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Lean In Culture · Lean Out Podcast

• 0:01
  Welcome to the lean out podcast.
• 0:03
  I'm your host, Dr.
• 0:04
  Don baker.
• 0:05
  Are you looking for a new approach to finding authentic and sustainable work-life balance?
• 0:10
  You've come to the right.
• 0:11
  Place.
• 0:11
  For inspiration.
• 0:12
  information.
• 0:13
  and a community.
• 0:14
  community.
• 0:14
  of like-minded.
• 0:15
  Professionals.
• 0:16
  Let's get to the show.
• 0:28
  Hello?
• 0:29
  Hello.
• 0:29
  Thanks for being here.
• 0:30
  Today I will share chapter two of my book, lean out a professional woman's guide to finding authentic work life balance.
• 0:37
  Slowly throughout this podcast, I'm sharing chapters of the book.
• 0:41
  I realized that I shared chapter one twice, but now we're on to chapter two.
• 0:47
  This section is all about the lean in culture.
• 0:51
  And I made the argument that this kind of hustle always on culture is costing women in more ways than they realize.
• 0:58
  Women have never had more opportunities in the workplace, but do they really want to take all these opportunities?
• 1:05
  I'm not saying anyone should go a particular way, but in my opinion, It's okay.
• 1:11
  If you want to lean in, as long as you're conscious about what you're choosing.
• 1:16
  But it's really hard to go against a prevailing culture if you don't want that.
• 1:20
  And you want to lean out.
• 1:22
  In medicine, we are taught from the beginning of school that you need to fit in.
• 1:27
  More like a chameleon to fit into each different clinical team on each different rotation.
• 1:32
  Even if it's something that you really don't care for and you have no interest.
• 1:36
  If going into.
• 1:37
  You have to fall in line.
• 1:39
  Of course, there is a time and a place for playing the games that get you the credentials you need to get the job that you desire.
• 1:46
  And that time in place is medical school and residency, but.
• 1:50
  What happens if you're done?
• 1:52
  Going through all the hoops and you find yourself in a culture that does not fit with your personality or your values.
• 1:59
  You don't have to do what everyone else is doing.
• 2:02
  That's what this whole podcast is about.
• 2:04
  Showcasing people that have decided to go their own way, but are continuing in their role as a professional.
• 2:12
  The other day, one of my coaching clients shared her interactions with the chief of her group.
• 2:16
  she has been finalizing negotiations to transition from a partnership role in the group to per diem.
• 2:24
  She said she was really proud of herself for sticking to her guns while the chief made comments.
• 2:28
  Like, I don't know.
• 2:29
  I think you're going to lose your skills and what are you going to do with all of that new free time, et cetera?
• 2:35
  I have to say, I have heard these all before myself.
• 2:38
  Anyway, I love that she recognized her confidence to stay authentic and make a move toward a work-life balance.
• 2:46
  This decidedly against the culture of her group, but more aligned with her personal values.
• 2:51
  That's what this is all about.
• 2:54
  This chapter, chapter two points out that often women professionals are doing what they think they should do and might not be conscious of their choices.
• 3:04
  They assume the mantle in the corporate hustle culture, which is a place that often does not allow for vulnerability flexibility, or just having human problems, like being sick.
• 3:16
  At the end, I share an exercise that you can do to contemplate your strengths.
• 3:21
  Not just the kind of strengths that you put on a resume, like an achievement, but the strengths that are distilled from outward praise.
• 3:30
  Things that are unique to you.
• 3:33
  Also, you will hear the profile of a woman professional Leann who has a great story about leaning out from big law.
• 3:40
  Have a listen to chapter two and let me know what you think.
• 3:43
  Are we as women better off since the advent of lean in.
• 3:47
  Or worse.
• 3:51
  Chapter 2.
• 3:53
  Lean in culture.
• 3:55
  The months and years leading up to having children are not the time to lean back, but the critical time to lean in.
• 4:02
  Sheryl Sandberg.
• 4:05
  When Sheryl Sandberg gave her famous graduation speech at Barnard College in 2011, sparking a TEDx talk, a book, and a whole movement, she told graduates to lean way in, to forge ahead with ambition, and run the world.
• 4:19
  Those graduates, and many women since, have heeded the call.
• 4:24
  Lean In became an entire movement, and women have assumed the mantle.
• 4:29
  Women now make up almost 60 percent of the undergraduate student population.
• 4:34
  The number of matriculating women began to eclipse men for law school in 2016, and medical school in 2019.
• 4:42
  Entire professions, such as psychology and veterinary medicine, are predominantly female.
• 4:47
  The number of chief executives leading Fortune 500 companies has expanded from 7 the past 20 years.
• 4:55
  In this country, we can now say we've had a female secretary of state, multiple female Supreme Court justices, and even a female vice president.
• 5:04
  Rise of the badass boss bitch.
• 5:07
  These trends continue with the next generation of women leaders and professionals on deck.
• 5:12
  As Sandberg recounted in her book, Lean In, Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, one of the graduates who crossed the stage after her speech told her she was the baddest bitch.
• 5:23
  These kinds of comments, which might have given a woman pause as recently as the 20th century, are now considered compliments.
• 5:30
  Women have assimilated into the well trodden hustle culture of the corporate workplace and the professional pathways of medicine, law, finance, and tech.
• 5:39
  In this world, falling behind and asking for help are signs of weakness, and you wouldn't dare miss a day of work due to sickness or a family problem.
• 5:48
  Showing up despite life's chaos has long been considered a virtue.
• 5:52
  Now, so is the woman trying to do everything at work and at home.
• 5:57
  In many dual income families, women still work a second shift, comprised of domestic duties and child care.
• 6:03
  Slay all day.
• 6:04
  We can do anything, hashtag like a boss.
• 6:07
  Side gig?
• 6:08
  Fitness competition?
• 6:09
  All while working 50 plus hours a week and raising a family, no sweat.
• 6:14
  Never has there been a time in our society where women have more opportunities and choices.
• 6:20
  But are women happier, healthier, and more fulfilled as a result?
• 6:23
  Let's look at some other parallel trends.
• 6:26
  Physical costs.
• 6:29
  In today's modern digital society, the health of adult men and women alike is declining.
• 6:34
  While life expectancy continues to increase by a small amount each year, 15 percent of the U.
• 6:40
  S.
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  adult population currently has diabetes.
• 6:43
  and 38 percent of adults meet criteria for prediabetes.
• 6:47
  CDC and Hanes data demonstrate a steady decline in the number of adults who are at a healthy weight, and obese rates for women are eclipsing those of men.
• 6:58
  According to the American Heart Association, only one in four people reported spending enough time doing aerobic and muscle strengthening activities to meet current movement guidelines.
• 7:09
  Some serious health problems are known to be related to stress and or long working hours.
• 7:14
  Thank you Numerous studies correlate stress to illnesses such as viral infections, cardiovascular disease, ulcers, depression, metabolic disturbance, and chronic back pain.
• 7:25
  In addition, a meta analysis performed by the World Health Organization found that consistently working more than 55 hours per week was associated with a higher incidence of stroke.
• 7:37
  A chronic state of activation in the sympathetic nervous system might be behind many of these physical aberrations.
• 7:44
  While primitive humans would properly close their stress response cycles with rest, family time, or fun, modern humans tend to move from stressful event to stressful event.
• 7:55
  With the advent of the internet, smartphones, video calls, and the like, there is never a moment in the day when we are forced to have downtime.
• 8:05
  For many women, the always on world is amplified by their additional responsibilities at home.
• 8:11
  They are on call 24 7.
• 8:15
  The lean in movement imagines a world where better work life policies are commonplace and all members of organizations flourish under the leadership of women.
• 8:23
  Yet the professional world is instead reeling from an insidious creep of work time, plus accompanying dysfunction and dissatisfaction.
• 8:31
  If women leaders are the nurturers, who will play the nurturing role when the leaders themselves are suffering?
• 8:38
  Psychological costs.
• 8:40
  Burnout, a triad of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and diminished personal efficacy, has become an increasingly recognized problem in many workplaces and professions.
• 8:52
  Deloitte's Workplace Burnout Survey of 2015 reported that a whopping 77 percent of respondents have experienced burnout in their jobs.
• 9:01
  While 87 percent of respondents reported passion for their work, 64 percent of them said they experienced persistent stress on a regular basis.
• 9:10
  Thank you for joining us.
• 9:10
  A Bloomberg law analysis in 2021 revealed that nearly half of attorneys surveyed had experienced burnout in the past year.
• 9:19
  Almost the same number of respondents reported a decline in their well being, and nearly one third of them experienced new or worsening health issues.
• 9:28
  In the physician space, you can't go anywhere without hearing about the pervasive destruction caused by burnout.
• 9:35
  The Medscape National Physician Burnout, Depression, and Suicide Report surveys more than 15, 000 physicians yearly.
• 9:43
  The reported incidence of burnout is consistently between 40 and 50 percent.
• 9:48
  Burnout is widely recognized as a source of absenteeism, lost productivity, declining quality of patient care, and even subsequent mental and physical disease.
• 10:00
  The top causes of burnout among physicians are long hours, overwhelming workload, and lack of support.
• 10:07
  These have not changed over the years.
• 10:10
  For women, burnout and depression go hand in hand.
• 10:13
  Over the past several years, the Medscape report has listed consistently higher burnout rates for female versus male physicians.
• 10:22
  Between 2021 and 2022, four separate surveys found that women physicians are experiencing more burnout than their male counterparts.
• 10:31
  With specific stressors identified as child care and household responsibilities.
• 10:37
  Having it all.
• 10:39
  While achievement and the outward perception of success have long been virtues in our society, these signals are now even more amplified in the current era of social media connection.
• 10:51
  Busyness is a badge of honor, one ever present in our curated social media feeds and filtered photographs.
• 10:59
  For women, the urge, nay the duty, to appear perfect is ever present.
• 11:04
  It's never been easier to compare all aspects of our lives to others.
• 11:09
  These factors, a low threshold to compare, high workloads, diminished work life balance, and the continuum of burnout, can lead to serious mental despair.
• 11:20
  While the incidence varies by report, women physicians have a much higher likelihood to die by suicide than female, non physician counterparts.
• 11:29
  Attorneys are also experiencing an epidemic of depression, suicide, and substance abuse.
• 11:36
  The oft cited mental load deepens the costs of this culture for women.
• 11:41
  It might now be possible to have it all, but what are the consequences?
• 11:47
  Having it all does not necessarily translate to the parts of our lives that matter most to us.
• 11:53
  Exercise.
• 11:54
  Identify your skills and strengths.
• 11:57
  Write a list of your skills and strengths.
• 12:00
  This is not the time to be humble.
• 12:02
  Brag away about yourself through this list.
• 12:05
  Think about specifics that make you unique.
• 12:08
  Your skill list should include more detail than medicine, law, tech, or accounting.
• 12:14
  I'm talking about things like cultivating close relationships with clients, communicating complicated concepts to people of all knowledge levels, teaching slash mentoring trainees, writing, or speaking.
• 12:27
  To get some inspiration, take a look at the lists included in the resources section.
• 12:32
  Ask others what they perceive as your greatest skills and strengths.
• 12:37
  Recall awards you were given during your training and the things supervisors or preceptors wrote about you in evaluations.
• 12:45
  Leanne's journey.
• 12:48
  There's a stigma even in the concept of leaning out.
• 12:52
  When we first met, Leanne was quick to point out that, though she uses her legal background in her work, she doesn't really practice law.
• 13:00
  In fact, she practiced law in the 365 days.
• 13:07
  If I had been left to my own devices, I would have gotten a PhD in social psychology, she said.
• 13:13
  But her parents dissuaded her from academia, wanting her to pursue a career path with more financial certainty.
• 13:20
  She also ranked first in her class at college.
• 13:23
  So she said, there was an excitement in the air about my potential.
• 13:27
  With these urgings, she decided to go to law school.
• 13:31
  Leanne became consumed by the admission process, her first red flag.
• 13:36
  The legal profession loves to have these institutions that exclude people.
• 13:40
  There's all these people and institutions in charge of who can access law schools, so once you commit, it's like, oh god, now I've got to do this.
• 13:48
  You're neck deep just to take the test.
• 13:51
  By the time Leanne began her law classes, she was already exhausted.
• 13:57
  She also quickly felt out of place with her classmates.
• 14:00
  There's a lot of fluff and self importance, she said.
• 14:04
  Graduation came during the economic crash of 2008, so Leanne took one of few jobs available in finance law.
• 14:13
  She said that during her time there, really egregious things happened to me as a woman and as a young associate.
• 14:19
  My first and only year of practicing law was absurd.
• 14:24
  I was in the law office until three in the morning, waiting for some miserable associate from another office to call me, in the middle of whatever hell she was navigating, to give me an assignment.
• 14:35
  The assignment was like, the client doesn't like curly commas, but the documents all have curly commas.
• 14:41
  They want the font to be the curly comma font, but they don't want curly commas.
• 14:45
  So can you go through and change all the commas?
• 14:48
  This is real life shit.
• 14:50
  This is actually a thing I did at three in the morning.
• 14:54
  Meanwhile, Leanne's husband was doing amazing work for a nonprofit organization.
• 14:59
  She looked around at the partners in her firm, thinking of all they've sacrificed and decided she needed to craft an exit.
• 15:07
  I don't need to live this miserable life.
• 15:09
  She said, I would rather be happy as long as I can still have a family, provide for them and have the fundamentals in life.
• 15:16
  With some joy release valves like buying kids Christmas gifts or going on vacation, keeping her fresh student loan debt in mind, Leanne set out to find a new job outside law.
• 15:28
  She took an opportunity as a consultant for a startup, despite a 100, 000 pay cut.
• 15:34
  She helped her husband build his nonprofit into a well known organization.
• 15:39
  Eventually, she landed a consulting job at a large philanthropic organization she's worked with for the past several years.
• 15:48
  Leanne describes herself as an operative who gets deployed for certain projects and negotiations.
• 15:53
  She is a planner, a builder, and a fixer.
• 15:56
  She loves her work and feels tremendously valued by her organization.
• 16:01
  A good legal background allows you to have a mind that can pivot into lots of different places.
• 16:07
  Your skill set can be applied to anything and everything, she said.
• 16:12
  Recently, Leanne and her husband and their two small children moved from the big city to the country.
• 16:18
  She negotiated to continue working remotely with her organization.
• 16:22
  She took another pay cut in the process, but she also started an additional part time consulting job for a friend.
• 16:29
  I'm making more money now than I was before, but I've leaned out, she said.
• 16:34
  If I was leaning in, I'd be trying to be the next COO.
• 16:38
  I'd be in that office and commuting to the city every day, busting my ass, but I'm not.
• 16:44
  Instead, I'm unavailable at noon because that's kid pickup time.
• 16:49
  Leanne has come a long way since her days as a miserable associate.
• 16:53
  She has fused her passion for justice and social causes with logic and problem solving skills from her legal education.
• 17:01
  Regarding her current work life balance, she said, we've really hit the right notes.
• 17:09
  Thanks for listening to the lean out podcast.
• 17:11
  If you find these conversations inspiring and useful, please forward them to a friend and also leave a review on iTunes or Spotify so that other people can find them easier.
• 17:24
  If you want to get in touch with me, you can find me at my website, practice balanced.com, where you can subscribe to my newsletter and get updates regularly about new podcast episodes, blog posts, speaking, engagements, and coaching services.
• 17:40
  You can also support my work by buying my book, lean out a professional woman's guide to finding authentic work-life balance for yourself, a friend, family member, or coworker.
• 17:52
  Have a great day and we'll see you next time