#079 How my Burnout led me to build a T.H.R.I.V.E.-ing business

On October 31, 2022, I walked into my boss' office in my black-eyed pea costume and announced that I was leaving. Today, my THRIVE Culture Framework allows me to meet organizations where they are and help them create a culture where their employees have an opportunity to thrive, without burning out.

I hope you enjoy this episode.

I'd love to hear your feedback on the framework or what is working for you when it comes to your organizational culture. Email me directly at wendy@culturecoachwendy.com.

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With 25+ years of leadership experience, spanning multiple roles across corporations and non-profits, I have gained a wealth of experience in understanding what makes organizations successful.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

You are listening to the Culture Coach Podcast. This is the place where CEOs and people first leaders come to boost productivity, extinguish burnout, and cultivate a vibrant culture that reflects a fully integrated mission, vision, and core values. Get ready to take your culture to the next level. I am your host, Wendy Brand. Welcome back to the Culture Coach Podcast. This is Wendy Brand. I'm so glad you're here today. Thank you for joining us. If you are an HR leader, a CEO, anyone responsible for culture change in your organization, you are in the right place. Today is a solo episode. I want to share a little bit about my burnout story and then really the impact that it has had on the business that I've created and the framework that I've created to help leaders like you to build an organization where your employees don't go through what I went through, hopefully. It's a little bit individual, a little bit organization responsibility. But as leaders in an organization, I want to help equip you with some tools that can help you to facilitate a culture that you desire for your organization and that your people are excited to be a part of. So why this episode, a why today? Well, on almost two years ago to the day it was October 31st. It was Halloween 2022. And I drove to work in my black-eyed P costume. And I had a, you know, black makeup over one eye for that black eye, and then the letter P on a t-shirt. And driving into work, I had a thought. Um, I was listening to a podcast, and I had a thought that um that I was pretty unhappy, and that I felt like the changes I was wanting to make in the organization were not picking up the traction that I thought they would. And the leaders of the organization, um I just I didn't feel valued or appreciated for the extra load I was carrying. And, you know, there's two sides to every story. I'm sure that my leaders have their own version of this. But on that day, it was about 5:30 or 6 o'clock. I waited till the end of the day. Um, I had found out earlier that day that they were interviewing somebody for my position and had not even told me that they were looking. So I knew, I mean, the writing was obviously on the wall, whether they were gonna let me go or repurpose me. I wasn't quite sure. But what I knew was um I definitely didn't feel valued. And I had really spent the last four years. Um, the company sold, it was a family-owned business. Uh, and then I was there for about six months, maybe nine, um, and the family sold and we became owned by investors. So what I was originally thought I was being brought in to do changed pretty drastically, and I had multiple leaders changed out um above me as throughout those four years. So I think I had four or five leaders within those four years as as investors and our new board were making changes to the leadership team at a pretty rapid pace. So while I was losing leaders that I appreciated and and understood my value, it was providing me opportunities because as the leaders were picked off, I was being promoted. So I can't deny that there was um, you know, there was a benefit to me. But after investing the four years, um, a lot of my personal time and really the largest um scope of an LD team they had seen since its inception. I owned all areas of LD and uh learning and development. And I can't I don't want to go into details about the organization, so I don't want to give that away, but it was a pretty, I mean, there were over 50,000 employees, if that's any indication. Um, and so my role was pretty extensive. I was traveling a lot, opening up new stores uh with my training team, and I had tried to do some things on the team to bring in some fresh um new uh experience because of the scope and breadth that we were um the that I was being asked to move in, and I was denied. So I was really wearing a lot of different hats and being spread very thin, and my health started to suffer. So when I learned on Halloween afternoon that someone was being interviewed for my position, I just I I really had been at my wit's end. And so um, and I did walk in that day in my black-eyed pea costume and quit. Meaning I packed up a box, I told my boss um that I was done. And I, you know, later I considered my team in that process, but afterward, I I felt um a lot of regret for a while that maybe I'd made the wrong decision in leaving my team like that so abruptly. But I will tell you that my thought was the next two weeks, if I would have given two weeks' notice or month that I would have spent um leading that team, knowing that I'm departing, have had I have given my notice, it would not have been productive because I knew that they were looking to bring somebody in that was gonna have a different set of ideas, of experiences, that was gonna lead that team in a different direction. And I really felt like it was in the best interest of everybody if I just left. And so I did. So I spent the next year really trying to figure out what I wanted to do. That departure had not been planned. Um, but I knew that I needed to get healthy. And after 30 years of working for somebody else, I was excited about the idea of creating my own thing and starting to use my voice. So in February of that year, I started this podcast. And really, just about a year, maybe even just 10 months ago, have I really refined the work that I'm doing. So I tell you that story as an employee point of view and what it feels like and why people leave the workplace the way they do. Communication is key. If my leader would have talked to me about maybe some things that she felt like I could have done better, I I had performance reviews where I was not given any um critical feedback. So I just, it was really um felt like a sucker punch. And so I think just for leaders out there to know that there's there, it's it's important to treat your people with respect. I would have gladly given two weeks or four weeks notice um had the discussion been been had with me. But here we are. Um, and I have a business that I absolutely love. And so I want to tell you a little bit about the Thrive Culture Framework because I've created it for leaders like you that are building a culture, that care about your people, and you want to build a culture that is meaningful and impactful to your people. And so there's six components that I really took based on Christina Mozlock. She's a professor at UC Berkeley. She's done a lot of research on um just the aspects of job burnout. And the really cool thing that she talks about in her latest book is the responsibility of the individual and the responsibility of the organization. And I 100% agree there are two pieces to burnout and two people that are responsible or two groups of people. Um, and so I had my the own, you know, I wasn't, I had given everything to this job. I wasn't setting boundaries. I'm a high achiever. I wanted to succeed. Um, I wanted the title, I wanted the pay. I wanted the team to be successful. I wanted to make changes in the organization. I was giving my everything. I could have set better boundaries. Um, and so there's work that I'm doing personally, but really this Thrive Culture framework is for organizations. And so I flipped the aspects of burnout that Christina Mozlok talks about and flip them into something positive, maybe a solution for addressing those areas of burnout. And so I want to quickly cover the six areas with you and um and hopefully this brings you some value and can help you to create the culture that you want in your organization so so that you your employees don't experience what I did. So the first one is tribal values. The T in Thrive is tribal values. And what that means is taking your core values and embedding them in the way that you work. And what that means is looking at the employee lifecycle. How do you hire? How do you market to the to attract future employees? Are your core values well known? And to take it a step back, I mean, you have to have core values and a mission and a vision. The mission, vision, and core values are what I call the culture compass. It all starts there. If you have not defined a mission, a vision, and core values, that's your first step. The second step is the T in Thrive Culture, and that's tribal values, where you begin taking those core values, looking at your employee life cycle. That's the word we use in HR, but looking at that end-to-end process from the time the employee first hears about your organization until they depart. How are your core values showing up and being lived throughout the organization, throughout that process? The H in Thrive Culture is helpful processes and systems. And what that means is you don't have to have a ton of processes defined, but you probably should have some processes defined. And people should know their roles and responsibilities within those processes, because otherwise, if you think people know things and they don't, or it's in their head and they leave, you can be in a world of trouble. So taking that step to define processes, define roles and responsibilities really can improve your culture. The R in Thrive Culture is a responsive listening strategy. And that means putting in place surveys, focus groups, one-on-ones, anything that is going to allow you to hear from your employees. But that R isn't just surveys or isn't just listening, but it's responsive listening. And what that means is you have to let the employees know that you heard them. Whether you can do something about it or not, at that time, you have to let them know that you've heard them. The I in Thrive is inspiring inclusivity and belonging. This is a big one. Everyone wants to feel like they are a part of the team. Whether it's their individual team, a larger team, uh, employee resource groups, creating ways for employees to feel like they belong is critical. And that's a huge leadership role and team role. The role of their colleagues and peers and creating that inclusive environment. Um, and that means rewarding um or um disciplining, holding accountable when people don't behave in those inclusive ways. The V is a visible career and development opportunities so that employees are aware of what that career path looks like for them, what the development opportunities are that are available to them. If you have money in the budget for development and you don't communicate that, it's a it's a you're not gaining the value of you're not getting credit for having that in your budget. Um, maybe you don't have enough for everybody, and that's okay. Create a system so that they know when they're up next for a development opportunity. Create a system so that the right people, maybe it's a way to reward, which is the E in Thrive is empowering rewards and recognition. Everybody wants to be recognized or rewarded. It may just be in different ways. And understanding how your team likes to be rewarded and recognized is critical to you as a leader. So that's it in a nutshell. That's the Thrive Culture framework that I've created. What I do is I work with organizations, I assess them based on that Thrive Culture framework, and then I do consulting work and leadership coaching to get them where they want to be. I meet them where they are and get them where they want to be. And I am so happy that I get to do this work. It is just a thrill. And I also like to listen to, I always want to stay in touch with what's happening out there. I'm going to a culture conference in November, and I'm always asking CEOs, HR leaders what's working for them, what's not working for them. So I'd love to hear from you. If you want to email me at wendy at culturecoachwindy.com, I'd love to hear from you, hear any ideas you have for um what's working, what's not working in building out your culture. That's wendy at culturecoachwindy.com. And that's it for this episode. I just wanted to share a little bit about my burnout story. So if you haven't experienced burnout yourself, you could hear it from an employee's viewpoint. And I really do believe that if some of these components were in place, um, just some of them, I probably would not have burned out the way that I had. I take responsibility for my individual role in that. But as leaders, it's our job to take responsibility and create that environment. Um, it didn't used to be 30 years ago, but it is today. The workplace has evolved, and I'm glad that it has personally. Um, and I'm here to help. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you next week.