Podcast Ep 163 | Executive burnout: Building your resilience (Part 2 of 2)

Exec­u­tives are often more dri­ven than the aver­age per­son. We run hard all the time, and it usu­al­ly works. And then, it does­n’t work.

We per­sist and push hard­er than the aver­age per­son, and that’s why we win. But it’s also why we can crash hard­er and some­times even put every­thing at risk. 

This week we talk about exec­u­tive burnout in the sec­ond of two episodes. What it means, what to look out for in both your­self and your team, and when it might be time to go get some help.

EPISODE TRAN­SCRIPT

Brad (00:00:13) — Hey there. Wel­come to the Growth Whis­per­ers, where every­thing that we talk about is build­ing endur­ing great com­pa­nies, com­pa­nies that last, that means that you actu­al­ly enjoy work­ing at and run­ning and being a part of, of course, if you are burnt out, you’re not gonna be able to ,

Brad (00:00:31) — Enjoy anything.

Brad (00:00:32) — Enjoy any­thing, right? It, it’s, that’s a part of it that’s not fun. This is episode two of two, uh, about exec­u­tive burnout. If you haven’t, we encour­age you strong­ly to lis­ten to, uh, episode 1 62 about exec­u­tive burnout. But, uh, I’ve talked enough. Kevin, hel­lo, my co-host. How are you today?

Kevin (00:00:52) — I’m doing great. Thank­ful­ly I’m not burn at the point. I’ve been burnt out many, many times. Yeah. Um, yeah. But I’m actu­al­ly, yeah, things are great. Excit­ed to be doing this episode. This is deep, deep in my heart and pas­sion, talk­ing about burnout, uh, pre­vent­ing burnout. Recov­er­ing from burnout. Is this just, you know, it’s been part of my life. Yeah. And, uh, lots of the peo­ple I work with, so. Yeah. Well,

Brad (00:01:16) — You wrote a book about this, did­n’t you? . Um, uh, so nor­mal­ly at this point, I’d say, what’s your word of the day? But I’m gonna ask you some­thing dif­fer­ent, right. I want you to tell me about Elvis Pres­ley. Right. And you and I Are you okay? Your weirdo? What are you talk­ing about? No, you and I were at a, at a, at a place, and I remem­ber you telling me a sto­ry about Elvis Pres­ley. Maybe you could share that with us as a dif­fer­ent way to start the episode.

Kevin (00:01:46) — Which sto­ry would that be about? The sto­ry of his life or the sto­ry of my child­hood home?

Brad (00:01:52) — Of your child­hood home.

Kevin (00:01:54) — Yeah. So, um, when I grew up, peo­ple talk about being fans of dif­fer­ent musi­cians. So if you could imag­ine my child­hood home, and I grew up in the sev­en­ties, and in my child­hood home, we had our din­ing room where we’d have our, you know, fan­cy meals. And we had fam­i­ly over in a, had the old sev­en­ties vel­vet wall­pa­per with the kind of dia­mond like designs. And it was, you know, vel like gold­en vel­vet wall­pa­per, if you could imag­ine. And, you know, we were like, you know, we, we did­n’t live in a fan­cy house by any means, but we had nice wall­pa­per, but we had a spec­tac­u­lar piece of art. And there was only one piece of art in the din­ing room. And that was a mir­rored framed pic­ture of Elvis Pres­ley. And that was ha that was the only thing at our din­ing room. Some peo­ple would have a pic­ture of a rel­a­tive or maybe even, you know, a, a, a landscape.

Brad (00:02:45) — But ours was Elvis. Cause my fam­i­ly was deep, deep, deep Elvis fans actu­al­ly to, to some point ear­ly in my life. You know, my friends that were, were real­ly, um, you know, their, were their fam­i­ly, were, their reli­gious beliefs were core to their fam­i­ly. They would have pic­tures of the, the God that they believed in or their beliefs up on their wall. And there’s a part of me that won­dered for a while, if we believed in Elvis Pres­ley, but , it’s so, he was a, he was a fig­ure. And that’s why in my world, you know, when, um, Elvis Pres­ley, uh, end­ed his life ear­ly in 1977, when I was a sev­en year old child, it hit me real hard cuz I was like, we idol­ized this guy. Yeah. And he, he was rich and he was famous, and he had an air­plane, and he was an amaz­ing per­former. And he had it all in my naïve child­hood eyes. And I was con­fused of why he would, you know, tap out ear­ly in life. And, uh, that kind of got me onto the stalk of think­ing about, you know, what, how, what does it take to like, thrive in your career and have a great life too, and wan­na stay alive even? So, yeah.

Kevin (00:03:52) — Thank you for shar­ing that. I mean, there’s no doubt that Elvis Pres­ley, oh, he was one of the first, he, he, he blazed a lot of trails in the Oh yeah. Enter­tain­ment indus­try and his suf­fer­ing for mul mul­ti­ple rea­sons. His suf­fer­ing was immense. Okay. But it’s abs, I, I bring it up as a way to change the start of the pod­cast, because this is an exam­ple of what we’re talk­ing about here. Last time it was exec­u­tive burnout. Um, when do you know it’s time to get help? Uh, this time it’s, it’s build­ing your resilience because frankly, we don’t want any­one to end up in the mis­ery and the ter­ri­ble, trag­ic end. Um, uh, which let’s be fair, uh, it took years to play out. Um Sure. Elvis or any­one else that you can name.

Brad (00:04:49) — Yeah. And, and unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s like the deep sart secret of the board­room, where some peo­ple get to the point where their Bruno gets the best of ​‘em. Like hap­pened to Elvis, it was, you know, a cumu­la­tive over time. But it, it, it, it hap­pens to lots of peo­ple. It’s quite com­mon. I mean, on one of the com­pa­nies we work with, we, we lost a key exec, and it was, it was, it was incred­i­bly sad, obvi­ous­ly hor­ri­ble for them and their fam­i­ly and, you know, and lots of oth­ers have been close. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a real, it’s a real, it’s a real seri­ous issue. Yeah. And we wan­na talk about this. Today’s episode is more about the pre­ven­tion piece.

Kevin (00:05:26) — Yeah. Yeah. I, in our research for this episode, we, we went to the def­i­n­i­tion of resilience ver­sus strength and, and mm-hmm. . And it’s a great, it’s, it’s a great way to get an idea of what we’re talk­ing about here. So strength is defined as the abil­i­ty to with­stand a great force. Okay? But resilience is the abil­i­ty to recov­er quick­ly from dam­age. Every­body, every­body expe­ri­ences men­tal health issues to some degree resilience. How do we build our resilience? It’s the abil­i­ty to recov­er quick­ly from that dam­age. Dam­age will always hap­pen. How do we recov­er quick­ly? And that’s the, the, the top­ic, um, that’s, that’s there. So, so I know how close this is to your heart. You wrote a book about it, you spend a lot of time speak­ing about it. And it cer­tain­ly is to me as well, it’s our abil­i­ty to recov­er from the issues that we expe­ri­ence that mat­ters. Um, yes. It’s so impor­tant. It’s

Kevin (00:06:34) — Almost like elas­tic­i­ty of an elas­tic, you know, the stronger and more, um, and bet­ter the, the rub­ber in the elas­tic or what­ev­er is in elas­tics these days, the more that it can bend and basi­cal­ly, you know, it can, you know, be pushed and come back. Yeah. At a cer­tain point it breaks. And we’re try­ing to keep the idea from break­ing, which is almost like burnout and, you know, and, and resilience. Our own resilience, our abil­i­ty to bal­ance back is like a mus­cle. You know, you can, there’s things that you can do to train it and, and get bet­ter at it. And that’s what a lot of, you know, per­son­al growth and exec­u­tive growth is about. And some­times that hap­pens nat­u­ral­ly just through the work you do. You build more resilience through­out your life. Yeah. Some­times you need some addi­tion­al help. And some­times there’s things that actu­al­ly reduce your resilience. So no mat­ter what, if you’re build­ing an endur­ing great com­pa­ny, you’re gonna need more resilience as you con­tin­ue to grow because you’ll have to han­dle big­ger things, not only in the busi­ness, but then stuff in life happens.

Brad (00:07:31) — It, it’s, it’s the thing that peo­ple don’t antic­i­pate as they’re grow­ing. The more that you grow your busi­ness, the, the more com­plex chal­lenges come your way.

Kevin (00:07:41) — Yes. Yeah. The big­ger the com­pa­ny, the big­ger the chal­lenges and they have more zeros attached to them. Yeah. Or more con­se­quences or more lives depend­ing on the busi­ness that you’re, that you’re in. And, and no dif­fer­ent than a pow­er lifter, if we’re just look­ing at the strength side, going to lift more and more weight. Well, you need more mus­cles in all of your body to be able to han­dle that. And same thing for, you know, lead­ers and com­pa­nies. You just need more resilience to han­dle all the stuff that gets thrown at you. So, yeah. And the def­i­n­i­tion, it’s abil­i­ty to recov­er or bal­ance anoth­er term for it. So the main thing is resilience. Resilience is a pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sure and it helps you to feel good and men­tal­ly be well and, and hap­py. Um, but still, as we talked about in the last episode, we’re all one or two life, life, life events away from get­ting pushed into a place where we need some men­tal health help, where we get into the orange or red zone. So no mat­ter what you do, you’ll be able to han­dle more, but there’s still things that could put you in jeop­ardy. And that’s okay. Yeah. We just want to make it hard­er and less fre­quent that we could get pushed over the edge men­tal­ly. Yeah. And, um, and that’s what this episode’s about.

Brad (00:08:53) — So, uh, we made the point, I just wan­na reit­er­ate it. We made the point last week that exec­u­tives are often more dri­ven than the aver­age per­son. So this men­tal health exec­u­tive burnout, build­ing a resilience top­ic is, uh, we encour­age, uh, more appro­pri­ate for our audi­ence than the aver­age per­son. Sec­ond point, or as we zoom out, uh, uh, before we start to go through some key points here, this is a job that must be done. Okay. Sim­ply know­ing, yes. Oh, there’s been a, there’s been a burnout event. Uh, and uh, yeah, it’d be good to build my resilience and then going back and watch­ing TV is not going to solve it. This is a job that you’ve got­ta do unless you work on this stuff. Uh, it may occur organ­i­cal­ly, but you nec­es­sar­i­ly, you won’t build your resilience, espe­cial­ly if you’re in a scal­ing business.

Kevin (00:09:48) — Yes. I guess. Absolute­ly. It’s crit­i­cal. And it’s almost like if, if you were a a an elec­tric car, the job that must be done is you got­ta plug it in and charge it up.

Brad (00:09:59) — Yeah.

Kevin (00:10:00) — And we know that, unfor­tu­nate­ly, we kid our­selves into believ­ing that, you know, even though the car’s got a 500 kilo­me­ter range, we’re just gonna take it for 700 and see what hap­pens. We, we would­n’t do that with an elec­tric car, but we do with our­selves. And the idea of resilience is always keep­ing your­self charged up. Yeah. Not let­ting your­self, you know, deplete not dri­ving from Los Ange­les to San Diego on 50 kilo­me­ters of range. We would­n’t do that. Yeah. But often that’s what we try and expect of our­selves. And shock­ing­ly, um, it does­n’t work out most of the time when we over­do it for too long.

Brad (00:10:40) — Yeah. So a cou­ple of quick points before we dig in. Um, I guess for, for me, one of the things that I’ve found in build­ing resilience is a line in the sand. And, and the line would be Stephen Cov­ey’s cir­cle of influ­ence ver­sus cir­cle of con­cern. In oth­er words, there are things that con­cern us and the exam­ples he uses, the sex life of celebri­ties or politi­cians, lat­est antics or what’s on TV or what­ev­er else. There are things that con­cern us, but there is also things that we can influ­ence. So in terms of build­ing your resilience, just on any top­ic that comes across your radar, know­ing is this a part of my cir­cle of con­cern or is this a part of my cir­cle of influ­ence? So that’s the first point. The sec­ond point I’d make some­times just say­ing to your­self, uh, in one year’s time, this thing that’s eat­ing me up, that’s con­cern­ing me so much, it won’t be a big deal. Yes. And, and being able to be at peace with the fact this thing will pass, it does­n’t mat­ter what it is, this thing will pass, is is a very good way to think about build­ing that resilience. So hav­ing said that, Kev, I’d like to talk about your oxy­gen mask first, your book, because this is about build­ing these habits.

Kevin (00:12:09) — Yeah, for sure. And the one thing I wan­na talk about, like in your exam­ple you gave is excel­lent and log­i­cal. The prob­lem is when your brain is in that red zone, men­tal­ly, we talked about the last issue, when you’re real­ly, real­ly in a bad place. Yeah. Our brain has bad thoughts. Yeah. And the abil­i­ty to be opti­mistic and hope­ful almost dis­ap­pears to the point where peo­ple at that point, like they need to build their men­tal health and resilience so bad, they can’t see pos­i­tives any­more. And that’s, that’s why it’s so darn risky. Yeah. Yeah. So we, but there’s a few chap­ters in the book, and the book is basi­cal­ly an entire book about resilience. And the mod­el of the book is sim­ply that peo­ple talk about work-life bal­ance, which is very cute, but what they leave under the equa­tion is self. And self is the pow­er source, the bat­tery of the car, essen­tial­ly in that metaphor.

Brad (00:13:03) — And that’s you and your own resilience and you make things hap­pen at work and you make things hap­pen in life. And we often, and this is about neglect­ing our­self and keep­ing our­selves charged up. So we just pulled some of the key chap­ters out to, to talk about, and the first one is the chap­ter call Dou­ble your resilience And the root of it, and this is the spe­cif­ic focus on resilience, the oth­ers are sec­ondary or, or influ­enc­ing, is mak­ing time for what we call your resilience rit­u­als. What do you, things you do that charge you up the, for your body, your mind, and your spir­it. And so I’ll give you an exam­ple. So like this morn­ing, it’s a Mon­day when we’re record­ing this, you know, I got up, I got out­side and got some exer­cise mm-hmm. , that is one of my resilience rit­u­als. Yeah. Um, then I also had some time to write this morn­ing before I start­ed my meeting.

Kevin (00:13:57) — It’s anoth­er one of my re resilience rit­u­als. And last night I spent a cou­ple hours prepar­ing my plan for the week. So my action list, that’s anoth­er one of my resilience rit­u­als. So week­ly pre­pare the action list, which is for my brain in the morn­ing exer­cise, which is for my body and my brain actu­al­ly in a bit of my spir­it too, cuz it ele­vates me. Yeah. Action plan for my brain. And then for spir­it, I had a whole bunch of time with my kids on the week­end. And last week I had some, some extra time to go do an expe­ri­ence with some friends in Los Ange­les. So there’s a bu you know, and I’ve got time play­ing with my friends at the race­track com­ing up in the, in a month or in the, in the next month. So body, mind, and spir­it, charg­ing your those dif­fer­ent parts of, of your­self. And if you just do the body, that’s great, but it’s, it’s not enough. And if you know your mind is impor­tant, but that’s not enough. The spir­it is kind of the things that gives you inspired and con­nects you to pur­pose and con­nec­tion with oth­er peo­ple. And if you do those things reg­u­lar­ly, uh, it makes a real­ly, real­ly, uh, so that’s for me, they, when I do those things con­sis­tent­ly, things are good. And when I don’t do them things don’t go as well. It’s almost like my chart comes down a lit­tle bit.

Brad (00:15:10) — Yeah. Yeah. Um, make time for your­selves. Yeah. So for me, I guess I’ve, I exer­cise every day, um, 30 min­utes to an hour. Um, and I, I switch between high inten­si­ty, a range of things that works real­ly well for me. Um, there’s also saunas and med­i­ta­tion and some things like that that, that help to get me to refo­cus clear­ly. There’s also time with the fam­i­ly and mm-hmm. a lot of, uh, uh, time with friends. A lot of that type of stuff. And, and to be hon­est, also, it’s this pod­cast just being able to riff and talk garbage with you No. Uh, on a reg­u­lar basis. Uh, so let’s move on to the next one from your oxy­gen mask first.

Kevin (00:15:56) — Yeah. Invest in your sweet spots chap­ter four. And the idea is, a sweet spot is work you love to do and you’re real­ly good at it, and you do it in the envi­ron­ment in which you like to do it. So it’s basi­cal­ly, if you do it right and you spend 80% of your time doing work that, that you love to do mm-hmm. and you’re good at the way you love to do it, your work will give you ener­gy when you’re drained by your work. Look, a a 12 hour day will drain most peo­ple, but in a reg­u­lar­ish day, if you’re drained by your work, you’re prob­a­bly doing the wrong work. Mm-hmm. . And as senior lead­ers, we can mod­i­fy our roles or build a dif­fer­ent team to suit us. So for exam­ple, one of the things that will absolute­ly zap and drain my ener­gy is any­thing to do with forms admin­is­tra­tion or any­thing like that whatsoever.

Kevin (00:16:54) — Just it, it absolute­ly zaps me. And, but yet I will work with CEOs and exec­u­tives with the most chal­leng­ing prob­lems in a sec­ond. Yeah. Some­one says they have a, a big chal­lenge they wan­na work through, or a big oppor­tu­ni­ty, they wan­na brain­storm around, I’m all in twen­ty four sev­en, call me. But admin­is­tra­tion stuff like I I, I can’t get away from it fast enough. So in my world, if 80% of my time is spent doing that, I’ve got infi­nite ener­gy. And so Ill give an exam­ple. A C E O I worked with, um, long sto­ry short, had a bit of an issue with deal­ing with some peo­ple. And when it came to let­ting peo­ple go, drove him crazy, uh, he did­n’t like it. End­ed up cre­at­ing issues and had a lot of law­suits in their orga­ni­za­tion from from dis­missals. Yeah.

Kevin (00:17:45) — And it drained them. And so we had a con­ver­sa­tion, I said, well, why do you get involved? He’s like, and he had a, a whole sto­ry about why, but I said, at the end of the day, if you don’t like it and based on a num­ber of law­suits, you’re not very good at it. Right. Why don’t you get some­body else? And it was an epiphany. So he got some­one else to get involved in these and he had zero to do with it. First of all, he did­n’t have to be bur­dened by that in his day. Sec­ond of all, he had a lot less law­suits, which took away fur­ther bur­den from his sys­tem. And again, it’s not rock­et sci­ence, it’s just don’t do the things you don’t wan­na do. And what­ev­er you don’t like doing, some­body else loves doing.

Brad (00:18:27) — Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Kevin (00:18:29) — And it’s basic, but you need to give your­self per­mis­sion. Go ahead.

Brad (00:18:32) — So you, you’ve got­ta have some­thing in the bat­tery to be resilient. If, if you are deplet­ed from just day-to-day, nor­mal oper­at­ing, uh, your, if your bat­tery is deplet­ed too much, then you’re not gonna be able to with­stand those forces. So what have we got next? Some­thing about toads?

Kevin (00:18:54) — Yeah. The next one’s called Lick your Toads. Basi­cal­ly it’s all the loose ends or incom­plete things in your world, men­tal­ly or phys­i­cal­ly. The bur­den. You, there’s a sto­ry about it in the book, but basi­cal­ly it’s the things that you think about reg­u­lar­ly. You get pinged with guilt or ugh, dread, but you don’t do them. And tru­ly in the time you’ve spent think­ing about them, the 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 times, you could have got them done. Yeah. And what I found, and through my work on this, and I used to do a lot on this years ago, is most peo­ple have 30 to 50 of these loose and incom­plete things. And it could be a que like right now in, in, in my place here in the, in the show­er, in the mas­ter, the sil­i­cone, it’s start­ing to dis­col­or. Mm. And I know I need to get it done.

Kevin (00:19:47) — Mm. And I’ve got­ta get some pic­tures that are beside me, hung up in my, I got­ta get some pic­tures redone and hung up in my office. And the thing is, if you don’t care and you don’t notice it, it’s one thing. But when you think it’s burn­ing cog­ni­tive ener­gy, these are low val­ue issues real­ly in a, in a big scheme. But almost like from a feng shui per­spec­tive, they, they clog up your life if you believed in feng shui. And if you don’t, prin­ci­pal’s still the same. So for exam­ple, so I had a a, a leader that was a part­ner in a pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices firm. They had 150 of these, which is not uncommon.

Brad (00:20:22) — Yeah.

Kevin (00:20:22) — And they all just cre­at­ed huge amounts of men­tal fric­tion and ener­gy wast­ed on low val­ue dis­trac­tions that kept them from being as effec­tive as they could in their job. Nev­er­mind the amount of stress. And so if you wan­na have more resilience, have less fric­tion, and imag­ine walk­ing to down, down the street to your, to your place of work or go to see your friends or fam­i­ly with 150 toads stacked up onto you that you’re car­ry­ing all that extra weight, it’s just bru­tal in ineffective.

Brad (00:20:52) — Yeah.

Kevin (00:20:52) — And well, and, and it just, it’s, it’s unnec­es­sary bur­den, but it’s like you got­ta do, if basi­cal­ly it becomes like spring clean­ing for your mind and get­ting the stuff out. So,

Brad (00:21:02) — So if the last one was, uh, infi­nite ener­gy gen­er­a­tion is what you described it. So you’ve got­ta have some­thing in the bat­tery at the end of the day. Yes. And this one is about the things that are drain­ing your bat­tery, the lit­tle things. Then the next one, deal­ing with your emo­tion­al junk is also about the things that are drain­ing your ener­gy. Cor­rect. Or, um, things that are I guess long-term things rather than the sil­i­con in the show­er, things that are drain­ing your energy.

Kevin (00:21:30) — Yeah. Cuz they’re just deep in your oper­at­ing sys­tem. And this is just unpack­ing those trig­gers. So basi­cal­ly we’ve all, you know, every­one is heal­ing from some­thing or suf­fer­ing from some­thing. We’ve all got issues that both­er us. And, and we’re not try­ing to be per­fect humans, but we have issues that tend to show up and get in the way our emo­tion­al bag­gage acts out in our mod­ern day life and gets in the way. So, for exam­ple, one exec­u­tive that I work with and it’s, they’re prob­a­bly the most chal­leng­ing exec­u­tive I work with and they just can’t help but be an asshole.

Brad (00:22:04) — Yeah.

Kevin (00:22:05) — Like they, they’re like the dog that needs to go piss on top of the oth­er dog’s urine to stake their ter­ri­to­ry. Yeah. He can’t help himself.

Brad (00:22:15) — Yeah.

Kevin (00:22:15) — And as a per­son, I kind of, I I like him as a per­son and as a, you know, and he is, you know, we’ve got a whole bunch of the right things, but he just can’t help but con­tin­u­al­ly be an ass­hole and be over­ly dif­fi­cult. Yeah. Now, I don’t know what he is talk­ing about if he has a coun­selor, if he’s talk­ing to his coun­selor, but I sure know that it, it, it def­i­nite­ly, it reg­u­lar­ly shows up and it reg­u­lar­ly gets it. He gets in his own way and unfor­tu­nate­ly he gets in the way of a lot of oth­er people

Brad (00:22:46) — And that’s the point he gets in his own way. Because if we go back to the last episode where we’re say­ing, when do you know that you need to get some help, exec­u­tive burnout, there are things that can be long-term chal­lenges. Maybe it was a, maybe it was a divorce or a loss, or you got fired or you had a fight. I don’t know. There could be things that are stuck there that are mak­ing you in a, a cer­tain ma mak­ing you act in a cer­tain way that are lead­ing to your unhap­pi­ness and act­ing out. So you’ve got­ta get these things sort­ed out. Yes.

Kevin (00:23:23) — Well, and here’s the thing, if every­where you go you run into assholes,

Brad (00:23:30) — ,

Kevin (00:23:32) — You’re prob­a­bly the ass­hole. And I’ve had my own ver­sions. I could, I I can be pret­ty fiery, but at the end of the day, if every­where you go or you run into crooks Yep. Look in the mir­ror. Yeah. Right. If every­where you go there’s, there’s peo­ple who are over­ly dra­mat­ic, like no mat­ter what that is. Um, and we all have our things. I’m not per­fect. I, I can still get intense and, and peo­ple might call me an ass­hole at times, although try not to. Um, but it’s, it’s, it’s inter­nal trig­gers in our own junk that gets in our way and cre­ates unnec­es­sary con­se­quences for our­self and oth­ers. So deal with your emo­tion­al junk, go see your ther­a­pist, con­tin­u­al­ly clean out the things that get in your way so you can one, feel bet­ter inside and two, also be more effec­tive and you’ll know what those are cuz they keep com­ing up.

Brad (00:24:26) — Okay. So then the last one that we’ve got is mak­ing your­self use­less. Tell us about that one, Kev.

Kevin (00:24:31) — Yeah. Well it’s tru­ly what our job is as a leader is to build a team so strong that there’s not much we need to do. And most peo­ple suf­fer from a, a, a less than ide­al team. Yeah. Because it’s hard. It’s the hard­est part of busi­ness deal­ing with the peo­ple stuff today we had to, you know, last few days we had to deal with some­body on a, on a com­pa­ny that just was­n’t cut­ting it and was an awe­some per­son who we real­ly, real­ly, real­ly, real­ly liked. Real­ly good per­son just was­n’t up to the task. And those are hard changes to make. Yeah. So the idea is it’s nor­mal­ly the team, the team either gives you ener­gy or takes ener­gy. It’s one of the one or the oth­er. So if you wan­na have a lot of resilience, have an amaz­ing team or if you wan­na improve your resilience, if you’ve got a bad one, at least get it to neutral.

Kevin (00:25:17) — Yeah. And, um, just sto­ry after sto­ry. But the root of it is build a world cl build the team that you want and that you would dream to have. It’ll free you up and give you ener­gy. Cuz most of what drains you at work is the peo­ple around you. Yeah. Some­times it’s the cus­tomers. Cus­tomers can be as, it’s inter­est­ing, um, we have a, a place that, uh, is in a, in a com­mu­ni­ty where, uh, things are rent­ed out over the sum­mer. It’s a place that we don’t use a lot. So we, it’s in a, it gets rent­ed out and you know, we have a list in the com­mu­ni­ty of the peo­ple not to rent to and for what­ev­er rea­son, I stum­bled on it the oth­er day, and guess what, every sin­gle one of this thing these peo­ple had in common,

Brad (00:26:01) — They were asshole.

Kevin (00:26:02) — Yeah. Gen­er­al­ly they were painful. Yeah. And for all kinds of things. Yeah. So they were basi­cal­ly, they were cus­tomers that you did­n’t want to have to work with. No dif­fer­ent than team mem­bers you don’t want to have to work with. Yeah. But this one’s about team, it’s just, you know, and, and, and today I was just talk­ing to a c e o about a new exec on a team that the c e o has and they’re, god my gosh, it’s so much eas­i­er. Yeah. It says, nev­er­mind the qual­i­ty of the work, the think­ing we’re talk­ing about, things like that are strate­gic in adding val­ue to the, the con­vers, nev­er­mind the work and the issues, the con­ver­sa­tion has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly in a very mean­ing­ful way. Yeah.

Brad (00:26:43) — Yeah. Yeah. It mat­ters. Awe­some. Yeah. Okay. So build­ing your resilience. We know exec­u­tive burnout is a prob­lem. Uh, we know that this is a job to be done unless you work on it, you won’t build your resilience. I would strong­ly rec­om­mend if this is a top­ic you are inter­est­ed in, that you buy slash read Kev­in’s book Your Oxy­gen Mask First by Kevin Lawrence. Um, it’s, you know, it’s a, a top­ic that not many read­ers, no, par­don me, authors have touched on and you’ve done a great job there. So thank you for that work, Kev. Uh, so to quick­ly sum­ma­rize, uh, we’ve got­ta know it’s a job to be done and it’s not gonna get done in a few days. So what we cov­ered off here was dou­bling your resilience, invest­ing in your sweet spots, lick­ing your toads, deal­ing with your emo­tion­al junk, and mak­ing your­self use­less. So, uh, any­thing else to add there, Kev, before we close? Nope.

Kevin (00:27:44) — No, it’s just that you, that you, that you deserve to take good care of your­self and make it pre­ven­ta­tive ver­sus reac­tionary. It’s always worse when you do it reac­tionary. Find ways to do it and you gen­er­al­ly feel bet­ter on a dai­ly basis and you’re able to bring your a game to the table consistently.

Brad (00:28:01) — Indeed, indeed. Well, thank you again. Um, so this has been the Growth Whis­per­ers pod­cast. Uh, my name is Brad Giles. You can find me at evo​lu​tion​part​ners​.com​.au and we’ve got a week­ly newslet­ter that you may well be inter­est­ed in where we share a whole range of inter­est­ing thoughts every week. Kevin, uh, the author again of your oxy­gen mask. First you can find at lawrence​and​co​.com. And Kevin has also a week­ly newslet­ter that you may be inter­est­ed. You can find us at YouTube if you search for the Growth whis­pers as well, if you’d pre­fer to see our smil­ing faces. Hope that you’ve enjoyed the episode and look for­ward to chat­ting to you again next week.