THE SYNCREATE PODCAST: EMPOWERING CREATIVITY
HOSTED BY MELINDA ROTHOUSE, PHD
WELCOME TO SYNCREATE, WHERE WE EXPLORE THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN CREATIVITY,
PSYCHOLOGY,AND SPIRITUALITY. OUR GOAL IS TO DEMYSTIFY THE CREATIVE PROCESS,
AND EXPAND THE BOUNDARIES OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE CREATIVE.
SUBSCRIBE / FOLLOW US ON SPOTIFY, APPLE PODCASTS, YOUTUBE
OR WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS
HOSTED BY MELINDA ROTHOUSE, PHD
WELCOME TO SYNCREATE, WHERE WE EXPLORE THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN CREATIVITY,
PSYCHOLOGY,AND SPIRITUALITY. OUR GOAL IS TO DEMYSTIFY THE CREATIVE PROCESS,
AND EXPAND THE BOUNDARIES OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE CREATIVE.
SUBSCRIBE / FOLLOW US ON SPOTIFY, APPLE PODCASTS, YOUTUBE
OR WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS
EPISODE 15: LEADERSHIP, BURNOUT & PERSONAL SUSTAINABILITY
WITH DR. Katherine Semler
LISTEN TO THE FULL AUDIO EPISODE HERE:
WATCH THE FULL VIDEO EPISODE HERE:
We’ve all likely experienced some degree of burnout or overwhelm, especially since the pandemic. But what exactly is burnout? How can we recognize the signs of it, prevent it from overtaking us, and heal from it once we’ve experienced it. My guest on the show today is Dr. Katherine Semler. Katherine has worked for 25 years in the field of leadership development. She is a senior partner at Korn Ferry and an adjunct faculty member at Ashridge Hult Business School. She is the co-author of Running On Empty, a book about burnout and the practices that can protect us from it.
We recorded this episode together in Girona, Spain, where we recently led a retreat together on Personal Sustainability and Creativity Through Writing and Contemplative Arts. Our conversation focuses on leadership, Katherine’s research on burnout, and personal sustainability, including practices to help prevent burnout and refill our energetic wells, such as creativity, movement, and time in nature.
For our Creativity Pro-Tip, I encourage you to set aside some time in your schedule, even if it’s only 30 minutes or so, to put away the to-do list, write in a journal, get out some paints or markers, or play some music. Get your hands in the dirt and do some gardening, or cook a nice meal. Whatever it looks like for you, just allow yourself to take a deep dive into your more right-brain, creative side. And notice what happens. The more often you allow yourself to replenish in this way, the more energy you’ll have for your life, and the less you’ll be susceptible to burnout.
At Syncreate, we’re here to support your creative endeavors. If you have an idea and you’re interested in our help, please reach out to us about 1x1 coaching, or join our Syncreate Six-Month Coaching Group starting in April of 2024. We’ll be guiding you through our Syncreate process to help bring a creative project to life. You can learn more at syncreate.org.
Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced by Christian Haigis with assistance from Anne Myers Cleary in Spain and Michael Osborne in Austin, Texas. Creative development and video production by Shuja Uddin and Devon Foster at Tishna Films. Artwork by Dreux Carpenter.
If you enjoy this episode, you might also like our conversations in Episode 6: Gratitude, Gentleness, and Generosity with Mayela Padilla Manasjan and Episode 11: Leadership, Values, and Criminal Justice Reform with Attorney Dylan Hayre.
We recorded this episode together in Girona, Spain, where we recently led a retreat together on Personal Sustainability and Creativity Through Writing and Contemplative Arts. Our conversation focuses on leadership, Katherine’s research on burnout, and personal sustainability, including practices to help prevent burnout and refill our energetic wells, such as creativity, movement, and time in nature.
For our Creativity Pro-Tip, I encourage you to set aside some time in your schedule, even if it’s only 30 minutes or so, to put away the to-do list, write in a journal, get out some paints or markers, or play some music. Get your hands in the dirt and do some gardening, or cook a nice meal. Whatever it looks like for you, just allow yourself to take a deep dive into your more right-brain, creative side. And notice what happens. The more often you allow yourself to replenish in this way, the more energy you’ll have for your life, and the less you’ll be susceptible to burnout.
At Syncreate, we’re here to support your creative endeavors. If you have an idea and you’re interested in our help, please reach out to us about 1x1 coaching, or join our Syncreate Six-Month Coaching Group starting in April of 2024. We’ll be guiding you through our Syncreate process to help bring a creative project to life. You can learn more at syncreate.org.
Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced by Christian Haigis with assistance from Anne Myers Cleary in Spain and Michael Osborne in Austin, Texas. Creative development and video production by Shuja Uddin and Devon Foster at Tishna Films. Artwork by Dreux Carpenter.
If you enjoy this episode, you might also like our conversations in Episode 6: Gratitude, Gentleness, and Generosity with Mayela Padilla Manasjan and Episode 11: Leadership, Values, and Criminal Justice Reform with Attorney Dylan Hayre.
EPISODE VIDEO CLIP: THE SIGNS OF BURNOUT
EPISODE-SPECIFIC HYPERLINKS
Episode-specific hyperlinks:
Dr. Katherine Semler
Book: Running on Empty by Amy Bradley and Katherine Semler
Ashridge Hult Business School
Maslach Burnout Index
Dr. Amy Bradley
Dr. Katherine Semler
Book: Running on Empty by Amy Bradley and Katherine Semler
Ashridge Hult Business School
Maslach Burnout Index
Dr. Amy Bradley
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Melinda: Welcome to Syncreate, where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology, and spirituality. Our goal is to demystify the creative process, and expand the boundaries of what it means to be creative. I’m Melinda Rothouse, and I help individuals and organizations bring their creative dreams and visions to life.
I’m very excited to bring you my conversation today with Dr. Katherine Semler, all the way from Girona, Spain, where we recently led a retreat together on Personal Sustainability and Creativity Through Writing and Contemplative Arts. Katherine and I met in college when we sang together in an a cappella group. We stayed in touch over the years and reconnected more deeply during the pandemic, when we discovered we’d been leading parallel lives for the last number of years. We both work in leadership development, went back and got our PhDs slightly later in life, we’re both professors, and we both host and facilitate retreats focusing on writing and creativity.
Katherine has worked for 25 years in the field of leadership development. She is a senior partner at Korn Ferry and an adjunct faculty member at Ashridge Hult Business School. Originally from both North America and Barcelona, she has lived and worked in the US, Spain and Russia. Katherine earned her doctorate in Organizational Change at the Ashridge Hult Business School in the UK. She holds a Master of Arts degree from Dartmouth College and a bachelor’s degree from Vassar College, both in Comparative Literature. She has published academic articles on holistic leadership and the integration of relational intelligence in organizations. She’s co-author of Running On Empty, a book about burnout and the practices that can protect us from it.
We recorded this episode together at Mas Estrellas, Katherine’s home and retreat space outside of Girona, Spain.
As I said, we connected when we were in college. You are also, among many other things, you recently co-authored and published a book on leadership and burnout called Running on Empty.
Katherine: That's right.
Melinda: So I want to hear much more about the book, but first of all, what brings us together in person today, which is such a rare treat because I don't think we'd seen each other in person for about what, 25 years?
Katherine: At least, yeah. Well, yeah, about that.
Melinda: Something like that. But we kind of reconnected during the pandemic and got to talking and just found out that we were sort of living these parallel lives in all these interesting ways. And you were telling me about your place out here in the country, outside of Girona. And I said, “Oh, I really want to see your place.” And you said, “Let's do a retreat together.” So that's how that idea was born. And here we are.
Katherine: Here we are.
Melinda: We've been here all week with a wonderful group of people exploring personal sustainability and creativity. So, I'm just so delighted that we can be here together. And, now that we're sort of coming to the conclusion of the retreat, we've all been immersed in our own creative processes. What are you kind of taking away from the experience?
Katherine: Well, the first thing I'm taking away, I love what you just said. You called it a rare treat. So I think we need to rename it a “raretreat.”
Melinda: A raretreat instead of a retreat. [Laughter]
Katherine: So you sparked some creativity right there.
Melinda: Awesome.
Katherine: So, look, I'm taking away, I think, a mixture of three things. One is the discipline of doing your creative work, which is something that I've kind of intuitively been in touch with for a long time, but it's just such a good thing to remind me that that constants and just getting to it regularly is a really important part of it.
So being here this whole week and having different spaces of time every day to connect with what I'm doing with my particular creative project at the moment has been, has been great. The second thing is community. So being able to share that with others and community and get feedback, that has all been really important. Also, the importance of space. So what kind of a space are we in? I do believe, and I think you say in your book that you can be creative just about anywhere. You do not have to have a beautiful studio with, you know, all kinds of, you know, amenities or fancy settings. So the space is not just about the time, it's also about the physical space, and that's something that I've encountered in the past, and which I've found to be really great about this week.
Melinda: Yeah, it's been wonderful just to take that time away, that time apart, and come together and really just bring our creativity to the forefront. So one of the things that kind of inspired this retreat was your work on personal sustainability, which kind of came out of your research and your book, called Running on Empty, which explores leadership and burnout, and how burnout comes on, how we can start to recognize the signs of it, and then how we can start to work with it.
Katherine: Exactly.
Melinda: So, what inspired the book?
Katherine: Yeah, so this book came about, the very inspiration for the book came about during the pandemic when my co-author Amy Bradley and I were both working in leadership development, coaching leaders, holding online development programs with groups of leaders, so both individually and in groups, and we just kept coming across this really prevalent trend of people being absolutely exhausted, and at the end of their energy.
Now, we were conscious from the beginning, and are very conscious now, that burnout is not something that came about in the pandemic alone. So a lot of people were already exhausted going into the pandemic and that exacerbated it. But we also talked to a bunch of folks who, you know, had stories of burnout to contribute to the research, which was way prior to COVID.
And so, COVID doesn't play a central role in the book, but it is the moment in time in which this research came together. So we were seeing this in our practice, in our real life. And we were, to some degree, experiencing it ourselves. I don't classify myself as having gone through a diagnosed burnout, but I was extremely overwhelmed in about November of 2020, having gone through a series of changes in my work and also changes in my personal life, and all of that coming together and being lived in, you know, 12 and 13 hour days on Zoom, et cetera.
So there was the lived experience of that through our own experience, and the leaders that we were talking to, and then there was also the realization once we started to dig into the topic that there is not a lot of research done on burnout So there are some very interesting studies, but the Maslach Burnout Index is something that is interesting to look into and that measures different aspects of burnout.
And that research is really robust, but we wanted to build on that. And really, they collect stories, and use a storied approach because it is restorative for people to tell their stories. We found it very restorative to write those stories anonymously, and of course protecting the participants, and then putting that together with a series of recommendations that came out of that. So we did a bit of a community inquiry. We also did individual interviews with a number of people, and then put together the book.
Melinda: Great. So, you know, burnout is a word that gets used a lot. But what does it actually mean? Like, is there a definition or did you all come up with a definition of burnout in your research?
Katherine: So burnout is a combination of exhaustion or physical fatigue; feelings of cynicism towards your work or your occupation, whatever that may be; and a sustained feeling of not being able to actually do what you're doing with quality. So a loss of confidence or a sense that “I don't think I can do this” over a prolonged period of time, which differs from how you felt before the burnout.
So the researchers on this topic, Maslach and Leiter, say that you need to have all three of those present for it to classify clinically as burnout. We differ from that a little bit in the book. We suggest that we've seen a number of people who maybe only had a couple of those three things or maybe even just one in a very acute way, usually a combination of two, and who were absolutely self-identifying as being burned out. But that is the definition, and I think it's a useful one. So extreme fatigue over a period of time; cynicism towards your work, and place of employment; and that feeling of failure and diminished self-worth in terms of what you do.
Melinda: Yeah. And one of the things I noticed when reading your book that was sort of a common theme. I don't think it's necessarily definitional, but we both work with leaders and executives and one of the things that I noticed in so many of the stories of people experiencing burnout in your book had to do with toxic leadership.
Katherine: Mmm hmm. Yep.
Melinda: Right? So If you know and there's so much research out there that if you have a boss, a supervisor, that is an inspiring leader and an empowering leader and you feel supported and you feel a sense of trust, then that you know just goes a very, very, very long way toward creating a positive work environment. And, you know, people feeling motivated and connected to their work. And then the opposite is also true. So, I'm curious, because you work with leaders all the time, tell me a little more about your perspective on sort of good leadership versus toxic leadership.
Katherine: So yes, and there is that classic adage, people don't leave jobs, they leave bosses.
Melinda: Yes.
Katherine: So the bad boss archetype is something that is absolutely a huge influence on burnout. So the book actually, you know, it serves as a way to heal yourself in a way, to understand what's behind burnout. What are some of the early signs that you might be able to recognize? What are some of the practices that keep us whole?
And also, if you're in a leadership position, there is some information and some cases around that bad boss syndrome. You know, sometimes you might be able to identify a bad boss and identify the source of your burnout, but you can also use that is a cautionary tale to say, you know, what are the things that you definitely want to avoid being that toxic boss.
And you know, they're pretty classic don't do's, you know, don't undermine, and you know, don't push the people working for you beyond where they can go, and know their context and their circumstances. Everybody's different. We cannot treat everybody the same. So somebody who's going through a major life event might not be able to contribute in the same way as someone who's not. So sometimes, we also talk about equity being different from equality, right? So equality is treating everybody the same. Equity is treating everybody the way they need to be treated in order to be able to accomplish the job.
So yeah, those are some of the hallmarks of bad bosses. A lot of gaslighting happens, a lot of undue pressure. So bosses who, instead of being a springboard and absorbing some of the stress that's coming from above, just refract that stress and multiply the stress that's going on below them for their direct reports.
So, yeah, those are some of the things to watch out for.
Melinda: Micromanaging.
Katherine: Yes.
Melinda: Also, you know, there's also a lot of research that shows that it's really the kind of relational, interpersonal communication skills. It's all about relationships and taking the time to develop positive relationships with the people you're working with.
Katherine: Yep. Relationships are so important. So I try to remind myself, and other leaders, that leadership is about relationships and relationships are about conversations.
Melinda: Yes.
Katherine: So without conversations, without actually sitting down with someone and just getting to know a little bit about who they are, if you're their direct boss, that's already a sign of potential mismatch between expectations.
Melinda: Just a power inequality. Yeah. So for people who may resonate with this, whether it's working for a toxic boss, or just experiencing exhaustion and burnout, as so many of us are, how do we work with that? What did you find?
Katherine: Yeah, so we learned about so many wonderful practices through the people that we interviewed, people who were on the road to healing from burnout, people who were, you know, staving it off and especially helping each other.
So I'll start with the helping each other. So one of the most powerful things that we found was that talking about what are the factors in your life that are causing you to feel burned out? And how are you feeling? What does it feel like to be where you are? To be overwhelmed, to be exhausted, to be in a job that's not giving you the space that you need to be productive and to grow as a person?
So being able to talk about that, and what we found that was most surprising was that people really emphasize talking with strangers. So coming together in this inquiry group and talking to people who did not work for their same company, were not known to them--they weren't your aunt or your cousin or your brother--and that didn't hold you to any baggage. They really just listened to your story with openness and acceptance and a lack of judgment. And having that conversation of a similar experience, but in a context that didn't have any strings attached to it, was a powerful thing.
So that's one of the things, conversation, and then that conversation with strangers or sharing your story with strangers. And then there's a whole series of practices that we can take on: Contact with nature, for example. So auditory things that we can do just in the middle of a busy day, if you can maybe open the window and listen to the birds, if there are birds outside your window, for a few minutes.
So sound is very powerful in restoring our sense of being centered and not being under threat. And interestingly on that, analog sound is apparently much more powerful than digital sound. So if you can listen to a live musician, do it. It's easy for me, my husband's a musician, so I hear live music all the time.
But birds is analog sound, or the sound of the ocean if you're near the water, that's analog sound. So, but just sound in general can be very helpful. Nature and movement are big ones. The best is getting out in nature and moving around, so whether it's a park or your backyard, or if you live in the countryside, then, you know, get out and enjoy that countryside and move around a little bit while you do that.
Of course, breathing. A breathing practice, a meditation practice, a mindfulness practice, of course is extremely helpful, but even on a very busy day between those back-to-back-to-back meetings, taking a moment to just take some deep breaths, and let that last meeting go before you go into the next one, or to the next task or whatever it is, can be incredibly restorative.
Melinda: Yeah, and then of course the one that perked up my ears--all of these are great--is creativity. That also figures in, right? So how does that, how do you see creativity figuring into working with burnout?
Katherine: Yeah, absolutely. So, yes, in the spirit of the week that we're having here and of Syncreate. So making things, whether it's physical things, making art, making music, making food. There's something about lateral thinking, and allowing your brain to relax and not constantly zero in on a specifically productive towards a certain goal kind of direction, turns out to be restorative. And it's not rocket science, but it is interesting to note that all of those activities, whether it's listening to nature or walking around or, you know, get, getting out and, and getting some movement, all of that allows for lateral thinking to happen.
Melinda: Yeah. Just kind of opening up of perspective and not just being so focused all the time.
Katherine: Yep, exactly. You're relaxing that focus that you have on your work or whatever it is that's the source of your burnout. Sometimes the source of your burnout can be something in your private life, right, that's causing you to burn out. But if you're thinking about that problem nonstop, it's going to be really helpful if you can do something. And if it's something creative, I mean, creativity, if you can tap into it, will almost for sure relax that muscle that's making you over-focus.
Melinda: Absolutely. I mean, this brings up so many things, but you know, in a work context, we tend to be, you know, exercise this focused attention. And one of the things about creativity is that it's about associative thinking and making connections between maybe seemingly unrelated things, or taking inspiration from the world. So it involves that, again, that sort of broadening out and also shifting, you know, into a different way of thinking. Like I find for myself, you know, when I sit down to play music or some other creative tasks that I find very absorbing, I can almost, like, feel my brain shifting into a different place. You know, I get into more of a flow place and I think it's good for us, for our brains, to not just always be focusing in on the same thing all the time.
Katherine: Having contrast in your life is a source of creativity sometimes, right? So I can remember when I had four very young children, and I had a fairly intense job. I was working at a business school and running programs for corporate clients at this business school.
And I loved my job and I, of course, loved having this whole band of kids at home, and one of the things that I found really restorative--which is gone now that my kids are grown up and gone away--is that I had a beautiful contrast such that I would come home. First of all, I had a little bit of a buffer. I had a nice 20-minute walk between my work and my home. So a little bit of buffer there to breathe and move and look at the trees or the sky. And then I would come into this really intense home life and it would, I couldn't possibly keep my work in my mind. It was impossible.
So two very intense situations, and that can also lead to burnout, but for me in particular, it was the contrast and being really present with what I was doing, with my home life, that would make me forget, and kind of disconnect from what was going on at work, which was really important.
Melinda: Yeah, so you've mentioned some wonderful ways to kind of work with burnout and all these, you know, kind of practices, which we know are healthy in general, but can also be useful in this context. So I'm conscious of time, but just want to explore a little bit more this concept of personal sustainability, which kind of came out of the research for you. Something we've been exploring in the retreat this week, and I'm curious, like you just actually came back from a meeting, a sort of more corporate meeting, around sustainability more broadly. So how do those, how does personal sustainability connect with wider environmental and sustainability in other ways for you?
Katherine: Well, first of all, I would describe personal sustainability as, you know, exactly what we talk about in the book. What are the practices that can keep us whole, that can make space for us to be creative, for us to stay healthy? So how do we first, create a space, and from that space, especially in leadership, if we’re trying to. You know, a lot of what I do in my work is try to encourage leaders to think about the broader sustainability agenda of whatever their business is.
But we can't ask them to do that if they don't have the time and the space and that capacity to even connect with that. Right? So the idea there is that there is a connection between your own personal sustainability. How sustainable are you as a person? Yeah. You know, living in this world, and as a leader, how is your personal sustainability and how does that allow for a consciousness of the broader sustainability?
And in both cases, if your own sustainability is just one more thing on your list that's going to stress you out, it's not really going to be true sustainability. And equally, if environmental or social or governance sustainability is one more thing on your list versus something that you have the space to think in that key, or to think in that, sort of, line of thought ,and to go in that direction, then it's going to be really hard.
So what we started to see as a result of this book was, and the research and all the people that we spoke to, was that in order to achieve sustainability on a more global level, in the broader sense, sustainability with a big S as I call it, we need the sustainability with a small s. The lowercase s to be in place for people and for leadership.
Melinda: Yeah. So thank you so much for the conversation today.
Katherine: Thank you, Melinda.
Melinda: And if people want to learn more about your work or about the book, how can they find you?
Katherine: So you can find me at katherineh.semler at gmail dot com. You can also find the book, on various different platforms. It's called Running on Empty. My co-author is Amy Bradley. So it's Katherine Semler and Amy Bradley. And yeah, we'd be delighted to get to know you.
Melinda: Thanks again for the conversation and for the opportunity to do this retreat together.
Katherine: Thanks for having me, Melinda, and it's an honor to be associated with Syncreate.
Melinda: Oh, thank you.
We talked today about burnout, and how creativity can help prevent and heal from it. Many of us have experienced burnout at some point in our lives. It’s almost inevitable with the pace of our lives and the ways we habitually overwork and overschedule ourselves. It can be hard to step off the roller coaster and take time for ourselves, but that’s exactly what I’m encouraging you to do for our Creativity Pro-Tip today.
See if you can set aside some time in your schedule, even if it’s only 30 minutes or so, to put away the to-do list, write in a journal, get out some paints or markers, or play some music. Get your hands in the dirt and do some gardening, or cook a nice meal. Whatever it looks like for you, just allow yourself to take a deep dive into your more right-brain, creative side. And notice what happens. The more often you allow yourself to replenish in this way, the more energy you’ll have for your life, and the less you’ll be susceptible to burnout.
At Syncreate, we’re here to support your creative endeavors. If you have an idea and you’re interested in our help, please reach out to us about 1x1 coaching, or join our Syncreate Six-Month Coaching Group starting in April of 2024. We’ll be guiding you through our Syncreate process to help bring a creative project to life. You can learn more at syncreate.org.
This episode was produced by Christian Haigis with assistance by Mike Osborne. Follow Syncreate on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn, where you can also find out more about all we do at Syncreate. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
I’m very excited to bring you my conversation today with Dr. Katherine Semler, all the way from Girona, Spain, where we recently led a retreat together on Personal Sustainability and Creativity Through Writing and Contemplative Arts. Katherine and I met in college when we sang together in an a cappella group. We stayed in touch over the years and reconnected more deeply during the pandemic, when we discovered we’d been leading parallel lives for the last number of years. We both work in leadership development, went back and got our PhDs slightly later in life, we’re both professors, and we both host and facilitate retreats focusing on writing and creativity.
Katherine has worked for 25 years in the field of leadership development. She is a senior partner at Korn Ferry and an adjunct faculty member at Ashridge Hult Business School. Originally from both North America and Barcelona, she has lived and worked in the US, Spain and Russia. Katherine earned her doctorate in Organizational Change at the Ashridge Hult Business School in the UK. She holds a Master of Arts degree from Dartmouth College and a bachelor’s degree from Vassar College, both in Comparative Literature. She has published academic articles on holistic leadership and the integration of relational intelligence in organizations. She’s co-author of Running On Empty, a book about burnout and the practices that can protect us from it.
We recorded this episode together at Mas Estrellas, Katherine’s home and retreat space outside of Girona, Spain.
As I said, we connected when we were in college. You are also, among many other things, you recently co-authored and published a book on leadership and burnout called Running on Empty.
Katherine: That's right.
Melinda: So I want to hear much more about the book, but first of all, what brings us together in person today, which is such a rare treat because I don't think we'd seen each other in person for about what, 25 years?
Katherine: At least, yeah. Well, yeah, about that.
Melinda: Something like that. But we kind of reconnected during the pandemic and got to talking and just found out that we were sort of living these parallel lives in all these interesting ways. And you were telling me about your place out here in the country, outside of Girona. And I said, “Oh, I really want to see your place.” And you said, “Let's do a retreat together.” So that's how that idea was born. And here we are.
Katherine: Here we are.
Melinda: We've been here all week with a wonderful group of people exploring personal sustainability and creativity. So, I'm just so delighted that we can be here together. And, now that we're sort of coming to the conclusion of the retreat, we've all been immersed in our own creative processes. What are you kind of taking away from the experience?
Katherine: Well, the first thing I'm taking away, I love what you just said. You called it a rare treat. So I think we need to rename it a “raretreat.”
Melinda: A raretreat instead of a retreat. [Laughter]
Katherine: So you sparked some creativity right there.
Melinda: Awesome.
Katherine: So, look, I'm taking away, I think, a mixture of three things. One is the discipline of doing your creative work, which is something that I've kind of intuitively been in touch with for a long time, but it's just such a good thing to remind me that that constants and just getting to it regularly is a really important part of it.
So being here this whole week and having different spaces of time every day to connect with what I'm doing with my particular creative project at the moment has been, has been great. The second thing is community. So being able to share that with others and community and get feedback, that has all been really important. Also, the importance of space. So what kind of a space are we in? I do believe, and I think you say in your book that you can be creative just about anywhere. You do not have to have a beautiful studio with, you know, all kinds of, you know, amenities or fancy settings. So the space is not just about the time, it's also about the physical space, and that's something that I've encountered in the past, and which I've found to be really great about this week.
Melinda: Yeah, it's been wonderful just to take that time away, that time apart, and come together and really just bring our creativity to the forefront. So one of the things that kind of inspired this retreat was your work on personal sustainability, which kind of came out of your research and your book, called Running on Empty, which explores leadership and burnout, and how burnout comes on, how we can start to recognize the signs of it, and then how we can start to work with it.
Katherine: Exactly.
Melinda: So, what inspired the book?
Katherine: Yeah, so this book came about, the very inspiration for the book came about during the pandemic when my co-author Amy Bradley and I were both working in leadership development, coaching leaders, holding online development programs with groups of leaders, so both individually and in groups, and we just kept coming across this really prevalent trend of people being absolutely exhausted, and at the end of their energy.
Now, we were conscious from the beginning, and are very conscious now, that burnout is not something that came about in the pandemic alone. So a lot of people were already exhausted going into the pandemic and that exacerbated it. But we also talked to a bunch of folks who, you know, had stories of burnout to contribute to the research, which was way prior to COVID.
And so, COVID doesn't play a central role in the book, but it is the moment in time in which this research came together. So we were seeing this in our practice, in our real life. And we were, to some degree, experiencing it ourselves. I don't classify myself as having gone through a diagnosed burnout, but I was extremely overwhelmed in about November of 2020, having gone through a series of changes in my work and also changes in my personal life, and all of that coming together and being lived in, you know, 12 and 13 hour days on Zoom, et cetera.
So there was the lived experience of that through our own experience, and the leaders that we were talking to, and then there was also the realization once we started to dig into the topic that there is not a lot of research done on burnout So there are some very interesting studies, but the Maslach Burnout Index is something that is interesting to look into and that measures different aspects of burnout.
And that research is really robust, but we wanted to build on that. And really, they collect stories, and use a storied approach because it is restorative for people to tell their stories. We found it very restorative to write those stories anonymously, and of course protecting the participants, and then putting that together with a series of recommendations that came out of that. So we did a bit of a community inquiry. We also did individual interviews with a number of people, and then put together the book.
Melinda: Great. So, you know, burnout is a word that gets used a lot. But what does it actually mean? Like, is there a definition or did you all come up with a definition of burnout in your research?
Katherine: So burnout is a combination of exhaustion or physical fatigue; feelings of cynicism towards your work or your occupation, whatever that may be; and a sustained feeling of not being able to actually do what you're doing with quality. So a loss of confidence or a sense that “I don't think I can do this” over a prolonged period of time, which differs from how you felt before the burnout.
So the researchers on this topic, Maslach and Leiter, say that you need to have all three of those present for it to classify clinically as burnout. We differ from that a little bit in the book. We suggest that we've seen a number of people who maybe only had a couple of those three things or maybe even just one in a very acute way, usually a combination of two, and who were absolutely self-identifying as being burned out. But that is the definition, and I think it's a useful one. So extreme fatigue over a period of time; cynicism towards your work, and place of employment; and that feeling of failure and diminished self-worth in terms of what you do.
Melinda: Yeah. And one of the things I noticed when reading your book that was sort of a common theme. I don't think it's necessarily definitional, but we both work with leaders and executives and one of the things that I noticed in so many of the stories of people experiencing burnout in your book had to do with toxic leadership.
Katherine: Mmm hmm. Yep.
Melinda: Right? So If you know and there's so much research out there that if you have a boss, a supervisor, that is an inspiring leader and an empowering leader and you feel supported and you feel a sense of trust, then that you know just goes a very, very, very long way toward creating a positive work environment. And, you know, people feeling motivated and connected to their work. And then the opposite is also true. So, I'm curious, because you work with leaders all the time, tell me a little more about your perspective on sort of good leadership versus toxic leadership.
Katherine: So yes, and there is that classic adage, people don't leave jobs, they leave bosses.
Melinda: Yes.
Katherine: So the bad boss archetype is something that is absolutely a huge influence on burnout. So the book actually, you know, it serves as a way to heal yourself in a way, to understand what's behind burnout. What are some of the early signs that you might be able to recognize? What are some of the practices that keep us whole?
And also, if you're in a leadership position, there is some information and some cases around that bad boss syndrome. You know, sometimes you might be able to identify a bad boss and identify the source of your burnout, but you can also use that is a cautionary tale to say, you know, what are the things that you definitely want to avoid being that toxic boss.
And you know, they're pretty classic don't do's, you know, don't undermine, and you know, don't push the people working for you beyond where they can go, and know their context and their circumstances. Everybody's different. We cannot treat everybody the same. So somebody who's going through a major life event might not be able to contribute in the same way as someone who's not. So sometimes, we also talk about equity being different from equality, right? So equality is treating everybody the same. Equity is treating everybody the way they need to be treated in order to be able to accomplish the job.
So yeah, those are some of the hallmarks of bad bosses. A lot of gaslighting happens, a lot of undue pressure. So bosses who, instead of being a springboard and absorbing some of the stress that's coming from above, just refract that stress and multiply the stress that's going on below them for their direct reports.
So, yeah, those are some of the things to watch out for.
Melinda: Micromanaging.
Katherine: Yes.
Melinda: Also, you know, there's also a lot of research that shows that it's really the kind of relational, interpersonal communication skills. It's all about relationships and taking the time to develop positive relationships with the people you're working with.
Katherine: Yep. Relationships are so important. So I try to remind myself, and other leaders, that leadership is about relationships and relationships are about conversations.
Melinda: Yes.
Katherine: So without conversations, without actually sitting down with someone and just getting to know a little bit about who they are, if you're their direct boss, that's already a sign of potential mismatch between expectations.
Melinda: Just a power inequality. Yeah. So for people who may resonate with this, whether it's working for a toxic boss, or just experiencing exhaustion and burnout, as so many of us are, how do we work with that? What did you find?
Katherine: Yeah, so we learned about so many wonderful practices through the people that we interviewed, people who were on the road to healing from burnout, people who were, you know, staving it off and especially helping each other.
So I'll start with the helping each other. So one of the most powerful things that we found was that talking about what are the factors in your life that are causing you to feel burned out? And how are you feeling? What does it feel like to be where you are? To be overwhelmed, to be exhausted, to be in a job that's not giving you the space that you need to be productive and to grow as a person?
So being able to talk about that, and what we found that was most surprising was that people really emphasize talking with strangers. So coming together in this inquiry group and talking to people who did not work for their same company, were not known to them--they weren't your aunt or your cousin or your brother--and that didn't hold you to any baggage. They really just listened to your story with openness and acceptance and a lack of judgment. And having that conversation of a similar experience, but in a context that didn't have any strings attached to it, was a powerful thing.
So that's one of the things, conversation, and then that conversation with strangers or sharing your story with strangers. And then there's a whole series of practices that we can take on: Contact with nature, for example. So auditory things that we can do just in the middle of a busy day, if you can maybe open the window and listen to the birds, if there are birds outside your window, for a few minutes.
So sound is very powerful in restoring our sense of being centered and not being under threat. And interestingly on that, analog sound is apparently much more powerful than digital sound. So if you can listen to a live musician, do it. It's easy for me, my husband's a musician, so I hear live music all the time.
But birds is analog sound, or the sound of the ocean if you're near the water, that's analog sound. So, but just sound in general can be very helpful. Nature and movement are big ones. The best is getting out in nature and moving around, so whether it's a park or your backyard, or if you live in the countryside, then, you know, get out and enjoy that countryside and move around a little bit while you do that.
Of course, breathing. A breathing practice, a meditation practice, a mindfulness practice, of course is extremely helpful, but even on a very busy day between those back-to-back-to-back meetings, taking a moment to just take some deep breaths, and let that last meeting go before you go into the next one, or to the next task or whatever it is, can be incredibly restorative.
Melinda: Yeah, and then of course the one that perked up my ears--all of these are great--is creativity. That also figures in, right? So how does that, how do you see creativity figuring into working with burnout?
Katherine: Yeah, absolutely. So, yes, in the spirit of the week that we're having here and of Syncreate. So making things, whether it's physical things, making art, making music, making food. There's something about lateral thinking, and allowing your brain to relax and not constantly zero in on a specifically productive towards a certain goal kind of direction, turns out to be restorative. And it's not rocket science, but it is interesting to note that all of those activities, whether it's listening to nature or walking around or, you know, get, getting out and, and getting some movement, all of that allows for lateral thinking to happen.
Melinda: Yeah. Just kind of opening up of perspective and not just being so focused all the time.
Katherine: Yep, exactly. You're relaxing that focus that you have on your work or whatever it is that's the source of your burnout. Sometimes the source of your burnout can be something in your private life, right, that's causing you to burn out. But if you're thinking about that problem nonstop, it's going to be really helpful if you can do something. And if it's something creative, I mean, creativity, if you can tap into it, will almost for sure relax that muscle that's making you over-focus.
Melinda: Absolutely. I mean, this brings up so many things, but you know, in a work context, we tend to be, you know, exercise this focused attention. And one of the things about creativity is that it's about associative thinking and making connections between maybe seemingly unrelated things, or taking inspiration from the world. So it involves that, again, that sort of broadening out and also shifting, you know, into a different way of thinking. Like I find for myself, you know, when I sit down to play music or some other creative tasks that I find very absorbing, I can almost, like, feel my brain shifting into a different place. You know, I get into more of a flow place and I think it's good for us, for our brains, to not just always be focusing in on the same thing all the time.
Katherine: Having contrast in your life is a source of creativity sometimes, right? So I can remember when I had four very young children, and I had a fairly intense job. I was working at a business school and running programs for corporate clients at this business school.
And I loved my job and I, of course, loved having this whole band of kids at home, and one of the things that I found really restorative--which is gone now that my kids are grown up and gone away--is that I had a beautiful contrast such that I would come home. First of all, I had a little bit of a buffer. I had a nice 20-minute walk between my work and my home. So a little bit of buffer there to breathe and move and look at the trees or the sky. And then I would come into this really intense home life and it would, I couldn't possibly keep my work in my mind. It was impossible.
So two very intense situations, and that can also lead to burnout, but for me in particular, it was the contrast and being really present with what I was doing, with my home life, that would make me forget, and kind of disconnect from what was going on at work, which was really important.
Melinda: Yeah, so you've mentioned some wonderful ways to kind of work with burnout and all these, you know, kind of practices, which we know are healthy in general, but can also be useful in this context. So I'm conscious of time, but just want to explore a little bit more this concept of personal sustainability, which kind of came out of the research for you. Something we've been exploring in the retreat this week, and I'm curious, like you just actually came back from a meeting, a sort of more corporate meeting, around sustainability more broadly. So how do those, how does personal sustainability connect with wider environmental and sustainability in other ways for you?
Katherine: Well, first of all, I would describe personal sustainability as, you know, exactly what we talk about in the book. What are the practices that can keep us whole, that can make space for us to be creative, for us to stay healthy? So how do we first, create a space, and from that space, especially in leadership, if we’re trying to. You know, a lot of what I do in my work is try to encourage leaders to think about the broader sustainability agenda of whatever their business is.
But we can't ask them to do that if they don't have the time and the space and that capacity to even connect with that. Right? So the idea there is that there is a connection between your own personal sustainability. How sustainable are you as a person? Yeah. You know, living in this world, and as a leader, how is your personal sustainability and how does that allow for a consciousness of the broader sustainability?
And in both cases, if your own sustainability is just one more thing on your list that's going to stress you out, it's not really going to be true sustainability. And equally, if environmental or social or governance sustainability is one more thing on your list versus something that you have the space to think in that key, or to think in that, sort of, line of thought ,and to go in that direction, then it's going to be really hard.
So what we started to see as a result of this book was, and the research and all the people that we spoke to, was that in order to achieve sustainability on a more global level, in the broader sense, sustainability with a big S as I call it, we need the sustainability with a small s. The lowercase s to be in place for people and for leadership.
Melinda: Yeah. So thank you so much for the conversation today.
Katherine: Thank you, Melinda.
Melinda: And if people want to learn more about your work or about the book, how can they find you?
Katherine: So you can find me at katherineh.semler at gmail dot com. You can also find the book, on various different platforms. It's called Running on Empty. My co-author is Amy Bradley. So it's Katherine Semler and Amy Bradley. And yeah, we'd be delighted to get to know you.
Melinda: Thanks again for the conversation and for the opportunity to do this retreat together.
Katherine: Thanks for having me, Melinda, and it's an honor to be associated with Syncreate.
Melinda: Oh, thank you.
We talked today about burnout, and how creativity can help prevent and heal from it. Many of us have experienced burnout at some point in our lives. It’s almost inevitable with the pace of our lives and the ways we habitually overwork and overschedule ourselves. It can be hard to step off the roller coaster and take time for ourselves, but that’s exactly what I’m encouraging you to do for our Creativity Pro-Tip today.
See if you can set aside some time in your schedule, even if it’s only 30 minutes or so, to put away the to-do list, write in a journal, get out some paints or markers, or play some music. Get your hands in the dirt and do some gardening, or cook a nice meal. Whatever it looks like for you, just allow yourself to take a deep dive into your more right-brain, creative side. And notice what happens. The more often you allow yourself to replenish in this way, the more energy you’ll have for your life, and the less you’ll be susceptible to burnout.
At Syncreate, we’re here to support your creative endeavors. If you have an idea and you’re interested in our help, please reach out to us about 1x1 coaching, or join our Syncreate Six-Month Coaching Group starting in April of 2024. We’ll be guiding you through our Syncreate process to help bring a creative project to life. You can learn more at syncreate.org.
This episode was produced by Christian Haigis with assistance by Mike Osborne. Follow Syncreate on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn, where you can also find out more about all we do at Syncreate. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
