Episode 185 · 3 April 2025 · 46:57
Burnout Isn’t Your Fault (But Here’s How You Fix It), with Cait Donovan
Featuring Cait Donovan
Burnout Isn’t Your Fault (But Here’s How You Fix It), with Cait Donovan
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Cait Donovan's mission to end burnout culture
The current state of burnout in 2025
interview#burnout#2025#workplace
Why pointing fingers at companies misses the point
interview#burnout#companies#responsibility
The Six Buckets of burnout explained
interview#burnout#six-buckets#framework
Nervous systems, weakness, and why it's not about toughness
interview#nervous-system#stress#resilience
The family bucket under strain
interview#family#burnout#caregiving
Values misalignment — where companies say one thing and do another
interview#values#company-culture#recognition
The collective sense of loss in today's workplace
interview#loss#workplace#burnout
Why resilience is never individual
interview#resilience#individual#systemic
Cait's free self-diagnosis exercise and words of wisdom
interview#self-diagnosis#exercise#burnout
Show notes
Burnout Isn't Your Fault (But Here's How You Fix It) — with Cait Donovan
Guest: Cait Donovan — burnout expert, speaker, author, and host of FRIED The Burnout Podcast, whose approach blends modern biobehavioural health science with Chinese medicine.
Burnout feels personal. The sleepless nights, the dread on Sunday evenings, the quiet sense that you're failing at something everyone else seems to manage. But what if burnout isn't actually your fault — or your company's fault either?
Cait Donovan returns to Truth, Lies & Work to challenge the conventional blame game around burnout. She introduces her "Six Buckets" framework, showing that burnout results from a mix of family background, personality, work environment, cultural pressures, physical health, and community support. She explains why typical prevention strategies often fail, how leaders can support burned-out teams without becoming therapists, and why collective accountability beats individual blame every time.
Top 3 Takeaways
- Burnout isn't a blame game. It's not simply the individual's fault, nor solely the company's responsibility. Real recovery comes from collective resilience and shared accountability across all six buckets.
- Values misalignment fuels burnout. When companies say one thing and do another, it intensifies exhaustion. Aligning personal and organisational values is essential to building a healthier culture.
- Leaders can support without being therapists. You don't need to fix everyone's problems — but you do need to take accountability for the work bucket and create conditions where people can fill the others.
More From Cait Donovan
- Website: caitdonovan.com
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/caitdonovanspeaks
- FRIED The Burnout Podcast on Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2VhzgpY24d6xDhxPLGn9Ex
- FRIED The Burnout Podcast on Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fried-the-burnout-podcast/id1469939920
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
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Cait DonovanMy name is Cait Donovan. I'm a burnout expert. I feel like my job is to end burnout culture. The Gallup polls, the Harvard Business Reviews, the Wellbeing at Work reviews, the McKinsey reports, all of them are like, burnout is worse and we're not sure why. Companies are unwilling to have burnout professionals come in often because they don't want to be told that they're at fault. If you are in a workplace or in a building that only uses fluorescent light and you never see dawn or dusk because of your working hours, You're gonna be more vulnerable.
Leanne ElliottIs it a case of saying, well, some people are just weak, some people can't hack it?
Cait DonovanI can't work a 9-to-5 job. I can't do it. Does that make me a bad person? No.
Leanne ElliottPeople are increasingly overwhelmed, and what I'm hearing is an overwhelming sense of sadness.
Cait DonovanYeah.
Leanne ElliottOf loss.
Cait DonovanSay you started in— you're a nurse, and you were like, all I wanna do is help people, and you find out that most of your work is paperwork. Does that suck? Sure. Can you put up with it in a short term? Absolutely. Can you put up with it long term? Absolutely not.
Leanne ElliottI messaged you immediately. I was like, Cait, we need to talk about this at length. How do I start to diagnose my own state at the minute?
Cait DonovanYou are someone who grew up in an insecure family. You had no one to support you. You created people-pleasing perfectionism and a lack of boundaries. So far, what I've found in the past 10 years, 6 buckets of things. One of the things that they found was there's only one actual action that increases your resilience automatically. One, and it's asking for help.
Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioral science meets workplace culture. We are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a chartered occupational psychologist.
Al ElliottAnd my name is Al, and I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottWe are here to help you create amazing workplace cultures.
Al ElliottToday we are joined by the brilliant Cait Donovan, Who's been on the podcast almost 3 years ago, I think it was. I can't believe it. Cait is a burnout expert with a unique background in both Chinese medicine and Western medicine. She's the host of the top 1% globally ranked podcast, Fried, and author of The Bounce Backability Factor. What's cool about Cait's approach is that she challenges our entire understanding of burnout because she argues it's not companies or individuals who are solely to blame. It's actually far more complex than that. According to Cait, burnout isn't just about workplace stress that's gone unmanaged. It involves 6 different buckets that make us vulnerable, from workplace factors to family history, personality traits, health, environment, and broader cultural influences. And this conversation feels like it's perfectly timed because recent research shows that burnout rates are higher than ever, worse than during the peak of the pandemic. Cait explains why this is happening and offers practical insights into what both organizations and individuals can do about it. So after this very short break, we're gonna join Leanne as she explores a fresh perspective of burnout that could transform how we approach workplace wellbeing. The dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all. Every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Cait DonovanNice.
Al ElliottCheck out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Welcome back. Let's join Leanne as she gets to the heart of the burnout issue with the incredible Cait Donovan.
Leanne ElliottCait, welcome back to Truth, Lies and Work. I say back, it feels like so long though. I think it was 2022 when we first spoke to you, which is wild. For our listeners who maybe missed the episode, can you just start by introducing yourself, who you are, what you do, and what you're famous for?
Cait DonovanI don't know that I'm famous, but my name is Cait Donovan. I'm a burnout expert. My history is in Chinese medicine crossed with Western medicine. So I have a degree in biobehavioral health and a master's degree in Chinese medicine, which gives me a a kind of a different view than most people on most things, if we're honest. My work is in podcasting, keynote speaking, authoring books, et cetera. And I really have a very deep goal, mission, and purpose for being. And I feel like my job is to end burnout culture, and which puts me out of a job, which is totally fine.
Leanne ElliottI want to ask you about burnout specifically in the current times and climate. I'd imagine most of our listeners would be aware of burnout, heard of burnout. How has burnout changed in the last 6 to 12 months, and what does it look like as we're moving into 2025?
Cait DonovanSo, the last 6 to 12 months, what we're seeing is higher levels of burnout, lower levels of engagement, higher levels of disengagement in the workplace. All, every single person that studies this, the Gallup polls, the Harvard Business Reviews, the Wellbeing at Work reviews, the McKinsey reports, all of them. are like, burnout is worse, and we're not sure why. What I think is happening, what I see happening outside of all the political shifts and outside of all the changes in the workplace that we're not sure what to do with yet, outside of that, I think we are still reacting to the pandemic. And it has been just long enough now that people feel like we should be in a the new normal that we all kept talking about way back then. And like, we're not. It seems like we're just going backwards and doing the same stuff that we used to do. So now you want me to go back to work? And now it's like we didn't learn anything from the lesson, but people's values shifted and the world's values, the world's values didn't shift with them.
Leanne ElliottHow have we seen burnout levels change over the the course of, say, 2020 to 2025? Has there been any peaks and troughs, or has it just steadily got higher?
Cait DonovanIt has steadily gotten higher. And the— we have, I think the end of 2024, the measures for disengagement specifically, which is part of burnout, the measures for disengagement were worse than at the peak of the pandemic. When it comes to burnout, I think the biggest missed opportunity is this constant focus On burnout prevention. Instead of looking at the fact that depending on what study you read, anywhere from 37 to 88% of us are experiencing burnout, which means we are too late for prevention. Burnout prevention measures are stress management measures. They're the same thing. There's no difference. But burnout recovery requires something different, and we keep talking about burnout prevention? Like, it already happened. That's like saying, if you don't want to get food poisoning, don't eat food, like bad food, but you ate the bad food 3 days ago. That's not helpful right now. And I do believe, as a general rule, as someone who has studied health promotion and sort of like public health measures, I do believe that we at some point need to go, way back and start fixing things much further upstream. But right now we are in a crisis of people who are already burnt out and we need to help them recover.
Leanne ElliottThis conversation sparked from an exchange we had over LinkedIn when I was looking for some hot spicy takes for our, our Tuesday episodes. And it was, it was, it really did stop me. I messaged you immediately and I was like, Cait, we need to talk about this at length. You said burnout is not the fault of companies. Not individuals.
Cait DonovanSo, the reason that I say this and the reason I'm— I spend so much time on it is that people that work in burnout, in the burnout space, are often telling people, individuals, like, listen, burnout is not your fault. Like, and I agree with that.
Al ElliottCool.
Cait DonovanBut then they're going about pointing fingers at companies and saying, your leaders are the problem, you are the problem. And so, companies are unwilling to have burnout professionals come in often because they don't wanna be told. that they're at fault. And when you look at a wider causation of burnout, your workplace is just one small part of it. This is why, so the World Health Organization of burnout is focused on the workplace. It says this is workplace stress that has gone unmanaged and doesn't apply to life outside the workplace, which is like, you guys, it's 2025. Like, we know better than to think that The different silos of our life don't affect each other.
Leanne ElliottIf there is no one to blame, how do we know where it comes from? How do we know how to deal with it? Is it just something that we accept? And does that actually get organizations off the hook and go, well, if we're not to blame, we're not accountable for employee wellbeing?
Cait DonovanNo, see this, and this is where I think that the biggest mishaps are happening. That's what we think. Like, if we can blame something, then we can fix it. But how often have you been attacked in a way of blame that made you really sit down and say, well, I'll change my behavior? Like, is blame an effective way of getting a shift made commonly in your experience?
Leanne ElliottIf we look at workplace health and safety, there's an element there potentially of change happening or behavior modification happening because of significant consequences. that people were held accountable for.
Cait DonovanHeld accountable and blaming, different energy. And what— but think about your world personally. If someone comes in your life and starts blaming you for something, is your initial reaction to say, well, let me change that for you? Or is your initial reaction to become defensive, to dig your heels in and protect yourself?
Leanne ElliottSo, applying this human lens to an organization, how do we approach burnout or how you're approaching burnout in a way that empowers, we're talking positive language, empowers an organization to take accountability rather than accept blame?
Cait DonovanWe all need to start understanding as a community that burnout is a bigger thing and that has many different areas. So, there's an epidemiological term from the 1960s called a web of causation, and it was originally thought to, they were describing how diabetes type 2 arises. So initially when diabetes type 2 was a thing, they were saying, well, it's people that eat too much sugar. And what they ended up finding was that it's people that live in poverty or socioeconomic issues, have socioeconomic issues, are more prone to it because they have less access to good food, not because they're aiming to eat sugar on purpose. And sugar isn't the culprit except for the fact that sugar was the solution to their food problems.
Al ElliottRight.
Cait DonovanBecause they didn't have access to good food, and the lack of movement was a big part of it. But then we have, in the States especially, this country was designed for cars, so we don't have people walking to and from their local store or taking a bike. Like, this isn't Amsterdam. We're not riding along canals and getting places with our kids on the back. Like, we are driving everywhere. So they started to see that the full web of causation for diabetes was all these different bits and pieces.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Cait DonovanBurnout is much the same. A person becomes vulnerable to burnout, not that burnout is caused by, but a person becomes vulnerable to burnout when there are a multitude of factors in play. And those multitude of factors come from, so far what I've found in the past 10 years, 6 buckets of things. The workplace is simply one of them. If you don't have anything in the other 5 buckets, your workplace could be pretty terrible and you'd still be okay. Your workplace could also be a utopia, but if your other 5 buckets are full of burnout risk factors, you're going to burn out anyway. So I don't think we can fully blame any single one of the buckets because that doesn't make any sense.
Leanne ElliottSo, talk us through these 6 buckets, Cait, the 6 areas that can impact our vulnerability towards burnout.
Cait DonovanSo, the first one is the workplace, right? So, how we're treated at work, if our value system matches the value system of the company, if the company's value system matches what it actually does in action, like that's a big one in the workplace. If a company has all these like really great values on their website that are like color-coded and Have fun animations, but in reality, they don't live according to those values. Like, that's a huge issue. Lack of psychological safety in the workplace is an issue. So the workplace has its own bucket of issues that it is responsible for. Not blaming, but it is responsible for these things. Cool. The next bucket is family. This is intergenerational trauma. This is whether or not you were able to form a secure attachment with a caregiver as a child. Just this one thing could end up being a root cause, a root cause, one of the many root causes of burnout later in your life. If you had family that was, someone in your family who was chronically ill, if you had an addict in your family, if you had a family member who was in prison or jail for any extended period of time, if there was any neglect or abuse in your world, All of those things are going to affect whether later in life you are susceptible to burnout. So any of those things will increase your vulnerability to burnout. The next bucket is personality/traits and states. Now, when we say burnout is not an individual's fault, when I say that, I really truly mean it. And we know that possibly because of some family stuff earlier in your life or some cultural stuff earlier in your life, You created coping mechanisms that probably worked for you for a very long time. People pleasing and perfectionism are successful. They get us where we want to go often. They get us jobs, they get us friends, they get us success. So we keep them. Sometimes we keep them a little too long and we own them as so much pressure that they start to break down our stress response system because we don't have healthy coping mechanisms. We have fix other people's stuff coping mechanisms.
Leanne ElliottSo. Yeah.
Cait DonovanPersonality traits and states is another bucket. That's 3. So workplace, family, self. The next bucket is health separate from personality traits and states. So if you have a chronic illness, if you have a tendency toward anxiety or depression, there's genetics and epigenetics here. So we're back to the, some of the buckets, they'll crisscross ideas sometimes. So intergenerational trauma might lead to an epigenetic change, which changes your ability to manage stress that you don't even know about. You can, there are markers on our genes, especially the stress genes, that can actually change how much your stress response responds. So if your mother, while she was pregnant with a daughter especially, so the line is through the female side is stronger. If your mother had an extreme stressful situation, During her pregnancy that you don't know about. She could have had an epigenetic shift in her DNA around stress, which would change your DNA around stress. Sometimes this shift is to lower the volume on your stress response so that you can survive when things are really mental. But what that does, if you take that through your whole life, is that your stress response never really gets high enough for you to like finish it. So you just stay at this chronic stress level. Whether the stress is coming from your work, your home, your environment, your culture, your politics, or anything else. So this is just a body-based, biological, physiological thing. If you have a traumatic brain injury, you're more likely to have burnout. If you have poor diet, sleep habits, exercise habits, et cetera, you're more likely to burn out. The next bucket is environment. Environment includes everything outside of your body. That adds or distracts from your ability to enjoy beauty and connection. So, if you live in a city that has absolutely zero green space, you're going to be more vulnerable to burnout, no matter how good or bad your workplace is. If you are in a workplace or in a building that only uses fluorescent light and you never see dawn or dusk because of your working hours, you're going to be more vulnerable To burnout. If you have no community of people that you can meet out and about that you see, like I have a coffee shop down the street that my dog takes me to every day. I know now every single person in the coffee shop because my dog goes in and gets a treat every single day. That's part of my community. That's part of what helps my nervous system feel safe in the world. But if you don't have that, you are more vulnerable to burnout. If you, and this sounds wild, but matters, if you don't like the design of your home, if there's too much clutter, if the color is wrong, if you hate the art on your walls, if you have too many drawers that always stick, or, you know, any of those things, if your household environment does not allow your nervous system to feel safe, You are at a higher risk for burnout. Sometimes I have clients literally change the art on their walls or paint a wall a different color, and they're like, am I seriously doing this? And I'm like, yes, and it matters. On a neurological basis, on a biological basis, this matters. So, so far we have 5 buckets: work, family, traits and states, health, environment. The last one is culture. This one is the underlying belief systems and ideas that we carry with us that own our behaviors sometimes, even though we don't know about it. In the US specifically, in our top 10 cultural values, 2 of them are hard work and individualism. Work hard, do it alone. That's terrible, but we all have it in us because it's built into our culture. If on top of that, you are a— in the US and you are a first-generation immigrant, who, whose parents gave up everything so that you would have the opportunity to live in the United States, you then have hard work, individualism, and family pressure. Then you go into a workplace that tries, like, overworks you a little bit, but you agree to the overwork because you think it's the right thing. So we're always interplaying these ideas together, right? The rest of the culture bucket, well, you know, we could go into for days and hours and lifetimes. But if you are a person who falls into any of the categories that has an -ism, ageism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, et cetera, you are going to be more vulnerable to burnout because actually getting these microaggressions thrown at you all day, every day changes your body's inflammation levels, which makes you more susceptible then to burnout. If we think of all of these 6 buckets, what are we supposed to blame?
Leanne ElliottI guess an element of, does that shift it back to more of an individual accountability to know where I'm sitting with my 6 buckets and how well I'm doing in terms of balancing my 6 buckets?
Cait DonovanWhen I work with companies, the thing we talk about is where do these lines overlap? So what can the workplace do to take care of the workplace bucket as best as possible, So that people can work on their individual buckets, and then we can meet in the middle and create something that actually works instead of pointing figures and everybody's saying, well, it's because you're not strong enough. It's because you overwork me. It's because— why don't we just figure out? And I think the other, before I go into that, the other thing that I think is problematic right now is I work with leaders every day. Most of them, have a desire to lead well, but they are not therapists. They are not wellbeing specialists, and frankly, that's not their job. But they are being expected to take on a role that matches that of therapist or psychological wellbeing. And so their job is to create psychological safety.
Al ElliottYeah.
Cait DonovanWhich is different than being a therapist. But they feel so much pressure to not only manage everybody's work stuff, but also be the empathetic ear when somebody has a problem and respond appropriately when someone has something going on at home. When it's— this is a lot to ask of people that are not trained in this work. But if I give them, hey, here's the things that you are responsible for. These are the things that you can influence. I want you to pick the 3 easiest ones for you to shift for your team. Let's start there.
Al ElliottAfter this very short break, Cait reveals whether all 6 burnout buckets carry equal weight and which factors have the most powerful impact on our vulnerability. Plus, Leanne quizzes Cait on the surprising truth about values mismanagement in organizations, why some personality types struggle more in certain workplaces, And what leaders can actually do to protect their teams without becoming therapists. See you in 90 seconds.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number one management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking. And you're not gonna say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in threes—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless, seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. Uh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioural science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff, and do some big things about how this affects the worlds of politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is, it's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Al ElliottIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd are we all just status-seeking monkeys?
Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back. I'll cut that out. Keep that in. Okay, let's rejoin Leanne and Cait as they explore the secret to understanding burnout.
Leanne ElliottI have some follow-up questions on these buckets before we dig into them. In terms of their impact on potential burnout, are they all equal or does one have more power than the other to cause burnout?
Cait DonovanMy belief is that our individual nervous system's ability to see, feel, and respond to stress appropriately. is our biggest factor, but that's built of 3 or 4 different buckets.
Leanne ElliottPlaying like devil's avocado, if there are some maybe like not very nice leaders out there who wanted to still use this model to point blame, is it a case of saying, well, some people are just weak, some people can't hack it?
Cait DonovanNo, absolutely not, because it's not a question of weakness. So, when it comes to the nervous system, weak and strong is not Um, the correct vocabulary, right? That nervous systems aren't weak or strong. They are, they have a smaller window of tolerance or a wider window of tolerance. And some people do have a smaller window of tolerance, but that's not their fault that they have a smaller window of tolerance.
Leanne ElliottI get it. But to that lady with that mindset, does that not kind of mean the same thing?
Cait DonovanIt might to them, which is why I like going in and doing this work with people because it's not your job to fix their window of tolerance. It's your job to recognize where they are and try to work within it with them as best you can. Or honestly, a lot of times, you know, people often are a little bit afraid to, you know, take in someone who talks about burnout in the workplace because they're afraid for the blame game, and they're also afraid that everyone's going to quit. And go try and find a new job, which never happens. That's not actually how it happens. But sometimes what we do find is that it's not a good fit. My window of tolerance and this position don't really match each other. That's okay. I think the individual side of things and this individualistic view that we have of people in the West, leads individuals to believe that they should be able to put up with anything. And that's just not true. If your window of tolerance is smaller than other people's, if you cannot manage as much stress as somebody else, then you shouldn't take on a job that is. But you might not know that. So sometimes you have to get to burnout to realize that that thing that you thought was okay for you actually isn't.
Al ElliottYeah.
Cait DonovanAnd there's nothing, there's no morality attached to it. There's nothing wrong with it. But we all think that we're all supposed to be able to do the same things, and we can't. I can't work a 9-to-5 job. I can't do it. Does that make me a bad person? No, it means that I have to work a little differently. But if I can't work a 9-to-5 job, my nervous system goes wild when somebody tells me what to do. There's a part of being on the spectrum that, you know, somebody tells you what to do and you have this like extreme reaction. I have that. So I'm never going to be able to be in a workplace where somebody from the top is saying, you need to get X, Y, and Z done. Like, that's never going to work for me. But I know that about myself, so I choose work that I can work within. Like I said before, there's no morality attached to how you interact with the world and how much your nervous system can manage. And because your nervous system is affected by all of these things, and you can expand capacity and there's, you know, et cetera. But if you don't know that, and you are someone who grew up in an insecure family that had really unhealthy boundaries with a chronically ill family member, you had no one to support you, you created people-pleasing perfectionism and a lack of boundaries, and then you end up in a workplace that has fluorescent lighting and a bully for a boss and someone who expects 10 out of 10, but you're giving 12 out of 10 anyway because you're a perfectionist people pleaser. As leaders, we need to see when people aren't fit for their role. And as people, we need to accept that we're not supposed to be in every role. And it's not because we're not good enough. It's not because we're broken. It's not because— it's just because this thing doesn't fit the life that I have lived up until this point.
Leanne ElliottSo if we connect the two aspects we've kind of dived into so far, Cait, in terms of the state of burnout, what's happened over the last 5 years, and then through the lens of this really cool model, by the way. I like how it's intuitive whilst also like, haha moment. If we fit those 2 things together, what buckets have been really under strain the last 5 years?
Cait DonovanThe family bucket has been under massive strain because family members had to take on additional roles, especially mothers, right? All of a sudden, mothers were teachers, And they were keeping their jobs and they were mothering, and that was a lot. So the stress family within— the stress levels within families rose incredibly. The culture bucket is a mess because we got to this place where we were like, oh my God, we can reexamine our values and change things for the better. Look, we don't all need to be in the office. We can get things done. And now there's pushback against that pendulum swing, and we don't know where we land anymore. So there's a lot of the finger-pointing and the blaming and the what's right and what's wrong instead of the expansion of some jobs do really well. Some jobs have to be done in person, but jobs that have the ability to be remote or not. Some companies can do it the way they want and other companies can do it the way they want, and you should work at a company that works with your values. Like, if we let it expand instead of let it be like, there's a correct way, there's not a correct way. There's no correct way. And I think the fact that there's no correct way is why the workplace stuff is not to blame fully. Right? Because if you created a workplace that had a perfect balanced workload that was super well-resourced, you always had everything you needed to do your job, you had at least one friend at work, you were psychologically safe, you were getting regular praise and recognition, everything felt fair, there was a value alignment, and everything was ideal, the way that it's ideal isn't ideal for every individual. No matter how good it is, we have to stop thinking that there's an answer, an answer. There's 5,000 answers.
Leanne ElliottThat makes it tricky for, for business owners, leaders. Infinite number of options, infinite number of ways of doing things. What you mentioned before, that you go into organizations, you help them figure out the main things that they can focus on to have the most impact. Do they typically tend to be the same 3 things?
Cait DonovanOne of the things that almost every place needs is the praise and recognition piece. Most people are not doing this well, but giving regular and specific, pointed, not just like praise and recognition all day, every day, because like everybody gets a blue ribbon. No, ma'am. Those moments of praise and recognition are really important. That being said, if we are going to work on praise and recognition, then the individual team member needs to work on being able to accept praise and recognition. Because how many times has somebody said, oh, that's a super cute dress, and you say, oh, it's old. Oh, I got it at TK Maxx. Oh, I— right? Like, oh, this old thing. Oh, it was $24.99. If we're gonna work on that, even that needs to come from both sides. When somebody praises you, you need to say thank you. The other piece that is absolutely necessary, no matter who we're talking to, no matter what, Is, it's like the values mismatch is one of the top 6 factors for burnout in the workplace according to research for the past 40 years. But values alignment and/or misalignment can happen on a couple different levels, and I think people only think about it on one level. But the first level a values misalignment can happen on is between the company and itself that we talked about before, right? Like we have these values, They are painted on a wall when you walk in, and they are well-designed, and they sound beautiful, but we don't actually live according to them. We do not act them out. Our values in writing are not our values in action. When that's true in a company, you immediately break down trust and immediately break down psychological safety. You can't work on any of the workplace things if the trust and psychological safety is broken. You can't do them. So the values misalignment on that level has to be adjusted. The next place that a values misalignment can happen is between the manager and their team member. How many times have some, has someone quit a job because their manager did not suit them? And they say that their manager is a jerk, and maybe they were, or maybe. They just weren't a good match. If there's different work ethics between a manager and an employee, that's going to be a problem. So we need to know a little bit more about our leaders and what's important to them so that when they create their teams, they're creating them with people that not just agree with them, because that's not quite right, but share some values so that when they're having a discussion, there's an underlying—
Al ElliottAgreement.
Cait DonovanUnderstanding. The 3rd place a values misalignment can happen is between the company and the person working there. Say you started in, you're a nurse and you were like, all I wanna do is help people. And then you start in this big, big, big hospital system and you find out that most of your work is paperwork. This is not gonna work out long-term, no matter what, because the thing that you wanna do and the value that you are there to use is not really applicable in the way that they want you to work. This is one of the most common issues in burnout that I see worldwide. We wanted to do a job because we assumed that the job would help us feel a certain way, and the job in reality is not that. I think the third one really depends, is more individual to the company, because sometimes it's about creating community better, and sometimes it's about creating enough autonomy. It really depends on What the complaints are on the engagement surveys.
Leanne ElliottMy thing is that sprung to mind when you talk about that was Meta, Mark Zuckerberg. Meta, how used to be, you know, pretty, pretty firm in terms of diversity and inclusion. This is a core value of ours. And now it's swinging to, oh, we need more masculinity in our culture. It's like overnight I've gone from being an employee who is in an organization where I felt my values were aligned to now they're really very much Not. How do I deal with that as an employee when it's, you say that it's the culture, it's the environment that's completely shifting out of my control overnight?
Cait DonovanWell, then you look at what the thing is that you can control, which is creating a graceful exit strategy and finding another job. The issue really happens when you decide that you should be able to, for some unknown superperson reason, put up with This shift. When you assume that if you just like do enough meditation and breathe enough, like you should be able to manage it, you're not going to be able to manage it. It's going to overtake you at some point. This is bigger than you. You have to create an exit strategy. Does that suck? Sure. Can you put up with it in a short term? Absolutely. Can you put up with it long term? Absolutely not. The good thing about the major swings that are happening now is that Both, maybe not, there's not only 2, but different value systems are becoming really obvious in a lot of places. So, the chances that you'll find something that is aligned with your values still are really high because people are being real loud about what they think right now, which is really helpful when you're searching for a job where you want to be in a place where you're safe.
Leanne ElliottThere's lots of leaders that don't seem to give a shit, excuse my language right now, about creating that environment. JP Morgan's CEO is one that springs to mind as a recent example. Are we, are you putting that in the same thing that actually there's gonna be leaders that will make it very clear where they stand and that'll make it easier for people to distance themselves from that?
Cait DonovanUh, my, that's the hope. Yeah. Honestly, I'd rather have people be that loud and obnoxious about it so that we know what we're up against. If you can't maintain, and the thing is, even within a company like, like that with a CEO saying those things, If the CEO is saying things that don't actually match what's going on internally, then you can kind of let the CEO run his mouth and say whatever he's going to say, and people still have managers that care about them and see them and hear them and are okay. And maybe, maybe not. I don't know what the truth is. I don't know what's going on internally at JPMorgan. The point is, we have to look at what the reality is on a day-to-day basis. For individual people within their teams and their, their direct management. This is the most important space because this is a space that we have influence over. So if the CEO is going wild, but the manager's like, don't worry, dude, I got you, you can stay home, and is willing to be that buffer for you, you're okay. But if the CEO says that and then all of the leadership right away says, We're on board. Get your tushes back to work. That's it. Well, then you have a decision to make. But I think we have this idea that we're not supposed to have to shift things to suit us. Things are supposed to shift to suit us. And that's just not real life as an adult.
Leanne ElliottI've spoken to a few people recently who, I mean, thinking with these buckets in mind, it's tough because work, they're going through shifts in terms of whether it be return to office or transitions of leadership. leadership. Um, in terms of family, they've had very different voting preferences over the last 6 months that is causing stress and strain. Um, in terms of, of the environment, and as you say, that the culture— I mean, it's, it's very changeable. It's, it's really quite frightening, from, you know, the extreme weather events we're seeing to, as you say, these very fundamental cultural norm shifting in terms of democracy or equality.
Cait DonovanYeah.
Leanne ElliottThe list really goes on. People are increasingly overwhelmed. And what I'm hearing is an overwhelming sense of sadness. Yeah.
Cait DonovanOf loss.
Leanne ElliottYeah. And that is something that I haven't really felt to that magnitude, its scale. I'm not sure I've ever felt that in my, in kind of my, my kind of regular day-to-day life, rather than maybe more specialized practice. How is all of this going to impact burnout if everybody's buckets Getting all a bit uneven, all a bit unmanageable.
Cait DonovanBut we have to look at the buckets of what the good parts of the buckets are, right? Because everything that could go wrong in a bucket could also go right. So we call, I call these, we, me, myself, and I, I call these BPFs, like SPF, but for burnout, right? Each bucket has plenty of things that you can control that can improve your ability to be in your life. So the first is when you can, of course, I understand that not everybody can like quit their job tomorrow and wait for a better offer. You have to create a structure for yourself to feel safe financially, et cetera. I get it. But if the workplace does not align with you at all, it is your responsibility to start looking for a new thing. If your family of origin did not give you the secure attachment that you needed in order to have a settled enough nervous system to interact with the world on an even keel, it's time to get some therapy. You can work through these things. Like, these things can be worked on. Our, our genes and our brains, they're not stuck. They are changeable and malleable. And the worse things get, the more we need to up our own internal abilities to function. So that things don't pull us totally off center every time they happen. We need to be able to— the title of my book is The Bounce-Backability Factor, right? We need to be able to come back into ourselves. We need to be able to bounce back. We can only do that if we are resourced enough to do that. We can only be resourced enough to do that if we know where we get our resources from and we use those things on purpose. So, You might need therapy or a coach. You might need to work on your boundary system. You might need to work through how to ask for help and get support. You might need to work on receivership so that when somebody pays you a compliment, you're able to say thank you. You might need to work on your sleep schedule or your food intake or your walking, whatever it is, right? There's— every bucket has A positive side. So the buckets are not, we do the negative, the quote unquote negative side first, because that's the thing that everybody wants to know. But the fact of the matter is you can fill every single bucket with resources. That's possible. And if you have to start by filling those buckets within your small communities or between you and one other person, because this is not just about individuals, this is about community, right? If you need to do that within a small community, then cool. Focus on 2 or 3 people in your world.
Al ElliottYeah.
Cait DonovanThat you can fill your buckets together because that will give you the strength and the centering that you need to handle the chaos that's going on around us.
Leanne ElliottI love that. And I think collective resilience is getting so much more talked about and more understood and more valued. It really is finding your tribe. It's as simple as that.
Cait DonovanWell, there's nothing— I want to go there for a second because there's no such thing as resilience that's not collective. When you Look at resilience research. One of the things that they found was there's only one actual action that increases your resilience automatically. One. And it's asking for help. Because when you ask for help, what you do automatically is gain access to that person's resources, which are different than yours or multiply yours. And when that person taps into their network, they are increasing your resources even more. There's no such thing about filling your buckets that you do alone. All of this happens in community. But you have to be in charge of what kind of community you're building and what kind of holes in your bucket you're accepting.
Leanne ElliottI think it brings us really nicely back to, to where this started in the, in terms of, of, you know, blame. An individual isn't to blame, a company isn't to blame or is at fault for burnout. But from everything you've said, it feels like as an individual, we can empower ourselves to take accountability To nurture our buckets.
Cait DonovanAnd as a workplace, as leadership, we can take accountability for the bucket of work, but we cannot take responsibility for the bucket of someone else's perfectionism. If you tell an employee that they really can go home at 5 o'clock, they don't need to stay until 6, but they insist on staying until 6, you can't fix that. So I think that yes, an individual has so much power. You can look at your burnout protection factors, you can fill your buckets, you get with a community that fills your buckets naturally, you create systems that keep pouring things into your buckets. All of that is doable. The only control you have over the workplace bucket is how you interact with that workplace and whether or not you stay in a place that values you.
Leanne ElliottThat's it.
Cait DonovanBut you have to be able to do your part there.
Leanne ElliottFor someone listening who is now thinking, how do I start to diagnose my own state at the minute, my own self, my own understanding of my buckets? Is there any exercises they can do, Cait, to help them understand this?
Cait DonovanYeah, they can grab this exercise actually. If they go to caitdonovan.com/freebie-web, W-E-B, they can download this worksheet and do this worksheet on their own, the one that we've been talking about this whole time. So that's available to people. Whenever they want it.
Leanne ElliottWhat words of wisdom, reassurance, guidance, advice would you give anyone listening right now who is struggling?
Cait DonovanYou know how Michelle Obama said, when they go low, we go high, right? In this scenario, I think when things get too big, we go small. And that means to me that we refocus our energy on our core base needs, start meeting our core base needs, Eliminate some of the— it used to be that only one side had a ton of fake news. Now there's fake news all over the place. So you're getting riled up about things that are not even true, no matter which side you're on. It's like pulling back from some of the allowance and space and time that you're giving to things that may or may not even be true. I am paying attention to everything, but I have a very limited period of time in my day. Where I sit down, I look at as neutral news as I can find. I know what's going on in that day, and then I move on. Go back to the very core basics of nourishing your human body. Remember that you are human, that you have a body to live in. Go back to those basic things. You do them, it affects a certain area of your brain that allows you better management of the big stuff.
Leanne ElliottCait, where can our listeners Find you to learn more about you, your work, absorb more of your wisdom?
Cait DonovanEverything can be found through Fried the Burnout Podcast. It's friedtheburnoutpodcast.com or Fried the Burnout Podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts.
Al ElliottWell, that was the amazing Cait Donovan, burnout expert and host of Fried the Burnout Podcast. If the 6 Buckets approach resonates with you, definitely go and check out our website at caitdonovan.com. That's Cait with a C, C-A-I-T donovan.com. I wonder if she knows Jason Donovan or Terence Donovan from Neighbours. Anyway, different conversation, different day. And download that free worksheet she mentioned. The link is in the show notes. Oh, and one last thing. The major lesson I think we need to take from this is it's not just about powering through on your own. Asking for help is actually the number one action that increases resilience. Talking of asking for help, if you enjoyed this episode, would you consider clicking that subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts? Or if you're on YouTube, then the button should be somewhere down there. Um, or you could share it maybe with a colleague who might be showing signs of burnout if you feel comfortable doing that. Or the other thing is, if you just, you could just write a quick post on LinkedIn saying how much you enjoyed it. You don't have to disclose anything about burnout. If you tag both us, Truth, Lies and Work, and Cait Donovan in, then I'm sure we'll share your posts with our lovely listeners.
Leanne ElliottWe will. And we will see you on Tuesday for our regular episode with our weekly news roundup, our spicy hot take, and our world-famous workplace surgery where Al puts your questions to me.
Al ElliottHave a fabulous weekend and we'll see you soon. Bye-bye.
Leanne ElliottBye.