From Overwork to Balance: Navigating Burnout in Leadership, feat. Dr. Malissa Clark

Speaker 2 (00:02.878)
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Hello friends and welcome back to Confessions of a Terrible Leader. I am your host and former terrible leader herself, Lacey Nelson. Melissa, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (00:37.24)
Thank you so much for having me.

Yes, Dr. Melissa Clark here today. She is a professor and the head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Georgia. Her area of expertise is industrial organizational psychology. And she's also an author who wrote Never Not Working. Boy, are we going to have a great talk today. I have so many questions for you and what a time to be alive, Melissa. Welcome to the show.

Excited to talk about all these topics. Yes.

If you want to just give us the lay person a brief definition of what the heck is industrial organizational psychology, some people may be hearing it for the first time or have seen the iOS on somebody's name, but they don't really know what it means. It's not an operating system. So what is that? Can you tell us?

Yes. Great question. I tell my grandparents, it's just work psychology. I am not a clinical psychologist. I don't have any background in that actually. So it has nothing to do with psychoanalyzing people. Really, it's kind of a combination of HR with a focus on organizational development and how to foster motivation and leadership. So we deal with anything from the technical side with

Speaker 2 (01:52.098)
like selecting people for the job, training, performance evaluation, all the way to more the people side dealing with what does it mean to be a good leader? How do we motivate our employees? How do we facilitate good teamwork? I personally study topics like overwork and burnout and work-family dynamics. How do we juggle work and home? It really is anything applying psychology principles and theories to the workplace to try to make work.

as Adam Grant says, how to make work not suck. Yes. Is what we study. I always love that phrase.

Yes, I am a Adam Grant fan and I love the how to make work not suck. That is in a nutshell what our organization does when we go in and work with people in their teams. I have so many questions. I'm trying to arrange my brain where to even start. I want to know, it feels like there is a perception that burnout and overwork and people just feeling completely underwater is worse now than it maybe has ever been.

Me too.

Speaker 1 (02:54.21)
That's my general sense. What's the data telling us? What are you seeing in your work?

I definitely feel like the data supports this idea that it is getting worse. I think it's been bad for a really long time. Data from the World Health Organization and other global data sets do show that stress is at an all-time high. Burnout is a really, really big problem. You know, I do think that

COVID, just the stress of everything going on with the pandemic globally, and then a lot of other issues on top of that, dealing with racial inequities and political situations, that we have all this stress on us already. And then you pile on all of that additional stress and all of the changes and transitions with COVID going remote and going back. We only can handle so much.

And so what ordinarily was perhaps manageable in, quote unquote, normal times, pre-COVID, let's just say, everything is so, you're kind of stretched to the max that it doesn't take much for it to be really, really negatively impactful on your health and wellbeing. It's like we're all hanging on by thread sometimes and it's like, we just can't take it anymore. Yeah, so I do feel like the data supports, it feels like it's worse. I hear that it's worse, you know? So yeah.

So experientially, antidotally, and in the data. So that sounds like there's a lot there.

Speaker 2 (04:20.589)
Yes

A lot of our listeners are listening because they want to be better leaders. want to care about, they do care about their people. And I often get the question, and I think it's a really fair question, I have it as well. When we have that grounding of like, yes, people matter, people are important, we care about them. But how much can we do when there's also, as you cited, so many influences that have nothing to do with our workplace, but everything to do with how people feel? Because we don't isolate, right? We like to say, oh, leave your baggage at the door.

I hope that phrase dies because it's ridiculous, right? And not practical and it's an expectation that's not human. I'm like, that's not how humans human. So I'm an employer coming to you going, my team, we have a decent work environment. I always have room to improve. How do I even begin though to support or if they're feeling like completely overwhelmed and it's stuff I can't control, I can't take off their plate. What do I do from my angle to help?

just unreasonable. Yeah.

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them in these unprecedented times.

Right. Yeah, so that's really tricky. I think if the leaders coming to me with this genuine desire to help their employees, I think we're already at a really good starting point because they're recognizing that people are really taxed.

I do think it's important to put on my IO hat to assess on a broader basis what are the concerns of the employees. So conducting pulse surveys or some sort of survey to gather the data about what is it? Maybe there are things about the environment that you don't even realize as a leader that are overworking your employees. You know, I talk a lot about communication norms and how this always on expectation really tethers us to our work so much that even if the leader doesn't really think the

problem is urgent, they might still mistakenly send a Slack message or an email after hours. Yeah. You know, not expect their employees to respond right away, but the employees feel pressured to respond right away. Right. They might not even realize that they're kind of putting this on their employees. But I think it's a great starting point if the leader already is acknowledging that people are human. And as you said, we can't just leave everything at home. It does affect us at work. Right.

there are some things that are out of the leaders control, right? But I think acknowledging and just empathizing with your employees, listening to them, even if it's not a work-related problem, just being supportive and being empathic, maybe there are different ways you can adjust their timing of their work or what they're working on that can help doing what you can to change the organizational aspects and aspects of the job and the environment. That can really help, but also just treating your employees like

Speaker 2 (07:02.808)
whole humans that have lots of different stressors coming from a lot of different areas. And we never really know what someone's going through.

Very true, very true. We do not. Indeed. I want to really understand my own team, full disclosure, entrepreneurial minded. They put up with a lot of my firing off random things and I have learned how to differentiate, hey, this actually needs attention or we actually have a separate thread where I just put ideas I'm working on, but you don't have to do anything with them or even listen to them. That has been helpful, but I am absolutely guilty of.

I'm thinking about this and it's eight o'clock at night. They have permission that they can silence their notifications. Is that enough to just give them that permission or do I need to get better at self control and putting it somewhere else and sending it?

I so appreciate that you're even recognizing that. No, I really, really do. You wouldn't believe how many people I have talked to that they're fundamentally against everything I talk about in my book. Yeah. But they'll say, well, I have told them they don't have to respond. Why should I change the way that I work? And I kind of push back and say, is it really that much trouble to schedule, send an email?

Just take that extra step. mean, having those conversations with your employees and allowing them to set boundaries is super important. And if you have an environment where they do feel safe to talk about that they need more boundaries, that's fantastic. That means you have a really good work culture going on. But even in that really good work culture, put yourself in your employees' shoes and your boss is emailing you in the evening or sending a message in the evening.

Speaker 2 (08:42.36)
think about do they still feel pressure even if you told them not to respond? Most of the time the answer to that would be yes, they're still gonna feel that pressure. So it's kind of like taking that burden off of them to make the decision. I'm a humongous fan of schedule send emails. I love and hate that message that people have at the bottom of their emails that says, my work schedule is different than yours. Feel free to respond whenever.

I love it because it's acknowledging that we all have different work schedules, but I also hate it because it still puts the burden on the employees to figure out what they should respond to, what's urgent, what's not. It doesn't really solve the problem.

This is so helpful. I think it's a good reminder that even if we've said you can ignore it, that Pavlovian response is still going to go off in your brain.

Yeah. And if your employees have tendencies to overwork, then it's almost like too tempting for them not to respond, right? So it's like helping them help themselves to disconnect.

Yes, I've got a couple of those where the reminders, this is a marathon, not a sprint.

Speaker 2 (09:47.926)
Right, right. So it might not be a matter of them feeling pressure. It could be a completely different problem, right, that they tend to overwork and it's giving them almost like an excuse to.

my gosh. So what are your tips for us that have some agency over the work environment to create teams where the problem with overwork is it gets rewarded all the time. It's like this self-reinforcing loop. You get praised for it. You get promoted often for it. Sometimes you get more money for it. What do we do to still be more than hitting deadlines being a productive team, but

Not being a team that chews people up and spits them out. We attract high performers. I don't think I have a single team member that's not. My challenge is how do I keep us all from combusting?

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:40.578)
Yeah, it's so hard, you know, because I feel like I have the same personality and, you know, it depends on how high up you are in the organization. If you're really high up and can kind of help to shape the reward system, that's a strong culture signal to your employees of what is valued. That's what's rewarded, like you said, with promotions and with raises.

And sure, I'm not against hard work and I'm not against putting in hours when they need to happen. That's how I got to where I am, right? Sometimes.

You do a poll a really late or really early morning. Yep.

Right. are deadlines and sometimes things truly are urgent. But I think it's a matter of, especially if you have a lot of really high achievers in your organization, it's a matter of sustainability. We know from the research that this is going to hit you at some point with your health, with your well-being. The data shows it. Every which way you look at it, it's a problem. And so thinking of,

How can you sustain this your whole career and how can you continue to be productive and happy and motivated for a long period of time because turnover is expensive?

Speaker 1 (11:48.926)
so expensive. Yes.

you're trying to keep the good people there. And so kind of rewarding working smarter instead of just longer. If someone really does put in a big push for a project, then make sure that they're taking a vacation after that or like taking their PTO time. Right. I interviewed a lot of people for my book, including Andrew Barnes, who started the four day week movement and Alex to John Pang, who wrote a couple of books on this exact topic of working smarter and

think it was Alex who said to me, you we really need to change the narrative of how we reward our employees and what we say to them. praising this idea of working smarter. Sally finished this amazing report and she did it so efficiently that she was able to take two PTO days that week and still like nailed it out of the park. Way to be productive, but also take care of yourself. Kudos to you.

I love that. The messaging is so critical. I can hear it, not just to them, but like for the rest of the people.

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:51.118)
Right. On the flip side, was on a call with a company and the CEO praised another employee for being available whenever he needed him. And the employee worked on the other side of the world, which meant he was available in the middle of the night whenever. And that was on an all hands call to everybody. And again, that little comment makes a big difference. People are like, this is what the CEO really cares about.

Yes. Everything we say when we are in that position, the higher up we go, the more it becomes true. We speak with a megaphone and we are under a microscope. People are always looking for clues of what do they want? And it's subconscious. We don't even realize how powerful our influence is typically. So we have to be really careful.

Yeah, and to something you just said there, people are looking for clues. That's something else that I really like to hammer home is this idea of you need to walk the walk as well as a leader instead of just saying, I want you guys to have more balance. The leader is the role model. Right. You can tell people that you want them to have balance all you want. But if the leader is not role modeling that, then the employees are going to pay attention to what you're doing, not what you're saying.

you're so right. Yes. You can say it all day long, but it's going to mean nothing and actually be damaging to morale, I would argue, if you're doing the opposite.

Right, because then they're confused. like, I don't know what to believe, right? Mixed signals. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:22.446)
One of the things that we do on our team is my calendar is shared with all of my direct reports and they can see everything I'm doing and I actually label when I put in there when I'm taking a chunk of time and I'm going to the gym. They know that I'm right. Or if I'm leaving early because I need to go do a kid thing or help a parent, I label it. It's in there. So it's not this mysterious like what's she doing? must be an important meeting. It is. It's just not that kind of important meeting you think.

I love that.

Speaker 2 (14:51.63)
how cool. I am so happy to hear that you do that. That is literally what I advise people to do. okay. One, schedule yourself into your to-do list for the day. But two, as a leader, making it known that you are scheduling in personal health and well-being, whether it's a 30-minute walk or exercise class or making it known that you're picking up your kids from school. Yeah. That's really important for people to hear that. Your role modeling those behaviors that are

Again, helping people to sustain their careers in the long haul.

Yes. I think it's important to acknowledge as a leader that feels scary because it comes with vulnerability, right?

Especially as a woman, you bring up things like kids. no, she has a, no, also going to balance work. Yes. Yeah.

and knowing that we are under a microscope, right? And so that willingness to be misunderstood, which is a whole other conversation that comes with part of leadership, especially with my personality type and a self-awareness of, I am always on the lookout for how is this going to be interpreted and how could it be misconstrued? And potentially, you know, it sounds ridiculous, but used against me in some way. I'm being really open here, listeners. Welcome to my brain.

Speaker 1 (16:06.818)
But knowing my logic, part of the leadership agreement is I have to have a certain level of willingness to being misunderstood to lead the way that I have really strong convictions around how it needs to.

Yeah, I love that so much.

before we invite you into the confessional, because we're close, but I have one more question for you. What is your advice for someone who is supervising a person who often falls into the overwork murder role where you're trying really hard to get them to not work the hours you're having the conversations, but

It is the classic, woe is me. I'm the only one who's this dedicated, that's working this hard. I'm here putting in all of these hours and no one else does, but no one's asking them to do that. They're holding themselves to some expectation that it's of their own creation. Where do you even start in helping to move that behavior in a different

Yeah, I guess one place I would start is, this is really tricky by the way, if the person should be delegating tasks but is not, then that's the first thing I would probably tackle is having almost like very candid conversations about what are you delegating to so and so and so and so.

Speaker 2 (17:24.662)
Yeah, specifically get concrete things that are being delegated. And if they are struggling to answer that question, then that's problem number one. Yeah, because I think that is a common tendency of people that struggle with overwork is this belief that they are the only ones that can do something. And so it's fruitless to delegate because it's not going to get done right.

Another thing I would say is if this person has leadership aspirations, you know, moving up, then they really need to hone these skills of empowering their subordinates to showcase their skills. Right. Find out.

okay, so they're supervising a small team, who on that team has what specific skills and are you empowering them to develop those skills because that's one of your jobs as a leader is to develop the people that are working with you and for you. It's almost like they're not even giving people a chance to show what they can do. I guess that's a place I would start, but that will involve lots and lots of conversations for sure.

Yes, and skill building and an acknowledgement of your own gaps where your impact and intention haven't been aligned with this person that's doing that as a pattern.

And it can be tempting too, to continue to enable that because you do know that they're going to get it done. So of course, there's a tendency to constantly go back to that person. And I've been guilty of that myself with graduate students that are just overly ambitious, but they crank stuff out and it's like, well, you know, I do need to publish. And so it's tempting to just funnel all this work directly to them. But, know, again, it's to their own detriment.

Speaker 2 (19:02.262)
And also just having those conversations about what are they doing for self-care? And probably not doing anything and make them accountable, you know, talk about what they can do and have conversations to follow up to make sure they are doing it. Any little change can make a big difference, even if it's just, you taking a 30 minute walk during, I'm a big proponent of short bursts of exercise during the work day. There's research that shows if you take a walk in the afternoon over your lunch break, you come back more engaged in the afternoon and more recovered in the evening from work.

I didn't know that part.

Yeah, know. actually, counter intuitively, it helps with recovery. So I'm a huge proponent of something like that. And I feel like it's so easy to integrate that. Get up and do it. Just get up and walk. Bring some tennis shoes to work if you don't work from home. You know, just simple changes. Start slowly. Yeah, where you can. Yeah.

Where you can.

Thank you. Those are some definite great starting places and recognizing other people are watching them too. And so not only is it damaging to them, it can infect the whole team. You get polarization and you know, I'm preaching to the choir right now. yes. Well, Melissa, I'm imagining even with all of your education and life experience, you still have made some mistakes along the way.

Speaker 2 (20:03.682)
yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:19.374)
yeah, definitely.

So this is the part of the interview where we invite you into the confessional to share your story of when was a time you made a misstep that still probably makes you cringe to this day in your own leadership journey and how has that shaped the way you

today. I thought about this a lot. It was hard to come up with just one single answer. I can't think of a single super catastrophic mistake, but I can think of a lot of little mistakes related to kind of the same themes. And I think part of this stems from my own workaholic tendencies and my own failure to delegate. It's kind of similar to the conversation we're having, honestly.

As a professor, one of our leadership roles is to manage a research lab. So we have graduate students and we have undergraduate students that work on research and we develop our PhD students to become professors with doctorates. And so they have to learn a lot of skills and we role model what we learn when we're trying to be a leader of a team. But I feel like because I was

so independent and workaholic myself in graduate school, my advisor was super hands off because I didn't ask him really for much assistance because I was like, I can just do everything myself. And so I didn't really know and I'm still learning how to be a good mentor to my students, my graduate students and even my undergraduate students.

Speaker 2 (21:53.046)
trying to really build their skills and self-efficacy and all of the different traits that they need to be successful. And I found myself kind of vacillating between being too micromanaging to too hands-off and trying to figure out the right balance so that they have independence, but also they're not lost if they need more guidance. Right. Really, it's just been something that I'm still not

I don't really think I'm great at it. I still feel like I have a lot of growth that still needs to happen to figure out the sweet spot. And I think what I've realized is the sweet spot is different for every person. Yes. So. I wish there was, right? We don't just run a regression and have like the answer. Right. How to lead perfectly. Right. It always depends. And so through the years of being a professor, really just trying to.

learn how to be a more hands-on mentor when I need to be. I'm perfectly fine being hands-off mentor if someone's super independent, but where I need to continue to build my skills is when it requires more hands-on. And how do I kind of see the gaps that they need to develop more? And how do I have more really honest and open one-on-one meetings where they can be vulnerable about the things that they need help with or have questions about? Because

it can be intimidating to admit, well, I don't actually know how to run this analysis or I've been trying to run it for a week and I keep on getting error messages. And to admit that to your professor can be really intimidating trying to foster that environment. That is probably the thing that has been the biggest struggle as a leader.

Speaker 2 (23:49.87)
Thank you. I'm always a work in progress. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (24:18.488)
They could go to my website, www.melissaclarke.com, spelled very unusual with an A for Melissa.

I know, like your spelling of your name. It's awesome. Or they could connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn all the time. Okay. Those are probably the two best places to link up with me. I'd love to hear feedback on the episode and any other thoughts people have on managing people with overwork tendencies or managing your own workaholic tendencies. Definitely really enjoyed this conversation.

Speaker 2 (25:26.4)
and the number of months. Confession free, trans, you are ready to refer to the of first leadership and join the leadership revolt.

I got her off. She were-

Speaker 2 (25:49.368)
manage