Burnout, are you there yet?

Intro

Welcome to Life Science lawcast where we aim to tackle challenges faced by overstretched legal and compliance teams in bite-sized chunks, covering regulatory updates as well as some hints and tips on how to engage with the internal stakeholders positively, maintaining a proactive reputation and developing your career whilst keeping your sanity.  

In each lawcast our community of legal and compliance experts will cover topics they have tackled whilst working within the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors. 

Episode 1 – Stress & Burnout 

Wendy

Welcome to this week’s life Science lawcast. I’m Wendy Lloyd Goodwin the founder of life Science law. Today we’re diving into the crucial topic of burnout and stress in the workplace. We are thrilled to have Lisa Levine, an executive transformation coach, here to offer some valuable insights on overcoming burnout and stress. But before we dive in I’d like to ask Lisa to provide a short introduction in terms of your background and experience, Lisa.

Lisa

Hi Wendy, thank you for inviting me to speak. 

So my background has been in technology for the last 20 years, not in law. But 15 of those were client-facing and the last 10 have been in leadership roles which have been really exciting because they’ve been in high growth areas, where those businesses are really trying to scale. We’re trying to recruit the right amount of people and there certainly was quite a lot of stress in terms of trying to run and build as we go, so I’ve chosen those organisations to work for which really had a passion for building a positive culture, because my leadership style and belief is to truly have high performance people and teams that go hand in hand with the freedom to recruit growth mindset individuals, with a psychological safety culture where people can share ideas.

Wendy

Fantastic. But from there you then moved from that industry to coaching. So why the transition from what you were doing in terms of sales to coaching? How did that happen? 

Lisa

So last year I invested in a coach myself. I’ve already had a passion for people, I really enjoyed managing teams, seeing them grow and that’s been a real passion of mine over the years, but I invested for the first time last year in my own coach who’s methodology was rooted in a positive intelligence model and backed by neuroscience. So that really gave me the ability to see how that changed and shaped my ability to deal with stress, burn out and also get me into an optimal state. 

Wendy

Great, so obviously that that worked and it was so great that you’ve become a coach yourself. You’ve had a complete change of career. 

Lisa

Yeah exactly. Well it’s given me the confidence to be honest Wendy. 

Two things. It’s giving me the confidence to do it, and it’s giving me the tools to help others, which I feel is really purposeful.

Wendy

And today we wanted to touch on the topic of burnout and stress. Now this is a highly relevant topic in all industries you know, not just the tech industry that you were discussing just now, but  in the legal profession also and in many organisations. 

Burnout and stress is a key – pandemic – if I can say it, that needs to be dealt with and organisations deal with it in different ways. Some good, some bad, some indifferent. 

I know I’ve worked in organisations where there has been a culture that has truly valued trying to make the workplace a better place to be. But there have been all other organisations that just haven’t dealt with it. 

But before we go into the sort of whys and wheres of burnout and how we deal with it, I wonder if we could perhaps just take a step back to kind of talk about what we mean by burnout and stress. 

It’s a phrase that we hear a lot about but truly what does that mean?

Lisa

Yeah, sure. I think it’s important we do hear it a lot. So burn out, the definition is really – a prolonged period of stress. Stress, we all know, is useful to keep us safe, and it does give us a spurt energy to manage those deadlines, but when that’s perpetual, and that is everyday your cortisol levels rise and that can cause anxiety, it can cause sleeplessness, and then that lowers your immune system, lots of things. So encapsulated, it means a long period of stress is burnout. 

Wendy

Right, and I guess in its chronic stage that can mean not only being unable to go to work, which can then have a knock on effect with the organisation, but also as the individual as well in terms of not being able to work and function properly. So you know it’s all encompassing and all consuming. 

Lisa

Exactly that, I mean I’m not going to go into all of the intricacies, because it’s a big subject and you could do a whole other podcast on just that topic –  which we may want to do – gives us feedback.

But that cortisol level and that prolonged period affects your ability to digest your food, it affects your immune function, and if you don’t sleep then it just perpetuates. And even the simplest of tasks, making decisions, people that have extreme burnout can’t even decide what to put on in the morning, so that’s when it’s really bad. 

Wendy

In terms of how do we manage it? What are the things that we can be doing? 

I mean one of them I guess is is coaching and having that that independent third party to talk to about some areas that are causing you stress which I guess, without having those discussions with a third party, you might not even realise that you are suffering stress in relation to that particular topic, so coaching I understand is one way in which that can be helped. 

I’d love to hear from you in terms of, how coaching can support that, but also there are some things within the workplaces as well I guess and how you as an individual manageable day can also be a benefit. 

Lisa, what are your sort of thoughts there in terms of you know, how do we manage these stress levels?

Lisa

I think going back to what I said previously, we all go through periods where we don’t sleep and we don’t feel like we’re on top form. It’s just making sure that if it goes on for weeks, that you have a safe structure where you can go and initially talk to your manager potentially about it. If you’re in the workplace, maybe talk to your manager about what’s going on with you and if you’ve got a community of people within your team, perhaps sharing the fact that you’re not feeling the way that you should. And then just having some strategies built. Things you can control. I’m a big believer in controlling the controllable. 

So in the morning when you get up, you can look at your diary and try not to have your calls back to back. You know how many times you look and you think, you’re going from one call to the next. You’ve not got the ability to have glass water, you’ve not got ability to to use the facilities, haven’t got time to stretch. You know, try and plan your day so you have at least 15 minutes, if possible, between those calls. Have a big glass of water on your desk. That’s such a simple thing to be able to do. 

Making sure that if you have got some lunchtime – I always put in my diary a lunchtime. Even if it’s for 45 minutes a day, so it’s blocked out. People know within my team. If they need to get hold of me, I can move that, but that’s typically when I have lunch. It makes you more likely to have a break and just you know shopping ahead of time. If you’re at home trying to get some healthy things in the fridge so that you’re not just eating carbohydrates and sugar, which again, affect your insulin levels and can spike your cortisol. 

All of these things, if you plan ahead, you can do. 

Wendy

Yes, and must I say where I advocate these things, I’m not always that the best at that. So you know, it is interesting what you said about the glass of water on your desk. Yes I have a glass of water on the desk but sometimes it doesn’t get drunk, and you know, yes I will diarise lunch. I’ve got that blocked out in my calendar every day but then ignore it. 

So I think there is, I mean I guess, the first step is to  do those things, blocking those things out in the diary, having the glass of water from your desk. But it is actually about creating habits so that you do actually drink the water, you do take the break, and I guess it’s it’s small steps. 

Rome isn’t built in in a day and you might fail at it. You know, you might not get it right every day, but I guess just the start is to be mindful that these are the things that you know will help and start to do them and celebrate the changes that you make for the better.

Lisa

Yeah exactly that, and I think the good thing, and you know you’ve got passion about making sure that the people that you’re working for it with at LS law and working for you are healthy which is why we’re talking today in your investing time which is brilliant, and I know that you have your team meetings and you do have check-ins, so one of the things as a leader potentially, you could do is add to those agenda writings. 

You know, how are we doing with having our lunch breaks? How are we doing water at the desk? How are we doing with getting some nutritious food in? Can we potentially make sure and check in with each other that we’re doing these things. We all need reminding. We all need reminding about the things that are quite obvious but it can be done. 

Wendy

Exactly right. And thank you for acknowledging this in terms of the culture at Life Science Law. It’s hugely important to me and it was one of the reasons that I set up LS law. I’ve worked in big corporate organisations for over 20 odd years, and in some of those organisations the culture was better than others. 

I saw firsthand some of the gaps that I experienced and I decided that I wanted to make an organisation that walks the talk in terms of, it doesn’t just say that its workforce is only quite the sum of its workers. It’s only as good as the team and actually you need to look after the team. As you say, you need to look after each other. You get the best out of people if you treat them positively and with respect and understanding and have empathy for what’s going on in their lives and creating that space. 

So yes Lisa, absolutely, it’s one of the reasons why I was very passionate about inviting you here today to talk about, what I also believe, are the the benefits of having a coach and having that independent third party to be able to speak to, and perhaps put some some kind of processes and steps in place to help with the new, perhaps healthier timetable for instance.  

Lisa

Exactly that. It’s still very misunderstood what a coach is, but basically it’s about holding a safe space for an individual, letting them process their thoughts and having insights about things that they might not even realise. As you are talking you process things and you uncover things that you might not even realise are a source of stress and then your coach will hold you accountable to some of the things that you said that you’re going to do to make some changes. So when you are forgetting that you’re putting in your diary that you’re going to have lunch and then you just ignore it, the coach would be able to remind you about some of those disciplines that might make a difference.

Wendy

Absolutely. And it’s interesting. It sounds to me, and I’ve experienced it first hand as well, but it’s the culture of the company that will make a difference in terms of how psychologically safe individuals feel with regard to conveying perhaps areas that they’re feeling stressed about. I think in the workplace, it has gotten better. I mean I know when I first qualified as a lawyer, you absolutely didn’t bring any emotion or any kind of life to work. That’s why home problems and home stuff stayed at home and work stuff was for work, and you know it was like hammered into you that you didn’t ever bring home stuff to work but I think the working place culture is changing and changing for the better. 

Lisa

Yes it is, and that’s one of the really positive things that have changed in the last five to ten years and we do obvious things. We spend more time at work than what we do with our friends and family, so it’s important that we are happy there and then that translates into more productive and creative individuals so the companies are more successful which is useful. 

Wendy

But of course there are still some leaders and other organisations out there that don’t necessarily see the benefit of taking some time out to think about the, what we call the more softer, kind of light side of the workplace, and that’s a really difficult situation to find yourself in. If you’re in an organisation like that, where you don’t feel that you have psychological safety or a leader that you can talk to, what do you do in that situation?

Lisa

I think I’ve witnessed this over the last five years. I think it’s been the toughest time in my industry – in sales – to try and get people to buy things. We had the pandemic, financial crisis, we’ve had the wars going on. 

So I think there are two emotions really, that people are driven by either love. You know when you’re in creative, and your calm, and your grounded, or you’re in fear and when you know times are tough and the targets aren’t being met and deadlines aren’t being met, that’s when the leadership that I’ve witnessed have gone into fear and that drives that that shift even though they may not even realise. 

I’ve had far more empathy as part of my coaching practice last year. To really have empathy for the leadership and for those people who were expressing a very short and clipped and empathetic way of doing things is because they were in left brain fear oriented behaviours. 

I think the best thing that I’ve learned which is been a bit of a shift I to have to say for me, because I would probably fight fire with fire and protect my team and protect quite aggressively, whereas now I’ve learned empathy for that person that’s trying to ask for unreasonable things, and really try and listen to really what’s behind that because often it is the panic and the craziness underneath that they’re fearful of what’s going to happen to them and that sort of does tend to diffuse things. And that’s okay for me to say because I was in a leadership position, but for people that are potentially lower in the organisation, or haven’t got that experience, that could be quite a scary place where you are feeling like you’re on your own. 

I think it’s really important to have mentors and to have people within the organisation that you can talk to and most organisations now do have a feedback loop where you can go and share the challenges of some of the behaviours that are causing stress and you don’t feel safe. 

Wendy

Lisa, thank you for such a fascinating topic on something that affects all of us. It has been a pleasure talking to you today and I would be delighted to invite you back for further discussions on these sorts of topics. It’s hugely important. I think for us to be addressing some of the topics that are harder to talk about in the workplace. So a big thank you to you Lisa but to our listeners also. I’d just like to say, if you do have any further questions for Lisa, or would be interested in learning a little bit more about how coaching might be able to help you, please do get in contact with us. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you Lisa. 

Lisa

Thank you