Let's Talk, People: Episode 32

TAKE OFF THE BURNOUT BADGE OF HONOR

LEADING WITH BOUNDARIES, ACCOUNTABILITY AND CARE

[00:00:00] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Hi, I'm Emily Frieze-Kemeny, host of Let's Talk, People, where leaders come to bridge humanity and profitability. Informed by a couple decades of work as a head of talent and leadership development, I'm here to amplify leaders so they can exalt everyone and everything they touch. Are you ready? 'Cause it's about to get real.

[00:00:28] Let's talk, people.

[00:00:38] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Today I'm joined by Dr. Janet Ahn. Dr.  Ahn Is a behavioral science expert and experimental social psychologist with a rare track record that spans academia consulting and business leadership. She designs evidence-based strategies that drive measurable behavioral change for organizations and the people who power them.

[00:01:00] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Janet began her career as a professor before becoming the Chief Behavioral Science Officer and later President of the Americas of a Global Behavioral Change consultancy. Today she advises business leaders on how to align people strategy with performance. Her work has been featured in The Atlantic, Forbes, Business Insider and she serves on multiple education nonprofit boards.

[00:01:23] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Today's episode, we are gonna dive into how leaders can balance accountability and wellbeing to drive performance and how to take off what can sometimes look like our burnout badge of honor.

[00:01:35] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Janet and I are coming at this both from our experience working with leaders and teams, as well as from our own personal journeys of overwork and boundary issues.

[00:01:48] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Janet, it's so wonderful to have you on Let's Talk, People.

[00:01:51] Janet Ahn: So excited to be here Em, finally.

[00:01:55] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Yay. We have so many great, deep, important conversations, just the two of us, and I am really grateful that you are open to taking this one out to all of the leaders and people that we support on this show.

[00:02:09] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: The way it feels is, we're supposed to bring our best selves to work. So many conversations that are happening, really since the pandemic, about the importance of wellbeing yet not sacrificing performance. Other people's expectations. It's a lot to juggle and I think you and I know from our own lived experiences in the work we do with others, that it can be really hard to figure out and maintain boundaries.

[00:02:35] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Work's such a big part of our lives, especially with hybrid work or remote work and so how do we balance the commitment and professionalism of work, our own identity and lived experience, how we handle feedback.

[00:02:49] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: And then really, you know, when we put on our leadership hat for this, when we show up at work, no matter how much self-work we've done, and we've both done a lot, we carry not only our patterns, but a responsibility to role model and explicitly shape boundaries and wellbeing for our team. And then today what we really wanted to do is to dig into the tensions between our responsibility as leaders to drive and hold people accountable for really good work and for people to feel good in all the ways while being a part of whatever it is we're creating.

[00:03:22] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Is there a moment when you look back at your work life where you realized that that drive you had within you to perform was actually negatively impacting your wellbeing?

[00:03:34] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: And then part two is what really shifted for you, in how you now think about boundaries and at work?

[00:03:41] Janet Ahn: It's such a good question.

[00:03:43] Janet Ahn: I just wanna say to every leader out there, there's no right answer, and no one's getting it perfectly done well. So I think that pressure, to keep as a leader, balancing, adjusting, rotating, pivoting, no one is getting it perfectly right and so expect to make mistakes and the pressure will be there, but expect to not always get it right. And that's all right. And I think that's where we need to level set a little bit.

[00:04:17] Janet Ahn: So going back to your question about where I've learned in my own past experience, and how that drive to get it right and what it affected in my own leadership behaviors, I've definitely overdone it. I think that's my natural tendency. So this is what probably a lot of people on your podcast can relate to. We're all high achievers. And we all care.

[00:04:39] Janet Ahn: I think that's one of the qualities, Em, you and I really just naturally understood about each other, we're good people who care about others, wanna do good impact, positive impact in the world, and what that does to our behaviors, to have that mission lived out and have those relationships play out. So I think that's where it all starts with good intention. We all start there.

[00:05:03] Janet Ahn: And I'd like to believe a lot of leaders have that. I don't think any leader is sitting here like, I want everyone to be hurt. I don't think anyone's really thinking that. I think where it gets tricky, and this is where we have to change our approaches where it becomes almost too much, too much of us, too much expectation, too much on other people.

[00:05:23] Janet Ahn: And when it gets naturally like that, it just comes to a tipping point.

[00:05:26] Janet Ahn: And I think for me, I had to really learn what's the actual need and what's perceived.

[00:05:32] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Yep.

[00:05:33] Janet Ahn: Because I'm constantly like “It's urgent, needs to happen now, this is really important” all the time.

[00:05:40] Janet Ahn: And I think a lot of my team members know that about me too. But how much of that was self-imposed by me and how much is it actually needed? That is an internal piece every leader has to deal with. So like you opened up and said, there's something inside of us, there's something external. And as a social psychologist, that's exactly what we study.

[00:06:01] Janet Ahn: We study the interaction of what's happening inside and what's happening on the outside. And I think, what behavior wins between what's happening inside and what's being manifested externally to people around you?

[00:06:14] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Yeah. And I think this part around speed, it feels very real because as a startup that's growing, you go through these really intense moments and how much of it is you as a leader and your own acute sense of urgency, and how much of it is necessity?

[00:06:30] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: And then what's manageable? We don't always have a good internal compass when, people like you and I, Janet, how we're wired is we have such an intense drive and we move with such speed, it does have an impact.

[00:06:42] Janet Ahn: Yeah, it's hard to turn off.

[00:06:44] Janet Ahn: I love this phenomenon in psychology, it's called a social facilitation effect. And this is by a social psychologist named Norm Triplett. I think the study's like in the late 1800s. It's not recent. And what he studied was what the presence of others do to your own behaviors. So what he really saw was that, let's say by yourself versus when you're with other people, what gets enhanced and that is pressure. So let's say by yourself, you're naturally high achieving, naturally urgent. Add pressure to that situation.

[00:07:17] Janet Ahn: What are you going to act like? Your default, times x.

[00:07:21] Janet Ahn: It's gonna be enhanced.

[00:07:22] Janet Ahn: And And so that's where this phenomenon of social facilitation, I think, is so interesting, that when you add those layers of pressure, when you add people watching or when you add other people in the mix, that is what puts your natural default response as a leader, times three.

[00:07:41] Janet Ahn: And so if that's who you are alone, you're gonna be like that even more.

[00:07:45] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: That's really helpful to understand that, how we get magnified at work and maybe it's not always in the good ways.

[00:07:52] Janet Ahn: It's not. But your natural response too can be in a good way, whatever your default response is, so if you are, let's say, very calm under pressure and under other situations, you'll remain calm because that's your default expert response.

[00:08:06] Janet Ahn: But when pressure hits and your default is to panic, it'll just magnify. So just be watchful as a leader of how that impacts on the ripple effect.

[00:08:16] Janet Ahn: So whatever your default, if it gets more intense, if it gets more magnified, how is that perceived by everyone else around you?

[00:08:23] Janet Ahn: That's the piece we have to acknowledge.

[00:08:25] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Yeah, and I think that we don't always know. That's where it helps to have people around you who will speak truth.

[00:08:32] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: That just happened literally to me today, where one of the people on my team called me up and she's like, "This is what you're doing to the team. This is how they're feeling. You need to slow your role, you're changing things, it's stressful."

[00:08:45] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: And you have all these excuses and reasons 'cause we're all trying to do a good job. But you need truth.

[00:08:50] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: So I think that's part of this formula around the work we do on ourselves as leaders is you need to really know your impact and that can be very difficult, especially under pressure when you're in get it done mode to step back and to say, well how is this landing?

[00:09:03] Janet Ahn: Yeah, and it's a natural impact of having power, right? A position of power as a leader, cognitively, you're just more task oriented than people oriented. Empathy tends to diminish, or it can, just a bit. And so you get very focused on what has to get done, and so you're not really always thinking through ‘how does it impact other people around me?’

[00:09:23] Janet Ahn: But that's so lovely that someone in your team was able to have that conversation with you. I'm sure it wasn't easy for that person to even bring it up, because even as a leader, you and I know, with the lack of that psychological safety, no one's talking. No one's going to speak up. Because there's a worse consequence of having done so than not.

[00:09:43] Janet Ahn: You'd rather not do it because you know it's going to cause more issues, and I think that's the accountability part. Whether it's within your own team or your peers or just even yourself, how do you keep yourself accountable?

[00:09:54] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: This is where that term that, thank goodness Brene Brown is introduced into our work vocabulary, about vulnerability is helpful, because when we realize we don't have to be perfect and we don't have to get it right, that actually leaves the space for our teams to be able to calibrate with us on wellbeing, boundaries, workload.

[00:10:13] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: When we show, like, "I don't think I know how to do everything", or "I'm not sure what the right answer is or what the best approach is", or "Yeah, I changed my mind because I hadn't thought about that thing that you just raised", all of that creates permission in a team.

[00:10:26] Emily Frieze-Kemeny:  Things become more of a dialogue, a back and forth of "This is how this is going", and "What if we tried that", and "This is impacting me in these ways'.

[00:10:33] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: So this is important. Okay. Abby, I know though we have a bunch of questions.

[00:10:37] Abigail Charlu: Yeah, a lot of questions were submitted around this topic. The first submission the leader asked, How do leaders distinguish between busyness and real progress while helping their teams redirect energy towards outcomes that matter?

[00:10:54] Abigail Charlu: One of my team members seems constantly busy, but their output doesn't match the time they're putting in. When I try to understand what they're doing and unpack it with them, they give me a long laundry list of everything they did, then they say they're missing deadlines because they have too much on their plate."

[00:11:14] Janet Ahn: This is so tricky, because as a leader, if you're asking that of your team, it's suspicion, a little bit, even with good intention, and then it could lead to somewhat micromanaging behaviors unintentionally or inadvertently, because you're like "What exactly are you doing? Let's lay it out."

[00:11:31] Janet Ahn: And then it looks like, "Are you micromanaging me?" and so it brings up that tricky dynamic. And for the person on the receiving end, they could feel completely flabbergasted about 'Do you know how many things I do to make this happen?' And to be feeling like you don't see I'm making output, it feels devastating.

[00:11:49] Janet Ahn: So I'm gonna be vulnerable, speaking about vulnerability, about feedback I received when I was in my leadership role by my boss.

[00:11:57] Janet Ahn: I'm kind of embarrassed to say it too, but I'm gonna share it because I think it's good for your listeners.

[00:12:02] Janet Ahn: I remember for one performance review and at that time the company with a tremendous change and I ended up having a ton of new direct reports sit under my remit because of some of these changes.

[00:12:14] Janet Ahn: And I remember, not too long after that, I had one of these quarterly performance reviews and my boss said, "Inputs are strong, outputs are weak."

[00:12:23] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Wow. Yeah.

[00:12:24] Janet Ahn: And I felt how can he say that when I was on top of a million things?

[00:12:30] Janet Ahn: Hindsight is 2020, right?

[00:12:32] Janet Ahn: I look back and I see a couple of dynamics that could have been done better by me and by my boss. I think my boss could have been a bit clearer on the priorities.

[00:12:41] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:42] Janet Ahn: That is definitely something if you didn't want me to do a million things, what were the top two, three things you actually needed me to move the needle on.

[00:12:51] Janet Ahn: The thing I could have done better is not chase activities, go for output.

[00:12:55] Janet Ahn: So I think there's a lot of things that I was doing, but those are a lot of activities. How do I, as an individual, a leader myself, a leader of leaders, need to view not the means, but the end and the outcomes.

[00:13:09] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Yeah. There's one thing that's really important that you said that we sometimes forget as leaders, it's not that we're responsible for everything that happens 'cause we're a group of people working together and everyone brings their own bit.

[00:13:23] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: I do think though, when we see a pattern in our team, or in our team member, that we're frustrated by, there should be a part of us that says, "How might I be contributing to this dynamic?"

[00:13:34] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: And if you don't know how you are, if you can build the type of relationship, and as you said, go into it with an ease versus a judgment of 'I'm observing this and I need to know what I'm doing that might be contributing to it.'

[00:13:47] Janet Ahn: Yeah, and I think that's so hard.

[00:13:50] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Yeah, but that's something we can do as leaders. The other thing you said, Janet, that I think is important is how do you get in there to figure out what's going on without the micromanagement as you described.

[00:14:03] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: I think the micromanage is, I am taking it from you and I'm gonna do it, or I'm going to prescribe to you exactly how to do it without knowing that's how that person's mind works, and so you're kind of losing the chance to know how they operate.

[00:14:18] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: I do think though, this idea of let's work it through together, like I wanna sit with you, either virtually or in person. I wanna understand how you're approaching it. I haven't sat in your shoes, or maybe I do it in a different way. I wanna understand. I really care, I can see that you feel - feel is the key word - that doesn't mean they are, I you feel like you're doing so much, I think that can work.

[00:14:40] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: The alternative, if that feels a little too high risk, especially if there's a pretty big gap in seniority between the person and the leader, is you can have a colleague do that.

[00:14:49] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: So sometimes I like to bring in a third person to say, "Hey, you know, what? I'm gonna pair you up with so and so, so you feel some support. I know we have so much going on. Why don't I have them spend a little bit of time with you?"

[00:15:02] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: It requires having some healthy dynamics within the team, so that still feels safe, but that way you can get some feedback from the colleague to say, "You know what? I think that I was able to help so and so try this, differently", or "I think it may be this works just not as well suited for them, so it's harder for them to do it. It's not as natural".

[00:15:19] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: That's two of the ways, but I do think you have to get underneath it, or how do you move past this dynamic?

[00:15:26] Janet Ahn: It's so true. And I think that's where it goes up against practicality of like, do I have time to sit here it. And that's tough, because that's the reality of so many leaders.

[00:15:35] Janet Ahn: If they have X amount of direct reports and X amount of deliverables, how do I coach everybody in this way and really try to understand people's process? And this is why I go back to how clear were your priorities.

[00:15:47] Janet Ahn: So no matter how they get it done, that's up to them a little bit, 'cause otherwise you are micromanaging their process, but what do they need to do? And I think that needs to be contracted, pretty regularly. It can't just be like an annual goal setting thing and then set it and forget it.

[00:16:02] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Completely agree.

[00:16:03] Abigail Charlu: Wow. So many helpful strategies there. The next leader asked, "How do I address a team member's frequent, unplanned personal days in a way that balances compassion for their needs with fairness to the rest of the team who are picking up extra work? Specifically, I have a team member who is often saying they need a personal day.

[00:16:25] Abigail Charlu: It doesn't seem fair to the rest of the team, especially those working overtime to deliver, but I also feel awkward to challenge them on it because they have an accommodation. When this repeatedly happens, I find myself feeling a bit annoyed and questioning their work ethic if I'm completely being honest."

[00:16:45] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: If it's starting to impact your ability to do what you need to do as a leader, if it's starting to drag down the other performers in your team, then you have a boundary issue.

[00:16:55] Janet Ahn: Really good point.

[00:16:56] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: And you can't accommodate one person to the expense of yourself and the team, right? That is a boundary that I hold. And you're gonna know it because you're starting to feel stretched and resentful and you're starting to get complaints from your team.

[00:17:14] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: That's a signal. You gotta listen to that signal, because otherwise that person's relationship with the team is gonna start to suffer and the team's gonna start to suffer.

[00:17:24] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: And then what you need to do, and at times you do need to bring in HR if it feels like it's sensitive, especially if they have an accommodation, if there's a health issue going on, or a personal thing is you do need to get a little bit of guidance on it, but the conversation usually goes something like, "I know, you're going through this, I really care and I really want to be able to be supportive and it's having an impact on the team.

[00:17:47] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: We have a lot going on right now and we're gonna need to solution a way to both allow you to have accommodation in a way that we can continue to manage the workload."

[00:17:57] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: That either is a co-creation type conversation, if you have a really high performer. If it's a moderate performer or you're not sure, then you need to say, "I may need to figure out if there's a way to sustain this, or not, and I just wanna give you a sense that this is what I'm thinking about. I wanna invite you into this conversation."

[00:18:15] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Or you're telling them "It's not working", right?

[00:18:17] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: That's kind of like the third layer of it.

[00:18:19] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: That's some of the stuff that comes to mind for me.

[00:18:20] Janet Ahn: It's so clear and I love how you started off by saying the signal right? Like, what's the signal? That there's boundary issues?

[00:18:28] Janet Ahn: One of the signals I've learned over time about me, is at the end of the day after work is done and I'm about to go to sleep, what's keeping me up at night? Is it the fact that I didn't get my deliverables done or I'm stressed about team dynamics? That's a signal for me that something's off.

[00:18:47] Janet Ahn: And normally what keeps me up is the team dynamics. It's more the team than "Is this client work getting done" or "Is this deliverable done? Did this KPI get reached?"

[00:18:57] Janet Ahn: It's the team dynamics and I know that right there is my signal something's off, that I'm not taking care of the team in a way that gives them clarity, gives them space to grow, gives them space to collaborate.

[00:19:10] Janet Ahn: So that's my personal one. What am I bringing home?

[00:19:13] Janet Ahn:  And I'm with you on this. As a leader, you always have to balance individual needs and the collective needs, and that's hard.

[00:19:21] Janet Ahn: That's always like, how much do you cater to one individual? How much do you cater to the collective group? But you, as a leader, you're responsible for the collective goals.

[00:19:29] Janet Ahn: And we know there's so much research about what happens when you have even one underperformer to the rest of the team. There's this contagion effect that can almost make that team more toxic. 

[00:19:40] Janet Ahn: Whenever that one individual can behave a certain way, what you're showing other people is you're tolerating that behavior and you're setting new norms.

[00:19:49] Janet Ahn: And that's the piece as a leader, you have to be consciously aware of at all times. What are you reinforcing, unintentionally or intentionally, by this one team member who's constantly off or sick and you're constantly catering?

[00:20:02] Janet Ahn: But then other people feel like, well, I am here when that person's not, and I pick up the slack, and what are you incentivizing about that person? So it becomes unfair.

[00:20:13] Janet Ahn: And so what norms are you reinforcing is always a key place, and I'm not going to reiterate any of the actions you said, 'cause they were so nicely spoken, but I do think there's that, how chronic of a behavior this is?

[00:20:25] Janet Ahn: Is this just like something's really come up in their lives and this is erratic behavior they've never really expressed, so you know that there's a basis of trust? Or is this just continuously happening from the get go?

[00:20:37] Janet Ahn: So I think just establish how chronic things are, and then at some point I think you need to, like you said, have clarity on that action. If it's not working out or we've explored several options now, but it's still not working, then I think I would just add don't wait too long.

[00:20:52] Janet Ahn: I feel like as a leader, I've only regretted times I've waited too long.

[00:20:58] Emily Frieze-Kemeny:  Yeah.

[00:20:58] Janet Ahn: And I look back and I'm like, I shouldn't have waited that long. Cause I try to be a good human the whole way, but sometimes I regret waiting too long.

[00:21:07] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: I've had the same experience.

[00:21:09] Abigail Charlu: Yeah, for sure. Better to address it right away than letting the issue linger.

[00:21:15] Abigail Charlu: On the flip side of this, another leader said, "I notice some people on my team never say no. They always step in, even if it means working late. At the same time, others are very clear about their boundaries and selectively volunteer. I need the work covered, but I'm worried about workload capacity and fairness among the team.

[00:21:36] Abigail Charlu: How do I manage workload while respecting boundaries, getting the work done and being thoughtful about what kind of behaviors I reward?"

[00:21:45] Janet Ahn: So I kind of brought this up in my response to the other one in terms of being really aware of what behaviors you're reinforcing unconsciously or consciously. And I think what tends to happen in organizations and in leadership circles or just teams in general, is the high performer ends up always burning out because they end up getting more work.

[00:22:07] Janet Ahn: So when you have a high performer, what happens is they accrue more trust. And so when you get more trust, you tend to get more stuff asked. And so we have to constantly balance as a leader, is that the only way to balance what good behavior looks like?

[00:22:24] Janet Ahn: Trust doesn't always have to equate to more work for you, because that's what happens when a leader starts trusting, they just give them more stuff. They could delegate more things, and I think that's a trap leaders have to watch for, in terms of, okay, how am I rewarding, quote unquote good behavior? Is it just by giving them more work, even though it's because I trust them.

[00:22:45] Janet Ahn: But in terms of the employee, the high performer or the person who's constantly saying yes to everything, what do they have to keep in check about what affirmation they're looking for? What approval are they trying to get? What are they trying to show by saying yes?

[00:23:00] Janet Ahn: And this is something I've constantly struggled with myself.

[00:23:03] Janet Ahn: It was always a "Yes, I've got it. Yeah, I'm happy to do so."

[00:23:07] Janet Ahn: And mainly because I'm such a strong team player, like it's not just about achieving, it's 'cause I care about the group and so I want the group to succeed, and if it means me stepping in to help the group, I'll do it Even though it's something that will take more time or other people don't want to do it. I just want the team to win.

[00:23:24] Janet Ahn: But I think we have to balance all of this.

[00:23:26] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: I can very much relate. I was always doing the extra.

[00:23:30] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: The only thing I'd add, Janet, which I think is an interesting flavor, and it reminds me of Liz Wiseman's book Impact Players.

[00:23:40] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: If you are ambitious and have that drive and wanna make a contribution, be seen as a high performer, there is a correlation of taking on extra stuff. I don't think you differentiate it as much at work if you just do your job well, 'cause it's like, well then what else differentiates you from your colleagues?

[00:24:00] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: So as a leader, I do evaluate talent based off of not just doing the job well, but where have they added incremental value? And I think that's a real thing.

[00:24:10] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: If you wanna get seen and promoted, you gotta go a little bit above and beyond, and I think that the catch is where is there an inequity in terms of workload allocation in the team? And maybe it's just about having a bar.

[00:24:27] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Let's say we have a consistent bar that everybody has to make a certain level of contribution. And you can feel and know when certain people are not adding as much value, and maybe it's skillset, maybe it's drive. And then I think maybe be explicit, which is like, this is what we all need to be able to contribute to make an impact. If you want to go above and beyond, I'm gonna give you opportunities to. If I'm not giving you as many opportunities as you want, let's have a conversation about that, because that means maybe you have greater capacity. Or maybe I'm not giving it to you because I'm not giving you feedback that I don't think you have the skillset that these other two people or three people have.

[00:25:06] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: But I think there's about fairness of distribution of work, and then there's about outperformance being, let's say, a bit of a choice.

[00:25:16] Janet Ahn: And I think like you said, the reality is to get ahead, you have to do some of that. And I don't want to be unclear to your listeners to emphasize that point. That is what performance cultures look like.

[00:25:28] Janet Ahn: You do have to push a bit more, but I think this is why it goes back to, do you even want to be there then? Right, But that's the reality. If that's your goal, to get ahead, to get promoted, it's a choice.

[00:25:40] Janet Ahn: And I think this is where, Abby, when you said, they say yes to everything, it's almost like they don't have choice. They do. They absolutely do.

[00:25:49] Janet Ahn: So I think this is where it's important for people to recognize at all times you have choice.

[00:25:55] Janet Ahn: No one's forcing you to do it. And I think when they run into this trap of, oh, I have to say yes, it's just my default.

[00:26:02] Janet Ahn: Well, where did you lose that sense of choice and how do you regain it? It's just one adjustment.

[00:26:08] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: I think that's such an important point. I've coached a lot of very high performers to dial it back, and to not tell anybody they're dialing it back. And that makes them really uncomfortable because they're used to giving it all and more, and I'm like, your 80% is most people's 120%.

[00:26:25] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: So no one's going to even know.

[00:26:26] Janet Ahn: Yeah. Where's your choice? People just lose that sense of autonomy, As if they have to, but you don't have to. So again, going back to the earlier part of our conversation, what's perceived, and what's actual?

[00:26:39] Janet Ahn: And where's your choice in that?

[00:26:41] Abigail Charlu: Mm. Definitely getting into some psychological drivers and maybe even some woundings there, which leads us nicely into our final question. This leader vulnerably shared, "I was raised to be the good kid. Always helpful, always agreeable, and I see those patterns showing up now as a leader. I overextend myself and sometimes I expect my team to do the same. How do I ensure I'm not projecting my own tendencies or wounding onto my team, especially in high pressure situations?"

[00:27:16] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Oh, the good kid. The good kid persona is so real!

[00:27:20] Janet Ahn: It's so real.

[00:27:21] Janet Ahn: And I think it is so relevant for women, because they're incentivized to nurture everyone's spirit, not just get stuff done, make sure everyone's happy while doing it.

[00:27:30] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Totally.

[00:27:31] Janet Ahn: So you have to care about how it's done as well as what's getting done, and if that's fair to everybody and then, keep the glue of everybody. And I think that's so much pressure, like I said in the beginning, this is not easy and no one gets it right.

[00:27:46] Janet Ahn: And I think even when we trap ourselves in a very American mindset, how do I make this better? It's just a very American mindset, to keep achieving for things that you can't.

[00:27:58] Janet Ahn: It's not attainable to be perfect at all times.

[00:28:01] Janet Ahn: Even if you did it perfectly, someone's gonna find flaw with it, so it's never going to be perceived perfectly. So I just think we have to break this mindset. And it's not easy when we're in this culture.

[00:28:11] Janet Ahn: But I think in terms of How do you stop? I mean, look, I'm not gonna go into the whole like, okay, do we need therapy? Every one of us probably.

[00:28:20] Janet Ahn: Do we need to do a lot of looking into ourselves about what's really traumatic inside and how are we projecting? And where do I notice the gap? And where do I notice doing it myself? I think we could just spend a whole field day on that.

[00:28:33] Janet Ahn: But that's what I've been trying to reflect on a lot is, what's perceived and what's actual, right?

[00:28:40] Janet Ahn: Even for me, what is the pressure I place on me? What is the actual need here? And then how am I emitting that behavior around? And I think that is constant awareness and it's exhausting, to center yourself, to be aware, 'cause so many times you're not aware. You're just doing it. And I think, in a culture of constant rush, of constant go, go, go, back to backs, you don't have a space to think about how you behave and how it impacts, but where can we make that space? I think it's so crucial.

[00:29:13] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: agree. I mean the way that I've started to see this in my own self work and in the coaching that I do with senior leaders is, are you listening to yourself?

[00:29:26] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: I think the most detrimental thing that has happened is that we override a feeling in us, the feeling of sometimes exhaustion. It's resentfulness. It's physical symptoms, and that we ignore it and I am the biggest perpetrator of this, I ignore it and I'll be like, "It's okay, I'll catch up on sleep on the weekend", or "I'll just get this one more thing done".

[00:29:49] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: I mean, I even start eating snacks at night, not because I'm hungry, but because it's an activity to help me stay awake while I'm finishing something I need to do.

[00:29:57] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Now, the thing I don't believe in prescribing is the how you recover. I think recovery is the key,  and recovery can be in micro moments. I'm a meditator, so I can throw in a meditation if I need to catch up on some rest, or I need to step away from it all and I can fit that into a 15, 20 minute moment.

[00:30:16] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Other people, it's like you just can't be back to back in meetings every day, right? Like you have to create some spaciousness in your calendar because you need to take stock. You need to think. You need to reflect.

[00:30:25] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Some people are very compulsive about their routines. I'm not, but I think having morning routines, having nighttime routines before bed, I just think that we can't tell people that there's one way, but you have to figure out what's your way.

[00:30:39] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Like I now know my way is I'm gonna go hard and then I'm gonna go slow, and I'm gonna go hard and I'm gonna go slow. And work has not given us permission to be able to set those patterns that work for us. So I'd say as a leader, if you wanna be at the cutting edge of leadership right now, then be the leader who creates some room for your team to set patterns that work for their own nervous system and flow as much as you possibly can.

[00:31:08] Janet Ahn: I completely agree with how people do that. And I think as a leader when you just go, go, go all the time, how is that sustainable? And I think we all inherently know that.

[00:31:18] Janet Ahn: But yet we still act like we have no choice. Just have to do it. And I don't think that's true.

[00:31:25] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Yeah.

[00:31:25] Janet Ahn: And I think a brave leader today is questioning that. Just step away and question for a second, and I think people are afraid to do that.

[00:31:34] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: I agree. And I think the trigger to ask that question is, something doesn't feel good. You're tired, you're frustrated, you're overwhelmed, you're doing things you don't wanna be doing, your team is overwhelmed.

[00:31:45] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: There's usually a signal that's like, okay, And my feeling is our philosophy on leadership is there's always another way.

[00:31:52] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: You're not as trapped in a perpetuating cycle as we feel we are, you just need to have more perspective, more input, that ability to step back for a moment. So that's the goal, is that believe that there is actually a better.

[00:32:07] Janet Ahn: Absolutely.

[00:32:09] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: So Janet, one of the ways that we like to close is, we believe we have a purpose as leaders. And we look at it as, there are perpetuating cycles of behavior patterns, ways of leading, that have been here at least as long as we've been able to experience them.

[00:32:27] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: What do you feel is a pattern that you are here to break as a leader?

[00:32:31] Janet Ahn: Oh gosh, this is such a heavy one. You know, Em, you touched on this, but the pattern I'm working on to break in me is to not second guess my instinct.

[00:32:43] Janet Ahn: I didn't realize how much I overrode my own instincts, like okay, just one more time. Or justifying. Or dismissing. Or saying, actually someone else said it and I over intellectualize. I didn't realize until in my personal career right now where I had to pause, my instinct was always spot on and I didn't listen to it all the time.

[00:33:05] Janet Ahn: And I think this time I'm learning to break the pattern of not doing that.

[00:33:11] Janet Ahn: Trusting my own instinct has been a new pattern I'm trying to form.

[00:33:15] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: I appreciate that so much and I think one that so many of us work on, and I really appreciate you sharing that and role modeling that that's the work we do as leaders and as humans, so it's a great one.

[00:33:27] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Janet, thank you so much for all the insight for helping us to unpack somewhat, almost impossible to get perfectly right answers, hopefully people got some key nuggets that they can work with.

[00:33:40] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: But these are hard, right? These are the human dynamics at play, at work, and as you said, this is the stuff that does keep us up at night. And so thank you for helping us to make some sense of it.

[00:33:50] Janet Ahn: Awesome. Thanks for having me here.

[00:33:51] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Great. As we wrap it up here for the things that I'm taking away from today's episode. It's so important for us to set clear expectations around outcomes versus activity. Sometimes, as you know, we can have a tendency to confuse high activity with high impact. You can level set with your team member by doing an aligning on outcomes meeting.

[00:34:15] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: It can be helpful to agree on the top three outcomes for the week or the month, who's the owner, or if it's them, a clear definition of what you think done means, and what the due date is.

[00:34:27] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Two, boundaries are a leadership responsibility. It's about balancing compassion with fairness. If one person, for example, is being very strong with their boundaries, maybe too much, it can affect the wellbeing of the team, as can the opposite, whereas people are not taking good enough care of their own boundaries, setting a bar that maybe is unrealistic for anybody to sustain. It's important to address it.

[00:34:52] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: At times, it might be necessary to loop in HR and to co-create with both your team as a whole and individuals a sustainable plan for performance. And my other piece of advice is don't wait too long to act.

[00:35:04] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Third, we also have to be careful about not defaulting to over rewarding that person who's the reliable 'Yes' by giving them even more work. I think it's important that we set a contribution bar that everybody needs to meet, and then we can distribute stretch opportunities for those who want them.

[00:35:23] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: In addition, it's so important for us to normalize recovery rhythms and giving people space to think and create.

[00:35:30] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: And last but not least, fourth, our defaults get louder under pressure. Are you one of those people who's naturally quick to overreact or underreact? Are you the type who has a tendency to over control or potentially under control situations? It's important to notice what happens to us when the pressure gets added. Often, that's when you start to see those natural tendencies get magnified, and the worst part is we often don't realize the impact that our leadership is having on others in those moments. Which is why we created a leadership survey that you can access for free at pivotplayers.com.

[00:36:07] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: That's Pivot, P-I-V-O-T-P-L-A-Y-E-R-S.com to see what leadership character you may start to look like under pressure.

[00:36:19] Emily Frieze-Kemeny:  Thanks for joining today's episode of Let's Talk, People. For more info and insights, visit arosegroup.com and find me, Emily Frieze-Kemeny, on LinkedIn and Instagram. If you're enjoying the show, please follow, share on social and leave a rating or review in your podcast app- it helps other listeners to discover us.

[00:36:41] Emily Frieze-Kemeny: Well, that's a wrap, friends. Until next time when we come together to talk people.