Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 456. Combating Burnout and Compassion Fatigue (Replay) - Eleanor Wells and Ashley Cauley

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456. Combating Burnout and Compassion Fatigue (Replay) - Eleanor Wells and Ashley Cauley · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the summer of evolution.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: It is just such a great joy to create some space and some room to really focus on mental health and I hope that as you're listening to the episodes this week, you're feeling truly held and seen as an individual and as a human being.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: We're really overjoyed to lift episode 177.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: It's combating burnout and compassion fatigue with the incredible Eleanor and Wells and Ashley Collie.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Eleanor brings this nursing experience, ashley brings in this psychology and therapy and science to this conversation and we just want you to understand what it means to have psychological safety.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: We talk about burnout prevention, how to avoid breakdowns, how to lift your needs to your organization, to your boss, and to feel seen and cared for.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: So please check out this incredible episode and then go follow up with Eleanor and Ashley on LinkedIn.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: They've got a great presence there.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Hope this feels like a little warm hug from me to you.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Hey, I'm John.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: And I'm Becky, and this is the we Are For Good podcast.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Non-profits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: So welcome to the good community.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: We're non-profit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabbit fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: So let's get started, hey Becky.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to this incredible week discussing mental health.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: I am very excited about this conversation today Selfishly.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: we need this conversation for us.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: We are going to just be sitting here, listening, taking notes and bring out how we can implement these incredible strategies that we are going to hear today.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: We're going to be talking about combating burnout and compassion fatigue and I cannot think of a Menor history, John, where all of us feel like we're in the same boat and nonprofit and we're all incredibly tired.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: We're all trying to pivot all the time at the new nuances that are coming to us, and this is a first for us, because Eleanor is a registered nurse, so we have a nurse, and Ashley is an industrial and organizational psychologist and educator, so we have got the experts in here.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Ashley, eleanor, welcome to the we Are For Good podcast.
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: Oh, thank you.
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: We are so delighted to be here again.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: We really are passionate about this topic, so we are excited to get to share with y'all today.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Well, we'd like for you to start, maybe just give us a little bit of background about your journey and led you to where you are today.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: And, eleanor, I think I'll start with you.
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: Well, as you said, I am a nurse but I have not practiced nursing for many, many years.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: But I am in a medical family.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: My husband is a physician and that's part of the reason I didn't practice nursing for so long.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: He had such a crazy life that we felt like somebody needed to be a little dependable at home and I was for likely choice.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: So I did a lot of volunteering and work with nonprofits really my whole life and have had such a wonderful opportunity to be on the frontline, whether as a volunteer or a board member or even as an employee, with lots of ministry and nonprofit non ministry organizations, and really tapped into what this burnout and compassion fatigue was, and it really generated some interest in me.
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: Also, in the last four or five years went back to school and got my coaching certificate and started my own coaching practice and again just felt so compelled and wanted to help people that were on the front lines in caregiving organizations.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: Hence, that's kind of how Ashley and I met and how cohort for care was birthed out of an idea of wanting to meet those needs, and Ashley and I just have a great time working together.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: And I'll let Ashley tell a little bit about herself.
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: Thanks, eleanor.
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we have a great time together.
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: We first started talking about doing cohort for care and discussing the need for a coaching consulting group that could work with organizations with compassion, fatigue and burn.
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: It was really coming from a place of experience where we had either experienced this firsthand or witnessed this our entire lives.
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: This is not something new.
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: We want to emphasize that.
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: It's gotten a lot of press lately.
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: It's been going on for a very, very long time, so we're glad it's actually coming to the forefront and people are learning how to speak about it and how to deal with it.
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: As a teacher, I also experienced a lot of burnout and passion.
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: My husband's first career was in ministry, so you name it.
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: I mean every, every profession that deals with this.
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: We pretty much hit, we've ticked all the boxes.
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: So we've all experienced this firsthand.
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: We've witnessed this firsthand.
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: We understand the pain from compassion, fatigue and burnout.
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: So this organization, this company, was really birthed from that experience.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: Well, I just love the child.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: Put your flag in the ground around this, because I part of my story was I was with my wife for a year overseas so we got full baptism into all of the compassion fatigue in that year and then came back and have been in the nonprofit side since then.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: So I feel it, and I have watched people that have stepped through it gracefully and people that haven't, to just how detrimental that can be.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: Would you kind of give us some context on the bigger scale to if somebody doesn't understand compassion fatigue, how would you define that?
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: And then let's talk through some of the stats.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: What does it look like on a national scale right now?
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: It is true what's being talked about.
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: So the burnout numbers that we're seeing are that in the workforce we are seeing numbers that precode.
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: We're already really up there, some 40 percentile.
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: You know people are feeling burnout but since COVID we see the highest numbers and millennials.
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: But we've seen the biggest jump in numbers from baby boomers pre and post of that feel of burnout.
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: And you're in your home and you're not only trying to do your job, you're trying to learn all this computer stuff and it's so funny.
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: I always relate myself a little bit.
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: I'm not a baby boomer, but I feel like it hard.
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: I am because I just want to take my computer and chuck it through a wall.
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: It makes me so mad.
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: I am not friends with technology, let's just put it that way.
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: There's that whole extra level of burnout and frustration and aggravation.
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: And then we have compassion fatigue and Eleanor is going to speak to this in a moment about the difference.
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: We have a harder time nailing down numbers for compassion fatigue because it's something that people don't understand very well.
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: We do see when people are able to track it and get numbers.
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: We see that compassion fatigue much greater effect on those that are in what we call caring professions, caregiving professions, helping professions, and that's going to be people in the nonprofit sector, educators, people in ministry, social workers, people in the medical field.
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: These are the people that we call helping professions or caring professions and they're the ones that so much higher level from action fatigue Right.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: Well, for me to explain the difference between compassion, fatigue and burnout, I just want to tell you a story because I think it'll paint a picture of kind of what the two are, and maybe we'll help us differentiate between the two.
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: So I met a young woman several years ago who, in her early 20s, had a real passion for helping others and found herself, went to Africa partnered with another young woman in a community where they found that with children that were born with disabilities, were not cared for and families didn't know what to do with the children, they these children were often even left at the city dump.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: It was just so.
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: These two women took it upon themselves to start a nonprofit and organization to help with these children, and so for eight years they poured their lives into these children, and you can imagine the work was hard.
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: The need was was great, there was fundraising, there was trying to find places to place the children and educate parents, and so it was just an unending amount of work that needed to be done.
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: When I came across this young woman and met her, I found a woman who had lost her passion.
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: She was tired, she was Seneca, she was angry.
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: Her co-corkers really didn't even like to be around her anymore.
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: She had lost her sense of humor.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: She even was suffering with some physical ailments and had developed an autoimmune disease.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: Burnout the symptoms of burnout and compassion fatigue are very similar, so you really can't parse out is this burnout or it's compassion fatigue?
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: The difference comes in what caused it.
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: Burnout comes from work conditions, things like overwork, underpaid, understaffed, don't feel qualified to do the job A lot of what we're seeing right now.
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: Right, I mean, people are just up against a wall.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: The demand is so high and they don't have the ability to meet what they need.
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: Passion fatigue comes from.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: Really, it's a PTSD type of syndrome and it often comes when you hear traumatic stories or are in trauma all day long.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: You may not personally be experiencing the trauma.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: You're seeing it and you're witnessing it, but your body doesn't know that.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: It doesn't know this isn't my trauma.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: I'm just hearing these stories or I'm watching what's going on.
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: I think about the nurses that are at the bedside of COVID, patients that are dying.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: Their families can't be there.
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: They're having to step in to be a family.
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: It's not their family member, but their body doesn't know that.
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: So their body is responding in a post-traumatic stress kind of way.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: That is what compassion fatigue is, so it doesn't really has to get hung up if it's burnout or if it's compassion fatigue Because, like I said, the symptoms are very similar, but it is important to know what we're dealing with.
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: Is it a work condition or is it really trauma that we're dealing with?
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: Does that make sense?
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: Is that clear?
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: It makes total sense.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Now I'm starting to rewind my brain and I'm like, well, clearly I've had burnout a lot in my life, but then I'm thinking of certain life events and how they have triggered me in certain ways and how that has manifested whether it was personally or professionally into my work, into my home life and, yeah, I think this conversation is really just illuminating and God bless you for having an example about someone actually working in nonprofit that suffered through this.
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: Well, and we just see it over and over and over again.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: Because, when you really think about it, who works in nonprofits?
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: It's people who care, who want to be involved, who see a problem, who want to fix it, who want to treat it, who want to be a part of it.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: So it's so easy for those type of individuals to take on the stories of what they're hearing.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: That's what makes them good at what they do, because they're so interrelated, so interlocked with that story.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: I just I love that y'all are stepping into this because we need resources.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think more people are experiencing or talking about it and everybody's wondering what do I do you know?
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: If you are experiencing these symptoms, who do you turn to?
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: Who do you?
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: Who do we need to listen to for advice?
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: Would you kind of walk us through that triage process?
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: What do you?
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: What do you personally need to do, what are some steps to take and when do you seek professional help?
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: Well, I think one of the most important things that anyone who's listening to this and anyone who's suffering from compassion fatigue and burnout need to understand the one lie that this that burnout, compassion fatigue really drive home in our mind is you are alone, you are alone and you have to do this all by yourself.
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: That's the big lie that we believe.
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: It gets us into a place of tunnel vision where that's all we can see.
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: So the first step when you realize you're suffering from this is you must reach out.
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: It's hard, but you need to speak up.
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: You need to speak out.
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: Fortunately, because there is so much discussion around this right now, I truly do feel that organizations are making an effort to have a place, to have opportunity for people.
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: I've been hearing of organizations that are offering free counseling, someone to listen, and unfortunately, a lot of people aren't actually taking advantage, because it feels like handing a glass of water to a drowning person.
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: It just feels like I'm already dealing with all this.
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: Now you want me to go do something else.
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: It just feels like too much.
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: But people need to understand that you can't come back from this on your own.
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: You do need help.
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: So anyone suffering from this needs to look around.
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: There are those that are willing to help, even something as simple as just discussing this with a friend and saying this is where I'm at, because it's.
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: It's that first step.
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: So that's the first thing that we encourage people to do is be open, be honest, find somewhere, find someone, somewhere where you can share this.
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: Hey, cohort for care.
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: We have developed a proprietary model that we use when we work with organizations, and it's something that I would love to share with you of how the steps that we take as we go through and work with organizations, with teams, and with individuals, of how to help them assess, treat, prevent compassion, fatigue and burnout.
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: And we call this process that we have developed get a grip, and we spell grip GRIPP because it's an acronym for the steps that we take.
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: And the first step in grip, that letter G stands for grief, and it seems harsh to start with that.
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: People will say you're going to start people that are in pain by talking about their pain.
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: Well, guess what?
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: They're already in pain.
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: Not talking about it will not help them.
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: And, yes, you have to strike right at the heart of the matter at the beginning.
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: People have to be able to express what they're experiencing what they're going through, because that helps turn that hidden, dark, ugly, dirty pain into open, shared, communicated pain.
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: That's the only kind of pain that can get healed.
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: We can't heal hidden pain.
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: We can only heal open pain.
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: So, yes, we start with the grieving process and right now we hear all kinds of stories about grieving with COVID.
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: But grieving is something that we all do when we bring ourselves to work.
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: All of us have an expectation of how we're going to do good work and when we get into it and we often find things aren't the way we thought they were going to be there are circumstances working against us.
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: We don't have the resources, maybe we don't have the training that we need, maybe we don't have the support that we need and there's hurt.
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: There's hurt when we have an ideal of what we want to see happen and that doesn't happen.
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: We have to give people space to be able to discuss that and say I was hurt because of that.
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: I'm grieving the way I wanted my work to go and the way that it's actually going, or the way I wanted my life to go and the way it's actually going.
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: So we have to give people space to grieve that and then we move on to R in the grip acronym, and R is for remember.
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: And here's where we can begin to take that open pain and we can begin to heal it by story and remembrance.
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: Everyone loves a good origin story Me and my family are obsessed with all the superhero movies and everyone loves the great backstory.
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: You want to see where they came from and you want to hear the origin story.
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: So one of my favorite things to do with people that are in a caring profession is say how did you start?
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: Where did this begin?
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: Where did this passion begin?
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: And I love that moment where you see them begin to smile and say well, for me it all started when I was, and they're often running.
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: They're talking about a childhood experience, they're talking about a family member, they're talking about something formative that made them realize.
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: This is what I want to do, so by helping people get back to that.
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: You know, eleanor discussed in her story of the lady that she was working with.
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: It was it was a lost passion, a forgotten fire that originally drove her to do what she was doing.
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: So we help people go back and learn.
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: How do I share my story?
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: How can I share this with people.
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: How can I remember it myself?
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: So once we have grieved what we have lost, once we have remembered why we are doing what we're doing in the first place, then we move on to I, which is to investigate.
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: We base investigate off of the cognitive behavior theory, which is pretty simple.
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: We all kind of know it.
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: What we believe to be true, the thoughts that we have affect our feelings and those feelings affect what we do.
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: So it's thoughts, feelings, actions, and we have to take people through a process of really assessing what they believe to be true.
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: I had said earlier that the trap of compassion, fatigue and burnout is that people believe I am alone, and when they repeat that truth to themselves so many times, it becomes solidified in their brains that they believe that is the truth.
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: So think about what that impact is gonna have on them Believing I am alone.
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: How will that affect their feelings and what actions will they take because of that?
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: They're gonna quit calling their friends, they're gonna quit employing social interaction.
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: They're going to disengage.
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: Worst case scenario.
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: These are the kind of thought processes that lead to suicide I am alone, no one cares.
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: So we help individuals go through and investigate what do you believe to be true and they are able to list these things out and say wait a minute, is that the truth?
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: Because if it's not, I need to reinvent the narrative, I need to change what I believe to be true so that I can move forward.
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: We then move on to P, which is plan, and this is where we really start taking people through the action steps of coming up with a personal self-care plan.
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: Now people say, oh, here we are, we're starting this again.
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: You want me to help myself and pull myself up by my bootstraps when I am drowning.
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: But remember we don't jump in there.
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: Please remember that, that we start at the heart of the matter.
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: We help them to express their grief, we help them remember what their passion is.
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: We talk about their thoughts and what is true and what is not true.
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: So we are not jumping in on the action step.
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: We've already covered the heart and the head and now it's time to take a look at action.
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: So we've covered those other things.
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: First we're helping heal before we start asking them.
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: And when we say an action plan, this may be a baby step.
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: We've worked with clients where your entire action plan is called my sister once a week.
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: That's what they've got, that's what they can give you and you say, fantastic, call your sister once a week.
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: It helps them get out of that tunnel vision of I'm all alone, life is pointless, I cannot go on.
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: And if they can begin to build on that and say, well, that action step really helped me, maybe I can add another.
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: So that's where we have the plan.
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: Our last P in Grip is partner.
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: We have to learn what nature already knows their safety in numbers.
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: That's true.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: We can do this by ourselves?
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we see it.
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: We see it all around us and we know their safety in numbers.
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: And you can't do things by yourself, but we doggone it.
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: We still try really hard to do it all alone and we can't.
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: So we have to help people to understand.
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: We're not saying it's good if you find someone to partner with.
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: We're saying it is essential that you find someone to partner with because it helps reinforce that idea that you are not alone.
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: You have people around you that care about you.
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: So that's the process that we help people go through.
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: That not only helps people come out of that fog of compassion fatigue and burnout, but we've seen people that when they go through an assessment, they really don't score high in being burned out.
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: They don't score high in having compassion fatigue.
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: But this, to me, not only is it treatment, it's vitamins.
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: You do this to help you.
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: Isn't that what we want?
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: We want preventative, we want to help people learn how to not get in that place in in the first place.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: We're taking a quick pause to get real with you, friends.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: Because, let's face it, it's a new world.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Donor expectations are higher than ever and donors want to know what their personal impact will be, which means we need to start by building a truly resonant message.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: And if you follow, we Are For Good.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: You know we're advocates for nonprofits need to disrupt and adapt in order to grow, and our friends at Foster Avenue agree.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: You might know Foster Avenue by their former name, Snavely Associates.
• 23:02
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• 23:05
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• 23:16
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• 23:27
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• 23:32
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• 23:39
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• 23:44
  Speaker 2: That's fosteravcom slash good.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: I know I just want to sit and I actually we could go back through each of these because let me just react as a guy, because half our audience is a guy, right, probably, and I don't want to stereotype guys, because I don't like being stereotyped, but I love to skip everything that is internally reflective and jump to doing.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: And I should bring my wife I wish she was at the house right now and I bring her in here because that's just like how I'm wired to want to solve and I want to fix things, and you breaking this down is just showing me why it doesn't work, you know, and why it is short lived.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: So, thank you, I think this is such an incredible framework and I'm just emoting.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: And what other people to jump into this with me?
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: I mean the thing that is striking me, and I don't know if, julie or John, you're thinking this, but these five steps dovetail so closely with many, if not all, of our values that we have outlined in our company, and I'm just noticing we're using different terminology as we talk about them.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, we're talking about be human and telling stories.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: How do you simplify, how are you vulnerable?
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: How are you going into your pain points?
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: How are you talking about failures and coming out of them?
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: And when you say there is safety in numbers, that, to me, is our last value, which is community is everything.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: And what you're saying is that we will all thrive more vibrantly when we can do this together.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: And I keep seeing Robin Williams and Goodwill hunting like, grabbing Matt Damon's like arms, while you're talking and saying this is not your fault.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: And I want to say that to people who are listening, because I will tell you that as I first went into therapy and got my psychologist and those kinds of things, I kept feeling like I did this to myself.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: I didn't go on too much, I didn't create boundaries and I and yeah, I just need you to come into my house and my world and figure out what my plan is going to be, ladies, because you are so smart about this.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: Well, we've seen it work and it works.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's just kind of the bottom line, you know.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: That's that's why we're so passionate about it and and I love what you said about you're not alone and you know it's not your fault.
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: I feel like so many times what we're seeing and reading about and compassion, fatigue and burnout is just get a self care plan and do some.
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: You know, go get a massage and you'll be fine.
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: You know, get a manicure once a week, you'll be okay.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: And that's just not the truth.
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's that's part of it, but that's that's not all of it.
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: And the other thing we feel so important, feel like so important, it's it, yes, it's.
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: It's something that people need to do for themselves, but organizations need to take some responsibility for the well that they.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: We need to create cultures where people have the ability to have good well being.
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: In fact, we've developed what we call our, our synergy of well being and we have five spokes that we see as a part of that gripping one of them and another one I think you're going to like after listening to a couple of your podcasts.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: We do some.
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: We love that.
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: People find their strengths, what, what makes them and that helps them to have a better understanding of themselves.
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: And then we also talk about psychological safety in in organizations, and Ashley's our expert on that and she is so well schooled and teaches psychological safety at the university level, so she certainly knows that.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: And then we do have a step of self care and we have a small, very brief workshop that we do.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: That's called fatigue deflourishing.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: That's really it's.
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: It's kind of the it's the intro to grip, it's if someone's not ready to jump into the deep end.
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: And then we also look at the stance of the organization.
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: Are they optimistic?
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: Are they showing gratitude?
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: What's their compassion for their employees?
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: So we feel like if all five of those folks can be utilized in an organization, it'll create a place of well being.
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: So that you know it's great to treat Ashley just said this it's great to treat, but we rather prevent.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, if you look at my profile, march of 2020.
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: I mean, covid had been around a week and I started writing what?
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: Who's going to take care of the caregivers?
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: Because I knew what was coming.
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: It was so apparent that we were going to enter into a place where people that were on the front lines were going to get in trouble and unfortunately there was just not the energy or the ability to die that at that point we're all surviving.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: And now we're coming out on the other end and there's a lot of casualties and I feel like we've got a lot of people that that need a lot of help.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: I really think these steps are outstanding and I kind of want to piggyback off something that you said, eleanor, and I would love for you to take this, ashley, about the psychological safety you know for our listeners who serve as leaders within organizations.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: What sort of advice will you give to them about creating an environment of psychological safety, and could you define it for us what that is?
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: Absolutely so.
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: Psychological safety has become a buzzword in the last couple of years.
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: You know we think of TED Talks and articles and things that have come out.
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: People are talking about it and some people take that they just hear the term psychological safety and I one of my favorite things to do in organizations.
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: When I first go in and start talking about it is put up a big slide of this is not psychological safety, because it'll be like somebody will.
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: One of the things I have on that slide is a person saying I really can't stand the way you speak in meetings.
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: You're just so nasally.
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: I'm sorry, I'm just being honest.
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: I should be psychologically safe to be able to tell that to you.
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: This is not psychological.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: That was the perfect voice to deliver that, by the way.
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: So basically we have to back up and realize that the definition of psychological safety is really being able to bring who you are to your workplace without fear of backlash, without fear of suffering any negative consequences.
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: Because you brought who you were, you spoke up, you asked questions, you were innovative, you took a risk.
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: You don't feel as though you were unsafe to do those things.
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: So then I go into an explanation of what is.
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: What is it?
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: It's hard to explain because it's a theory, so usually I go by benchmarks.
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: If I sat in, if I went to an organization for the day, what would I see that could help me understand where they were?
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: On 10 you on, and remember that it is a continuum.
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: I call it a culture of psychological safety because it's not like we have it or we don't have it right.
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: It's a continuum and it might.
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: You might have higher levels of psychological safety in the sales department than you do in the marketing department, than you do in the HR department, so it can differ even within an organization.
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: But what I would be looking for is do I see people asking questions or just saying yes and no?
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: You know, is it safe to raise your hand and say wait a minute, I'm not quite sure about that.
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: Can I ask some questions before we move forward with that process?
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: It looks like people being innovative and taking risks and knowing that when or lose with that risk, the organization is going to support them and that the organization, if it does not work out, will say, hey, what did we learn from this?
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: How can we move move forward from this, instead of just blaming and saying, oh, you did something wrong, you're out?
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: So those are the kind of things I would be looking for to be able to assess the level of psychological safety Within an organization when it comes to compassion, fatigue and burnout, which is what we're really focusing on today.
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: I really there's one thing it's been on my mind.
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: I'm gonna give you my my one doable action take away of what not only Organization should be doing, but what individuals should be doing for one another when they see someone who is suffering from compassion, fatigue and burnout.
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: And it is what I call and it's really based off of that first Step in grip, which is grieve.
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: Because until we get past that, I love, john, what you said about wanting to just take the action step and just do it, and all I could see is my mind is that commercial of the guy where the boat's leaking and he slaps that tape on it.
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: That's in my mind.
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: I'm like just duct tape, it, duct tape, it move on, and that that's the whole.
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: But we've got to get to the heart of the matter first, even though it is difficult and painful.
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: So this, this actionable step, really strikes the heart of that grief and it is what I call learning how to sit quietly with pain, which is very difficult for us to do, especially those in the caring professions.
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: What are some characteristics of the person who's going to go into non-profit, to the medical field, to ministry, to social work?
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: What are they?
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: What is innate about their personality?
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: You see a problem, you fix it.
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: You see an issue, you address it.
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: You assess, diagnose and treat right.
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: That's the order that you do things in.
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: You are ready to jump into action and get it done.
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: But when people are suffering from compassion, fatigue and burnout, the first step, the first thing they need, they need to know they are psychologically safe to share their grief and to share their pain.
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: I just want to set the scene.
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: Think about this.
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: Imagine that a co-worker comes to you and says I Am struggling.
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: I keep thinking I'm gonna get past it and I just can't.
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: Maybe they even start crying and they have a breakdown and you're thinking what do I do?
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: Maybe you've experienced this I know that I have personally and we have a tendency to do one of three things.
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: Like I said, those of us who were in a caring profession, one of our first tendencies is to fix it right.
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: But we have to understand is that that changes the way that we listen?
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: Suddenly, we're not listening for compassion.
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: We're just waiting for them to stop talking so we can give our sage advice and tell them what they should do next.
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: I don't know about anybody else, but married couples can relate to this.
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, I'm dying.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: I do this.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: I do this.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry everyone in my life.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna get better.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: You're not listening for compassion, you're listening for, basically, how you're gonna solve that.
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: You're gonna solve that with your listening how you're gonna fix it and set the scene if you if you haven't been, you know We've been talking about COVID you imagine a colleague coming to you, a physician, who comes and just burst into tears and said I lost three more today.
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: How are you gonna fix that?
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: What do you think you're gonna say that's gonna make that go away?
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: You can't.
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: Well, you can't make that go away.
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: So we must learn to listen for compassion, not to fix it.
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: The second tendency people can have is to Think that they are being sympathetic by joining in and they want oh, you're gonna share your story of how bad things are.
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: Okay, as soon as you're done, I'll share my story of how bad things are, and what that turns into is a competition who's had a more difficult time?
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: Or it just turns into a gripe fest and you just both circle the drain and go down.
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: That's not really gonna help anybody, anybody.
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: So, again, you're learning to listen for compassion.
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: You're not going to fix it.
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: You're not going to say oh, I can one up, one with that.
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: You haven't slept in three nights, I haven't slept in five nights.
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: So, again, we're taking a step back.
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: We're not going to fix it.
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: We're not going to add our own story to it.
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: The one thing that people and organizations, especially leadership and I want people to hear this, because people that are leaders, people that are managers they want to know what can I do for my people?
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: What if one of your team members, what if one of your employees comes into your office and this happens and they begin to cry and they begin to share?
• 36:47
  Speaker 4: And what I see leaders, managers, supervisors do is they want to explain it away.
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: They want to explain.
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: Here's what I'm doing.
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: It's kind of like fixing it.
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: Here's what I'm doing to try to fix it.
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: Oh, I know the schedules horrific.
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: You haven't had a day off in weeks.
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: Well, here's, here's my plan for Da da, da, da, da da.
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: And again, it's not giving safe space.
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: The person didn't come in there for that kind of conversation.
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: So it's difficult as it is, as hard of a step as this is, I think the most loving, caring thing that you can do for someone who is currently hurting is to sit quietly with them in their pain.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know where you two have been, but you need to be in the nonprofit sector for life, because I am seeing so many parallels, as you're talking, with past lived experience in different sectors, different jobs and and I think that if you're someone like me who's listening to you talk and I'm pretty sure I've done all three of these many, many times as both a friend and as, maybe, a leader it's like I want to say sorry to everyone.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: I've ever done this too, and I'm going to work on being a better leader, but I think that it's so smart and you don't know what you don't know, because people Are, I think, hardwired to be compassionate to others when others are suffering, and so I can understand the need to want to fix it, to take away the pain, but understanding that we can't take it away we're gonna have to sit in discomfort a little Could possibly be a very empowering thing if you could figure that out.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: And so my question to everyone who's listening right now is what are you doing to create a safe place at your organization?
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: You could be remote.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: What are you doing to foster a culture of safety?
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: John and I just talked about this On a podcast recently about John said are you building a culture where somebody feels safe enough to raise their hand and say I don't know, I need training on this.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Can you help me Put something into the budget so I can be familiar with this?
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know that I had the bravery or I don't know if I wasn't in a culture that made me feel that way, but there are so many opportunities and if you take nothing from this conversation and I truly hope you've taken three notes, three pages of notes, like I have but figure out and do a deep internal dive into how you're creating a safe culture where people feel like there is open communication, that people care about you as a human being and not as a worker bee, that you're having Constant conversations about mental health.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: Take care, listen in and I think the listening quality is so profound because Fundraisers and especially people in nonprofit, are hardwired to listen.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: We listen to donors, we listen to nuance.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: We're always trying to figure out what is the one thing they've said that could connect to our mission or that could connect to our mission or that could connect to this project?
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: Are we listening to ourselves?
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: That could be something, john, that I think we're really missing.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: No, I think, like activating this particular sector.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: I mean it could be revolutionary, because we talk a lot about retaining donors but we don't talk enough about how are we retaining this staff that's on the front lines, that's seeking that, and I think Creating this type of workplace that's safe Is going to lead to the business results that you want, and that's not why you were doing it.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: That's the same with this conversations about, but I think it all points to that you know of like creating a safe place that people want to invest their careers in, their lives, and all those things.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: I think there's so many wonderful nuggets here, and I just so appreciate it.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: We love story here, and I can tell that you guys do too.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: I would love to hear a story from both of you about a moment of philanthropy that really touched your life, eleanor.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: I think we'll start with you.
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: You know, I've been thinking about that and my dad was who I thought of immediately.
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: My dad had the real gift of giving and I watched him my whole life be the one that would.
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: If someone had a need, he was going to be the one that met it and he did it very quietly.
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: Most people didn't know what he was doing, but he was.
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: That's just who he was, and the ripple effect of that in our family has just been powerful.
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: I think I'm one of four kids and I'm now seeing how we have all kind of taken and embraced that kind of life and is trickling down to kids and grandkids.
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: That's a beautiful thing to see and I think that's what philanthropy does.
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: It has a ripple effect.
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: It doesn't just affect the one who's receiving a gift or receiving something, it affects those who are also a part of that giving.
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: And that was what came to mind.
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: What about you, Ashley?
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: You know I'm really going to have to echo Eleanor here.
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: I love how you know we talked about asking somebody in the caring profession what made you want to go into this field in the first place.
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: And, like I said a lot of times, just like Eleanor, it hearkening back to stories and memories of her dad.
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: This same thing is true of me with my mom.
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: My mom was a nurse.
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: Her whole life just retired shortly, just a little while ago, a couple years.
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: And when I was growing up we lived in Monterey, tennessee, which was like Mayberry, I mean like a wide spot on the road, one stoplight, and she was a home health care nurse and she would go from home to home and help these people there in Monterey Tennessee.
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: And I remember just so many times with this one night stands out in my mind.
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: I remember that it was snowing, it was winter, and she got a call at two in the morning that she needed to come to someone's home and I remember seeing her on the.
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: I woke up, I heard the phone ring and I heard her on the phone and she was giving instructions to this family, telling them what to do and that she was going to be right there, and the instructions sounded very weird, like getting a cardboard box and putting a blanket in it and putting it by the stove, and I thought what is she telling these people to do?
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: What is the emergency?
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: I was very concerned when she got home later that night, about four in the morning, she looked so tired and she explained to me.
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: I said what did you?
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: Are you?
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: Were you even on call?
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: And she said no, but they needed me.
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: I said for what?
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: Their cat was having kittens and they weren't quite sure what to do.
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: They just needed me to come help them.
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: And that was her.
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: That was just how she's always been.
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: I remember just story after story of that and again, just like Eleanor said, that trickle down effect of being shown from a very early age of what it looks like to have compassion, what it looks like to care, what it looks like to go above and beyond, to give back and to take care of one another, to live in community, to know that we are all in this together and not to stop and say that's not on my job description, but just to give.
• 44:12
  Speaker 4: And I will never forget either that night or many other things that my mother did that just hold fast in my memory and heart and have made me who I am.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: I just love hanging with y'all.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: I know Good human awards right here.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: Seriously Well, this conversation has grown my heart.
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: I can't wait to go back and process through everything you've talked us through.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: We try to pull it into a moment at the end and ask what's your one good thing?
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: If you could sum it, what's something you want to leave with us in our community today?
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: What's your one good thing, Eleanor?
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: Well, we've combined ours, we've got one for both of us.
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: Oh great, I love this, really talked about it, and what we really want people to realize and to remember is self-care is not selfish, but it's also it does not happen by yourself.
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: So I think we are in a world that is so self.
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: I mean, we're just, it's all about us, right?
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: And then we've got the world telling us if you're burning out or if you're feeling, then just take care of yourself.
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: And while that's important, you just cannot do it in a silo, you cannot do it in front of a computer screen, you cannot.
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: You have got to have community.
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: And that's our biggest thing is we just feel like it's not selfish and you cannot do it all by yourself.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, people are going to want to know how to take your classes, how to get your resources, how to find you on socials.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: Connect us with all the places you are, and certainly your website.
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: Well, you know what?
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: We are not very social networked because we both don't know how to do it very well.
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: But we do have a website.
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: It's cohort the number for care, cohortforcarecom, and you can totally get us through that website and we would love to have that interaction.
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: We both have LinkedIn pages, so if you want to message us, cohort for care has a LinkedIn page.
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: You can also get us that way.
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: We've also developed a digital workbook that's available on Amazon and it's called Get a Grip G-R-I-P-P and it's by Ashley and I, but it walks you through these steps of Grip.
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: We felt like we needed to have something out there.
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: If people couldn't, we much prefer to do it in a group setting or one-on-one, but this, at least, is a resource that people can go to if they're really are needing some help and they can.
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: It's $10, it's on Amazon.
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: It'll walk them through the steps and hopefully we'll just leave them on a path of health.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: For $10.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: Just the heart of service and I've already found it on Amazon.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: I already deep Googled Amazon.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: We will link that up in the show notes for the direct checkout Awesome.
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: Great, thank you.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: I just can't understate just how meaningful and how appreciative we are of this conversation.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: Thank you for showing up and loving on us and this community with your words and wisdom today.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: It's been a complete blast honestly, this is massively important work that you're undertaking and I have enjoyed every moment, as well as enjoying your incredible Tennessee accents.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: So thank you for that, and yeah, we're just here rooting you on.
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: We appreciate it.
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much for being here.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: We hope you're loving the Summer of Evolution series and to learn more you can head over to WeAreForGoodcom slash Evolution for all the playlists, resources and other ways to help you get inspired and activated this summer.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: We'd also love for you to join the conversation, share what you're learning on social media or join us at our free community at WeAreForGoodCommunitycom.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: Bonus points for snapping a picture and showing us where you're listening from.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: We can't wait for the next conversation.
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: See you soon, friends.