Kay Daigle

Julie Pierce

Julie Pierce reminds all who are leaders in any position of the importance of unplugging like a pro, taking time to decompress. In this conversation with Kay Daigle, Julie schools us on why it’s so difficult to do. As an experienced leader and now a coach, Julie has lots of tips for ways to unplug that work no matter what your role or leadership position entails.

Unplugging like a pro is doable and so necessary for the care of your soul and those who depend on you.

This episode is available on video as well.

00:21 Introduction

Kay >> Hi. I’m Kay Daigle. Welcome to the Beyond Ordinary Women Podcast and video series. My guest today is Julie Pierce. Julie, we are so glad to have you back.

Julie >> I am thrilled to be here. Always loved being on the podcast with you.

Kay >> Well, we love having you and you have such a wealth of information. I just want to get started so that the people who are listening can learn from you and learn how to unplug like a pro, because that’s what we’re talking about today. Let me tell you just a little bit about Julie. Julie does have a history of working on church staffs and leading communications and marketing efforts.

And Julia and I met quite some time ago now on a church staff. We were working together on a church staff and those were the roles that she had. But she’s also done leadership development in churches, and she now coaches executives and teams.

There’s a lot more about Julie on our website, so I don’t want to go into every single thing that she’s done, but it’s a lot and she has a lot of experience in this area. And I know that you’re going to want to hear everything that she has to say.

You can find out more about her on our website, BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org. Go to the dropdown menu where it says About Us and go down to Video/Podcast Contributors and you can read more about what she’s done. So Julie, this is a prevalent thing that people don’t unplug.

How would you describe what’s going on in our culture that people don’t unplug?

Julie >> Yeah. Well, I love this topic because I desperately needed to learn how to do this. In other words, I learned the hard way.

Kay >> Yeah.

Julie >> And like we do so many of our lessons, right?

Kay >> Yeah, pretty much I’ve learned everything I know, I learned the hard way. I messed up badly and learned. Yeah.

Julie >> Yes. And so this was one of those things for me. And I think particularly now, we hear these phrases all the time. We’re accessible 24/7. Everything is going 24/7, whether it’s the news cycle or accessibility to anything and everything. You know, places rarely closed down, whether it’s Sunday or at all. You know, there’s, there are so many expectations as to be accessible and available all the time.

Kay >> Yeah.

Julie >> And we also live in a time where little things that can be blown up into huge things and everyone has this heightened sense of urgency all the time. And so we don’t have a proper understanding or proportion for what priorities really are. And so it just adds on this pressure. It doesn’t matter if we are in a full time staff position, part time or a volunteer position.

We feel that pressure all the time. And so it’s not a flaw that we individually experience. It’s really this collective experience right now in our culture and in our world. And so it’s no surprise that what the end result of that is, is that we end up burning out. We end up burning up relationships in our lives.

We end up physically ill. All kinds of things happen with our physical health, much less our mental health. Are all of this accessible availability, pressure to not unplug really does have all these dramatic consequences that can end up having just, again, dramatic consequences on our lives, on our ministries, on our relationships that, quite frankly, we were never designed to be that way, ever.

So it’s really against God’s design. It’s something we have to be intentional about, to be almost countercultural with.

Kay >> Yeah. Well, you know, I really have found that people in ministry are just as bad, if not worse, than people in secular jobs. And so when you threw this out as the topic, I was all over it because my experience of just working with people on church staffs shows me that that’s the case.

And you can even, you can even be a volunteer, I know some volunteers that are just at the church all the time. Like, it is like it is as bad as a job it is. They don’t feel like they have time to do anything else.

Why do you think ministry people are like that? Do you have an idea?

Julie >> Well, I have opinions all day long. I don’t know if they’re worth anything but buy my opinion on this is I think when we add a spiritual layer on to this. We feel like we are doing God’s work. Well, Jesus wouldn’t turn them away. Well, they’re asking for this one thing. So who who else is going to respond how to if I’m not the hands of feed of Jesus in this, then we add on all of this pressure on to it that I think in some ways makes it worse.

All right. So that’s just my opinion. I don’t know. What do you think? Why do you think that is?

Kay >> Well, I think that is definitely true in some cases for sure. Definitely. I mean, I always had this sense. I mean, I ended up burning out at one point, and I felt like. You know, I went to a counselor and she was very helpful. And she’s like, what is it that you think would happen, Kay? What do you think’s going to happen if you don’t do this?

And I’m like, I don’t know how the whole thing fail? She’s like, so you don’t think God has it? Well, I do, but I guess I really don’t.

So I agree. And I’m sure that’s not the only reason for it in some cases. I also think that there’s just a lot of competition in churches, the stuff because of all of the accessibility. It’s like here you’re competing not just with the church down the street, but with the church in New York City or someplace.

Julie >> Yeah, that.

Kay >> Yeah, that you need to be doing what they’re doing somehow.

Julie >> Yeah, that’s a great point, Kay. There is this unspoken competition or comparison that is constantly going on.

And I think also this work really matters, right? We care deeply for God’s people. And it is really hard to say no to an opportunity to serve and love and care for—whether it’s the least of these, whether it’s the people on our path. Like it’s really hard to say no to an opportunity to care for our neighbors. Right? And so I think that’s another layer to it.

Something that you said about your counselor’s wise advice. Gosh. My counselor sometimes is a little sassy. And so, like, whatever he said that was like, yeah, that sounds like what something mine would say.

But I remember as I was years ago when I was on staff at a church and I was preparing for an extended time off for a sabbatical. And the closer we got to it, I just kept I would say the words out loud to people around me. Well, I think we’re going to have to cancel this thing.

I think there’s exactly 0% chance I am going to actually take this sabbatical. Right? And I just kept like getting closer to it and watching the countdown happen and going, yep, this never going to happen. And one day something else came up and I was lamenting to my husband, “Well, I guess this is the thing that I’m going to have to cancel it for finally.”

And he looked at me and he goes, “What in the world? But let me just tell you this. When you’re on sabbatical, the Lord is still on his throne. And he is going to take care of this whole place without you here. And it’s going to be just fine.”

And I just looked at him like, well, I mean, do you not know what I’ve been doing for the last nine years? Do you not know? I mean I was just so put out. But that’s the truth of it, right?

Kay >> It is.

Julie >> Somehow in our desperate again, care, our deep care and passion for the mission. For what God’s doing all of these things, we get our own stuff mixed up in there. And then we start to think, well, I’m the only one holding this thing together barely by a thread. And so if I step out, the whole thing’s going to fall apart. So I don’t think that’s possible, right?

We just started to get this inappropriate view of the Lord’s sovereignty and our involvement in his work and. Yeah.

And stuff where we need our good counselors and our wives husbands going, “Yeah, you’re not that important. Thank you very much.” Yeah.

Kay >> Well, you said you had to learn how to unplug. What did you learn?

Julie >> Yes. Well, a couple of things I learned. There’s lots of reasons why it’s difficult for us. I think one of the things that I realized, even when my body wasn’t there, my mind still was. And so I would tell myself, well, it’s easier if I just go ahead and send that email. It’s easier if I just go ahead and do that thing while it’s on my mind instead of just adding more work for me whenever I get back. Right?

So that was, again, a lie. I was telling myself that was keeping me plugged in to whatever the circumstances or the project or whatever.

Another thing I realized is it’s really hard to turn down or to turn off that adrenaline when we have been running at such a pace. When it’s just been go, go, go, go, go, it’s really hard to turn it off or turn it down to slow. So slow. And I had to really learn how to downshift, if you will, to like in a car like you, if you are driving a manual transmission, you couldn’t just go from I don’t know, fifth gear down to like neutral. Right? Like, you just can’t you can’t just skip all the gears in between. And so I had to learn how do I actually slow it down so that when I do unplug, I don’t run into a wall because the adrenaline has been going so much inside of me.

So those are just a few things that I took realize that that’s part of what makes it so hard for us to actually unplug, whether it’s a long weekend or a holiday extended holiday break.

Or even a vacation that we actually paid for to be on that we can’t go and actually be unplugged and be present for because our mind is still back here at work and because we’re so actively engaged in it. So.

Kay >> So how do you turn your mind off?

Julie >> Well, I think there are a few. For me, to get to actually unplug it takes a lot of prep, a lot of prep. And so then one of the things that I think is really important is asking ourselves, how do I need to prep Okay? If we think we’re just going to show up to a vacation or an extended holiday and just be like, oh, carefree. And like those people in the movies like, that’s just we’re just fooling ourselves.

And so I think the prep is critical. And so I think there’s three things that we have to prep.

I think the first thing we have to prepare is we have to actually prepare at our work. And again, this applies whether you’re a volunteer leader or whether you’re a staff leader. It doesn’t matter it’s still your work. It’s still the work of your hands. And so we have to prepare there.

And so the first thing that we have to do is and this is so simple, but so many leaders just don’t do it. We have to put it on our calendar so it is blocked off. It seems so silly, but it is the first critical step so that stuff doesn’t get piled onto there. That then we’re having to rearrange or take that call on vacation or go ahead and be present just for that one meeting. We’ll just come in for that one thing and then we’ll be back on vacation. We have to actually block that time out on our calendar.

We need to go ahead before that time off, before we know we’re going to be out and schedule meetings with our key volunteers, our key staff. You know, a month and two weeks and then a week of just for those touch points to make sure we hand things off and give them as much heads up and prepare ahead of time. I’ll see leaders maybe do that the week of, but really they’re having conversations they should’ve had a month ago.

And so if we will back it up even further and do those meetings a month out, two weeks out, the week of then we’re actually preparing people and able to hand things over and make sure that it’s also mentally for us, reminding us at every one of those meetings, hey, I’m handing this off. Look how it’s being taken care of. So-and-so’s got it. Right?

Instead of the day before. Okay, has everybody got everything right. Like that is not helpful to our brain. Yeah, that is sad. Just causes more stress on the inside and makes it harder to unplug. So we have to prepare at work.

I think we also have to prepare for the rest. So often we just show up and we expect to just be able to relax. It’s so hard for me to relax, and if I don’t do this part of the preparation, then you can just forget it. I’m going to just be mentally somewhere else.

And so I mean by preparing for the rest is that we I’ve got a few coaching questions and it’s actually in this resource that your listeners are going to be able to have access to. It’s called How to Unplug Like a Pro. But I have a few coaching questions that I think are critical to sit with and answer before you even start planning this time away.

And those questions are things like, What do I actually need on this time away? What kind of physical, mental, emotional rest do I actually need while I’m away so that you can plan around that.

If you plan a vacation that is, let’s just say, has the intention of conquering a country over the course (and you know what I mean by like, we’re going to conquer this city, we’re going to conquer, we are going to see everything there is to see and we are going to eat every bite and we’re going to see every place and take every picture).

And so you’re up at like five in the morning every morning, and you don’t hit the bed until midnight. Every night, and you do that for four or five days straight. And what you really needed was a nap every day you’re going to come back from that time away, no more rested than when you got there.

And so if we can back it up and really prepare for that rest and ask ourselves, what do I actually need? What does my body need? It may be that you’ve paid for this really amazing, cool vacation but what you need every day is a long nap, right? That’s okay. Like but what do you need so that you can prepare and plan for that?

And then what’s asking yourself the question, what’s keeping me from unplugging what’s keeping me? Is it that I don’t actually trust that person to handle it, that I delegated things to?

Okay. Well, then you need to work that out with that person, right? Or delegate it to somebody else. Is it that I just constantly get those notifications on my phone all day long? Every day? Okay, well, silence notifications or take the apps off altogether for that amount of time. Right? Just asking yourself, what is keeping me like pulled back in, keeping me from being present and then addressing it? Right?

So asking those couple of questions of yourself and really being honest with them and then preparing for that rest based on how you answer those questions.

And then finally, and this, (gosh, this is a big one that again, I learned the hard way and maybe you learned this one, too) is you have to also not just prepare the work and not just prepare for the rest, but you’ve got to prepare for reentry.

I can’t tell you how many times early on in my career we would go on a little vacation just a few days away somewhere, and our flight would return that night before I was going back into work the next morning, like late at night.

Now, partly, I was young and maybe I could bounce back a little, but I was also just dumb. And we were trying to soak up every last second of that few days of vacation time that we had. Right? And so we would get back the night before late, and then we’d have to be in at work like the very next morning.

And there was just no space for reentry back into our lives, much less back into work.

And we did the same thing at work, like we reenter from time away, hopefully unplugged and getting good rest and refreshment. And then we walk right in Monday morning to 700 meetings on our calendar. And we never get to just like take a breath and go, hi, how are you? How did things go a while? We just jump back into it.

And so we have to prepare for that reentry as well, give ourselves a little buffer, a room to actually deal with our personal stuff. We need to take care of like errands or grocery or just unpacking. And then also give ourselves just a little buffer back at work to just reenter. And we connect with our teams, reconnect with the projects, okay, what’s the status, where are we?

And then jump back into the work. So that was a lot of talking, but those are kind of the three areas I think that is the key to really unplugging is that preparation.

Kay >> I think those are there’s such great practical ideas that can I can see the more you implement those, the easier this whole unplugging would be because you planned in advance and you planned at the end not to be so tired when you come back that, you know, you’re killing yourself. You have to so plug in when you get back because you’re just exhausted. My husband says there’s a difference between a vacation and a trip.

Julie >> One million percent agree with that.

Kay >> Yes.

Julie >> Dramatic difference.

Kay >> Yes. He always says there’s just a big difference there. And it’s, you know, what do we want to do? Do we want to go on a vacation, or do we want to go on a trip And I think when you recognize those things in advance, as you’re suggesting, that that helps, because if it’s been a trip that you had things to do, all these places to see, all these, maybe you’re visiting friends or family, even you know, that’s going to be a different situation.

Julie >> Absolutely. And so my husband and I used to always joke that it’s a trip if our children are attending this expedition. It’s a vacation if it’s just me, you know, but that’s a different story. Okay.

But I agree. I mean, even on a trip, though, if we’re coming into that trip knowing I have bone tired, and I’ve got these babies that have not slept through the night and I don’t even know how long, I have no idea.

Well, even on a trip, we can work real hard. And that preparation ahead of time to arrange some kind of way where we can get a night or two of a full night’s sleep or a really long nap where nobody’s coming and going and meeting us. Right? Or everybody else is going off and doing that fun thing. Yay, go do it, but I’m going to stay at home and read a book because I need just a minute away from all of you people, right? What it is that we need to recharge right? And actually get a breather even if it’s a trip, not a vacation.

Kay >> So yeah. And a lot of what you’re talking about is knowing yourself, what you’re going to need, what you are not going to do well. You know, what would happen to make you do better? To come back better.

Julie >> Yes.

Kay >> To be more rested, all those kinds of things. I love that, There’s such practical ideas.

Julie >> Well, and I think with the knowing yourself, I used to have a lot of FOMO, like fear of missing out. Like we are at this amazing place with these amazing people, and I don’t want to miss something. And I would just come back exhausted. And so I just know, like for me when I’m on, like, the thing we plan around our vacations is a nap almost every single day.

I love to sleep, okay? I love sleep more than just about anything else in this world that the Lord has given us. I love sleep. I love sleep. I love sleep. It’s so I don’t care if we’re missing out on this one more amazing thing like I just I just want to take a nap in the afternoon.

Like, I just want to take a little nap. That feels like vacation to me is being able to take a nap. And so whatever that is for you, like figuring out, like, what is it that will help you rest and refresh? It may not be a nap. For some it might be a hike. For somebody else, whatever. That’s fine.

But figure out what your things are and make sure you weave that in so that you actually come back refreshed.

Not yes, it matters for you, but it also matters for the people you serve. And however we look on vacation we are modeling for our team what we expect of them. So if we are constantly available and texting and emailing and jumping just into that one meeting or whatever it is we are modeling to our team with our behaviors. Even if our words say, No, no, take that time off, I want you to unplug. Well, what we’re modeling to them is I want you to unplug, but really I expect you to be available because look at me, I’m also available all the time.

And if we’re modeling to them, hey, we’re going on vacation, we’re going to unplug, but actually we come back exhausted, we’re not doing anybody any good. Like they need us to catch our breath.

Kay >> Yeah.

Julie >> Can you tell that I care about this, Kay?

Kay >> Yes, I do. I don’t think I love sleep quite as much as you do.

Julie >> Gosh I love sleep.

Kay >> But sometimes I like being alone.

Julie >> I also love being alone. Yeah.

Kay >> And, you know, that’s good. I remember that years ago, we took a trip with our kids to D.C. And so I wanted to get up in the morning and go to a certain site, you know, and they really weren’t very interested. And they said, I think we’re just going to stay here and sleep. Well that was great. I got to go by myself.

It was really a nice break.

Julie >> Perfect, and everybody was happy.

Kay >> Yeah, everybody was happy. It was really good. I wasn’t forcing them to go with me and they weren’t forcing me to stay there and wait for them all to wake up. You know.

Julie >> Yes.

Kay >> It was really nice.

But I can see how the way that you model this makes a difference for the people that you have left in charge. And I think those are really important points. If you’re leading a group, leading a team, you’ve got to show them how to unplug as well.

Julie >> Yes. And you’re also show—if you keep touching base and just dipping back in the whole time, you’re not just modeling—this is what it looks like. You’re also saying to them, I don’t trust you to actually take care of this. Yeah, I don’t trust you have what it takes. I don’t trust that you will follow through.

That’s what you’re saying to them.

Kay >> Yeah.

Julie >> And I mean, what a punch in the gut when you’re the one there working on it, taking care of it, making sure everything is goes off without a hitch. But your supervisor keeps communicating with their behaviors, “I don’t trust that you’ve really got this.” It’s so yeah. It really undermines everything you’re trying to do with them. So.

Kay >> Yeah, yeah. As the leader, you’re training people, you’re modeling for them as you said. You’re entrusting things to them. Otherwise you’re really just micromanaging.

Julie >> Yeah.

Kay >> Well, any other final tips or tools that you want to leave with our audience as you think about what’s going on with them?

Julie >> Yeah, you know, my favorite tip and again, this is just one of those silly practical things that leaders will tell me later, “Oh, my gosh, that was the thing that was so helpful.” So I hope that’s helpful for all of your listeners. One of the things that I always do before the last on the last day before I’m checking out or whether it’s the holidays, vacation, whatever it is, I always do a final brain dump.

And I will either get a blank sheet of paper, a blank whiteboard, a really large posted on the wall, whatever works best for you. And I will just dump out every last thing the last 10% right? I’m worried about this. I’ve got to make sure this gets taken and I will just everything, even stuff that’s maybe future whenever I get back, I just I don’t want to forget it.

I dump it all out and then I actually take every single thing and I assign it a date for after I get back

Kay >> Oh!

Julie >> So that again talking about reentry so that whenever I show back up that first day after my time away I don’t show up to this big pile of mess that I dumped out before I left. Right? Instead, I’ve taken the time to actually sort through it and go, oh, actually, that doesn’t need to be done at all.

I’ll send that in a quick email, or I’m going to assign it to a day whenever I get back so that now my brain can again actually relax and unplug because I know that’s been taken care of. Right? I know that it’s been assigned a time for me to actually deal with it, so I don’t have to worry about it right now.

So that’s just one of those. Again, it sounds like a silly thing to do, but it is so, so helpful.

Kay >> It sounds like a wonderful idea just because I do know that things go on and on in my mind if I’ve got those things pending. But if you had a date and you knew that you were going to deal with it, then instead of just dumping in your lap when you get back. How wonderful!

That’s great, Julie. Did you come up with that idea yourself?

Julie >> I don’t know. But if I borrowed it from someone else, I’d be happy to give credit away.

Kay >> Oh, I just think it’s brilliant. It’s a brilliant idea that I would have never, ever thought about.

Julie >> It made all the difference for me. The brain dump is one thing, but then my brain is still holding on to when am I going to get that done? When am I going to get this done? So if I can go ahead and assign it to that date, then it releases the internal worry that happens for me.

Kay >> And when I’ve got that worry going on, I’ve got something like that. That’s when I wake up and I can’t go back to sleep.

Julie >> Again, sleep is a priority.

Kay >> Even though I can’t do anything about it while I’m, you know, lying in bed.

Julie >> Yeah.

Kay >> It’ll just it’s bothering me and I cannot sleep as good. That’s not good for any of us.

Well, thank you so much for sharing all of this. I know that some of you out there could probably use, you know, some of the coaching that Julie does. You can get in touch with her at Julie Pearce. Let’s see, JuliePearceLeadership.com and Pierce is P-i-e-r-c-e. I know there’s more than one way to spell that. So I don’t want you to miss getting in touch with Julie. And she mentioned earlier the resource that you would be able to access if you sign up for her newsletter. So if you go to that website I know that you can do that as well.

And she had a lot of questions. I looked through her entire document where she was trying to help people unplug. And so if you feel like you would like a little bit more help with some more of those questions that she was asking awhile ago, I really would very much suggest that you go there and look at that. It would be like Julie coaching you herself.

Julie >> Yes. These are literally the questions that I just pulled from old coaching notes whenever I would work with leaders who were getting ready for just to whether it was take a vacation, take a, say, sabbatical, go, you know, off on the holidays, whatever it was. And so I just kept pulling of these questions from my notes. And then I just pulled them together.

So it is very much like we’re coaching together.

Kay >> Yeah.

Julie >> as you work through this research just to prep for that time away.

Kay >> Yeah, that’s the way it seemed as I read through it. I feel like you’re asking me these questions, you know, and there were really good, insightful questions.

And for many of you out there, you’re not thinking of going somewhere right now, but you may want these questions later on. So go ahead and download it. Will they be able to download it?

Julie >> Yeah, yeah.

Kay >> Go ahead and download it now so that you’ll have it available to you when you’re ready to really unplug. And I know Julie and I both have benefited when we have unplugged, and we really highly recommend it.

So thank you so much, Julie, for sharing your experience, your ideas, and just your guidance for all of us in this area because it’s a tough one in our culture, I think.

Julie >> Well, Kay, again, thank you for always paving the way for all of us by bringing your expertise to this podcast. You have helped so many leaders over the years, myself included. And so I am so thankful for you and your voice and just your wisdom that you share with all of us every day. So thanks for inviting me to be a part of it. Always a thrill.

Kay >> We love hearing you. We’ll have you again soon. I know.

And for those of you out there, we’re so glad that you joined us. I would suggest that you go to our website as well, BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org, and go to the pulldown menu on Resources. From there if you go to Leadership Development and from there go to General Leadership and then you can get to a section called You As A Leader.

And this is going to be posted in that area, You As A Leader. If you’re interested in other ways that you can become a better leader, this is the place for that. You particularly, what you can do to be a better leader to your soul care, your unplugging and all those other things that are really important for leaders. That’s where you’ll find those.

So we invite you to browse around on our website and we have many other topics as well. So thank you once again, Julie, and we hope to see you soon.