Lead From Here

The topic of work/life balance tends to start a multitude of conversations depending on who you talk to. Some may say there is no such thing, some may say you gotta hustle until your face falls off...others may say that capitalism is unhealthy and we should all live in harmony. I don't like absolutes, generally, and that goes for this topic as well.

As we get into the new year, it's important to lay a path for yourself and then share that with your people. It's easy to take the goals handed to you by your leaders or executives and focus solely on those, but it's important to do the same thing for yourself and push beyond your current situation.

A great way to do this is to ask those around you. Maybe it's your people, maybe it's best friends, your boss or your significant others! Ask them to give you candor filled feedback and let them know it's a safe space. This may be more difficult if you don't have the trust of your people, so if you don't have that yet, focus on that first!

Once you have a good understanding of your room for growth, layout the plan and EXECUTE! Goals and ideas mean absolutely nothing without EXECUTION!!!

I hope your 2024 is amazing and you layout a plan to continue to grow! If you aren't growing, you are dying in today's age!

Thanks for being here! Take care of yourself and those around you!

Just wanted to take a quick minute on this New Years Eve and say thank you to everyone that has joined in the first few months of Lead From Here!

2023 has been a big year of growth in my life and Lead From Here is a big part of that. 2024 will be more of the same! Growth and expansion, especially on Lead From Here. I have heard you, you have asked that I improve production quality, go deeper on topics and more episodes talking about leading outside of a company!

We will get all of that done and more! I am working on a book club, building out the newsletter and finally, one of the things I am most excited about...an app. The Lead From Here App will be a daily tool for helping manage your people, teams and leaders! More to come very soon, but it's VERY EXCITING!

Ok, this has gone long enough! As always, thank you for being here...I am excited to be a part of this community. I hope you have an amazing 2024 full of everything you want!

Take care of yourselves, your people and your community!

Happy New Year!

The best way to know if you have recovered from burnout is have you felt the pain of self reflection? Pain, why pain? Whatever happened, lost your job, took a sabbatical, kept working at a slower, less effective pace, that reality, your burnout...was all because of your actions.

That is a tough thing to hear, you may work for a hard company that doesn't value their employees and you felt that you needed to run yourself into the ground to work there...which led to burnout. That is still on you, you didn't know your limits or didn't communicate your limits or make people respect your limits. You are in control of where you work. I know that isn't easy to hear and is a convoluted statement, but ultimately if a company doesn't align with your values and respect your limits (or you)...then it's time to find a place that will.

Recovering from burnout means that you have a very clear picture of what got you there and consequently what you won't do anymore. You will learn your limits, communicate your limits and make sure people are respecting your limits...and if not, then you will find a place that will be able to challenge you and respect your limits. The pain was there to remind you in moments where you are beyond your limits to come back for a breather, to make sure that you don't make burnout and habit and most importantly you live a life full of contentment and happiness.

I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions or want to dive more into a topic, let me know. Thanks for being here!

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Continuing to build off of the last episode, I want to talk about how to you begin the recovery process with regards to burnout.

You have now communicated that you are burned out and have gotten to the point where you can focus on your recovery. If you quit or lost your job, then the first part should be much easier...if you are on a sabbatical or just taking a chunk of PTO, it will be a bit harder. The first and most important thing to do is disconnect. From work, from thinking about work, from doing work. Focus on friends, family, partner, hobbies, travel, gardening, whatever...anything that allows you to not be in "work mode".

If you quit or lost your job, there is the complication of your next job...so if you are going to apply to jobs or learn a new trade, set aside very focused chunks of time and when you aren't in that mode, don't think about it. Keep moving in those chunks of time, but ONLY during those chunks of time.

The overall keys to recovery are resetting your brain to remember what comfort, joy, balance looks like. It's important to remember this is going to be a SLOW process. It's not like you take a day or two...or even a week off...and you are back to normal. You are going to be processing grief, shame, embarrassment and anger to name just a handful of the emotions involved in recovery.

Shame and embarrassment, why would I feel those? There is nothing wrong with burning yourself out. You are correct, it's very common thing in life...but the shame and embarrassment come near the beginning because you aren't doing your job as you once did and your team suffers and more painfully at the end when you realize that it was you that put you in this state.

Yeah, that is the hardest part to overcome, but the most important part. You ignored your limits for too long and you put yourself into burnout by not knowing your limits or not communicating and living within your limits. If you don't get to this moment of enlightenment...you are doomed to repeat the cycle.

The most important thing in this process is to be kind to yourself, be patient and focus on doing things that set you on fire that aren't work related.

I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions or want to dive more into a topic, let me know. Thanks for being here!

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Building off of the last episode, I want to cover what happens when you hit burnout...what do you do first?

The first thing you need to do is talk to someone about it, then you need to figure out your options. I won't say it's impossible to work through burnout while continuing to work full time...it's just infinitely more difficult.

Who do I talk to and what options do I need to figure out?

I would talk to someone in your leadership group, whether that is an HR representative or a leader you trust, is up to you. Tell them where you are at and ask what options are available to you. Every company will have a different level of support, so it's important to understand if long or short term disability is an option, does your company off a leave of absence or a sabbatical? Can you take a chunk of PTO? Will FMLA work for you?

The key thing in this topic is to understand that depending on how healthy your company is, the news of you being burned out could be take the wrong way. There is always risk when asking for large chunks of time out or communicating that you don't have anything left to give at the moment. It can be read as weakness or incompetence by an unhealthy leader.

HR is a good spot because there are usually protections and you can go to them and get your options without your direct leadership core knowing. From there it's up to you how to proceed with communicating to who and when.

Make sure that you take burnout seriously because left un-communicated can also lead to risk. If all of a sudden your delivery or quality drops off, it will raise flags with your leaders and peers...if they don't have the context, you could end up out the door anyway.

I hope this was helpful, it's not legal advice and I suggest you know your states (or country's) rights before pushing to hard on anything with regards to mental health and burnout. If you have any questions or want to dive more into a topic, let me know. Thanks for being here!

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This topic is a very important topic with regards to burnout. Limits are a very important part of life and nowhere in your life is it more crucial to understand it than in your career.

It's ok to go beyond your limits to push the boundaries throughout your life. In fact, I would say that it's crucial to do so, as growth, innovation and evolution come from outside your current limits. The thing is, you can't live outside your limits all the time and if you try to, you will most certainly end up in burnout mode.

That all sounds great and understandable...but Jason, how do I know what my limits are? Well, if you feel comfortable and balance, you are inside your limits. If you are feeling anxious, nervous or uncertain, you are outside of your limits. Anxiety, Nervousness and uncertainty are all deemed as negative emotions, but it's really just your body saying we aren't comfortable. That is why it's important to find and expand those boundaries, so you can do more as a human and feel comfortable doing it.

If you are feeling overly tired, stressed out or getting sick often...first go see a doctor...then if all is well there, I would take time to reflect on your career and life. Are you living beyond your limits, in a place where you don't ever feel comfortable or are running yourself into the ground? Then you might be knocking on burnouts door or already in burnout.

It's important to go beyond your limits, but it has to be in short bursts, it's not healthy to live beyond your limits.

I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions or want to dive more into a topic, let me know. Thanks for being here!

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When people talk about bosses or leaders it seems to be in opposite extremes, "they are awesome!" or "they are the worst!". As you get deeper into your career, you will come across leaders that you look up, respect and feel drawn towards. That is a positive thing and will help you grow as a person and as a leader.

Building a relationship with your leader can be a very beneficial thing for both of you. You have someone that is helping you grow, looking out for opportunities for you and pushing you to new heights. They have a person that will help rally people to their cause, will go above and beyond to get the job done and will, in most cases, be a better employee.

The key to building a relationship with your leader is integrity. You may become the best of friends but at the end of the day, you have to remember that there will come a time where they have to put on boss hat. They may have to have difficult convos with you and if things get bad enough may have to fire you. Which is where the integrity comes in...if you are building a relationship with your leader to use that relationship to further your career or save your career ONLY. You aren't building it with integrity.

You want your leader to push you to grow, to call out your weaknesses so they can help you improve and push yourself further. They aren't a get out of jail free card. If you build the relationship on integrity and work hard to grow and push each other, you will absolutely help level each other up over time.

I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions or want to dive more into a topic, let me know. Thanks for being here!

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Fake it until you make it is something you hear a lot with regards to career moves and just generally in life. I think it's something that is important for people to do, because we rarely FEEL like we are ready for the next thing.

I get the question a lot...can you fake it until you make it as a leader? It's a good question and the answer is sort of.

The ways you can't EVER fake it until you make it as a leader is around the "soft skills". You can't fake caring. You can't fake wanting to help. You can't fake empathy, sincerity or kindness. A large percentage of people can sense when you aren't being genuine or sincere...so if you have to fake those things, this line of work probably isn't for you.

The ways you can fake and grow into after you have become a leader are the more technical skills. Things like learning excel, how to calculate ROI, public speaking, building presentations, etc. Basically anything that is a tactical part of a leaders job, you can learn as you go. If you are looking to grow in excel, check out Youtube or Udemy for a tutorial. If you are looking to become a better public speaker, try toastmasters or volunteer to present more at meetings.

The bottom line is you can't fake the human pieces of leadership but you can absolutely fake the tactical things.I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions or want to dive more into a topic, let me know. Thanks for being here!

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As a leader you are two things for your team, you are a shield and a sieve.

As a shield, your job is to block out the nonsense that is happening outside the team. Frustrated customers, angry executives, drama, chaos, ambiguous information. There is nothing productive in these things...all they will do is derail, distract and ultimately impact your team negatively. Sure if a customer or executive is frustrated, you need to handle that situation, but you take that to the team as a story of opportunity to help solve pain or get a project back on track. You never go to them and say "The CEO is really frustrated with our delivery as a team." This doesn't mean that you don't coach your team and work through problems that individuals have on the team, it just means that you keep that inside the team and don't let the outside world impact the team negatively.

As a sieve, your job is to filter out the things from outside the team that will be beneficial to the team. Credit, shoutouts, kudos, celebrations, happy customers, happy executives and the like are all things the team should hear about and in an enthusiastic manner. It's important to always make sure they are aware of all the positive impact. As a leader if you are getting credit or kudos, your team is directly responsible for that, so you should be sharing that with them and including them in the conversation in the moment is happens, even if they aren't around.

This may seem a little different, but you are a leader now...your success is based on how successful you can make your team. It's your job now to shield them from blame and pass on the credit to them.

I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions or want to dive more into a topic, let me know. Thanks for being here!

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