You Are Not A Frog

If you nod in a meeting, then say what you really think afterwards, this episode is for you. Our ingrained programming tells us we have to please everyone all the time to feel good enough, so we choose ‘nice’ to keep the peace. Unfortunately, that stores the pain up for later, and it will affect your next decision, and the one after that. In this episode with Alice Driscoll and Louise van Haarst, co-founders of The Power House and authors of Smart Conflict, we get into how to have the conversation that would actually lighten the load on us - including how to tell a colleague hard truths, and how to repair when you get it wrong.

We cover:

• Nice vs kind - why nice often withholds the information someone needs to do well
• You and me versus the problem - how to stop a rota or task issue turning into you versus me
• The Responsibility Trap - why the conflict ends up being between an exhausted consultant and a junior doctor instead of where it belongs
• High support, high challenge - why a lovely, supportive leader who never challenges can become an accidental arsehole
• Repair - why one apology is rarely enough, and the small gestures that put most ruptures in relationships right
• A phrase to open a hard conversation, how to say no to the knock on the door, and permission to go back and try again

This episode is for you if...

You are a high achiever in a leadership role who has to have the conversation nobody else will, has to make the call someone disagrees with, and lies awake replaying a decision you had to make. You can deliver bad news to a patient or client, but you freeze when the problem is a colleague you have to see tomorrow. Hard as that is, it makes sense - but it can be different.

You are not a frog.

You Are Not a Frog — for GPs, hospital doctors and other high-stakes professionals who want to thrive, not just survive.

Podcast: You Are Not a Frog with Dr Rachel Morris

Email list: https://youarenotafrog.com/welcome/

Website: https://youarenotafrog.com/

Guests: Alice Driscoll and Louise van Haarst are co-founders of The Power House and authors of Smart Conflict: How to Have Hard Conversations at Work. Together they train leaders in how to do conflict well, high support, high challenge communication and repair.

Team diagnostic tool: https://www.thepowerhouse.company/diagnostics

Learn more about The Power House Company: https://www.thepowerhouse.company/

Read Smart Conflict®: https://mybook.to/SmartConflict

Mentioned in this episode:

🟦 Join the How to Have Difficult Conversations at Work Masterclass

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If you’ve ever plucked up the courage to have ‘that’ conversation, and planned it carefully so that you can be kind and clear - but two minutes in, it goes south - you’ll know what it feels like when their face changes, your chest gets tight, and suddenly you're both defensive and you’re both feeling got at.

This replay from January 2025 is part of our season on conflict and difficult conversations, re-released while I'm in the middle of writing my book How to Say No When Someone Might Die. I keep coming back to it because it names the exact moment the conversations tip and we go ‘over the net’ – a concept Carol Rubin and David Bradford talk about in their book ‘Connect’. It's nuanced, but once you see it, you can't unsee it. There is a certain thing we do that triggers defensiveness in them, and a certain thing they do that triggers it in us.

You will hear why assuming you know what the other person intends can be devastating, and how our ingrained programming tells us we have to please everyone all the time to feel good enough. Learn how one tiny change in language - staying with what you saw and the story in your head, instead of what you decided they meant - may help you carry a patient or client complaint, an official grievance or being criticised by your team differently. Because if you don't spot it, it will affect your next decision, and the one after that.

We cover:

• Why we can suddenly click into defensiveness two minutes into a careful conversation
• What going ‘over the net’ means - and the three things to watch out for in every conversation
• Why being misunderstood feels like such a threat to high achievers
• The exact language swap: from "I felt dismissed" to "the story in my head was..."
• How to find your highest intention - what's in it for them AND for you
• Why assuming good intent creates safety to hear hard things
• Ditch the final third: say it kindly, then stop and listen
• Curious questions that keep you on your side of the net

This episode is for you if... you are a high achiever in a high-stakes role like medicine who has to have the conversation nobody else will, who has to make the call someone disagrees with, and lies awake replaying a decision you had to make. If you leave difficult conversations thinking I'm not cut out to be the senior one who has to do the hard things, maybe I'm not good enough - this one may help you see what's actually happening.

Concepts in this episode from Connect by David Bradford and Carole Robin.

More from You Are Not a Frog:

The podcast — available wherever you listen

FrogFest — our conference on workload and thriving at work. Click here to learn more.

Email list — 20,000 high achievers get the weekly Pearl. Click here to join the list.

Mentioned in this episode:

⭐️ Book Your FrogFest Ticket Now

Have you ever lain awake replaying a conversation with a tricky colleague, wondering if you were the one completely out of order? If you're a high achiever in a leadership role, you know the dilemma - you don't want to be the bad guy, so you avoid the awkward chat, pick up everyone else's slack, and say yes when you mean no. Then it leaks out at the worst possible moment.

In this fun episode I play Am I the A**hole? with Leanne and Al Elliott from Truth, Lies and Work. I read out workplace dilemmas and they give their verdicts - the nurse who keeps leaving early, the WhatsApp Work group from hell, the dreaded "can I have a quick word?", Gary the people-pleasing team leader, and yes, someone watching rather dodgy videos on a train.

You'll come away with the exact words to use when you need to raise something, why "no, and..." beats a plain no, and why your job as a leader is not to be nice, it's to be clear. You'll also meet a new species we name in the episode: the accidental arsehole - where our ingrained programming tells us we have to please everyone all the time to feel good enough, so we duck the conversation and it will affect your next decision, and the one after that.

Fair warning: fruity language in this one, so maybe not for the school run. And all scenarios are made up and stitched together from training stories - none is about anyone specific. Even if you've definitely got a Greta.

We cover:

• Am I the a**hole? How the game exposes why caring leaders duck hard chats
• The colleague who leaves early: the exact curious words to open a difficult conversation without judgment
• The WhatsApp group row: why it's on you to set your boundary
• Gary the people-pleaser: Drama Triangle, rescuing, and the MoSCoW way to hand work back before leave
• "Heard, held or helped?", "no, and..." and "I can't now, but I can at..." - phrases that make saying no doable
• The accidental arsehole: how avoidance, not harshness, creates most workplace conflict

This episode is for you if... you are a high achiever in a high stakes leadership role who has to have the conversation nobody else will, has to make the call someone disagrees with, and lies awake replaying a decision you had to make. If you say yes when you mean no and then feel resentful after, this will help you see what's actually happening and carry it differently.

You are not a frog.

Guests: Leanne Elliott and Al Elliott host the Truth, Lies and Work podcast - weekly conversations about work psychology, leadership and tricky team dynamics.

More from You Are Not a Frog:

The podcast — available wherever you listen

FrogFest — our conference on workload and thriving at work. Click here to learn more.

Email list — 20,000 high achievers get the weekly Pearl. Click here to join the list.

Mentioned in this episode:

Am I Stressed, Overwhelmed... or Burning Out?

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Have you ever felt ashamed or frustrated that you didn't know the answer? Not to a clinical question, but about your own life - what's next, what's wrong, why you feel the way you do?

If you're the one everyone relies on, not knowing can feel like failing at the one thing you're supposed to be good at. This is a replay from 2024 I'm bringing back while I’m writing my book ‘How to Say No When Someone Might Die’. One of the things I keep coming back to in the book is how much of the load we carry isn't about the work at all. It's our ingrained programming that tells us we have to have the answer to feel good enough. And when we don't, it will affect your next decision, and the one after that.

In this episode we revisit what to do when the furniture is shifting, and why wait and see can be a strategy.

We cover:

• Why high achievers feel shame when they don't know what's next
• Shifting furniture - what to do when life is reconfiguring and you can't see where things will land
• Your left brain interpreter - and why it makes up catastrophic stories to feel safe
• Zone of Power - what is actually yours to carry, and what isn't
• Why wait and see is a valid, proactive strategy, not avoidance
• The next best action when you feel discombobulated

This episode is for you if... you are a doctor or professional, a high achiever in a leadership role who has to have the difficult conversation nobody else will, has to make the call someone disagrees with, and lies awake replaying a decision you had to make. If not knowing feels like not being good enough, this one is for you.

You are not a frog.

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🟦 Beat Stress & Thrive | Live Cohort Starts 13 October

You may think you're fine. You're still performing well at work, still the one people rely on, yet you know something's off.

In this episode - a replay of one of my most important conversations from 2025, I share the question that changed how I think about burnout: What are you borrowing from your life to keep your work looking fine? For many of us, our ingrained programming tells us we have to please everyone all the time to feel good enough, so we protect our work and borrow energy from the rest of our life to do it. We look totally fine on the outside. Inside, the walls are standing but there's nothing left.

I’m chatting with Dr Richard Duggins NHS Psychiatrist and Author of ‘Burnout Free Working’ about why high achievers stay high-performing right up util they burn out, what radiators and drains have to do with it, and what Richard calls the burnout cliff - where one small trigger takes you by surprise. If you go back into the same way of working, carrying the same load in the same way, it will affect your next decision, and the one after that.

This is about burnout not as a personal failing, but as a change in the balance of your energy.

We cover:

• Why your performance can stay high while the rest of your life shrinks
• Borrowing energy from home, fun, and rest to protect work
• Radiators and drains - work intensity, home pressures and culture
• The burnout cliff and the plateau before it
• Early signs - poor sleep, irritability, detachment, loss of joy
• What may help you carry it differently without going back over the edge

This episode is for you if... you are a high achiever in a leadership role who has to have the conversation nobody else will, has to make the call someone disagrees with, and lies awake replaying a decision you had to make. A doctor or professional who looks capable to everyone else but feels depleted when you get home.

You do not need to collapse to prove you were struggling.

Get weekly tools and episode notes by email: https://youarenotafrog.com/welcome

More resources: https://youarenotafrog.com/

Burnout Self-Assessment Toolkit: https://youarenotafrog.com/toolkit/

Mentioned in this episode:

🟦 Beat Stress & Thrive | Live Cohort Starts 13 October

The Overwhelm SOS Toolkit

You tell yourself that never letting anyone down is how you protect the people you love. But our ingrained programming tells us we have to please everyone all the time to feel good enough - and the people you love are the people who suffer most when you're stuck in the Responsibility Trap. They get the tired, thin version of you. If you lie awake worried you've upset someone, or feel guilty for saying no to something small like a dinner you can't make until November, this 20-minute Quick Dip will show you why that guilt isn't telling the truth, and what changes when you let the load go back to whose it actually was.

We cover:

• The November dinner — and why answering honestly can feel like a failing
• Why for us a request arrives as an obligation with our name on it
• What over 600 professionals told us about lying awake worried they've upset someone
• The identity underneath it: I'm not the sort of person who lets people down
• What that identity costs at home and at work
• The village cricket team — guilt for saying no to a sport I don't even like
• The question that proves you already let people down every day — and the world kept turning
• If I'm not the woman who never lets anyone down, then who am I? And who says?
• What happens at home and at work when you stop carrying it all — including the reception team who stopped asking her first
• Two futures — and phrases to reach for when the guilt fires

This episode is for you if... you are a high achiever in a leadership role who has to have the conversation nobody else will, has to make the call someone disagrees with, and lies awake replaying a decision you had to make. You are the one who copes, steps up, notices what needs doing — and you feel guilty even doing the work that matters most.

📩 Join 20,000 professionals: https://youarenotafrog.com/welcome/

🐸 Get exclusive episodes and resources by joining FrogXtra: https://youarenotafrog.com/members

Mentioned in this episode:

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Do you lie awake replaying a decision you had to make? That work anxiety loop where you can't stop thinking about work even when you are home? Maybe you've told yourself burnout is just the occupational hazard of this job.

You've tried to put things in place — to leave on time, to say no more often — and you just can't seem to hold them. What if you are solving the wrong problem? It's not a work stress problem, but an identity one.

Our ingrained programming tells us we have to tie who we are to how we perform to feel good enough, so when work dips, we dip. That pattern will affect your next decision, and the one after that.

In this conversation we put clean language on what keeps you fused to work, and what real burnout recovery has to start with instead. I spoke to Nick Petrie, author of Burn Bright, about why the usual advice has not touched it for you, and what may help you carry it differently.

We cover:

• Why burnout can feel like an occupational hazard — and why you may be solving the wrong problem
• What happens when you fuse your identity with work — you don't have a job, you are the job
• What he calls the Karman Line — the deliberate slow down between work and home that stops you crash landing
• Uncontrolled re-entry — why you walk through your own front door still in work mode
• Rumination vs reflection — why a patient or client complaint stays with you when you are emotionally fused to it
• Perform mode vs grow mode — why staying too long in perform mode leaves you exhausted. And bored.
• How to get more comfortable disappointing people you care about — and why that matters for recovery

This episode is for you if...

You are a doctor, senior healthcare professional or high achiever in a leadership role - someone who has to have the conversation nobody else will, who has to make the call someone will disagree with, who lies awake replaying a decision you had to make.

If you have ever thought, what is wrong with me, why can I not cope, maybe I am not good enough — this episode is for you.

Nick Petrie is a leadership coach, Burnout Researcher and author of Burn Bright. In this interview he shares practical ideas from working with high performers on identity, boundaries, and getting out of perform mode.

Listen to You Are Not a Frog wherever you get your podcasts. For workshop and event details, see the links on the channel page.

Get more episodes and resources by joining FrogXtra

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🟦 [FREE WEBINAR] How to Beat Burnout and Escape Burnout on Repeat

Note: This is a re-release of one of our most-listened to episodes — originally recorded Autumn 2025. We've given it a new edit because it's more relevant than ever.

If you know you need to do something about how you're feeling — but you keep telling yourself "not yet" — this is for you. We are very good at spotting danger in other people. Sepsis, red flags, a patient or client deteriorating. We act fast. With ourselves, we don't. We wait until it becomes catastrophic — a patient or client complaint, an error because our brain isn't working properly, our health going — before we give ourselves permission to act. This episode is about why doing nothing feels safer, why it isn't, and how to make the next step small enough you can actually take it. Not handing in your notice. One doable thing.

Download the free Burnout Self-Assessment Toolkit — work through it as you listen: https://youarenotafrog.com/toolkit/

We cover:

• Why we spot burnout and overwhelm in everyone else but not in ourselves

• The three psychological traps that keep high achievers stuck: status quo bias, loss aversion, and sunk cost — including the thought "I've given 10 or 20 years to this, I can't stop now"

• Why our ingrained programming tells us the misery we know is safer than the uncertainty we don't — and how that will affect your next decision, and the one after that

• Why waiting has a cost too — your health, your relationships, your character — and why that cost keeps going up and can be devastating

• How to decide your line before burnout decides it for you — your "kill criteria" — so you don't wait for catastrophe

• How to make the next step small enough you can actually take it: one conversation you've been avoiding, one boundary, one phone call to a trusted person — shame shrinks when you speak it

This episode is for you if you are a high achiever in a leadership role who has to have the conversation nobody else will, has to make the call someone disagrees with, or lies awake replaying a decision you had to make — and you can feel the heat building, but you keep telling yourself to keep going.

Hosted by Rachel Morris | You Are Not a Frog - for high achievers who want to care deeply and carry less.

Get weekly tools and episode notes by email: https://youarenotafrog.com/welcome

More resources: https://youarenotafrog.com/

Burnout Self-Assessment Toolkit: https://youarenotafrog.com/toolkit/

#burnout #burnoutrecovery #highachievers

Mentioned in this episode:

🟦 [FREE WEBINAR] How to Beat Burnout and Escape Burnout on Repeat

Every high-achieving leader has a to-do list that doesn't end — it just refills. And the only response most of us were ever handed for that is push harder. Grip tighter. Muscle through. In this episode, Rachel talks to Ellen Coomber, co-founder of the Softness Revolution, about why that instinct — the one we were trained into from exams onward — stops working, and what she does instead. Ellen has a genetics degree from Cambridge; she is not someone who arrived at this by avoiding rigour. She arrived at it because pushing harder had genuinely stopped working, and she had to find something else. This conversation is about that something else: working with less effort, not more, and learning to tell the difference between an instinct worth trusting and fear wearing an instinct's clothes. Getting that distinction wrong is how we end up saying yes to the thing that breaks us, and it will affect the next decision too, and the one after that.

We cover:

• Why "work harder" is the only tool most high achievers were ever handed for pressure — and where that training actually started
• The Softness Revolution: what "soft" means when it isn't the opposite of capable
• What solo-sailing a 40-foot boat taught Ellen about the difference between soft and weak
• What horses know about force that most leadership training never mentions
• How to tell your actual instinct apart from fear when they feel identical
• Why more effort is not always the effective option, and what to do with the effort you're not using

This episode is for you if...

...you're looking at a to-do list that never actually shrinks, and your automatic response is to push harder, focus more, try again — even though that's the exact same plan you had last week, and the week before. If some part of you already suspects that working harder isn't the answer but you don't yet have a working alternative, or a language for it, this one's for you.

📩 Join 20,000 professionals: https://youarenotafrog.com/welcome/

🐸 Get exclusive episodes and resources by joining FrogXtra: https://youarenotafrog.com/members

🐸 Learn more about Ellen: https://thepowerofsoftness.com

Mentioned in this episode:

🟦 Permission to Thrive

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Nearly one in three people who take time off for burnout are off again within a year - and over half of them work in healthcare. This episode is about why that keeps happening, and it isn't because anyone's weak.

You go back to the same poisoned water, you carry the same responsibility you carried before, and now there's something extra on top of it - a shame tax, the pressure to prove you're fine, to prove the time off wasn't a mark against you. Rachel walks through the Bent Tent Pole - why the same load bends you faster the second time round - and makes the case that the fix was never more resilience. It's changing what you believe is actually yours to carry.

We cover:

• Why nearly 3 in 10 people relapse into burnout within a year of returning
• The poisoned water analogy - why rest alone can't fix a toxic system
• Why dropping hours or changing roles often doesn't touch the real problem
• The Responsibility Trap: picking up what everyone else drops
• The Bent Tent Pole - why the same weight bends you faster the second time
• The Shame Tax: the extra load you carry just for having needed the break
• Why waiting for the system to fix itself keeps you stuck
• The Performance Zone - what boundaries actually look like in practice

This episode is for you if...

You're a high achiever in a leadership role who's been back at work for a while now and can feel it building again - the same tightness, the same countdown to the next break. You're the one who has to pick up what someone else dropped, who has to say yes because no one else has the whole picture, who lies awake replaying whether you're actually cut out for this. Hard as that is to admit, it's not a character flaw. It's physics, and there's a different way to carry it.

The tent pole bent because of the load, not because you were weak. You can do the work without being responsible for all of it.

📩 Join 20,000 professionals: https://youarenotafrog.com/welcome/

🐸 Get exclusive episodes and resources by joining FrogXtra: https://youarenotafrog.com/members

Mentioned in this episode:

⭐️ Book Your FrogFest Ticket Now