The Five Habits Courageous Leaders Use to Prevent Burnout | Sophie Anderson

Welcome to the Courage of a Leader podcast. This is where you hear real-life stories of top leaders achieving extraordinary results, and you get practical advice and techniques you can immediately apply for your own success. This is where you will get inspired and take bold, courageous action. I'm so glad you can join us. I'm your host, Amy Riley. Now, are you ready to step into the full power of your leadership and achieve the results you care about most. Let's ignite the courage of a leader. Sophie, thank you for joining me on the Courage of a Leader podcast today. Thanks, Amy,

for having me. So glad that you are here today. Sophie is a burnout prevention specialist, and burnout has become one of the biggest challenges in today's workplace. Organizations across all industries are seeing high levels of stress, emotional exhaustion, disengagement, and leaders want to know what to do. It takes courage to acknowledge that we're running on empty. It takes more courage for leaders to create environments where people can take care of their well-being while also performing. So I'm so glad that you're here, Sophie, to share your expertise and your experience

with us. So I want to start with why. Why do you focus on burnout, and why is it important for leaders to be focused on burnout? The

reason why I'm focusing on burnout is because in my 25 years in the corporate world, I have seen so many people burn out, leave the workplace for months, but also a lot of people talking about burnout, and even within the same teams with the same manager, the same KPIs, some people would be fine and some people would be exhausted. And I was starting to study coaching, and I was starting to coach people, and I was really starting to recognize the different elements that come into our well-being, how we treat ourselves, what our habits, the workplace. So I got really

curious about that, and when I decided to go and work on my business full time and leave the university where I was working. I decided I was going to focus on reducing stress and improving well-being. That's what I used to say. Okay, and that's that was my pitch when I started my business. I reduce stress, improve well-being. Sounds good. It sounds good. Yeah, it works. And as I was building the business and working full time, I started to feel burnt out myself. I started to feel all of those, the pressure and the workload, and wanting to call in sick. And my boss was saying, "No, you gotta

go to work. Yeah, your boss. Yeah, I was not a very nice boss to myself. Though jokes aside, it made me realize how much of the personal pressure we put on ourselves, and it just reiterated that burnout has so many different aspects. So I have not burnt out because then I pulled on my resources and my coach, I've always had a coach since 2020, and it helped me refine my research around reducing stress, improving well-being, and really know more about burnout and how I can really hone in on that.

Great, thank you for that response, Sophie. That's opening my eyes up to the different dynamics that are at play here. How do we treat ourselves, our own habits, the physical workload, the environment that we work in, our leader? There's so many dynamics there. So I know we want to talk next about what do we do to prevent burnout? First, let me tell listeners more about you. Sophie Anderson is a burnout prevention specialist and the creator of the Anderson Model of Burnout Prevention (AMBP) It's a practical framework that maps how burnout accumulates across three zones:

activation, overfunctioning, and depletion, and identifies the intervention points that stop professionals from crossing that threshold into burnout. Sophie works with professionals, leaders, and organizations across Australia and worldwide through personal coaching, keynote. And workplace well-being programs. I'm glad you're here to share with us from your experience, Sophie.

Thank you so much. It's a pleasure.

So I know you have for us top five courageous habits to prevent burnout. What are they?

And I see you're ready to take notes. I am. I am. Let's write them down. And the idea, if you allow me to take two steps back very quickly, the idea of the habits-they are part of one of the prevention pillars, which are mostly in the lifestyle pillar. There's three ways to prevent burnout: awareness, and you talk a lot about this. Knowing ourselves, raising awareness to the changes, what's different. The second one is restoration. So both our nervous system and our energy need replenishing, need to be topped up and looked after, so that sits under restoration, and in the

lifestyle, this is where we have our habits, nutrition, sleep, our relationships, our environment, and our self-talk as well.

Great, the three prevention pillars, folks: awareness, restoration, lifestyle, and that's where the habits live. I want to react to something that you said about awareness, noticing how things are changing, and I think sometimes also noticing how things are staying the same. When I see leaders that have been taking care of a number of things for themselves and for the team and for the organization and for the project or projects, and then those become table stakes. I got to know how to take care of all this, and then it's just adding on and adding on and adding on, and nothing

comes off. And we think like, okay, this new thing-it's not that big of a deal. Like, why is this dragging me under? Well, it's because there's still all of the rest of it on your plate.

Absolutely, and that is the first habit. So, how about we jump into that one? The first courageous habit, and I want to emphasize on the courageous because it could be just a habit, and I'm doing the air quotes on this, but I think your audience is ready to take them up a notch and make them courageous. It's to be clear on our priorities, and when we're clear on our priorities, we are honest with ourselves. We list all of the things that are on our plate, and then we sort them. Where am I putting unnecessary pressure on myself? Where are my standards and my perfectionism

leading this? Why is this on my list? It's Sandra's job. It's Karen's job. Why is the third review of that document on my list the volunteering at the children's school and all those extra things, baking the cake instead of buying it? If you write down all the things that are on your mind that you need to do and that you feel you should do, or you could do, or you want to do, and then you sort them. So the goal here is to really be able to find what our real priorities are and categorize the rest. And I always recommend the Eisenhower Matrix for that. If you oh,

what's a Eisenhower Matrix?

He was president in the U.S. I believe, and he had a real motto in life where he said, "Urgent things are really important, and important things are really urgent. So he developed a four quadrant matrix where we have urgent and not urgent, important and not important, and when things are both urgent, which means there's things at stake, that there is a risk if I don't do it now. There's deadlines. There's money on the table. There's someone at risk. The business is at risk. That's urgent and important means I have to do it. It's often that it's important that I take this on.

Then that becomes a priority.

I love sorting it by that matrix. Some folks might also know it as the Stephen Covey matrix. He had something along the same lines, and sorting that into like, what are those things that feel urgent but they're not necessarily important? What are those things that are important but they're not urgent? Right? They don't have to happen today, but I do have to build that relationship. I do have to do that strategic thinking around this project pretty darn soon, right? Or it's going to become both urgent and important. I love the sort into those boxes. Great, really great, Sophie, and

that idea of getting it all out on a piece of paper or a document, so you can really see the quantity there.

Absolutely, and for those who are listening, I know your audience are high achievers, so they're probably listening, thinking, but everything is urgent and important. It's hard to sort things at the start. It helps sometimes to have someone who can help us. Maybe it's our direct supervisor. Maybe it's a colleague. Someone who has our best interests at heart who can help us say, "No, actually, you don't have to do that, you can give it to Sandra.

Oh, I love another set of eyes on it because I fall into this trap sometimes, right? I'm trying to sort priorities, and I'm like, I'm putting too many in the highest priority bucket.

Yes, and if that may help, when we do our priorities, Amy, it's really helpful to number them and then to stick to the plans. I love to say, stick to the plan, not to the mood.

So actually, do number one, then number two, then number three. Yes,

yes. If it's a problem and people multitask and jump and feel scattered because they're doing too many things at once. That can be a very powerful thing to do.

I'd like that advice. Have it number two.

Number two, saying maybe before we say yes. So when people come to us with a request, or a lot of organizations have the open door policy, and then people pop in to talk about their weekend, or they they pop in for a five minute chat. If you got five minutes, yeah, and minutes

later,

correct. And there's no conclusion. Sometimes you know, in the words of my clients, it's a ramble, it's a vent. People are venting. People are coming in to gossip, and we can create this and then feel fine and still have time to do our things. There's nothing wrong, though. If that is happening and it creates resentment, and then we don't have time to do the work that matters, and it's leading us to you know higher stress, and we're staying late because of these. Then it's a waste of time. Even though we feel like we're there for our people, if they're conversations

that are not helping anyone, it's really important to start putting boundaries there. I like to talk about the half open door policy, where we establish rules with our people, so we can have yes, the door is open for these kind of things 100% anytime you can come in, and for a chat, then we have permission to say not now I'm in the middle of something. Nice, I like it, Sophie. I've also worked with many leaders whose default is to say yes to everything. A colleague comes in, their manager comes to them. They feel like they have to say yes. Think this default of maybe I'd love to

help. Let me understand more, right, and make sure that you're clear on scope and timing, and does it realistically fit before you're automatically a yes.

Absolutely. So it's not necessarily the word maybe, although it works. Let me check my schedule or tell me more. So it's essentially giving ourselves permission to think about it or to gather more information instead of saying yes, of course, yes, I can be the acting VP for a whole month. Go, what does that mean for you? What does that mean for others? So that's that's a big one with the executives I work with as well, is someone goes on leave who is higher than them, and they're acting as them, but they're also acting as someone who's like a manager under them. It becomes

very confusing, and and it's a huge workload as well.

Yeah, I love these go-to phrases. Let me check my schedule. Tell me more. Let me see how that fits in the priorities. There might be some trade offs here. Help you manage expectations with others.

That's right. And if the person who's telling you is maybe the CEO, you can also empower them and throwing back at them and saying, "How do you see that happening for me, like what's your vision for me doing all of this as I'm doing that as well? Great. Number three, number three, the tech boundaries. So the way I write it is to implement some tech boundaries to reduce the. Overwhelm, and the courageous part here is we want to be there for people, right? If there's an emergency, we want to know what that means. However, for a lot of people, is when they get an email,

it's the little box in the corner of their computer. Oh yeah, it's the watch that buzzes, and it's the phone as well.

The little pop-up comes up, all that.

So they're in a meeting, and you see them. And again, if someone's able to manage all of this, it creates no friction in the relationships. They can keep up with the workload. It's not stressing them. I don't know if you say that in America, but in Australia, they say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Yes, we say that. Yeah. Okay. Though, if it creates tension and it means that you're in meetings and you get out of meetings, you don't remember things. So either distractions or overwhelm, then it's time to be honest with yourself and to realize what's really at risk here, if

I turn off the watch and the phone, for example, when I'm at my computer,

it can be so important as a leader to be present with others, to give them attention, right? That matters in engagement and folks feeling like they're valued. It's also really hard on our brains to be pinged from this to that. I'm focusing on the discussion now. I'm checking this notification. Do I need to do something about that? Yes, I do. No, I don't. Okay, do that later. Back to the conversation. Our brain task switching like that takes energy, and it tires us out throughout our day. So I love this tech boundaries to reduce the overwhelm.

And I'll add two layers to this: when people have a sick day or they're on leave, switch everything off, and that can be very uncomfortable, though. Again, if you've warned your team, look, I will not, and that's the boundary place that I love to talk about. You don't have to tell people, look, don't email me because I'm on leave, but you can say, if you email me, I won't see it because I'm going to turn my notifications off. Yeah, right. It's to turn it around, and the second layer of this is, if you have a lot of priorities when you're working on a project, make sure you

turn everything off so you can really have quality focusing time.

You need to focus for 90 minutes on something, right? Make sure you have that. I was chuckling to myself, Sophie, as you're saying, like I'm not saying don't send me an email. I'm just saying I'm not going to see it while I'm on vacation or I'm out. And the next sentence in my mind was, "It'll be stored very safely there in my inbox for my return. Don't don't worry. I'm going to both parties. It'll be there,

and you make people more empowered when you do that because instead of just sending you the quick email, they'll think about the answer. And often they have the answer, but if you're training them, it's a little bit like the open door policy. If you've essentially trained them because you want to be nice, you want to be liked; they keep coming to you. So there's a professional way to start setting boundaries like that with yourself first, and then you tell people this is how I function now because I need to keep my head screwed on and I need to stay well so that I can lead

well.

Absolutely.

Number four, four. Speaking up and destigmatizing the overwhelm.

A

lot of the leaders will be ashamed, especially our high achievers. They will tell themselves like, "I should get on top of that, and then they'll stay late. And I always tell them, you are not alone. And sometimes I coach many people in the same organization. Everyone's in the same boat, but no one talks about it. Destigmatizing. I've got too much on. Me too. Okay,

yeah. We need to reassess the priorities, and we need to have conversations about this.

So it's it's really about letting go of the shame because the shame says there's something wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with you if you're too busy. And there's something I love to remind people is that your capability and your capacity are two different things. Your capability stays the same. You're capable of doing all those things, but sometimes if you have a sick child or if there is just genuinely too much, you're a human. Things don't need to go wrong, but you're a human. Your capacity has its limit. Capability, we can do anything

for sure. Oh, I like that distinction separating those. In our minds, and I'm thinking as you're talking, Sophie, that it's not just about the number of things that are on our plate, but it's the kinds of things that are on our plate. Are these things new to us? So we're in the process of learning and growing and building new skills. That takes more energy. That takes more thought. Are the things on our list complex and dynamic and rapidly changing? That takes more processing power than something that might feel more rote or comfortable. Or I do this all the time. So it's also

what is it? And it's it's okay to say this is taking up a lot of energy and brain power right now,

and things that are draining as well that we don't like doing.

Oh yeah,

that's another one as well. There are things we just need to do, and it's not a big job, but it's just something that we're not necessarily good at, or it's just draining for us. Just not fun,

and the number of draining things on the list. So, all great food for thought. Habit five.

Five is to build rest and recovery into our days despite the guilt, and I insist on the word despite the guilt, not without the guilt.

That's awesome. that what real wording you have there, Sophie. The

guilt might still be there because we're learning to look after ourselves. We're learning. We're exploring things, and I love to tell my clients and everyone when you try something new, when you say my shift, I'm supposed to be out at 330. I'm never out at 330. I finish at five every day because I feel too bad for staying back. Their roster finishes at 330. They're at work at seven or eight in the morning. Okay, I'm gonna start this week. I'm gonna go home at 330. It feels so uncomfortable. I feel so guilty, but I'm going to treat it as an experiment.

Experiment is a powerful word.

Commit to it

for a week. See how it goes.

Yeah, we'll just see. And and I'm going to tell people I'm doing this thing this week. I will be gone at 330. I'm already feeling bad about this. Please don't joke, or you can joke, but I might ignore you. You know, you can just make it a bit fun. Make people aware that this is a thing you're trying, and then look at your workload. Has it really impacted your workload? Most people find that it doesn't, because they're so much more energized when they come back, and they've taken that hour to go to the gym, to hang out with their kids, to go for a walk, to even do the

shopping, whatever. But just take time for themselves.

I was coaching a senior director once, Sophie. You reminded me of this conversation, and she had a big job, director of supply chain, and she wanted better work-life balance. She was staying till 8p.m. I'm like, "What do you want? She's like, "I want to leave at 6p.m. She's like, "How do I do this? So we were strategizing different ways how to work more efficiently, more effectively, smarter. She's like, "How do I make this happen? I'm like, "You just have to start leaving. You just have to start leaving at 6p.m. It'll figure it itself out if you're committed to it.

People won't have you for the answers; they'll figure out more. Like there's a multitude of ways it'll happen. You just have to start leaving at six. She's like, "I think you're right. So she did, and it worked itself out, right? The supply chain of this organization did not crumble.

No, it's such a powerful example, and it really doesn't. And sometimes it's even personal things like I got to be home to cook dinner for my son because he's working at 530 p.m. and then I got to drive him to his workplace, but he's 16 and he has a bicycle. He can feed himself and he can take himself to work, right? This is just a random example, but the way that we just want to help so much, but it's to our detriment as well. And when that specific person started to empower her son, essentially in doing that. He was very upset. It was very uncomfortable. She felt very

guilty, and she was a very bad mom. I'm saying that with it, obviously very sarcastic. Right. He loved it. You know what? He loved it. He got fitter. He loved cooking and stuff because then he got a girlfriend, and he was able to cook for her, it was growth for everyone. It was gross for everyone, and the ripple effect-you never know what the ripple effect is going to be. But when your intention is to look after yourself, and you've communicated the change to the right people first, and you tell them, "I'm sorry, and "I feel bad." Doing that, don't worry. I'm not doing that. You know, you can

be vulnerable like that in saying that's not. I wish I could just keep doing this, but I think let's try it. I just want to try it. It works out

well, and that gets unearthed with habit number one. Write down all the priorities, and then be like, okay, does this need to be a priority? Is there a different way that we could be doing this?

Yeah, and that's part of the delegating box, where some of the things really have to be done. But does it have to be you? There are things we can say. Well, that's not mine.

Make sure I've got this right. And I know, Sophie, we are going to provide a link to these five courageous habits in the show notes, so that folks can grab and review have in front of them. Number one, be clear on your priorities. Two, say maybe before saying yes. Three, tech boundaries to reduce overwhelm. Four, speaking up and destigmatizing overwhelm. Five build rest and recovery despite the guilt.

Yes, that's it.

Those are powerful. Those are powerful. So of course, all leaders we can engage in these habits ourselves. We can support our teams to engage in these habits. Sophie, we're coming up on our time. I want to ask one more question. So let's say that a leader listening recognizes that there is a team member, and I think they're burnout, or I think they're on the cusp of burning out. What is the first thing that you would recommend that leader do?

The first thing is probably what your leaders already do is the reducing the demands and increasing the resources. So burnout is caused by an imbalance between those two things. There's too much to do, and I don't have enough time, enough energy, enough support to do it, so having the conversation with that employee and asking them how you're feeling about how much you've got to do and the support you have, opening a conversation, then seeing what you can take off their plate physically, like tasks and project. Maybe you can pause for a little bit, give them a breather.

Maybe you want to give them a few days off, and also increasing the resources. Do you need training? Now I know most people who listen to your podcast regularly are probably just nodding and going, "Yeah, that's what I do. The second layer of this is really to help the employee maybe implement some of those habits, those courageous habits and doing it with them. So put down to paper everything you think you have to do, and then you might look at it and go, "No, actually, that's not your job. You don't need to do that. Oh no, I'm not expecting that of you. And then you will start realizing

that their standards are unrealistic, that they're perfectionists in areas that don't require perfectionism or such standards, and also you can tell them if there was no limits, if there was no limits to the resources and the support I could give you, even things that you think I will say no. What would you ask?

I love that. That's a great question.

So you get them to say probably what they tell their partner or their friends. You know, you sort of open the safe door to say, "What do you want? Essentially, how can I support you? Doesn't mean you have to say yes to everything.

I love it thinking about how do you reduce demand and increase resources, automate, delegate, support, change the timing. There's more options there than we sometimes realize. And then I love asking them to engage in the five habits. I think that number one is such a powerful place to start. What is it all, right? Is it? Oh gosh, no wonder I'm feeling overwhelmed. There's so much stuff on here, or like I'm putting more pressure on myself than needs to be here.

Absolutely, yeah. And it's beyond having a to-do list because most people have a to-do list. But write it down and categorize it. What do I actually have to do? What can I let go of?

And I'm hearing personal and professional. Like when you're looking at it holistically as an individual. Then you're like, I'm putting this pressure on myself to drive my 16 year old right when they could find an alternate way to get there.

Absolutely, or mow the lawns when the little neighbor would love to mow the lawns for 50 bucks every two or three weeks.

Yeah, that's my son's job, Sophie. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us. And like I said, we will get a link in the show notes to your top five courageous habits. Thank you so much. I've learned a lot.

Thank you, Amy. That was great.

Thank you for listening to the Courage of a Leader podcast. If you'd like to further explore this episode's topic, please reach out to me through the Courage of a Leader website at www.courageofalleader.com. I'd love to hear from you. Please take the time to leave a review on iTunes. That helps us expand our reach and get more people fully stepping into their leadership potential. Until next time, be bold and be brave because you've got the courage of a leader.