Your Future Realized

63: The Unseen Strength and Emotional Labor of Ops Leaders

• Laura Malinowski • Episode 63

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Find the full transcript and more resources for operations execs at yourfuturerealized.com/63.

To everyone out there leading operations:  I see you being the glue holding your organization together! In this special episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Mira Brancu, a seasoned consulting psychologist with leadership experience across various industries.

We discussed how today’s global issues, geopolitical tensions, economic shifts, and environmental concerns, are influencing the workplace and adding pressure on operations leaders. We also covered strategies for managing stress, setting boundaries, and finding strength through community support. And we explored the unique hurdles faced by women and people of color in leadership roles.

Whether you're stressed about complex workplace dynamics or just ready to level-up your leadership skills, you’re in the right place. Keep listening for practical tips in these tricky times. 

To everyone out there leading operations:  I see you being the glue holding your organization together! In this special episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Mira Brancu, a seasoned consulting psychologist with leadership experience across various industries.

We discussed how today’s global issues, geopolitical tensions, economic shifts, and environmental concerns, are influencing the workplace and adding pressure on operations leaders. We also covered strategies for managing stress, setting boundaries, and finding strength through community support. And we explored the unique hurdles faced by women and people of color in leadership roles.

Whether you're stressed about complex workplace dynamics or just ready to level-up your leadership skills, you’re in the right place. Keep listening for practical tips in these tricky times. Find the full transcript and more resources for operations execs at yourfuturerealized.com/63.

Laura:

So, we've got about 25 minutes, so let's dive in and make the most of the time we do have. 

You're out there working in organizations. How do you see geopolitical instability affecting the workplace? 

Understanding the Impact of Global Instability on the Workplace

Dr. Brancu: 

Yeah, you know, and you name these things, and some people are going to be like, what does that have to do with organizations? What does that have to do with companies trying just trying to make money? Everything! I mean, everything. And, and the reason is you don't have to necessarily like be tracking closely the politics of things happening globally in other countries. However, you have people working for you and people are affected in different ways by what they see on the news or in terms of their own family members. 

If you're a global company and you have locations that are in these areas or close to these areas, they're nervous. Your employees are nervous. And if you have employees, for example, in locations of two different countries that are experiencing this turmoil against each other. There's a war between two countries or turmoil or tension up, how are those employees going to feel comfortable, safe, working together, bringing up things that are concerning? Or if we have family members in or near those areas? Whatever is happening in our personal lives or around the world affect people. Yeah, we're humans. That's who works for you. And so, I often see that what is happening within an organization is a microcosm of what is happening out there in the world. And it's being played out in various different ways. 

For example, I've seen in the last two to four years an increase in stress, in burnout, in depletion of people's coping resources. And what that means is greater and greater difficulty having conversations, like critical conversations, experiencing conflict between people and then knowing how to move through it. 

Instead, I see an increase in entrenched or polarized views or greater tensions and difficulty repairing when there's ruptures in trust or experiences of ruptures in trust that have increased. 

All of that is a direct impact of what people are experiencing as constant, ongoing kind of feeling of instability, chaos, stress, worry, anxiety about what's happening in the world and how it's affecting them. And so, yeah, it's being played out within our organizations. And people are looking for some place where they feel stability, where they feel like they can be effective and productive.

Navigating Diverse Perspectives in Leadership

Laura: 

And it's so interesting because stability for one person might not really feel like stability to somebody else either. So, there's sort of a dance between them. In several of these issues, there are different views that the leadership has to be able to understand and hold that dance of being authentic and true to themselves. But also sharing and creating a space where everybody feels safe to share their points of view to whatever degree is appropriate. And it's tricky. 

Dr. Brancu: 

Yeah, absolutely. How can we both be our authentic selves and share concerns that we have and hold space for different points of view and somebody who might feel differently or. Sometimes I find that some people are more stressed out and worried about one thing happening, and, you know, other folks are not. And then, you know, that flips depending on what the situation is. 

What's difficult here is that if everyone felt the same way about a situation, then you kind of know what to say as a leader or how to offer some support. And you would say, “Hey, we're all feeling this way, and here's how I….” But that's not always the case these days. Different people are feeling different ways. So, trying to navigate even the communication plan around that, to respect differences in people's experiences and how they feel about it is a lot more challenging right now. 

Laura: 

Plus, the person who's responsible for the communication plan is bringing their own point of view and their own stress and their own overwhelm or delight that this happened. 

Dr. Brancu: 

That's right. Yeah, that's right. Exactly. Yeah. 

Strategies for Managing Stress and Building Resilience

Laura: 

How do you recommend that somebody deal with that? Who's going to be listening to this largely are operations executives, but not only operations executives. People who are leading in companies and dealing with these sorts of issues. Is there anything that you've seen is particularly helpful to solve this almost unsolvable problem? 

Dr. Brancu: 

Easy peasy (laughing)

Laura: 

Do you happen to have a magic wand over there? 

Dr. Brancu: 

Yeah! No, there are some important things to think about. And you started talking about one of these, which is, we are human too. We are affected too. And it's important. I wrote a couple of articles on this in Psychology Today. I wrote one on how to communicate stability after a destabilizing event. I wrote about leading through crisis and how to process for yourself before responding. I also wrote navigating emotional triggers at work. All of these can apply. And what I wrote in there is that number one, sort of recognizing the impact that something is having on you first is important. And how long you've been impacted by that situation. 

I remember when I was in a leadership role and I was facing this hurricane crisis in North Carolina and they were talking about evacuating certain areas and I started struggling with, do I focus on my needs and my family and protecting them and evacuating and leaving earlier, or do I stick around as a leader in this organization and help my employees and what they need? And that was very difficult to think through. And that was a kind of like a “simple” situation. It was an acute situation. It was not a long term. 

Now let's say you take a much longer-term issue that's happening for a year or years where we might be feeling on constant alert or on constant edge, high stress. Our cortisol levels have been at a certain high level. Right. And in those situations, it's important to recognize first:

How much are my own coping resources depleted? How much have I been challenged with?

Lack of sleep, appetite, inflammation. Stress can really wreak havoc on a body, and you know, thinking about where am I in this and what do I need? The first thing to do is reaching out to trusted colleagues, your leadership team, and aligning with them, connecting with other leaders who are going through this. Asking: What are you doing? How are you handling this? Do I have my support system? And slowing things down enough to be able to think through your options and how you're feeling affected and what you need before you try to show up for others.

Laura:

This really sounds like that ‘Put your oxygen mask on first’. I mean, everybody sort of knows this, but I don't know that everybody does it. In fact, I don't think most of us do. 

Dr. Brancu: 

That's exactly right. And you know, this is especially salient for people who are used to being constantly, you know, run, run, run, go, go, go. They're working in an intense environment. They're always comfortable in crisis or in rapid urgency mode. (And) they don't always recognize or pay attention when their own coping resources have started to be cut away and depleted. 

If you're noticing you're snapping more at people or you're more tired at night, those kinds of things are early warning signs that the body is starting to say, ‘Hey, hello, pay attention to me. I'm not as well. I need you to sort of focus on what I need first right now!’

Beyond that, you want to think about like your threat response and other people's threat responses when we're under a lot of stress. There's fight, flight, you know, flee or freeze or fawn. I might be the kind of person that like, wants to get into it and butt heads and argue about how I'm right or whatever. You might be the kind of person that retreats and doesn't want to talk about it. Now, what if I start chasing after you to talk through this so that we can get a plan together? That's not the best thing for me to do with you because you're going to get more irritated and more stressed out with me. So just recognizing our threat responses, recognizing the differences in our leadership styles. Am I the kind of person that wants to cross things off the list and results oriented, but I sometimes miss the relational part of things? Or do I overcompensate and over worry about the relational aspect of things? But then I don't hold people accountable, or I don't sort of move things forward? That's going to affect the outcomes too. 

All of this is just recognizing our styles of how we respond to stress, how we respond to crises. Can we get some breathing room and slow down and think through. Can we get some support systems to help us think through this so that we're not alone and we’re not taking on the world here in isolation. And then eventually thinking through timing of communication. ‘Can I buy some time when I'm still thinking through how do I want to show up and say what I need to say or what other people need to hear of me? Have I processed enough and felt comfortable enough that I can be there for others and say something that's useful to them?’ So even thinking through, like the communication plan and process and the timing of it can sometimes help. 

Laura: 

As I'm listening to you, I'm also left with the urge to sort of take on everybody else's issues and pain and challenges and that it is impossible to do it yourself. Some of the most successful ways I've seen that handled is to ensure that there are resources shored up. When I think about people who are handling budgets and planning ahead and working with HR folks to be looking ahead, to have resources who can come in and support and to provide that. And have an assumption that people are going to need that at this point, I don't think that was an assumption for a long time now. It feels like, my goodness, that that's kind of just keeps the ship going at this point. 

The Importance of Community and Support Systems

Dr. Brancu: 

Yeah, I, I heard a conversation with Simon Sinek and Trevor Noah about this. That like it used to be that we had, you know, communities and networks and groups outside of work that, you know, functioned as various ways of getting our needs met and our mental health. Did you see that one? 

Laura: 

I did. Churches and bowling leagues and all these things. 

Dr. Brancu: 

That’s right. And now we sort of look towards work life to offer all of that to us. And that means people in leadership roles are feeling a lot more demands and expectations on them and that, that they can sort of meet all of these needs, which of course is really challenging and impossible. You can't meet everybody's needs all the time. But just recognizing that there is that pressure that we're absorbing.

Laura: 

What a great advertisement then for community building beyond work, which of course that isn't what an operations executive is doing, but to encourage people to find those resources in their own lives. Covid really knocked the wind out of a lot of those sails and sent everybody working at home and alone. Now people are coming back, but there's still sort of this very siloed orientation sometimes. 

Dr. Brancu: 

Yeah. You know, and that brings up boundary setting. So, you know, if operations executives are absorbing all this stuff and they're worried about it, one way to help people is through boundary setting and expectation setting. It's through saying, ‘Hey, I can help you with this, this and this. And we're creating this plan and we're putting in place this. And we already have all these infrastructures available to you. And that is how we're creating the kind of stability as best as we can within this organization. And if you need more, if you're worried about your mental health, if you haven't had the opportunity to create a community outside of work, if you're finding yourself coming home at work and you're not engaging with other people, is there a way that you can do that outside of work so that you can leave work at work?’ That's a way that operations executives and other leaders can help their employees think through ‘What systems can I put in place outside of work? Because it's not available in work at work. And I shouldn't expect it to be available at work either. But here's what I can get through the systems that have already been put in place. ‘

Laura: 

And so now you've brought up finding additional resources in your free time. And there's not equal scales necessarily for what everybody has available outside of work or what responsibilities there are outside of work or what pressures there are having nothing to do with work. I'm curious, what are the sorts of unique challenges or approaches that you're seeing for women and people of color for whom there's kind of perhaps an additional step of challenge to be able to handle these things. 

Addressing Unique Challenges for Women and People of Color Leading Operations

Dr. Brancu: 

Yeah. I mean, if you think about. Well, first, let's just take operations execs. If you think about them within an organization, they're. They're usually the quiet warriors, right? They're in the background. They're not always visible. If everything's stable, you don't hear from them. You don't know that how much they're doing to make things this stable. 

Laura: 

No news is good news, right? 

Dr. Brancu: 

No news is good news. But then if you add that additional layer of somebody from a marginalized background or a woman, a woman of color who already has that experience of not always being visible for the work that, that they contribute to the workplace, the creation of stable, healthy work environments, strong teams with strong infrastructures. A lot of that is emotional labor. And it goes unseen. Invisible emotional labor. They might come home even more exhausted, more depleted, especially if they're not being recognized. Now, this doesn't happen in all organizations, but in situations where they're not being recognized for that work, and they have had this lifetime of experiences where they have not been recognized. Getting additional supports and being within a community of people that have had those experiences is important. I'll just put a plug in. I have a community like that for that, especially for that specific reason. The Tower Scope Leadership Academy was specifically made for women and marginalized folks who are looking for a community where there’s no judgments, not competitive, but getting support and not feeling isolated in these experiences. And so just thinking about, like, for everything that we give to create the stability in our organizations, for others to thrive, we must give to ourselves as well. We deserve it, and it's really important.

Laura: 

And it helps us be able to serve. The point I often hear is that ‘I can't put on my own oxygen mask because it's so important they get theirs.’ I think there's a forgetting that the more oxygen you have, the more you can give, the more you can. Not that that is necessary or what you should be doing but like to feed that passion. If the point is to serve others, which is often basically what I'm hearing and finding that, that your ability to serve is so diminished when you're not taking care of yourself first. And it’s easy to forget in the moment because it just feels like a very binary choice. Am I going to go step outside for a minute? Am I going to answer these six emails? And it feels like it's just a minute choice, but it really impacts your system. 

Setting Boundaries to Prevent Burnout

Dr. Brancu: 

In our community we had this guest panel speaker, you know, around overachieving and burnout, resiliency and wellness. Taylor Elise Morrison. And she has, she owns Inner Workout as an app and a book and her company. And one of the things that she reminded us of was that burnout came from the healthcare field, nursing and compassion fatigue. When you over care and when you don't put boundaries on your level of empathy and the amount of caring that you offer to other people, that's how burnout starts happening because you deplete so much of yourself to the efforts of other people's needs. 

I think about my own sort of growth in this area where I went from overdoing it. Okay, I still overdo some things, but overachieving, right. I still do that. But like the people pleasing stuff. Women are socialized to, to please others, to support others, to nurture others, but to the, to, to the expense, at the expense of losing themselves in that effort. And when I personally started finding myself again and feeding into and pouring into the needs that I had and the aspirations and vision that I had and putting boundaries on certain things, it didn't keep me from being effective with supporting other people. It helped me become more effective, more helpful because I knew where I stopped and someone else started and I knew what I could offer and what was something that I needed to sort of put back on them to take care of because they owned that thing. 

Laura: 

What would you recommend if someone, if someone wants to get there, if they're sort of trapped over in that sort of people pleasing, can't get there. They can see where they're supposed to go, but, but it's like it just doesn't feel right. It does feel almost instinctual to stay where you are. With all your vast experience, if you can just call that down to one or two tiny tidbits, what do you recommend? 

Tiny Habits for Massive Change in Leadership

Dr. Brancu: 

Well, I'm writing a book on this. I'm in the middle of it. I think right now it's going to be called Enough of Never Enough. 

One of the activities that I'm writing about is the first thing to do is just to track when you say yes versus no in any given situation, whether it's like an amazing opportunity or somebody asks you to do something. Like every single time there's a decision point and you say yes or no. Have a two-by-two post it, track yes versus no and ‘Did I regret it or was I glad about it?’ Start tracking. And this is such an operations thing to do. It's such a data nerd thing to do. But like you start tracking for yourself: When did I regret saying yes? When was I relieved that I said no? 

All that data will give you some insight about like what you're learning about yourself and where you need to start attending more so that you can start placing some boundaries. But at least it also gives you language. No, I'm really sorry. I've noticed over time that when I say yes to these kinds of things, this is what happens. And then it doesn't work out either for you or for me. And so, I just can't.’ And then you could add some negotiation to that like, ‘Yes, I can do this, but only under these circumstances because I've learned I'm at my best under these circumstances.’ That is the way to start slowly easing into practicing this. But first noticing where the areas of tension are. 

Laura: 

I appreciate this because it's, it's powerful, but it's relatively small. Like literally you can have a little thing of post its and just track it literally at the end of the day for five minutes. It builds an awareness and starts to build that muscle that’s like doing crunches at the gym. It only might matter a little bit today, but if you keep doing it every day, over a week or a month or over time, those muscles get stronger, your awareness gets stronger.  I appreciate the tiny step that it takes to build something big. 

Dr. Brancu: 

The whole book is about like, you know, tiny habits that have massive change that you don't have to change your entire life around. And if we're going to connect it back to, like, where we started with, you know, creating stability. And in a, you know, geopolitical instable world, it doesn't necessarily mean you have to make this massive change to make an impact in your organization to create stability. It is tiny things like:

  • How much can I be there for people and where can I place the boundaries?
  • Where can we tweak our policies and procedures or infrastructure? 
  • What can we let people know is already existing for them to use? 

And that reminder of stability that you've already put in so much to create stability helps people. So, it's, it's little tiny things like that. 

Laura: 

Yeah. Thank you so much. Already. The time has flown. We didn't get through a third of what I hoped. Maybe we'll do a part two of this. 

Dr. Brancu: 

Sure! 

Laura: 

Mira, thank you so much for being here. It has been delightful to connect with you and do it live on LinkedIn. And thank you to everyone who's joining and those catching the replay. Thank you for listening in. I'm going to put up a couple things here. If you want to connect with Mira, please do. She's here on LinkedIn. Also, we didn't even get to talk about this, but Mira's got a new book. 

Exploring Dr. Mira Brancu’s Latest Work on Workplace Politics

Dr. Brancu: 

In 2021, I wrote the Millennials Guide to Workplace Politics. And we just came out just recently with the Millennials Workbook for Navigating Workplace Politics. You don't have to get the first book to understand the second book, but it's just navigating workplace politics. It's not just for millennials; it’s just part of a series. And it helps you work through lots and lots of different ways to think about proactive and reactive measures when you're navigating complex workplace politics. 

Laura: 

Excellent. And to the listeners: If you have any expertise that you'd like to share that would benefit operations executives and you'd like to be a guest on a LinkedIn Live session like this, just drop me a line. Mira, thank you again! 

Dr. Brancu: 

Thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun!

Connecting with Dr. Mira Brancu

To connect with Mira, you can find her here:

Share Your Expertise with Operations Executives

If you have expertise to share that you think would benefit other operations executives and would like to be a guest on a LinkedIn live session like this, please just connect with me and we'll explore what might be possible and bring even more value to our community.