Mark Williams 0:07
You’re listening to Balance, Not Burnout, a podcast helping leaders rethink the speed of their business. And I’m your host Mark Williams. Join me as I explore the power of a more intentional, balanced approach to leadership. Thanks for listening.

Marie-Helene Pelletier 0:25
Hey, everybody, welcome to Balance, Not Burnout Season Two. Today, Episode Six, we’re going to talk a little bit about a lot more about burnout. So sometimes burnout creeps into our lives, but we can work ahead to make sure it doesn’t happen. Today, I’d like to introduce Dr. Marie-Helene Pelletier. She’s a psychologist with a systems mind and has both a PhD and an MBA. She has over 20 years of experience as a practicing psychologist and as a senior leader in the corporate insurance, governance and healthcare sectors. And he has unique talents is bringing together workplace and psychology. And she’s really a specialist with burnout. She even has her own book. So Dr. Marie, welcome. And you can call me an age. Thank you, Mark. It’s an absolute pleasure to be here with you. So I’d love to know what got you interested in burnout and a little bit about your background and how you ended up doing what you’re doing? Yes. By chance, you know, early in my career, me and my now husband moved in northern Quebec as small remote area. And early in my career, I had the chance because I was there to work in many different areas as a early psychologist, and one of them was employee and Family Assistance Programs. And there, and that’s now quite a few years ago, I could see how if people were able to access resources early, they could truly change the course of where otherwise things would have gone. So the impact of being able to be preventative. And so that’s what got me got me there, then having lived in northern, I decided to do my PhD research on at the time what was called telehealth, which was providing services via videoconferencing that was considered pre embryonic at the time. And then that required a lot of management. So I decided to study management.

Marie-Helene Pelletier 2:21
And with these tools, then continued with my career.

Mark Williams 2:23
So I, normally I started the podcast, I’m going to insert it here. Because we talk about burnout, I’d love to know, on a personal level, assume it’s a Saturday or Sunday morning, and you have no responsibilities. I’d love to know what a perfect Saturday morning is for you. And with whom and what you would share it with.

Marie-Helene Pelletier 2:45
Oh, well, it also will depend on what else has happened in the week. But an example of what that could look like. I tend to wake up very early before anyone else is awake. So that’s a time where I usually like to go for my physical exercise outside, ideally, either in the nature or just outside. Sometimes I’ll have time to also do a little yoga, little meditation before and my little sometimes it’s four minutes, but it’s a combination I love, then there will probably be time with family and friends during that they ideally unscheduled, because the rest of my time tends to be very scheduled. Yes, I would agree makes it ideal.

Mark Williams 3:30
So it’s interesting what you do. i It’s you’re mixing both the corporate world and psychology which I find super interesting. From my perspective, we’ve done that a little bit with salespeople. We’ve done training seminars on the psychology of where to sit at a sales meeting or body language, for example, or reading people’s. how people make decisions, right? Always offer things in sets of three because most people like options, right? That kind of psychology, but yours is a little bit different. So why don’t you talk a little bit about how you use your background and your knowledge in the corporate world? Yes,

Marie-Helene Pelletier 4:08
I, I use it to you sometimes people think I’m an organizational psychologist, right, someone that focuses on the psychology of the organization. I’m not. I’m a clinical and counseling psychologist who has also the management background. So I focus my support, even though I absolutely fully understand that this is a system. So we have individuals teams and the organizational culture and they all interact and I work with all really, but my unique angle is how can we help the individuals especially the professionals and leaders here who are high performers and delivering so much to make sure that they retain their resilience and build it and sustain it over time, so that they can continue to do what they’re fabulous at and what they want to contribute to it. Describe

Mark Williams 5:00
for me the definition in your mind of one of these professionals burning out?

Marie-Helene Pelletier 5:07
Yes. Well, if if we start from the actual definition of burnout, maybe that’s just started there because we use burnout. All day every day. Yes. But there is a definition. And it’s supported by the World Health Organization three main criteria. One, we’re exhausted second, not necessarily in order. But the second criteria is we’re cynical. So we’ve lost hope that anything’s going to change. And the third is, it’s impacting our performance. Now, burnout does not appear instantly in builds over time, which means if we look, we’re going to see the signs earlier. So before being fully exhausted, here, we have less energy, we’re a bit more tired, right? Before we’re cynical, we’re not feeling the love as much less engaged. And before we see major performance problems, you can start seeing more unusual for you things falling through the cracks. We all have some at times, of course, we all know where that line is, when we’re starting to, I don’t know, send the wrong proposal to the wrong client. That’s not the usual falling through the cracks, right? So you can catch these signs there.

Mark Williams 6:23
Do you find right now? I find it’s increasing. And I don’t know if that’s through my lens. But is there more work for you like, are you finding more and more people are burning the candle at both ends starting? There’s a cynicism and I would argue that there’s a cynicism kind of engulfing the world right now it feels a little bit more cynical. So I’m curious if you’re seeing a rise in what in our definition of burnout, and then we’re going to talk about how we can prevent it, hopefully. So is there a lot of need for your work?

Marie-Helene Pelletier 6:57
areas? There is and more even more exciting for me there’s more of an interest in catching things early, protecting yourselves early taking the lead on how we can at least mitigate some of these factors. We know from research that it because one of the challenges with burnout is we definitely have more people everywhere saying that they are more burnt out when they say that. However, if you’re just asked, Are you burned out? Mark, quite likely you’re thinking about am I exhausted? And you may say yes. Which actually does not mean you meet all three criteria, right? Sure. So we are running a bit into this kind of thing, like, you know, huge number of people reporting burnout, but sometimes it’s just are you burnt out? Yes or no. Sometimes it’s using a full validated, reliable tool that makes us see that it is actually meeting burnout. Sure. Now, the other thing too, is that, does it matter less if you’re telling yes, you’re exhausted? Yeah. It’s also important, right? Even if you’re so so anyway, it’s semantics at some point, bottom line is, we are talking more about mental health in for a number of reasons. The pandemic is one of them, it’s One positive aspect, we are talking more about it. And in we’re paying more attention within ourselves as well. So whether we talk or not, we are more self aware, we could be even more in my opinion. We talk more about it. And but even when we’re looking at full, you know, very reliable, valid tools, we are seeing an increase in burnout as well. So yes, it is something for us to pay attention.

Mark Williams 8:39
Yeah, I’ll even say for me and my employees. If I look at technology, it has, it has made our lives much easier. In some respects, I would also submit it may have made our lives a little more difficult. And I’ll give you a few examples of that. And also what I expected my employees, customers, and even my employees can reach me in a various number of ways, way more ways. And when I first started to work, there’s email, there’s a text message, there’s through our intranet at work. So I’m being bombarded by messages in various locations, as opposed to just used to be on my voicemail at work or in an email or in a letter. Now I get 100 emails a day, I’m getting 30 voicemails a day, I’m getting text messages throughout the day, I get LinkedIn messages throughout the day. Technology has also made our jobs a little bit easier. But now we’re asking more of our employees, I think because we have sped up the system. And so for many of our employees, we’ve raised the bar if you used to be able to process 30 applications a week. Now I can process 60 Because of technology. So now there is a there’s a little bit more of a workload. There’s more communication. There’s, we’re expecting a little bit more. So I fully understand that. And I’m sure that led to and I want to make sure we talk about your book. So Dr. Pelkey ama He has released a new book, The resilience plan, a strategic approach to optimizing your work performance and mental health. So let’s talk a little bit about your book, the inspiration behind the book and the value of the book.

Marie-Helene Pelletier 10:13
And when you were talking about a moment ago about, we’ve raised the bar, it’s true for all the reasons you just described, it’s also raised for other reasons, we’ve got even more of technology and AI coming into our professional and personal lives, that will also demand a lot of changes adaptability for all of us. And so the key thing is, if we’re raising that bar, we also want to raise the resilience. Because if we only raise the bar and keep resilience, the same, this is not going to

Mark Williams 10:49
recipe for a good direction for disaster for sure. Right.

Marie-Helene Pelletier 10:53
And that’s in part sometimes what happens when people sometimes say, Okay, why is should we need to be strategic about our resilience is, is that not pathetic? Like, should we not just be fine, and we’ve been fabulous, and we’re continuing to be as fabulous, not pathetic, it’s just that this sport here has changed. If we were just going for walks before, no matter what we are wearing in our, you know, in terms of shoes, probably fine. But we afford deciding to go run, you know, a marathon or something like this wrong idea to go in any shoes here, you need to have the equipment and other pieces of equipment as well. So same thing here, we’ve got we’ve raised the bar, there are more demands, some, sometimes it’s the in part where we’re at in our career, sometimes it’s a combination of more demands on the personal and the professional side, for all of us we’re getting we have more like societal changes, like the pandemic, like the AI. And so therefore, the level of demands we’re facing is much higher. And if we’re not taking deliberate action, proactive, ideally, then we’re a bit more at risk. And if we aren’t taking these actions, which is the essence of the book, then we’ve got a chance to definitely mitigate the risks and quite potentially lead how much resilience we have and can sustain over time.

Mark Williams 12:23
So talk a little bit about the inspiration for the book. Yeah,

Marie-Helene Pelletier 12:26
it’s working with my clients, my executive executive coaching work, and my speaking work, professionals and leaders that accomplish so much all day, every day. And they get to that point where they just need something to give them an edge. And, and then they realize all these pieces about, okay, I need to do something, but I don’t have time. I don’t know what exactly what do I do? And then they would come to me sometimes and say, Well, I mean, it can’t be that complicated. Look at all the things I have sustained so far. Oh, the ways in which, hello, I have been resilient, right? I’ve

Mark Williams 13:05
been successful, it’s been working for me, right? Everything’s great.

Marie-Helene Pelletier 13:08
I am that guy like I am that person, or that woman. And so, and then I would still keep up. And because they are so accomplished in a number of ways. It almost looks too simple to them. They’re like, Yeah, I’m already like this. And then here’s the the analogy that led to the book is I tell them, I’d say, Look, if you were in the business here in business, in general, in your in your organization, you’re you have a great idea on a certain new product or service, would you just have that great idea and implement? Or would you have that great idea and look at who else is providing this? How much are they charging for it, who is paying for it? What forces in the future could in fact, you would look at all this, that’s the context. Sure. Same here, you would be strategic, we need to do the same here, we need to look at our overall context and build a strategy. And that’s as I was using this analogy, and more people saying, after working with them on building their strategy here, they would say, I’m so glad I’ve got this now moving forward. And I so wish I had this earlier in my life. And then hearing this a few times just led to finding a way. super

Mark Williams 14:19
interesting. So let’s talk about if you don’t mind, don’t want to give away the book, obviously. But that’s given up. Let’s give enough away for people wanting to buy it. So let’s talk a little bit about that strategic plan, if you don’t mind or maybe the basics of the plan, and how someone can get started and why they would want to buy the book.

Marie-Helene Pelletier 14:38
Well, and there are I’ll give you even some some ideas of even exercises you could try now even without the book so you know what we really want. What I’m really after is even more people thinking strategically about their resilience and taking action. And so however you get there, that makes me happy. But in the book, what I’ve done is I’ve extracted some Some of the tools, some of the things we use on the business side, and translated them for hear our context, because they resonate with anyone in business, they resonate with anyone who even if you’re not in business, they make instinctual sense, they are very easy to get. So I get people to first write down their main values, what’s most important for them in life?

Mark Williams 15:23
On a personal level?

Marie-Helene Pelletier 15:25
Meaning so what’s in everything to me, okay? Could be, you know, someone may say, what’s important to me is influence. It may be power kinds of things they associate with their work. And it may also include family, it may include health, it may include travel, whatever, yep, everything. Then I get them to do an exercise where they write, again, we go writing because you need to externalize this, we use this often in psychology for all kinds of other circumstances, it does help us take a distance see if and plus you don’t need to rethink about it tomorrow. It’s in writing two columns, looking at your current in this current context, your current sources of supply, what gives you energy, okay. And your current sources of demands, what demands energy. Now, I usually say this people just like you right now, you’re nodding, yeah, I’m you know, sure. Sure. Well, here’s the thing. highly performing people tend to overestimate their sources of supply and under estimate their sources of demands. Sure, as if we’re positively bias that’s in part what pushed us forward, right? Right, oh, I don’t need to do this, I’m fine. And this demands not too big. I’m doing it and we carry on. And it’s been very helpful. However, can’t sustain this forever. You know, sometimes I ask people, you look at their list of supply, and they’re like, oh, yeah, you know, bike ride three times a week. And I say, Okay, looks good. How many times in the past week, last seven days? And then they say, well, actually, the last week has been very busy. So no, well, in general, well, then it doesn’t go on that list, you need to get very real with yourself. And that’s when people switch to that very real, what goes on this list, that it allows them to see how, number one, this doesn’t quite correspond to their list of values of five minutes ago, and it looks off, right? Then we’ll look at their context. And I won’t go into details there. But very similar to what we would do in business. In a SWOT analysis. This time, we’re looking at your personal context, internal and external. And then with this, we build a strategy look just like we would do in business pillars, tactics or actions under each pillar. And that’s what you go for. But here, the actions will not be huge and aspirational, they will be extremely doable, because what we want this to move you to action and build that sense of self efficacy.

Mark Williams 17:57
So you’re real. I love the SWOT analysis. So you’re literally building a plan, much like I would for a strategic plan at work, our strengths, our weaknesses, our challenges, right and our opportunities. So you’re literally looking at your life like you would your business. Yes. Yeah. I love that. And can it be that simple? Is it that simple? Because you opened up by saying that it almost sounds too easy. I just don’t take the time to do it, which is, I think some part of your message, correct?

Marie-Helene Pelletier 18:28
That’s right. And it is, it does not take a long amount of time. It’s an investment that requires a bit of self awareness, a bit of doing the work. But ya know, in the book, I propose exercises, they usually take 510 I think the longest is 15 minutes, maybe. So they don’t take that long of a reflection. But then you do have a plan that you know where you’re going, you can lead this mean, if you think of it on the business side, doing a strategic plan, I mean, could be made to be a very complicated endeavor. It could also be fairly straightforward. Sure. So same thing here, but it changes everything.

Mark Williams 19:09
In at work, we have something called KPIs key performance indicators, it’s our, our map, if you will, or a snapshot in time of showing the health of the business, and every business has their own and oftentimes its profit revenue expense that the easy things. equate that to my life, which I think if I think I understand might be back to the energy list. Right? So here are all the things I’m feeling and are wanting, and all the things that are taking my energy. And now I’m going to build this SWOT plan on either increasing my energy reducing my demands, or demands. Thank you. So is that ultimately kind of what you’re trying to build here?

Marie-Helene Pelletier 19:52
I think it could be one because I think I mean, the what is for sure is that just is like a strategic plan here in business needs to be measured in terms of its efficacy and updated over time. You would want to do that here, in terms of how exactly you measure it. Which KPIs are you using? It may differ from one person to the next. I think for many Yes, it could be that, that scale of how much energy do I find I have zero to 10 scale, and I’m just checking in with myself on a daily basis. That could be that it could be for different people may look different. For example, someone I worked with, did this whole reflection about their values and their case, they valued family, they also valued the work they were doing that they enjoyed, okay, then they looked at their supply and demand realize that there was nothing truly no time with family members, no time with the kids and all the time with their partner. There was nothing right now. And that’s, that’s how life looked like. And so, for this person, part of one of their pillars became family, literally. And some of their actions here was initially once a week leave work at whatever that particular time was, they decided it was five leave at five no matter what, tell everyone I’ve got a personal commitment. It was not like an appointment. But it was this person’s commitment to going back and being with their family. And so for this person, their KPI may be how many checkmarks do I have in the past month of the one day a week that I left at five? Sure. Okay, so it may depend.

Mark Williams 21:38
Let’s talk a little bit about results. We’re in a results oriented business, and you’re working with people who are results minded. Yeah. Great, I’ll read the book, I’ll do some exercises, what should I expect? What’s my expectation, when it’s over?

Marie-Helene Pelletier 21:55
You will, that you can build your strategic plan to be specific to be with the goal here to be increased my resilience. If that was your goal, and you’ve built this plan, according to your values, your context and all this, then you will see an increase in your resilience. Okay. So your ability to go through the challenges and still meet, meet them with energy and come out even stronger will be there. For some people, they will decide that their strategic plan will be more specific to a specific to a sub area, if I can call this, they may say I already know I need to work on my boundaries, and my plan is going to be about increasing boundaries. And my pillars will be specific about this boundaries at work boundaries at home boundaries about my personal self care, for example. So for this person, then what they may expect is just see themselves move in a direction of even more boundaries. So it will depend on what your plans focused on. But you should see movement in that direction. Just like in business, if you’re making a strategic plan to sell something, you’re gonna sell more of it. And if you’re not, when you’re assessing, then that means there’s something in the plan that was not you missed or something changed. And you need to just

Mark Williams 23:13
what have you find? What have you found there some of the biggest obstacles that you’ve run into with working in the corporate world with both with what you do the consulting work and the book? Well, there is a

Marie-Helene Pelletier 23:27
more there is actually an interest in people doing it for themselves and helping others do it. I think that in some cultures that may be a, they may be early in these types of conversations. What’s friendly with with approaching it from a resilience from a strategic perspective is that it’s using language we already use in other areas. So it makes it a bit easier and obstacle might have been if the topic was treated even more clinically, potentially, then that would make it would the content will be equally valid, probably. But the words here would be too far from the words that we use for them to be easy to bring in our daily. So sometimes that’s a bit of that stigma that is less now than what it was and probably will be less than another five years. If

Mark Williams 24:24
corporately I feel good. So I feel good about where I am businesses good. I’m optimistic. But in my personal life, I may be burned out there. Yeah. Do you? Is there still a benefit to the book number one, and I would imagine there’s still a benefit to doing the SWOT analysis and everything else, just on a personal level. What takes my demands? Where do I feel deficient? I’m assuming that regardless of where you are in life, you could be burned out either corporately, personally or both, or not at all, professionally, but personally.

Marie-Helene Pelletier 24:58
Yes, EDM I mean be technical. And the term burnout as defined by the World Health Organization is actually an occupational phenomenon. So technically, it’s more related to your work. But if we use the word of it more broadly in terms of being exhausted, for example, for all the energy, cognitive, emotional behavioral, that we invest, say, in taking care of aging parents supporting a friend who’s moving to a new country, and and then moving our child from outside the home to their first year university, all of this will be very demanding, right. But you know, emotions don’t stay in their lane, right? So even if work is going great, and home or personal life is very challenging. Sometimes we think that we can keep things in their lane. But the reality is that lanes all in Mark that lanes all NMH here, and therefore they are actually together. So yes, if we’re finding that right now, from a corporate professional perspective, things are actually really going great. And we’re having challenging challenges here. It’s still all in the same person absolutely need the resilience. Ben, this one may be more require more actions for you to change on the personal side, in this case, but that’s it.

Mark Williams 26:20
What little tidbits of advice could you offer our listeners that are interested in the topic, but want to get their feet wet? Are there things that they can do at home or questions they can ask themselves or tips and tricks that might lead them to move in a certain direction?

Marie-Helene Pelletier 26:40
I know, and love that. Because that’s sometimes that that’s how we start, right? We even if the full deal would be fantastic. The reality is, number one, our life lives are full. So we need to start small to build that momentum within ourselves. I’ll give you two ideas that I like. One is not just I like research and support as well. The first is, and it’s the beginning of so many things. It’s this that self awareness. You know, we talk about it quite a bit in the context of emotional intelligence, for example. But truly, again, if I use a business analogy, you know, when in business, would we ever say, You know what, I don’t need to know how things are going right now. Just let me know if there’s a crisis. Yep. No, we want information. We want to deal with things early. We want to avoid the crisis. Same thing here. So why not print a calendar from the internet posted on a wall that you visit each night where you brush your teeth, maybe every night, a zero to 10 scale, put a number, how was your energy level today average? Simple, it will take you two seconds. But that will start giving you it will be internally consistent, because it’s only you rating it each time. And you’ll see it eight, seven and a half, seven, six and a half, seven, six and a half, six, you’ll catch it before you’re down here. Sure. So So I would say that, that self awareness would be a key piece, and I’m sorry, remind me of your question. I got distracted by my own. So

Mark Williams 28:16
that was that was the first tip. Great trick, right? So not even a trick, great tip. So watch. Try to mindfully monitor your your, your feeling your your your tiredness, your exhaustion, your your enthusiasm for work, you’re asking people to be mindful of that in a in a very specific way. And a calendar, doing that on a daily basis is one great idea. Fantastic. Any other tips that someone might be able to look at, or monitoring themselves? And they may go, Hey, maybe it’s time for me to do a little work on myself?

Marie-Helene Pelletier 28:50
I know exactly. You could then Well, you could do that exercise we discussed earlier writing down your supply and demand because that’s one that very consistently of all of these they work well together. But if you’re going to do just one, that may be the one to start with. Because for many people they’ve told me just doing this shifted and give me give me gave me sorry, an idea of something I can try. So that’s that’s a bit perhaps, when and then a third one I would say is, you know, when we’re and we’ve heard this, especially in the context of pandemic, that research saying that, Oh, if we’re going to increase our resilience, there are four areas that if we invest in these areas, we’re more likely to increases like exercise, nutrition, sleep and time with people we enjoy spending time with. And that’s an example of how all of these things look so simple. And we all do them to some degrees. We’re like, well, was that going to change? If I pay more attention to any of these? It will. And so if you’re wondering what to do, my my audiences of high performing people most of the time did they have some form of exercise going on? On very often it’s very active exercise, cycling, running, you know, hiking, whatever. Meditation is often the piece that they know would be good for them. And they have not yet turned to or they tried and hated it, or they tried and they think they’re not good at it because their brain was going. And but research is solid in this area. And if you start small and change, change your success criteria success and meditation is not it, I will encourage you to consider this at least to start. Don’t see success as was I an eight plus student at calming my brain? No. success here is did you press play on? Because many will use that in app? Did you press play and stay sitting here? Just trying to do it for this entire time? Doesn’t matter if your brain went away? Did you do the instructions? Putting it back when you did? If you did that full marks?

Mark Williams 30:56
Interesting. Interesting. You say this, my therapist would I am Liz literally listening to his voice as you speak, telling me to attempt meditation. In he would he would say is even if it’s not meditation, but you can find five or 10 minutes alone with no distractions, no noise, no music, no phone, just by yourself with your thoughts, your in your step in the right direction. Would you agree with that? I

Marie-Helene Pelletier 31:27
would agree with this. Another example of action sometimes that that I’ll recommend is, if there is an activity you do in life right now that you often do while doing something else, listening to music, listening to a podcast, not yours, Mark, Mark, you’ll always want to listen to my podcast. But if there is an activity where you could actually just do the one thing not do to take a pause, actually just listen to mark podcast at one point. And then just go walk your dog just be with your dog, that dog and podcast going on at the same time. Right? You’re more present in that one moment. And your brain will thank you because brain prefers one thing at a time.

Mark Williams 32:10
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So let’s close with where can we find your book? Where can we find you? And we will have, we’ll post a once we post the podcast, we’ll have all of these links. But where can we find the book? Where can we find you?

Speaker 1 32:24
Yes, everything at theresilienceplan.com If you go to theresilienceplan.com You’ll find the book when I do me and you can find me on LinkedIn to always love connecting over on LinkedIn.

Mark Williams 32:37
Well, the summarize if any of the listeners are feeling a little bit exhausted, maybe starting to feel a little cynical. Maybe it’s affecting your performance. There might be burnout that’s beginning. And even if it’s not, if it’s just one of the three, perhaps taking a look or listening to some of the tips or taking some of the ideas that MH has has recommended might start in a different direction. So I want to thank MH for being on the show. super thrilled to have you on thank you again. Thank you, Mark. And for everyone else. This is Balacne, Not Burnout. We’ll talk to you

Mark Williams 33:11
Thanks for listening. If you think balance is as important as I do, at work and all throughout your life. Help the show out by leaving me a five star review following me on social media or sharing the podcast with someone you think would appreciate it. If you have comments or questions. I’d love for you to join the conversation with me on LinkedIn. I want to thank OBI Creative for producing the podcast and Swells Beats for getting the music for me. Thanks for sharing your time with me today. And until next time, this is Mark signing off

Transcribed by https://otter.ai