Latest / Hustle Rebels: Burnout Recovery for Over-Achievers / People Pleasing at Work: When Extra Responsibilities Lead to Burnout

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People Pleasing at Work: When Extra Responsibilities Lead to Burnout · Hustle Rebels: Burnout Recovery for Over-Achievers

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was working full-time on light duty, paying the town my whole damn paycheck, and worrying about whether I was doing a good enough job.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is Hustle Rebels, the podcast for people who still want to win, but are no longer willing to burn themselves down to do it.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Renee Mansfield, your host and burnout recovery and leadership development coach.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to change the workplace culture and create leaders that people actually want to follow, and stop sacrificing yourself to systems that just never give back, stick around.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Subscribe, like, share, and hit that follow button so that you never miss another episode.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also interrupting myself to let you know quickly about an awesome new resource that I created for you guys called the Energy Leak Finder.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna help you guys find where you might be leaking energy in your day-to-day lives because energy is your greatest currency.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's time that you start protecting it.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'll put the link down below in the show notes.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, let's hop back into it.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: So today I want to talk about something that I wish I had questioned a lot sooner.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it came out of a conversation that I had with Lene Brown, who we're gonna have a conversation with next week.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: So definitely subscribe so that you don't miss that episode.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: But just because you can handle it doesn't mean it's yours to handle.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And if your immediate response is, well, if I don't do it, who the fuck will?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Stay with me, because that's exactly where I want to go.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: First, let me explain that opening.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Toward the end of my career as a firefighter paramedic, I took some time off for an emergency surgery.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: I also had AFLAT coverage and used some PTO during that time.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Then I came back to work full time on light duty while I was still recovering.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was still in FMLA and I was paying the town my whole damn paycheck because I had just been told that's how it worked.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Looking back, I have plenty of questions about that arrangement.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: But at that time, I was doing administrative work, secretarial work, things that I had never been trained to do, and getting frustrated with myself because I wasn't doing it as well as I thought that I should be.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't thinking, what training do I need for this?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Or is this a reasonable expectation while I'm recovering?
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking, why can't I do this better?
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Rene, you fucking suck at this.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: I had taken an arrangement that already asked a lot of me and added my own expectation of perfectionism on top of it.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Apparently, recovering from surgery wasn't enough to get me to lower my bar.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: I needed an excellent surprise secretary as well.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I can look back and recognize that now, but when you're in it and on some recovery drugs, you don't necessarily hear how ridiculous that sounds.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: You're just trying to get through the day.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Someone needs something done, you're there, you just figured the fuck out.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Then you do it again tomorrow.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And somewhere along the way, nobody has to ask you to do that anymore.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's the part I want to sit with today.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because you don't have to have been in my situation to recognize the pattern.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe a coworker needed help with something a few months ago, you knew how to do it, so you helped.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: No big deal.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Next time, they came back to you.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Then somebody else started sending the exact same thing.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Next thing you know, now you're spending part of every single week doing that work that nobody ever actually discussed making your responsibility.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And when it doesn't get done, you feel incredibly guilty.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Does that sound familiar?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: When does that happen?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: When does a favor become something that you feel like you're failing at?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to think about one thing that you're carrying right now that started as, sure, I can help with that.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Just one thing.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to make a whole inventory.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: But what was it?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And is it still a favor?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Or has everyone, including yourself, started treating it like part of your job?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now you might be thinking, okay, but I really am the one person who knows how to do it.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's fair.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: You might be.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: We tend to do this a lot, especially if you're an overachiever that is very good at a lot of different things.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: This reminds me of a story that was told about Picasso sitting at a table in Paris, drawing on a napkin.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Someone sees it and asks, Can I purchase that?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, sure.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: $10,000, an extraordinarily amount of money.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: They scoff at him.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: $10,000?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: It only took you five minutes to draw that.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And he responds, no, it took me a lifetime to draw this in five minutes.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And meanwhile, we're over here saying, Oh, don't worry about it.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's easy for me.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just do that.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because how often do we do the exact opposite with our own abilities?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: We say that all the time.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: I catch myself saying that all the time.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Don't worry about it.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's easy for me to do.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: I can figure that out.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: It'll only take a minute.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: We say these things like the fact that you can do it quickly makes it worth less.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: But how did you get so good at it?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: How much have you learned?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: How many mistakes did you have to make before you knew the ones to avoid?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: See, nobody hands you a problem and you know where to start.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: That has value in it.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're good at several things, like I mentioned, this can get really sneaky.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: You were hired for one role, but you can also fix the spreadsheet, write the announcement, figure out the software, organize the event.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So you do.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Then you minimize every one of those contributions because to you, none of them feels particularly difficult.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, the person who couldn't do it, that's why they came to you.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because they couldn't do it, but you can.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes people take advantage of that.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we take advantage of it ourselves.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we volunteer before they even ask.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then explain away why it doesn't deserve any recognition or compensation.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: We're negotiating against ourselves.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: If your job has grown to include several more skills and responsibilities, that deserves a conversation about your role, your workload, and your pay.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: You shouldn't have to reach the point of being overwhelmed before your contribution counts.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying to invoice your coworker every time you unfreeze their Excel.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm asking you to notice when I'm good at this becomes your reason for doing more shit for free.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Being able to figure something out is part of what you bring to the table.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Stop treating it like it doesn't count because it becomes easy for you.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And even when you're happy to help, there's still the question of whether you have room or capacity.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: We look at the task and think, it'll only take me 20 minutes.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: But those 20 minutes were already supposed to be going somewhere else.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: You had other work to finish.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to take your lunch break.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: You had a time that you intended to leave.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: So when you say yes, what else gets pushed?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you're eating lunch over your keyboard again because you spent your break helping someone else.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then you get home frustrated because you never got a minute to yourself.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: That frustration makes sense.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Your time did go somewhere else.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: But did you actually choose where it went?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Or did being helpful actually make that decision for you?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now I know some workplaces actively do dump work on the people who are dependable.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Some leaders keep handing the same person more work because they know it'll get done that way.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that needs to be addressed.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're leading a team, I highly recommend you go check on your best, most reliable employees, the people that you keep going back to because you know that they get shit done.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Ask them how they're doing, genuinely, and give them the time to answer.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Ask them, do you have room for what's actually on your plate right now?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And what support would help?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: And pay attention beyond the, yeah, I've got it, no worries.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because they might actually mean that, but if they look exhausted, they keep working late and haven't taken their PTO in three years, it's worth following up.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Notice their body language.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: While you can't just know what someone is thinking by looking at their body language, you can notice when their no worries doesn't seem to match how they're doing.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: You could say something like, I know that you'll find a way to get it done, but I'm asking whether the workload is reasonable.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: I've noticed that you're staying late, and I want us to look at what could come off your plate.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then listen, be willing to make something change.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: If every time they admit that they're stretched and all they get is, we appreciate you, they'll learn that there's no point in even telling you.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: They shouldn't have to fall apart before you offer support.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And for the person that's listening who keeps stepping in, think about what happens when you imagine leaving something for someone else to handle.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel guilty?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Do you worry that they'll be disappointed?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Or do you think it's going to take them forever?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna get it done myself.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: I specifically know that last one for sure.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: But if you always take that task back because you're quicker, when does the other person get a chance to learn?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: And when do you get to stop doing it?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: It may take them longer at first.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: They may need to ask some questions.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: They also may do it differently than you.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: I know, it's difficult.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: For an ordinary task, that can be a part of learning.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Their learning curve doesn't automatically need to become your extra workload.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is where, if I don't do it, who will deserve an actual answer.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Who is responsible for it?
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if they don't know how to do it yet, who can help them learn?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: You're allowed to ask that before volunteering yourself as the permanent solution.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes helping is exactly what you need to do.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: You have the room, you care about the person, you choose to step in, or it is actually part of your role.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm asking you to notice the times when you never gave yourself that choice.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: The times when your mouth just said, Yeah, I'll take care of it, before you even checked in with what you were already carrying, or what your actual role is.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's where I want you to pause this week.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: When that familiar request comes in, give yourself a moment to just answer and ask yourself, is this actually mine to take on?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: If it is, you can still ask what support you need, or what else needs to move.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: If it isn't, you can help point someone in the right direction without taking ownership of the whole damn thing.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Something as simple as, hey, I can show you how to do it, but I can't take this over.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need a 12-minute defense as to why you're busy enough to deserve a limit.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: See, I wish I'd stopped and asked some of those questions when I was on light duty.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: I needed time to recover, I needed clarity about what was expected of me, and I needed training for the work that I had literally never done before.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, I just kept trying to become better at handling an arrangement that I never stopped to question.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I want you to catch a little sooner before I did.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Before you get angry with yourself for struggling to carry something, check whether you're even supposed to be carrying it in the first place.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: This came up in my conversation with work navigation strategist Lene Brown, which you will hear next week.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And we talked about what you can do when your job just isn't working for you.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: But leaving might not be the right move right now.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: She brings a really practical way of looking at where you still have some choices, even when the people around you haven't changed.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: So for this week, stay with this one thing.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Notice a moment when being able to handle something makes you feel obligated to handle it.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Give yourself a second before saying yes.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And if something came to mind while you were listening, I would love for you to leave a comment.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: What have you taken on that started as a favor?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: It somehow became a responsibility.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: As always, I'm a nosy neighbor, so I would love to know.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: So follow or subscribe to Hustle Rebels wherever you're listening, and leave a review if this episode hits home.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're watching on YouTube, hit like and subscribe and share this with someone who you definitely heard say, It's fine.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just do it myself.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you guys next week with my conversation with Lene.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Have a good one.