Mark Divine  0:02  

Coming up on the Mark Divine show. 

Jennifer Moss 0:04

Happiness is a continuum. It’s part of what we should be experiencing. It’s not a state of being, and that we can only help our employees to be motivated, if we’re, you know, helping them to be well in the first place. You know, and we’ve been sort of throwing ice cream to people that need water.

Mark Divine  0:28  

Hi, this is Mark Divine, and you’re on the Mark Divine show. On this show, I explore what it means to be fearless through the lens of the world’s most inspirational, compassionate and resilient leaders. Guests include notable folks from all walks of life, including meditation monks, Blockchain security wizards, survivors of extreme adversity, and social scientists who study things like burnout. Like my guest today, Jennifer Moss, we’re going to talk about her new book, the Burnout Epidemic, which is triggered by many factors that we need to understand we need to keep an eye on, looking for symptoms to show up so we can take care of ourselves and as leaders, transform our cultures in our systems so that we are more healthy, and we avoid things like burnout. Jennifer is an award-winning journalist and author, international speaker and workplace culture strategist. Burnout epidemic was named 10 Best New management books in 2022 by thinker’s 50 and shortlisted for the 2021 outstanding works of literature award. Her earlier book Unlocking Happiness Work received the distinguished UK Book Award, UK Business Book of the Year award. She’s also a nationally syndicated radio columnist and writes for Harvard Business Review. Her work has appeared in Times New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, amongst others. Super stoked to have you here. Jennifer, thanks for joining me. 

Mark Divine 1:43

Jennifer, thanks so much for joining me today. I appreciate your being on the Mark Divine show.

 

Jennifer Moss  1:45  

Yeah, I’m really excited to be here. It’ll be a great conversation.

 

Mark Divine  1:49  

Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. I mean, it’s such an important topic. But one thing I’d really like to do is get a sense you’re up in Canada, you’re Canadian, by birth?

 

Jennifer Moss 1:57

I am. Yeah. Yep.

 

Mark Divine

Give us a sense of your, you know, your formative influences in childhood, parents, you know, education. What led you down this road to be, you know, a psychologist to be studying things like burnout? It’s a unique path?

 

Jennifer Moss  2:10  

It is it is pretty circuitous. I think I mean, I started really wanted to be a writer and say journalism, and then ended up loving the behavioral sciences piece. And I think the storytelling factor played a big role. And, you know, I was young, I was always writing always reading, I was at grade four, I said that I was going to be a Newbery prize winner. I decided when I was nine, which is an actually award for children’s books, literature and just big Literary Award. And I decided and I even put it in one of those time capsules in our front yard of our, our schools. You know, it’s kind of a decision very early on that that’s what I wanted to do. Which is interesting.

 

Mark Divine  2:52  

Did it ever come to pass? Or is it still a goal? 

 

Jennifer Moss  2:55  

Well, I’ve never won a Newbery Award. No, I haven’t written children’s book. But I’m on my third published book, which is great. So So I’ve become an author, but not what I expected to be writing, nonfiction leadership books around, you know, burnout and happiness and well-being. But you know, my mom was a nurse practitioner, a very kind of healing person. She was the first practitioner, nurse practitioner in Canada. Actually, in the history books really fought to get right to be able to practice this type of medicine. And it was her, I think, that really did drive this kind of entrepreneurial spirit and thinking about having no boundaries. And that, you know, I had a voice, I wasn’t an imposter. And you go through that a lot, I think, in this world of writing books on this topic without a Ph.D. But you know, the probably 20,000 hours I’ve spent in research focused on this topic, as I think made it so that I can talk, you know, as an expert to it, but I think I talked to it passionately, because my own experience going through burnout, and really understanding what it’s like to play. You know, this juggling role of mother of an advocate of female co-founder and the highly male-dominated world, all of those things really played into my own burnout cycle. And it made me want to be able to write this book.

 

Mark Divine  4:15  

So before we get into the topic of burnout, and our implications for culture today, let’s talk about your early career and maybe your experiences with that, you know, with burnout and what it was like, what your experience was, how it affected you and your family. All that. Let’s make it personal first.

 

Jennifer Moss  4:33  

Yeah, you know, and it really is burnout. And ironically, too, I’m writing this book in the middle of a pandemic, which with three kids, there was a lot of you know, constant irony as the burnout expert, feeling extraordinarily burned out. But yeah, it started really early on for me this, it’s interesting because I was in Silicon Valley in those early days of social media and people were kind of saying it was going to be nothing, you know, like and and trying to advocate to people that really didn’t want to listen that, you know, we, we needed to get our team on Twitter and we needed to engage in LinkedIn and some of these other components. I remember these executives saying, like, no one’s gonna take this seriously, this is the stupidest thing ever. Like, can you imagine a president tweeting?

 

Mark Divine  5:19  

Hahaha, that’s hilarious

 

Jennifer Moss  5:20

I think.. I wish maybe we could backtrack at this point now, I wouldn’t have been such an advocate. But I think I’ve always been really connected to things that people don’t think are really going to happen, or important, or I don’t know, maybe I like to be an underdog. But then I got into this concept of, of well being and happiness and how, you know, maybe we can actually focus on being happy at work that we don’t all have to be disengaged and depressed and kind of be weekend warriors. You know, I’ve been working in sort of HR services and communications and then realized, I think we should research this. And there was this precipitating moment in my life where my husband, who’s a pro athlete, played pro in two different sports, actually representing Canada and four different international metals; he got very sick, and he ended up becoming acutely paralyzed from gamma-ray syndrome, had West Nile and had contracted, you know, swine flu twice, just completely debilitated his whole body. And everything changed in a moment for both of us, you know, his identity, and we’re living in California at the time and this sort of shocking awareness that, you know, everything can change in a moment, and you’re still forced to go to work, and you’re still, you’re still expected to, you know, be competitive and high performing and still work at those same hours. And, you know, there’s very limited grief policies, and care policies weren’t even in existence at the time. And there just weren’t a lot of protections. And we sort of had this moment where it was like the things we were talking about were being realized. And that kind of brought us back to Canada, because we were living in California then and brought us back to Canada and reset our priorities and started up our company, which was a sort of a focus on well-being, and then taking that thinking into the workplace. But as a female co-founder and a married co-founder, it was really a challenge to find funding. And again, we’re in this uphill battle. And that was a moment where I thought no matter how committed you are, sometimes to a purpose, or meaning or a goal, and you feel really good about it, you’re going to constantly face these challenges. So how do you develop a psychological fitness, the social-emotional flexibility, the emotional intelligence to really get over it. And it took me going through burnout took me through going through these life challenges before I figured out, I think, a path to being able to do, you know, do this in a way that’s sustainable and healthy?

 

Mark Divine  7:50  

So you mentioned your husband manifested his burnout, obviously, physically through decreased immune system, autoimmune issues, disease breakdown physiologically. How did you manifest your burnout? Because it just shows up in many different ways, as you know, and I’m just curious, like, from your perspective, and then how, how else would others recognize burnout if they’re not familiar, or if they’re in denial about it?

 

Jennifer Moss  8:14  

Well, it’s interesting because a lot of entrepreneurs and people, you know, in this role, especially in a startup role, but in a even a stay up, or anyone that’s a leader of their own, kind of their their own goals. They’re not very good at being their own boss; they’re not great at saying, Okay, you need to take a break, or your not good at telling yourself, okay, you’re overworking, you feel strongly committed to the mission, you feel almost married to it, failure becomes not an option. You also are passionate about it; you love the work. And this whole idea that you know, you love what you do, you never work a day in your life is just such a total myth. And you actually work really hard. And people at most risks of burnout tend to be really passionate about the stakeholder or their job or their work. And I also felt like I was in this unique role. There’s only 7% of females that get funded in tech in their companies that they’re co-leading or leading. And so I felt this responsibility to then advocate, you know, and be in on boards and be talking about this role that women have to play. And I ended up taking on sort of that responsibility, which meant I left very little room for myself and self-care. And I don’t believe that burnout is solved with self-care alone. But when you are your own boss, you do have to model the behavior to the people around you of self-care, or else no one really follows suit. So you start to turn up a whole culture of, of burnout, and that’s sort of what we created, and, you know, I’m running this happiness technology company, a company that’s trying to solve, you know, workplace stress and increase well being At work, and I was just this walking contradiction. And I hated that I was I felt really, you know, upset with myself.

 

Mark Divine  10:07  

Almost like a fraud. Yeah Or yeah, I can imagine. 

 

Jennifer Moss  10:11  

Yeah, I felt like a fraud. You’re right. I felt like, okay, how am I the expert when I’m not following any of my own rules? And so I ended up having a break physically and emotionally, I was completely exhausted, I was emotionally distant, I didn’t want to connect with the goal anymore, I didn’t care about it, I stopped caring about being happy, I didn’t care about the things that made me happy about the work, the things that I used to love, I stopped loving, and the depletion, really, the exhaustion was a big part. So I just had to leave, you know, leave the thing that I had built, and take a six-month break, and really figure out what I was going to do. And it came with, you know, financial stress and emotional stress and relationship stress. So, you know, there was, there’s consequences, and they’re, they can be catastrophic for people, and we kind of downplay burnout. But I know for myself, after going through that, and realizing how much risk, you know, I’d put in my, to my life and my family that I didn’t want other people to have to have it be too late before they made a change,

 

Mark Divine  11:13  

Right, That’s so fascinating. Um, there’s so much to unpack there first, like burnout came in waves, right. And I think that’s really interesting, right perspective because you guys had a burnout moment in California. So you go back to your smaller town in Canada, closer to family, and you think, well, that’s changing, location changing setting is going to solve all my problems. It can help, right, but it’s not the be all end all. So then you start your business. Now, that begins the second phase where you’re leading up to disaster, because the the pressure and the stress you take on as a founder, startup founder, and I’ve been there several times myself, where you are responsible, right? For capitalizing the business for the employees for the client work for your own financial well-being. And all of a sudden, when people have a job, there’ll be responsible for their productivity, basically, for their output. But when you run a business, you’re responsible for about 10 other things that are suddenly the weight and it sounds great, but the freedom of owning your own business and the potential for higher financial returns sounds great. But it comes with a very high tax. And that tax leads a lot of business owners into burnout, they’re unaware of it, or they’re not acknowledging that when they go into it, right. So they don’t know how to structure their time, they don’t know how to structure their relationships, they don’t know how to set proper boundaries, all of these things start to, you know, poke their head into the game and, and contribute to that situation,

 

Jennifer Moss  12:31  

You really do see that with entrepreneurs very distinctly. And I learned a lot I took a lot away from that first experience of, you know, and just understanding, you know, what is sustainable growth for me, I mean, the expectation of growth when you’re in a kind of a tech community, and this idea of investors and, and even just how I’d fund my business, how I funded, you know, going into this next phase of where I’m evolving and realizing that when you have external pressures, it changes what you need to be able to produce and really going through, you know, this trial by fire has been considerably helpful in my later experience, because I realized, okay, what really matters, I started to come up with this schematic of, you know, prioritization, and it was deathbed regrets, you know, like, it’s such a morbid way of thinking about it. But I started thinking, Okay, this decision to take on this project, even though it sounds fun, and I’m so excited by it, and this sounds great. And this could offer this much, you know, increase in capital here, and I started to go, Okay, well, how much will that take me away from my family? How much of a learning curve is this? You know, do I want to be learning right now? Or do I want to have mastery? Because right now, mastery is actually quite efficient? And, you know, learning is exciting, but how much is reasonable? You know, what, is it vertical? You know, the learning curve? Or could I easily move over into this space? And it not be too challenging? You know, how many meals am I going to miss with my family? How much travel am I going to do? And so, I think about what that would mean, and would it be a deathbed regret if I said no? And you know, many times it’s, it isn’t, and, you know, you say no, and you feel like, oh, that opportunity’s gone, or I missed it, but then, you know, the FOMO goes away and, and then you get back to what, you know, the joys of being able to participate in your life. And so I think that’s been a real, you know, growth moment for me.

 

Mark Divine  14:32  

Definitely. And I want to kind of highlight this point because it’s so important. We’re not really taught to say no, in our culture. And you know, I look at it at the other side of every yes is a large, long series of commitments and obligations and stress. On the other side of every no, is a release of pressure and an opportunity for a better yes. And so one of the most important qualities to develop as a leader is knowing when to say no to leave space for the for the yes, for the better, yes. Which is kind of what you’re saying. But we’re not taught that. And there’s a lot of pressure to say yes, especially early on in the startup or for a lot of leaders, because we want to please, we want to do the right thing. We want to make money, you know, we want to please our investors. So it’s very challenging to develop that no muscle, isn’t it?

 

Jennifer Moss  15:17  

It is. And, you know, I’ve been following again, another one of my favorite quotes is “you can have anything, not everything.” And I think that, you know, like we have, it’s always about a choice. And, you know, I was trying to teach my daughter that the other day, because she was wanting to either stay at the cottage or go to a birthday party. And it was like, you know, she said, You know, I wish you had this really delicious apple, and it was so great, you know, and then now you’ve offered me an orange, and I liked the orange just as much, and I wish you hadn’t even ever offered me the orange. She’s nine. She’s being very philosophical about this. And I said, that’s life is a lot of, you know, choosing between two great things are 10 Great things or, you know, even five bad things, like, you know, when you choosing the lesser of all evils, I mean, this is, this is life, it’s a series of making difficult choices. And for her, you know, it’s between the birthday party or the cottage and for us, it’s, you know, major life decisions, but you just start to understand that there’s lots of pathways that we can take, and really knowing I think, who you are, and probably why, like the age I’m at, and where I’m at in my career is that have a better sense of who that is. And I do have the privilege of being able to make those choices. You know, one of the things that causes a lot of burnout for young professionals and for the BIPOC community and people that are maybe at risk is that they don’t feel that they have the privilege of saying no, or that they can make those choices, that it’s impossible for them to turn down that work because they’ll get fired. I mean, that’s the real issue is that we get to a place and there’s some of us that have those choices and can make those choices, but there’s a lot of people in the workforce that don’t even, you know, don’t even have that kind of power and privilege to make those decisions.

 

Mark Divine  17:05  

Do you think it’s a generational thing, Jennifer? Because it seems like Gen X and you know, people entering the workforce. Now, I have a lot easier time saying no. Or, you know, that’s not for me, or you know, this whole great resignation, a lot of it’s coming from the younger generation, you know, basically finding it much easier to say no to a workplace that’s toxic, or to a job that doesn’t meet their vision or mission or is doesn’t have an impact mission and those things.

 

Jennifer Moss  17:29  

I definitely think that there’s an empowerment right now with our younger workforce. And they’re saying, I don’t want that carrot that badly, you know, like, what you have defined as track for success for me are what you’re defining as my future isn’t the future I want. And so I don’t necessarily need to make these choices to give up all this other, these other important parts of my life for it. It’s like we’re learning now, after however many years into a place where we might have a little bit more tenure and ability to have those choices. They’re saying; I’m not even going to follow that path for 20 years until I can have those choices; I’m going to choose now to figure out what other job I can do. There’s, you know, freelancing, there’s gig economy, there’s a bunch of different jobs that you can put together so that you have freedom, you have a lot of, you know, benefit from the, from the great resignation, and that there’s high high, you know, rates of employment out there, there’s lots of opportunities for you to move. And so I think that a bit of a revolution is happening right now with our younger workforce, and they’re just saying, well, you better figure out what is the future that I want because I’m not going to give you what you you want for me to get there.

 

Mark Divine  18:48  

It’s made, and it’s also, I mean, it’s largely made possible because of this changing nature of work. And so much of the economy now is part-time gig, freelance, all that type of thing, you know, driving Ubers, while you’re starting, you know, there’s so many opportunities that just didn’t exist, for me at least, and I’m imagining for you in your younger years. So it’s neat to see that and also, so that has helped shape their attitude about what’s possible. And then also culturally, there’s a lot of change. I noticed that your your first book, you titled Unlocking Happiness at Work, and now your latest book is The Burnout Epidemic, it almost seems like they’re two different polarities of the same issue. Or is one is the burnout, kind of the sequel to happiness, just looking at it from the other side?

 

Jennifer Moss  19:32  

Yeah, it’s funny because I have joked that I was, you know, my tagline, happiness expert, and now I’m in the, you know, the unhappiness expert. It’s sort of depressing. 

 

Mark Divine  19:40  

Haha, you’re not really happy.

 

Jennifer Moss  19:43  

AN evolution of my career and sort of sad and disappointed

 

Mark Divine  19:46  

That’s kind of like life itself. You know, you go through these waves. 

 

Jennifer Moss  19:51  

That’s exactly it. And you know what, you’re you’re most unhappy in your 40s I guess it’s at least in the curve. It’s like the lowest part of your joy and like 70 is when you’re you’re the happiest of all time. So we’re all on an upswing, which is good, I guess. But, but, um, no, it’s funny, because it’s sort of, yeah, it is basically looking at it, you know, and just two sides of the equation, but what I think what Unlocking Happiness at Work was, was, and I sort of say it’s like a bit of a naivete in this like looking at it and thinking, okay, we can just start at this place of optimization. And that’s where I think a lot of people in happiness, really we’re looking in that social-emotional intelligence, that resiliency place, the gratitude place and, and psychological fitness, which we should all be practicing, as part of who we are. self-care is important. It’s part of what increases lifespan and healthiness. And that’s in our personal lives. But it is a realization. It was for me through those years of working with organizations that it ended up making people feel like leadership was tone deaf or that there was this toxic positivity that was being expected of their staff and saying okay and ignoring the root causes of stress, which is chronic stress, which is in burnout, which are out of their control. And it was really in 2019, when the World Health Organization identified burnout as institutional or occupational stress left unmanaged, that it’s a workplace phenomenon that really did click for me, and I’ve been writing about stress and burnout and how it impacts well-being and happiness inside of workplaces for a while. But this announcement was was made to get people to think seriously about it, you know, and understand that happiness is a continuum. It’s part of what we should be experiencing, it’s not a state of being, and that we can only help our employees to be motivated if we’re, you know, helping them to be well in the first place. You know, and we’ve been sort of throwing ice cream to people that need water. And that is where we’ve really gone wrong. And so a lot of my focus is okay, yeah, I want you to get to the point where all of those awesome things, those perks, those, you know, the subsidized gym memberships, the, you know, the chef on site, the more yoga and breathing and calm apps, and all those things are actually going to work for you because you are in a place that has time and energy and a wellness and healthiness enough to support actually engaging in those tools. And that became okay. I just started this book is just more further upstream on the continuum of how we actually improve well-being and healthiness for our workforce.

 

Mark Divine  22:42  

And I can see a very integral approach is necessary. Like you said, you have to solve this at the personal psycho-emotional level, but you also have to solve it at the family kind of structural health level, you know, in terms of, you know, routines around sleep and nutrition and exercise. So that’s the external of the I or the you know. And then, you have to solve it at the team level and then solve it at the organizational structural level. And if you leave any one of those unaddressed, right, then you’re gonna leave some underlying trigger for burnout to remain. So how do you look at it in terms of, maybe it’s more awareness, but to provide kind of a prescription in terms of some places to start? Because there’s a little bit of a chicken and egg, right? If you just do solve the psycho-emotional first and then look at the structural, or that you have to do them all together? How do you look at this?

 

Jennifer Moss  23:29  

Well, you know, in a lot of what I think, first has been provocative is I’ve been pushing back on accountability at the leadership level on the organizational level to fix those root causes. But simultaneously, I mean, we can have learned helplessness we have to as individuals, be able to still show up. And there’s certain personalities that are very high risk for burnout, like those that are perfectionists or those that have trait neuroticism, or those that are in, you know, high performing of high competitive, high production focused roles, you know, medicine to doctors tend to have that mix of different personality traits, that puts them at risk of burnout. So a lot of it is still it’s not on the individual to solve, but they play a role. I mean, everyone plays a role, but, but we have to do if we’re doing the work, the last thing that we can have is how going into, you know, the coal mine, essentially and getting sick and coming out. And then we’re being told, okay, we’re not a warning signal. We’re just to be sent back in and continue to be sick. And so our employers need to say that, okay, I’m not going to necessarily be responsible for your life satisfaction and your happiness, but I’m responsible for not detracting from it. And so I have to make sure that there’s supports in place so that if you are practicing psychological fitness, emotional intelligence, that you’re coming to work with self-care routines and modeling self-care, that I’m not going to just say okay, well, it’s on you to solve your burnout after give you 80 hour work weeks or unsustainable workloads, or if you’re coming into discriminatory practices or, you know, an exclusive environment that doesn’t promote you, because of the color of your skin, or you know, or you’re lonely, we’ve isolated you, and you have no connections, you’ve been bullied at work, I mean, all of these things play into why someone’s burning out. And so just the way we’ve tackled it so far, is just saying, Okay, well, here, listen to this rain for 15 seconds on an app. And that here, this is your the silver bullet technology that we’re going to solve for, you know, you not even be able to go to the bathroom, because you have to work, you know, 15 hours today without a break. So these are the things that we need to juxtapose and remedy. So that everyone’s kind of in the same mindset around making work a healthy place,

 

Mark Divine  25:52  

Ya, in the realm of behavior science and within an organization, we’re talking about culture. And it sounds to me like I’m thinking, as you’re talking, the structural stuff, such as paid leave a time off, having a yoga studio, at the office, you know, those types of things, those are fairly easy to implement, relatively speaking, you know, and I would try to say this, if companies did a good job with that, then it wouldn’t need to be regulated, but they haven’t. And so now you have a lot of regulation coming in. Still, those don’t solve the problem if there’s major cultural issues, right? Because you could have all that stuff and still have a culture that’s toxic, still have a culture that that rewards, you know, hyper work ethic, or whatever you want to call the hyper achievers who get rewarded for working 80 hours a week. Well, if you don’t, then you’re not rewarded. And so that creates a lot of stress for someone who thinks that’s not healthy for them. So I guess the question then, for leaders, is, how do we go about changing a culture because that’s extremely challenging, as you know because that’s your work.

 

Jennifer Moss  26:54  

It’s extremely difficult. And you know, as long as it’s taken for burnout, to get to a boiling point is probably as long as it’s going to take to, you know, point to take it even down to neutral. And we’ve really, this has been mostly transactional relationship that we’ve had with work and where employees have had no rights to a few rights to increasingly, you know, accessing rights, and we’ve mostly only had physical protections and policies, and now we’re finally getting the psychosocial policies. But that’s there’s not even a standard in the US and most countries, there’s only a few in Australia and Canada have sort of psychosocial standards, but that’s very new.

 

Mark Divine  27:36  

What do they look like, by the way? That’s a new term to me.

 

Jennifer Moss  27:39  

For example, when it comes to exclusion, discriminatory behavior, those types of things, yes, we get that, but it’s around policies, you know, like similar, like we’d have had you climb a ladder properly, or what boots door on the factory floor, you have, okay, this is how you manage harassment, physical harassment, sexual harassment, and then you know, which is kind of the first psychosocial policy to really come into place. We’ve seen that in the last decade or so we’re we’re actually getting training and there’s policies and expectation, but even newer ones are like right to disconnect policies. There’s laws now in several countries. There’s the law now in Canada that just got instituted where you can’t expect an employee to work outside of their working hours, you can’t digitally like you can’t email them, you can’t call them you can’t expect them to take meetings after certain hours. And so this right to disconnect policy is saying, Okay, we have created this standard around what is considered normal working hours. And if you go over that, or off of that, then you could be sued. And this is the actual government policy.

 

Mark Divine  28:49  

I’ve got to change my behavior, you just triggered a thought like, I’m always emailing my team after hours. Now I don’t expect them to respond, actually expect them to respond, you know, during work hours, but I can see how that would set up a, you know, an improper expectation on their part. For me, it’s just to get a task done. And it’s on my mind, so get it off my mind, you know.

 

Jennifer Moss  29:10  

Yeah, it creates invisible pressures, and then people that can answer well, and then you create exclusive behaviors, because there’s some and we saw this this disproportionate impact on women who take on just again, disproportionately a lot of the caregiver roles. So when they’re putting kids to bed or their bath time, if there’s an email that goes up from their boss, and most of their male counterparts can answer, but then they can’t, then it creates this separation where they’re not working as hard, and it’s all bias and you know, in history that we don’t even realize as part of our the way that we perceive people, but that is what kind of psychosocial policies is an example of that. That’s what’s starting to kind of go there’s lots of European countries. France was the first to start in 2016, so it’s still really new, but over For the last six years, we’ve started to see more standardization around safety essentially, like psychological safety, not just physical safety. And I think we’re gonna see a lot more of that. And we’re gonna see more people suing because they burned out or, you know, and that’s going to create then more psychosocial policies and standards to say, Okay, well, how do what do we define as burnout? What do we define as preventing that and the protections around that? And I see that becoming something that’s really interesting in the leadership, organizational risk assessment, HR space in the future of work, for sure.

 

Mark Divine  30:36  

In last two, three years have obviously been a big contributor to burnout because there’s a lot of social and economic and political stressors that suddenly invaded our both personal and professional lives. And then we thought, okay, when things get back to normal, all that will settle down, but we didn’t really return to any old normal. So what do you see now, the impact of remote work and, you know, endless zoom or microsoft team, you know, meetings and, you know, uncertainty? How is that affecting burnout? And what can we do about that, if anything?

 

Jennifer Moss  31:09  

It’s still exhausting, people. We seem to kind of think like, okay, we’re getting to a new normal, and there’s, it’s not it’s not a new normal. It’s, I said, there’s no future of work at this point. It’s the metaverse of work or the multiverse of work, like we’re in a par.. another paradigm like, this is not at all what we would have evolved to just naturally. There was this cataclysmic event, we went from 4% of the entire global workforce 4% to 35% of the global workforce, working remotely within a week, like just dramatic increase, we’ve, you know, 10x, the amount of adoption of teletherapy and telemedicine, we’ve just had these massive rapid shifts in a very short amount of time, which has changed our behaviors, it’s changed our mortality. I mean, we’ve we went through periods of time where I say, we’re in the first sort of level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, where we were actually in a state of survival in some days, you know, protecting our family, protecting your own health. And when you go through that, your social contract with work changes, it’s no longer transactional. It’s like, okay, I want something different in this relationship, right? And, I mean, we also increased meetings. I mean, meeting fatigue was always a problem, a massive problem before just the lack of etiquette and people going over meetings and a person dominating the entire meeting by speaking, you know, in just themselves, like, lots of issues around that before the pandemic, we have actually increased the number of meetings. This is just teams meeting data, Microsoft data, by 252% more meetings in the last two years. 

 

Mark Divine 32:52

Wow. Like interesting. 

 

Jennifer Moss 32:54

And zoom went from, you know, around 10 million daily active users, and within a month, they went to 300 million daily active users. It’s a total different shift. And so we haven’t really paused and said, okay, is this actually what we want in this Metaverse of work or future work? Do we actually want to be this collaborative? And is it really actually making us more efficient? And uh, are we just working more hours and feeling like we need to be toxically productive, and it’s not necessarily increasing shareholder value or revenue or well-being. And that’s something that we need to start thinking about. It’s why people are quietly quitting and why people are resigning because this just isn’t sustainable.

 

Mark Divine  33:42  

I agree. It’s interesting. And this, this is going to go a little off track., admittedly, but when I pan out, it’s almost as if decisions are being made for us by some technocratic, you know, overlord. Or elite that is driving humanity toward this Metaverse kind of connected digitally, you know, Avatar kind of environment, which is, you know, from our discussion, I don’t think you believe that’s a healthy thing. And I certainly don’t believe that’s a necessarily a healthy thing, or what human beings are needing or wanting, right? Human beings want connection, they crave on being outdoors, they thrive, I should say being being outdoors environments or hybrid environments and human connection. They need time off, you know, our, our native ancestors, quote, unquote, worked for four hours a day, roughly, you know, but the rest of the time they were doing things like play and learning and things that were human. And so I think it’s time for us as a human community to, like really step up and say, Wait a minute, we have a voice in this. When I saw Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince wants to build a 75-mile-long city, that is two buildings extending across the mountain, and they’re going to displace all these native tribes and people are gonna be packed into these two buildings like That is the most dystopian view of the future I have ever seen in my life. Like, how could that be good for us? I don’t know, what do you say?

 

Jennifer Moss  35:06  

I love that you’re saying this. Because, you know, these are the things that you know I’m ranting about right now, because it’s frustrating because, you know, we’re sitting four to seven hours more day, and we were sitting already too much. We’re finding that the data is showing that people are actually increasingly lonely. It’s the loneliest they’ve ever been right now.

 

Mark Divine  35:26  

They’re getting more unhealthy, more lonely, more burnout. And the antidote is to put them on drugs or antidepressants to keep them more sick. And it traps everybody in this horrible cycle.

 

Jennifer Moss  35:38  

Well, yeah, and the connection piece is maybe the biggest effect. I think you see this on youth. Obviously, mental health issues with youth is just exploded. But also, when you look at the data around how people are feeling and sort of leadership challenges for remote work is that you know, what’s happened is that some companies have gone fully remote. And they’re saying that their biggest challenge is connections and connectedness and the loneliness that their remote workers are feeling. Feeling like their careers atrophying, like they don’t have any connection to their boss, a lot of young professionals are quitting just because this is where you’d meet, like your spouse, or you might meet your best friends in those first few years of working is like just you know, serendipitous moments and being together and seeing each other face to face. And there’s even just really important data. It’s really cool. Dr. Jeremy Bailenson, from Stanford Media Lab, he did this research project on Zoom burnout. And he said that there’s four reasons why one of them is that we’re constantly staring at ourselves, which is not healthy. He said that and we I was reading some data in that Botox is actually called this the Zoom boom, they’ll pandemic was their zoom boom. Their sales have gone up 90%. And they’re calling it the Zoom boom, constantly critiquing ourselves social comparison is not healthy. And then also, he found that we’re not getting the same interactions. You have to look at the whites of eyes. You need to look at each other face to face. But he said the only time in real life that we would be this close to each other in person is if we were mating someone or fighting them. So he says, we’re actually in this hyper-aroused conscious state all day long. So we’re like, you know, think about your one on ones with your boss, or, you know, a co-worker, and you don’t realize that you’re actually like feeling triggered by this communication. And I thought that was so fascinating. So there’s all these reasons why this communication is totally unhealthy and that we’re now trying to use it so that we can be more disconnected. And even just that, we haven’t stopped and said, do we need to have a full hour on Zoom every time we meet? Or can we invite people to not show up? And that’s okay. How do we politely decline a meeting? How do we start to create space? If you’re hosting a meeting, make sure that the people that are supposed to be there are there, and if not, create a really put it on yourself to create a really scheduled agenda so that you can say, Hey, Joe, from accounting, you can jump on from 12:30 to 12:45. But that’s all I need you for instead of just having everyone in a room in the same place at the same time sitting down, you know, why not walk and talk with someone and go for a 15-minute walk? Why not have a stand-up meeting? You know, why don’t you meet in person, I mean, and having a hybrid office where people can show up when they want is unhealthy either because then they go into a ghost town, and they’re back on meetings, but just in the office. So we really, leaders, are really challenged right now with figuring out how to do it better. And you know, we can we can do it better, we don’t have to just be forced into this equation. We really do have this opportunity to be way better than we are right now.

 

Mark Divine  38:58  

Now’s not the time to follow the herd. Because the herd is being led by someone and that someone may not have your best interest because they don’t know. I don’t know if it’s intentional or not. But that’s fascinating. We got to wrap this up. I want to be sensitive to your time. But if someone’s listening to this, and they’re like, God, Jennifer just hit a chord with me. I think I’m burned out. What should they do? What’s their next step?

 

Jennifer Moss  39:18  

Well, first, you know, really labeling. If you’re burnout is it’s good. It’s to look for these those three major signs. So how depleted Am I? Am I exhausted by two or three in the afternoon and feel like I’m just completely wiped out? Do I feel like in the morning, it’s hard to motivate, you know, like, we just found out that showers are down by 30% this last year, people aren’t, you know, changing clothes or showering.

 

Mark Divine 39:40

Really? 

 

Jennifer Moss 39:41

Yeah, and it’s a sign that..

 

Mark Divine  39:43  

I guess we’re saving water.

 

Jennifer Moss  39:44  

There’s a benefit to that and no driving, but people are just working during their commute time. But yeah, there’s benefits to that. But I think it’s what they’re they’re trying to correlate it to is that people are probably feeling depressed, you know, and depression increases this lack of motivation and so, when you’re depressed and anxious, you know, you stopped caring about those things, and you just want to stay in bed. You know, are you feeling like you need stimulants to keep awake in the day and then sort of downers like alcohol and these other types of things? You know, are you eating emotionally? Those types of things usually signal, okay, I’m trying to come down, you know, at the end of the day, and do you feel dread on you know, going into work? Do you feel like you’re disengaged from work? Like you’re emotionally distanced from the goals? And are you using language like a lot of language of permanence, always and never like, are you saying, I’m always, this is always going to be like this, it’s never going to change. And I’m always running into the same issue, or you’re using I language, very isolated language like I can’t do anything about this, I never get any help, or, you know, that kind of language usually signifies that you’re feeling sort of hopeless, you’re feeling isolated, you feel like you lack control or agency. So that kind of stuff thinking about that. And then just like that cynicism piece, that hopelessness piece, all of those things, if you’re feeling that and you’re feeling it frequently, and frequently means two to three times a week, then you’re probably in a position where you’re very close to hitting that wall, and you need to talk to someone, if you feel comfortable talking to your boss, you should, but a lot of people say that they can’t. So sometimes, it’s just going to anonymous sources through your EAP teletherapy. Being able to, you know, talk to someone is good, there’s counseling groups, sometimes organizations have a mental first aid support group within, you know, a peer group within, inside your organization. So, it is about reaching out and understanding that this is a very serious issue, you know. People get very sick, and there’s real consequences and catastrophic consequences to being to being at that point where you hit the wall. You know, we can sustain feeling symptoms of burnout for a period of time. But there’s a point when it adds up, and you hit the wall, and then it can mean PTSD, it can mean meaning pharmacological support, it can mean therapeutics, it can mean, you know, can mean a lot of time, and healing. And it impacts your confidence in your job and your career, all these things. So, we need to be better about diagnosing and then asking to get external support before it gets too far.

 

Mark Divine  42:14  

So self-awareness, and then self-advocacy really are the first steps and then and then from there, you can identify the triggers and causes and start to work on both the site, the psycho-emotional, as well as the systemic things that are causing and try to remove the friction and remove the triggers. And then for leaders, I think the leaders, this is very powerful, because, you know, awareness of what your organization is doing, or what your you or your key leaders are doing that might be leading to burnout. And a lot of that is unconscious like you said, it’s a bias, right, because of our male-dominated kind of hyper-performance-oriented culture. So to be aware that that’s not healthy, and to work toward bringing more balance, maybe first in your own life, because a lot of CEOs and leaders, you know, are right there. And they’ve got maybe some more skills that that other people don’t have so that they can ward off burnout. But it’ll show up, right, in some ways. And a lot of my clients are high-performance leaders and, and they’re not sleeping well, like we have a major sleep problem in our culture. And then, you know, they overcompensate that with hardcore workouts, which then is pumping more cortisol into the system, which is leading them and not sleeping well. And this is a train wreck waiting to happen for a lot of people. Right?

 

Jennifer Moss  43:19  

It is. And I love that you said that because sleep, it plays a huge role. I mean, just, you know, sleep deprivation one day, and we’re already, you know, basically not functioning at our same level and capacity, you know, from a neuroscience standpoint. But we as leaders think that the, the idea of a break is non-productive time, you know, that rest isn’t productive. We need to start thinking of rest as being part of productivity like that is actually holistically part of it. Leaders too. I mean, here’s a couple tips for leaders, leaders need to model all of these behaviors they need to model turning off, or else the invisible pressure will just exist, and employees can’t be what they can see. They need to see you actually behaving in the way that you want them to behave and how you care for them. You have to care for yourself first, you know, that mask on yourself first. And then we also as as leaders, have to recognize that we aren’t mental health professionals. And I think that’s why we we kind of move away from those conversations with our teams maybe or we don’t we feel nervous about having those conversations because we think, what happens if I met with crisis, or what happens if I can’t solve this and then like, it evolves, and I’m in a situation where I can’t answer that person’s questions that are, and that’s scary for a lot of leaders, what leaders need to be able to just vocalize to their team is I’m not a mental health professional, but I’m your mental health conduit. So I know what is in your EAP to give you support. I know what is maybe a local support for anyone that’s dealing with BIPOC issues or LGBTQ plus, you know, issues or whatever it is that they’re dealing with. Who knows what that is, but I can help. You know, you’re a parent or a single mom. What is your thing that I can help you with. If you’re dealing with financial stress? Well, this is a support system we have inside of our EAP. And then take mental health first aid, it’s a six-week course that any buddy can take, but leaders should really take it. They can have the right posture in those conversations, they can have the right language to use in those conversations, they can de-escalate, they can be the conduit. So we have a job as leaders to be to be knowledgeable in the products or the services that we offer to our shareholders or to our teams. But we should be knowledgeable in the human part of our relationship with people. And that means just becoming knowledgeable on the topic of mental health.

 

Mark Divine  45:39  

I love that. And also, I mean, it’s, it’s a really important step for leaders today is you don’t have all the answers. Right, perfectionism, actually, is a very unhealthy thing for your teams, right? So you don’t have to have all the answers, you don’t have to solve the problems, model behavior by going and seeking help yourself, get a therapist, right, take time off, you know, in fact, there’s now a lot of research about you should take time off after every important thing you do. Like every deep work training, every zoom call, take a few minutes even to breathe, to walk around the office to get outside. Because your your brain needs that time to really integrate what you’ve learned. Otherwise, if you just go straight to the next thing, you lose a lot. And so there’s real real, like you said, extraordinary benefits, not just health benefits, but decision-making benefits to being able to take time off so that your subconscious can assimilate, and then feed back to your conscious mind, you know, the right information, as opposed to you just suppressing that.

 

Jennifer Moss  46:35  

Well, and it makes you higher performing. And we’ve looked at all the data. You want to be a high-performing person, you know, and you’re doing all these other things to be high performing. And if you’re missing this very significant part that actually is giving your brain the power to be high performing, you know, you can be as physically high performing as you want. But if you are struggling because of stress, making simple decisions, or you’re more volatile, and you’re not being mindful in the way that you lead, I mean, you’re not actively listening to people, you’re losing so much of your momentum. And so, high performance needs to be in the recipes and the modeling of the behavior and self-care, only to be considered as part of the expectations that you place on yourself to be high performing.

 

Mark Divine  47:21  

Thanks so much. And so the book, The Burnout Epidemic name 10, best new management books in 2022 by thinker 50. That’s awesome shortlisted for the 2021 outstanding works of literature award. Congratulations, by the way, outstanding work. What’s next for you?

 

Jennifer Moss  47:36  

There’s a lot of stuff that I’m working on. But I have signed with Harvard Business Review Press, and I’m working on the next book. It’s kind of like, you know, you, as a mom, like, you make a choice or as a parent, you know, you make a choice of a child and in those first, whatever, you know, six months of their life, you’re like, this was the stupidest decision I ever made, I’m so exhausted. And then you forget it a year or two later; you have another so that’s kind of like writing a book, you sort of forget how painful it is. So that you can, you know, do it again. But yeah, it’s passion.

 

Mark Divine  48:10  

That’s awesome. Well, good luck with that. And we’ll share all this information. But where can folks learn more about you? Or where would you like them to kind of reach out to you on either social media or website or?

 

Jennifer Moss  48:19  

You know, everything is really on the website, which is jennifer-moss.com. It’s very easy to remember.

 

Mark Divine  48:28  

Jennifer, thanks so much. I really appreciate your time today. Wonderful work and it’s very important conversation. So you know, we’ll do our part and we’ll get the word out and share your your messages and your work. And let’s talk again when you when you’re done. And some of the pain has residedd from that next book.

 

Jennifer Moss  48:43  

Would love so great. chatting with you. This is such a great combo. Thank you.

 

Mark Divine  48:48  

I agree. Likewise. What a fascinating interview with Jennifer Moss, author of The Burnout Epidemic, learn some really interesting things to under 52% more meetings since we went virtual zoom went from 10 million to 300 million users a day in one month when the pandemic lockdown started. We talked about the need to be your own boss and to learn that every no is in service to a bigger yes, so learn how to say no, no to overworking no to unrealistic deadlines, no to projects you shouldn’t take on. As Jennifer says, you can have anything but not everything. Tons of great stuff. In this interview. The show notes and transcripts are on our site at Mark Divine.com, and videos up at the YouTube channel, which you can find at our site as well Mark Divine.com/youtube You can find me on Twitter @Mark Divine and on Instagram and Facebook @Real Mark Divine or on my LinkedIn profile. If you’re not subscribed to my newsletter, Divine Inspiration, it comes out every Tuesday with a synopsis of our podcast of the week, my blog, other shows that I’m on, and other interesting things that come across my desk that I think you’d find valuable. So check it out. Go to Mark Divine.com to subscribe if you’re not on it and share it with your friends. Shout out To my amazing team, Jason Sanderson and Geoff Haskell, to bring this show to you every week with incredible guests like Jennifer. Reviews and ratings are very, very helpful. So if you haven’t done so, please consider doing so. Wherever you listen to this, help us get to 5000 5-star reviews this year. Thanks for being part of the change you want to see in the world. Clearly, we’re in a very complex, challenging, and changing world. We have to have a discussion about things like the nature of work and what we want our future to look like. Jennifer, I had a great discussion about how it feels like we’re being marshaled, like sheep, toward a dystopian future, technocratic, isolated, and connected constantly. And it’s not good for human beings to do that. And it’s not what we want. But it feels like it’s what is just being prescribed for us. So it’s time for us to have a discussion and to push back against it and to co-create the future that we want to see. And we can do that now at scale by having conversations like this and sharing this show and others like it, and being the change we want to see in the world at scale. Till next time. This is Mark Divine, and I really appreciate you. Hooyah!

 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai