Mental Wealth Podcast

Rob

How do we create psychologically safe workspaces where employees truly thrive? What can we do to recognize the science of workplace burnout in ourselves and our colleagues? And how can organizations move forward beyond surface level Wellness programs to create lasting change? These questions are more critical than ever as workplace stress continues to rise and the majority of working age Americans say they’re experiencing work. Burnout today on the Mental health podcast. We’re speaking with behavioral psychologist Dr. Ethan Levine, whose groundbreaking research has had a profound effect on individuals and workplaces across the country. Dr. Levine brings decades of experience bridging the gap between psychological science and practical workplace solutions. We are delighted to share with you that the Mental Health Podcast has partnered with the American Red Cross. As part of our partnership, 50% of all proceeds from products purchased through our online store will now go to support the urgent needs of the American Red Cross. We want to thank everyone at the American Red Cross for their instrumental work. Please visit supportmentalwealthpod.com to learn more about our partnership. And thank you everybody for your support. For add free episodes of the mental health podcasts, head to mental health pod gumroad.com. Doctor Levine, how are you today?

Dr. Levine

I’m doing great and Rob and Macon, thank you so much for having me back.

Rob

The reason why we sort of came up with this topic for you, I think it’s an important one that a lot of people are discussing these days. I read a stat that 66% of the American working population is experiencing workplace burnout, as you know, a lot of people have a 5 to 9 after their nine to five. They’re trying to make as much money as possible in a difficult. Honor me, and I’d like to start there if I can. I’m just wondering if you could provide the signs that they should lookout for on an individual basis, that there may be overextending themselves a little bit.

Dr. Levine

Yeah, it’s. I’d like to also share, you know, before I answer the question, my perspective on why it’s gotten worse. I think that COVID is significant damage to employees and and employers because. All of a sudden, some people were out of jobs. Most people were ending up in situations where they couldn’t go in their workplace, so they weren’t getting the support. So it’s almost like toxic. Talk having to go back to a routine of that they had adapted to in some way shape or form, and I hear over and over people are finding this really difficult and from an employer perspective, they’re finding that people don’t want to go back. You know, they are willing to come in two days, three days. Days a week. But they want to be home. They want. They have had some degree of that life balance for a period of time and you know the circumstances weren’t great, but they discovered their spouses, their families, their kids, their hobbies. And now you took it away from me again. So I think that on some level contributes to the burnout. As for the signs, we’re the last to know. The people around us will know before we do as a person who has experienced burnout. Was earlier in my career some of the things that I saw in me and I observe in others, I had a job where I was working partly in the school system, but it was a contract. So I’d find myself driving there and I’d drive right past the place, keep going for another 15 minutes and then turn around and come back. Because I have a sense of responsibility people find they’re sleeping too much. Not enough. It’s a disrupted sleep. Interpersonal relations get messed up. People are on edge. They find they react to things. What I hear more often than anything. Else, as people get to the weekend and they can’t get themselves to do the basic chores, I have to clean the house well, they let that go. I have to get some groceries. Well, maybe I can make do with what we have.

Rob

So the immediate sign is a lack of energy, but what you’re saying is the people around you are more likely to notice the symptoms and the signs before you are. Yeah. So it’s almost like you gotta have feedback from that network around you. And then that can be the impetus to to make a change and maybe sort of think about things a little differently. I’d like to get into the idea of guilt for employees in the workplace. What can someone do if they feel guilty for not taking on extra work? Maybe the employer is asking a lot of them and they don’t want to say no. What can they do in that kind of situation?

Dr. Levine

Yeah, I can give you several different perspectives on it. You know, a lot has to do with how you’re feeling. If you’re feeling this. Of I’m not competent to do the job in that situation, it’s important to whether it’s getting coaching, counseling. If you happen to have a boss who is supportive or a employee assistance program, or some way if you’re not feeling confident that’s an internal to me. Issue it’s.

Dr. Levine

Becomes perpetuated because you know the workplaces overburdened with too much to do, not enough people to do it. The flip side of it, and I I’m speaking in my own situation, I feel like I’m really good at what I do, but that doesn’t eliminate the possibility that. My boss will come to me with 34510 things that they want done and my personal strategy has always been. To say you know I’m I can handle three things. Here’s the 10 things you’ve asked me to do right now. You pick. I’ll do any of those three things. It doesn’t matter which ones you choose. Happy to do them, but I can only do 3 right now, and we can revisit this when those are done. Pick another three. That way you assert some control over the situation. Yet you still allow your manager to have the sense that they’re directing, you know what’s the highest priority, because the truth is a lot of times we don’t know. You know, I might think just because something’s urgent doesn’t mean it’s most important.

Mukund

Right. How do you handle a situation when your superior comes and says I need everything done? Which?

Dr. Levine

Yeah, I I in that situation, I’d say. Of course I want to do everything. In fact, I want to exceed your expectations. I just need a sense of what’s the priority, because clearly neither you nor I can do 10 things at once or certainly do not do them well. So which is the most important to you to have done? For whatever the reason, tell me. I need direction. About what’s most important, and then let’s go through it. If your boss is collegial in that regard, or if you have an external consultant. Or somebody, whether they’re internal to the company to help with that process the way you do prioritization, it’s very simple. You say, alright, here’s two things. Which one of these is more important? You say this one? OK, then let’s takes thing two and thing three. Which of those is most important? So they pick one of those. And if they picked the one, the one that was second the first time, then you know that that’s more important. But if they pick the other one, then you go back to the first item and say, alright, let’s look at those two, pick one and you can gradually you know it takes a period of time. But you can create a list because you’ve matched 2 things against each other and you or your boss can pick one. Eventually you have the full list of what’s the order in which I should do things.

Rob

I like that because you’re keeping the hierarchy of the company intact while maintaining your own personal hierarchy. What you’re prioritize and what your boss wants to prioritize to. I really like that idea. You keep the structure in place.

Dr. Levine

Yeah. And. And you’re not being confrontational, you’re partnering, you know, with your boss or. And with the company to assure the highest priorities are taken care of first so everybody wins and, you know, and the key behind it. Is burnout and that sense of, you know, I’m a failure. I can’t do it comes from here’s 10 things I can’t do it well, none of us can do 10 at once.

Rob

Absolutely. There’s a the idea of the workplace and that the stress that builds up in people, there’s a tension there now in a lot of workplaces, as you said, people that have been told that they have to come to work after working from home during COVID and the the transition that takes place, I’m wondering if you could speak to what an employee can do. To. Better manage that workplace conflict. Maybe they’ve got a boss or another fellow employee that they have issues with. They have communications. Do with. Is there anything that you can tell them in terms of a tangible approach to dealing with conflict at work? And there may be some things that are mistakes that people often make in trying to sort of approach the issue head on.

Dr. Levine

To me, the simplest things you focus on the task when you focus on the person, that’s where you get in trouble. It’s it’s really that simple. It’s just this is about the task. I know, you know, I know you and I are have different perspectives, but. Let’s talk about how we approach getting this done, because you if it’s a fellow employee and I both want to please our boss or our bosses. So it’s in both of our best interest to get the task done. Let’s create a plan so that we get it done and I’m not being unrealistic in the sense we all know that. Some people you get along with better than others. Some people you work with. Part of that is the personal journey. I think it’s very important for people to have self-awareness. For me, being completely transparent and my colleagues know this. I’m not detailer. I’m very good at future thinking. I’m very good at big picture. I’m very good at putting together puzzles sometimes that nobody else sees, but if you give me an endless series of tasks that. Of detail and you’re making a mistake because I’m not gonna be good at it. So for me, in a leadership role, what I’m always seeking to do is partner with people or hire people that have what I don’t have, that they’re better at at those things than I am. I always try to hire people that are better than me. Because then I know the outcome is gonna be the best possible for the individuals and for the company, but really it’s very simple. Make it about the task, not about the person.

Rob

I love that advice because it’s like you said, it’s very direct and it’s very straightforward, but they can focus it sort of gives them a sense of control. They don’t have to think about the, the external. They can focus on the internal and that’s really great. There’s, there’s the other side of that is sort of maintaining motivation while you’re dealing with that kind of negative influence. Is there a step that you think that individuals can take? To maintain that internal motivation, or is that something they’re gonna have to develop individual?

Dr. Levine

Well, it’s, it’s both. Obviously we have to be honest with ourselves about what makes us feel good about us and if I’m doing the things that make me feel good about me, you know, then I have that internal motivation to do that. This is a simple little psychological technique that I. People about that seems to be effective when the other, when that dust around you, you know all that external stuff, the stimulus is getting your way. Take a minute and it really doesn’t take more than a minute and you think about whatever that noise is. Shut your eyes. Imagine the noise is a cloud. And when the wind blows, just visualize the cloud going away and then come back to work. And the nice thing, it’s not pharmaceutical. So you know, it’s completely something you can do as many times as you want and you, you just recognize when it’s becoming too much background noise and just let it go, literally let it go. I think I may have said this to you in a prior podcast that that works for headaches as well. If you if you get a headache, you know. Visualize it in the cloud, imagining it floating away, your headache will go away, but you can you can try that or pain. It’ll go away. It’s the same with that background noise at. You know, being honest, I mean, there’s individuals in my own workplace that I struggle more to work with. But again, focus on the task and I really work hard not to take what they may say as personal. And I think that’s where people get in trouble. The fact that somebody uses a voice tone they don’t like this fact that somebody doesn’t recognize that I’m nine months pregnant and might need a, you know, a minute. Break to step away. You know, it’s just if you personalize it, then you end up more stressed. And then the situation gets worse. So if you need to step out, I can go outside for a minute. Just. You know, the bathroom historically has been a wonderful place for people to get away from it. You know, you go in there and people are generally not gonna be following you in with information or work tasks.

Rob

Just going for the bathroom to reset a little bit and take it from there. That what you just said about how your management communicates with you brings me to my next question. The management HR side of things for communicating with employees, let’s say that are going through some sort of behavioral health issue. Is there signs that managers can recognize among employees that maybe they need maybe an arm around the shoulder a little bit more? So.

Dr. Levine

There’s a saying that I love and this is. My leadership style, but I didn’t get it from me. I got it from a guy who I admire tremendously says people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. So it’s a constant management style, which means at the times when people are going through stress, they’re very comfortable coming to you and talking about it. When as a leader, as a manager of the things I look for, something’s different. Something changes, they arrive later. They seemed to be staring off into space. They’re flushed, their voice tone is different. The quality of the work is different. I will always then say, come on, let’s let’s go have lunch together. Let’s go for a walk together and I’m. I always phrase it as I might be wrong. You know the. You know, I might be wrong because you don’t want to be accusatory in that situation for a lot of different reasons. So I might be wrong, but here’s what I notice. If you’re comfortable, I’d love to be able to help you if if my help would be of value.

Rob

That’s XI love, that approach. It’s very sort of open to starting the conversation and then it leaves the employee to then say more about what’s going on. It sort of starts the conversation. That’s the important part.

Dr. Levine

This is a well researched technique called appreciative inquiry, and that’s a way you can Google it. You can look it up and it’s a way to have those kinds of conversations where you’re you’re you’re showing appreciation for the person and you’re gently inquiring to try to get them to tell. Whatever their story is.

Rob

I just want to get into the the the idea of an employee that starts at a new workplace that they’ve been through a stressful event. Maybe they were fired and maybe difficult circumstances from a previous job. Are there any steps that an employee can take before they start this new role to allow themselves to have a renewed focus and renewed take on the workplace that they don’t want to take those? Stresses to the to the new.

Dr. Levine

Yeah, I can answer that one. Personally, I lost the job once, you know, got let go and it was I found out within 30 minutes of finding out that I was going to be a father for the first time. So that was a relatively stressful power and it would be really easy to be upset, you know? In lots of different ways, you know to be excited and upset and stressed. My take away what I learned from it is. Rather than brushing off what had happened, I think it’s important to not rush into what you’re about to do. You know you have practical reasons. You need income, obviously, but to think about what could I have done differently, you know, sometimes you did nothing. Where the company hired a new president. Change this and this and this and I was in a different layoff situation. I had to let 17 people go, including myself, but that just was strictly because they changed their direction. So there’s nothing much to learn there. But if it is associated in some way with your own behavior, the best approach is to say. What is? What could I? Do differently so that that kind of thing would not have happened, and in that particular situation where I found out it was being that I actually. Uncovered something about my own behavior that has proven invaluable and future jobs. And because I’m I’m a different person. I handle the exact same kind of situation very differently because I was. Look, we all screw up sometimes. We all do things that, Gee, I wish I could have done that.

Dr. Levine

Differently? Well, you can in the future, you can’t in the past so that you know, just give yourself a break and figure out what it is and then do something different for the future. That’s the best advice for me.

Rob

I can’t even imagine that the stress of that situation fanning out you’re a father from that. That must have been, and you seem to have come out with it with the right attitude from it. So it seems to have worked out for the best, but I can’t even imagine how much stress that must have. You must have.

Dr. Levine

Well, I’ll share one other detail there, which you might find interesting. I don’t know why, but I had the Peace of Mind to say, well, what’s the issue right now and the issue is I’m going to be a dad. I need a job, and I could focus on the thing that I’m upset about. But I I gave myself permission to be upset once I got my next job, and within 30 days I had one of the most intriguing jobs I’ve ever had in my life. I got hired by a culinary institute to design A training program to teach chefs how to manage people. Chefs know how to cook. Chefs don’t know how to manage people. That was 30 days after I had lost that other job I had. I applied. To you laugh, I applied to 500 jobs the next week after it happened because I needed a job now. Now, if I’ve got multiple opportunities, I could select what’s the best fit. What’s most interesting. But the bottom line is I needed a job. So at the point where I got that other one, I said, you know, what doesn’t matter. It happened, I learned. I’m moving on.

Rob

That is unbelievable approach to it. And again, I can’t imagine that stressful situation, but it seems like it works out.

Well. This concludes our initial conversation with Doctor Levine. Thank you so much for listening your time and support means so much to our entire team. In our next recording, we’re introducing a new addition to our podcast questions from you. The listener, listen in. As Doctor Levine answers your workplace mental health questions.