization? When it comes to preparing people to lead with compassion? What we're missing, literally, is communication, effective communication and compassion those two hand in hand. And how do you communicate? Some of the ways that I say to you you bring it up through the organization is based on. Some of the ways that I say you bring it up through the organization is based on having you have a simple place, which is your open door policy, which creates safety. Trust is very important, extremely important, to have the trust to know that you're going to be that compassionate leader, you're going to feel free and you're going to lead by example. Really, you have to lead by example, and that's what your question before leading by example by coming in there and saying, okay, this is, I took over a company, just divert, just slightly, took over a company many, many years ago.
Jasmin Dennis:This was a wellness company that I was building and the first thing I did and I remember when I walked in they were removing one leader out of the main post that was putting me in as the head of the organization, which was not you know. I got bombarded with a lot of stuff, but anyway, the first thing I did I didn't care how long it took me before I made I wrote a procedure manual, procedure manual, policy and procedure manual. I sat down. That was my first order, even though they brought me on initially as a consultant to bring the company up financially to take it out of it's going this way, even though I said I'm not going to do if I don't sit down and if everyone does not have something to go by, we're never going to be successful.
Jasmin Dennis:So I locked myself in an office and I start off with you know and simple things. There were simple things. I said to the trainers the boardroom is not your closet. Take your gym bags and your sweaty shirts out of that room. Created that room where, when we go in there, this is what we do in that room.
Manya Chylinski:Jasmine, we are getting close to the end of our time so fast and I know it goes by so quickly. What do you think is one step that a company and its leaders can take right now easily to just move the needle to becoming more compassionate?
Jasmin Dennis:Develop a wellness culture. Develop a wellness culture is number one. Takes many steps to get there, but if you can develop this wellness culture and I've seen a company that's so good at it you walk through that front door and you can feel it. You can feel the energy. Energy is something that is very contagious. So, if they develop, the one thing right away is develop. Don't worry about the steps to get there, Worry about putting it down and says this is what I'm going to do for my team. Absolutely, Absolutely.
Manya Chylinski:Oh, that's excellent. Commit to building that wellness culture. Don't worry about the steps immediately, but get yourself there. Jasmine, thank you so much. Before we go, can you please share with our listeners a little bit more about yourself and how they can learn about you and your business?
Jasmin Dennis:Oh, fantastic. I am a wellness leader and leadership coach. I create health and wellness programs in workplaces. When I say workplaces, don't take it for only workplaces. It transforms, transcends to your home and the community. And what I do I do speak in engagements community and um. What I do I, I do speak in engagements, I do um.
Jasmin Dennis:I have a book, out of several books, but your audience will get a free copy of the hidden signs how to identify emotional burnout in the workplace, and they can get that copy by going to on my website. Get that copy by going to on my website, jazzdhealthcom, and it's J-A-Z-Z-D-Healthcom, and they fill out that little thing that says give me my free copy from you know, notes of Resilience, and they'll get that copy. They can also reach me on LinkedIn and I also have a series of developer learning hub on YouTube where there are probably about 20-odd videos on it as we speak and just different on emotional intelligence in the workplace, because in order to get anything done, you must have a little bit of emotional intelligence in order to see what's going on around and be able to act. And yeah, so they can reach me on LinkedIn, they can reach me on my website, they can Jazzy helps. Just one word on YouTube and they can click through the videos to see what resonates with them.
Manya Chylinski:I will put links to that in the show notes to make it easier for folks to find you, Jasmine. Thank you so much. It's been lovely chatting with you today.
Jasmin Dennis:It's been so great and time flies.
Manya Chylinski:It does. It absolutely does, thank you. Thank you for listening. I'm Manya Chylinski. I help organizations build compassionate, resilient teams that thrive by creating environments where well-being is at the core. Often, people reach out to me during times of crisis or significant change, but the truth is that building a healthier, more supportive workplace can prevent issues before they arise and empower your teams to thrive no matter what challenges come their way. If you're ready to make a meaningful change, I'd love to connect. If you haven't already done so, please subscribe, rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. It really helps others find us, and if you'd like to continue the conversation, connect with me on LinkedIn or visit my website, wwwmanyachylinskicom. Thank you for being part of this journey with me.
