Why burnout isn’t about hard work
Yuriy: Hello, everybody. Hello, Jerry. Thank you for joining us for this conversation.
Jerry: Thank you for having me. It's a delight to be with you. I'm always interested in meeting new friends and finding kinfolk around the world. So thanks for having me on the show.
Yuriy: I've just finished your book and I'm still under the impression – an emotional impression – about the challenges people have in their growth and leadership. What struck me were your words about brokenhearted openness and being a warrior at the same time. Because usually in our minds, it's totally different things. I recently read a report that says that designers and creative people and managers are people who are most prone to burnout in almost all of the professions. Almost 25% of them report that they are almost at burnout. Is there any chance for us that most teams will be working without burnout and enjoy their work?
Jerry: To put your question more simplistically, is there any hope? And the answer is yes. Okay. So I really want to first of all acknowledge and recognize that that's where your attention went first. What I see in you is a broken, open-hearted warrior who is empathetically caring about the people he works with. And I want to lift that up. Because one of the challenges of being a human being, let alone being a CEO, is that when we open our heart and feel the struggle of other people, we ourselves can feel overwhelmed, which is why we tend to shut down. It's not because we're sociopaths. It's because it's too much. It's called compassion burnout. And you just asking that question tells me that you're trying to lean into that in a compassionate, empathetic way. So Mazel tov, congratulations. I'm happy for you. And you're doing a good deed. Now to your question. Do you remember in the book I talk about the crow? Okay, so just to summarize for people who haven't read the book, the crow is my image of an inner critic. And the image came to me in college when I was a student of a poet named Marie Ponsot. And Marie used to talk about the crow who sits on your shoulder telling you what a terrible writer you are.
Yuriy: Chapter seven. I remember.
Jerry: Chapter seven. You remember loving the crow. And so what she used to say to me is, or all of us, is "shoot the fucking crow." Okay? What I've done is I've turned that into love for the crow. Now let me explain what's going on. If you remember in that chapter, I talk about the artist who takes a knife to the painting that they've just created and tears it apart. I talk about the musician or the songwriter who struggles because the thing that they put on paper just never quite captures what was in their mind or what was in their heart. Or I, as a writer, struggle because I write a sentence that you might find beautiful, but I find lacking. Okay. Now what's going on with all of this? What's happening, and this is why I think designers in particular may be feeling this, is what's happening is burnout is not a function of stress. I'm going to say that again: Burnout is not a function of hard work.
Burnout stems from the very human phenomenon of taking our sense of self-worth and pouring it into the work that we're trying to do. So who am I as a writer if I can't construct a sentence that moves you? Who am I as an artist if I can't even create a design that speaks to what's in my head? And how frustrating that is! And so when you take all of these examples, what we're really talking about is the crow sitting on the shoulder telling you that the work you do sucks and that you'll never be as good as you think you are or you want to be. That then leads to the sense of burnout. And so the hope lies in what I call loving the crow – realizing that the whole point of the crow sitting on your shoulder is to actually make you better. It just does it in a way that is just painful. So now I'll shut up.
Yuriy: When you care a lot at the moment, it becomes too hard to take everything on yourself and you build the wall to protect yourself. And then some people can think that you are too thick-skinned, and then it's always a balance. You open the door, you close it again, you open the door and you close it again.
Jerry: Yeah, well, and what you're describing, by the way, isn't just a phenomenon of the artist. It's a phenomenon of a founder. It's the phenomenon of a CEO. We care so much that we actually have to shut the door. And the problem is when we shut the door, we disconnect ourselves from the source of solace and comfort that's available to us: the people with whom we work.
Walking into the kiln: sacrifice by vhoice, not by fear
Yuriy: Do you know the people who could balance it once for a while, or it's always the play because the company grows? Like maybe it was easy for you when there were like 10 people, but when they're like thousands of people, hundreds of people, it becomes harder and harder to balance that.
Jerry: Yeah, so this question has animated my coaching for 27 years. The 27 years that I've been a coach. And the best way into understanding this phenomenon that I've ever seen stems from a story that I actually share in Reboot. So if you remember the story of the Potter. Okay, so the story goes like this. There was an ancient Potter who spent his entire life trying to perfect the most exquisite glaze imaginable. And at the end of his life, deciding that his meaningful life was over, he walks into the kiln and disappears into the fire. The next day, the potter's assistants take out the pots and they're covered with the most exquisite glaze imaginable. And that's the end of the story. Now the reason this story comes to mind is because to me, it's a perfect example of what you as a founder try to do, what I as an artist try to do. We decide that the only meaning in our life is the perfection of that exquisite glaze. Now the glaze could be, you know, a fabulously successful, financially successful company. The glaze could be the most amazing product in the world. The glaze could be, you know, a short story or a song. But the trick in that story is "deciding that his meaningful life was over." You see, when we look at this phenomenon through the lens of that experience, what's happening is the Potter's only source of meaning is external to him. I'm going to say that again. The only source of affirmation and validation comes from without rather than within. Okay, so then the potter walks into the kiln where the pots are fired and turned into something. This is a paradox. Because sometimes to create that most amazing product, that amazing book, when I'm writing a book, my wife will tell you, "Don't even look at me," because I am so into it. Sometimes what's necessary to create the most exquisite glaze imaginable is to sacrifice everything. Okay, now that's gonna sound counterintuitive from a touchy-feely coach like me. "What do you mean?" Right?
And here's the issue. Here's the unlock. Too often we walk into the kiln for unconscious reasons. Too often we believe that we have to deplete ourselves, to literally destroy ourselves, in the pursuit of work for reasons that are barely conscious to us. Take for example – you've read Reboot so you know I'm going to go there – it might be because we're trying to redeem our ancestors in some way. 'Oh man, let me tell you what they sacrificed to put you through school,' right? 'Let me tell you about the financial sacrifices that they made so that you can have a life.' 'How dare you not work to your bones when they went without?' And so we walk into the fire. We walk into the kiln. Or: 'The only way I'm going to feel good about myself is if I have a successful company.' You know that feeling? And success means a particular set of things. And so the result is that we kind of steamroll over everybody in our life to get to that place. So what I often say, and then I'll shut up. What I often say about this is: I don't really care if you walk into the kiln. Sometimes you're gonna have to walk into the kiln. What I care about is: are you walking into the kiln by your choice, by your conscious choices, or are you dictated to by fears and limiting beliefs from your childhood – what I call subroutines? Because if you are, you are not really living your life. You are letting the programs that were installed in you as a kid determine your life. That's my answer.
Beyond the dichotomy of motivation
Yuriy: Yeah, I always hope that that's because I love what I do. But sometimes you can be so much in the flow that you even don't understand.
Jerry: Well, you probably do love what you do, and you're also probably terrified to not do what you do. Both.
Yuriy: Yeah, but mostly let's pretend at least for now that it's 90%. That for 90% it's because of the love. And I always try to hire people to build our leadership team, and everybody in the team, who love what they do. And I had a challenge because once I read a lot of books on psychology. Unfortunately, with life experience, I can also read some patterns and say, "Okay, this person looks like somebody familiar I've seen before." And I see that motivation for this specific designer is mostly external. He wants to get rich. He wants to make money, nothing about it. He never thought about that until he knew he can make a lot of money in this profession. Should I... and I feel the pain in his... like everything you mentioned, his poor childhood, his struggles, he worked in the supermarket as a cashier and then he saw the book about design and decided he'll become a designer because somebody from one of his friends worked there. And the question is, is it wise, one, to hire such people that are super motivated but by external motivation, or should I try to help them to find themselves as a leader?
Jerry: I think you're working with a false dichotomy. I think you've set yourself up for an impossible choice. Because the way you've set it up is, "Am I hiring people who are purely motivated for internal reasons or purely motivated for external reasons? Or is it okay to hire people?" And the problem with the question is that no one is purely motivated for one or the other reason. Okay? The problem to hold on to isn't "I've got a bunch of people who are externally motivated." The problem is if you have a bunch of people who are externally motivated but think they're internally motivated, then you've got a misalignment and that leads to dysfunction in the team. So what should you as a CEO, what should you as a leader do in that instance? First of all, you should model something. And what you should model is self-awareness. Let's try it, just a simple thing. Don't worry, I won't coach you or make you cry. What part of you... you said 90% of what you do is because you love what you do. That's an internal motivation, correct? Well, tell me about the 10%. What do you want externally? Do you want to feel love? Do you want to feel safe? Do you want to feel that you belong? Do you want to provide for your family? What is it that motivates you?
Leading with legacy and radical self-awareness
Yuriy: So at this stage it is mostly not about security, like financial security, whatever, yes? Because you're already nine years on the market and this is mostly solved. But when I get old, I don't want to say that my life decisions were wrong. That I wasted my life doing something that wasn't impactful or smart, or that now I have a better idea of how I should have lived my life. Like, "I should have done something different." For example, I have created a service company, a consultancy, yes? But maybe I should work on products, or maybe I should go and become a priest, whatever, or write books. "Like I had to do something different. I was mistaken." So even if I did what I liked, maybe the journey I took wasn't so good after you reflect on that at the end of your journey.
Jerry: Okay, so just hold on to that spot for a moment. And I would argue that you're not even talking about being externally motivated. Your internal motivation just got expanded by a notion of legacy. At the end of my days, I want to know that I contributed meaningfully to the world. And I don't care how I did it, whether it's a product or the way I lead or the people that I've loved. Now, do you remember – I forget where you are in the book – but do you remember when I encountered that old oak tree that's toppled over? Briefly, I tell this story of going for a walk in California and coming upon this old oak tree that has died and has toppled over. And I'm turning over in my mind again and again this question: "Am I a good man?" To the point where my wife is like, 'Shut up. Shut up. I'm tired of this question. Of course, you're a good man. Of course, you've been a good father.' And I look at this oak tree and I say, "Here lies a good man." Even though they made mistakes, even though they weren't always the person that they wanted to be, they lived their life in a meaningful way. Imagine talking to your employees and colleagues about your legacy. That's counterintuitive. That can feel like I'm being egotistical or narcissistic. "Me? Talk about my feelings? No, I'm not going to do that." But imagine talking about those things and asking, say, a new hire: "At the end of your career, how would you like to be known?" Here's a very specific question you could ask as you start to bring the team in or even do an offsite with your existing team: "When you leave this company – because the truth is they will leave – what would you like to be most proud of? How would you like to be known?" Or "When you leave this company, what would you like people to say about the company that you built, that you walked into the kiln to build?" You see what happens, Yuriy, is that we bind people together by sharing honestly the motivations. Some people are going to say, "I just want to be rich." But even – and I write about this in Reboot – even greed has at its base a wish to be safe. See, "If I have all the money in the world, then..." (fill in the blank). "My family will be safe, I will be safe." And so the way through what you set up as a dichotomy is really to model being connected to all the parts of you, the 90% and the 10%. So that the entirety of that person can show up at the job.
How to help your team befriend their inner critic
Yuriy: Thanks, that's deep. The second part: when you see the person with this crow – and lots of designers and creative people, from what I see from my experience, I really love deep people, who have a lot of interest, they think about... they respect a lot. But usually, to motivate the person to think about themselves a lot, it's because they have these crows that tell them to develop themselves, to grow, to be better. And one of the best people in the team, even officially state it, that they feel this thing about being... feel that they are imposters, that they are not good enough yet, they have to grow. Even if they are the best in the team, there's still this thing. Like, how can we and should we try to help them? This will be the question and then another one.
Jerry: Well, what I would say is don't see the crow as a problem. See the crow as a friend, right, who's just a little bit annoying. And if we go back in time, do you remember right now you feel solid? "I got it." But that wasn't always the case. Remember the anxiety and fear you felt when you started the business? You can connect empathetically to that feeling. And you can say to that employee who is really good but thinks that they're an imposter, "Dude, I know what you're feeling. I remember that feeling. It took me a long time to understand that I am enough just as I am. And I'm going to work really, really hard out of love, not fear." And it's a struggle. Right? I'm about to work on... I've been spending the summer working on my third book. I get started and then I stop. I get started and I stop. I say, "Who's gonna read it? Who cares?" My God, I'm so tired of that. But you see what I'm doing? I'm sending that voice a little love. I'm not saying "I'm a shit" because I can't get rid of that voice. I'm human. I have that voice. That voice compelled me to write a book that you read and felt moved by.
Guiding your team to see for themselves
Yuriy: Do you ever have a feeling that you are already understanding more about the world than your colleagues, for example?
Jerry: Okay, so are we talking about me or are we really talking about you?
Yuriy: I have to be open. I have quite a few conversations when I said I was working a lot on myself previously. And once I had a therapist who told me, "There is nothing else to work on with you." It's not true, because as you mentioned, you need to always be waking up. It's not like... something like that. But it looks like on average, there are no more large issues to focus on. And the problem was that I had a lot of training in my childhood with bullies, with people who said, ‘I don't love you.’ And I said, ‘Okay, no problem. Tell me 10 times more that you don't love me.’ And I feel that my skin is very thick. So I can handle a lot of aggression, a lot of conflicting stuff and don't care much about that. I can isolate it. It's not good because sometimes it can influence your view of the world. Maybe sometimes you can't hear the pain of other people because of that.
Jerry: I relate to all of that. I developed those skills as well. I used to get very frustrated as a young business executive because oftentimes the answers were obvious to me. You know that feeling? Sitting in a room and they're all like scrambling around and you're like, 'Fuck, it's obvious, do this.' The good side of that is when we execute against it, we're pretty competitive. We're pretty good. The downside is we get really frustrated. Same thing happens when we see somebody who, to use my language, is complicit in creating the conditions in their lives that they say they don't want. Right? So they constantly date the same kind of person and then they bemoan to us, and you're like, 'What are you doing? You're doing this to yourself.' Right? So it's frustrating. You ask a deeper question here, which is: "What is one to do?" Okay. And that's a question I would argue that is a post-midlife into elderhood question. 'Cause you, you frame the question to me, "Did I ever experience that?" Dude, I'm a fucking coach. I experienced it all the time. But here's what I understand. If I tell somebody what they're doing wrong and what they need to do to fix it, they're not going to learn. Even if they allow themselves to take it in, my job, just like as a parent, my job is to withstand other people's feelings with compassion. See, we have this open heart. We start to see things. And we said before that sometimes when we see things, we want to shut that heart. I got it. It's painful to watch somebody repeat the same mistake again and again and again. I don't care if it's a business context or a romantic context or a life context. It's really painful, especially if we care about that person. The question to hold on to is – or the observation to hold on to is – because I love that person, what is the most effective way to support that person? Effective. And first, be true to my own words. Live with an inner and outer alignment. So I'm not hypocritical. Second, lead with empathy. "Boy, I know it's a struggle for you. By the way, when I have struggled with this, this is what I've done." See, I'm doing this with you right now. First, I established the similarity of our experiences. And then I shared with you that I see this as part of my eldering. I'll be 62 this year. I'm moving into this new phase of my life where the measure of my life isn't going to be the pot of gold that I create. It's about the lives that I've touched. That's... and so sometimes someone needs to be told directly, "You're doing this to yourself, stop it." And more often than not, they need somebody who stands with them shoulder to shoulder and says, 'I get it, it's fucking hard. By the way, this is what I did when I was in a similar situation. Might be similar to you, might not.' You see what I'm doing?
Yuriy: Yeah, that works.
Jerry: By the way, this is a really good leadership skill to develop. Because one of the mistakes that leaders will make is that they will build a system where all of the employees have to come to them for an answer. And then they get really frustrated and they call up an executive coach and say, "Why can't anybody make a decision without me?" Well, you built a system where everybody's dependent upon you seeing clearly. Your job is to help them see clearly, not see clearly on their behalf. You see the difference?
Rethinking 'Founder Mode' without micromanagement
Yuriy: Yeah, it depends on the topic. That's the easiest way, in a way that may look like an easy solution, because you just delegate people to make decisions and say, "I trust you guys." But from what I see in... sometimes it also says... What do you think about "founder mode," for example? Do you remember this conversation? The CEO of Airbnb, Brian Chesky, wrote an article that he tried this kind of delegation, and at the end, it went to some disorganized organization, where everybody was doing something, but the speed of movement wasn't there. So he had to bring the culture back to how it was in the beginning when he made a lot of decisions and added speed to the company.
Jerry: No, it's not. And I will confess I have made the same mistake in my own businesses and sometimes, in my wish to remove myself from the day-to-day struggles, I don't want to decide what credit card the company should use. I don't care. Right. But when I tried to remove myself from that, what I ended up doing inadvertently was removing myself from setting the vision and driving direction. Right? And so, as is often the case, I think Brian is correct. I think the way Paul Graham interpreted it may not have been 100% correct, because it was also Paul's essay that elevated that. It was, I guess, last September. I think that there's a middle ground in there, which is not pushing everybody out of the way and being an asshole, but picking the most important things, the things that create leverage, and staying focused on it. And it might be product design. It might be, you know, like... The person who just popped in my head is Luis von Ahn, who's been a client for a very long time. I think we had 30 employees at Duolingo when we started. No one has a better feel for the product than Luis. No one. In fact, his sensibility around marketing is nuanced and creative. And you don't want to remove him from that process. Just like you don't want to remove Jerry from the process of defining what Reboot is. On the other hand, the companies cannot grow past that individual unless you as the founding CEO are successful in implanting that vision into the people who follow you. I'll give you a well-known example. I think Satya Nadella has done a fantastic job at Microsoft. And he's not in founder mode. Steve Ballmer was in founder mode. Bill Gates certainly was in founder mode. Satya Nadella has created more economic value than the other two combined. So we have to be very careful of glorifying a simplistic answer to a complex and complicated challenge. It's much more nuanced. And once again, the dichotomy is false. Either you're in "founder mode" or you're "not in founder mode." It's more nuanced than that.
Finding joy in repetition and reinvention
Yuriy: I liked what you said about sharing vision and aligning everybody on vision as the most important part. The challenge, what I see about myself when the company is already nine years old, it's sometimes hard to repeat yourself so many times.
Jerry: Amen, brother.
Yuriy: After like five years, 10 years, you're still having to repeat the same things that for you are super obvious, but for newcomers, maybe not.
Jerry: It's the hardest thing, right? I remember standing next to a client at an all-team meeting, and he had just given a speech about the vision of the business, and I said, "You know, great job, really great." He goes, 'Jerry, but I gotta say it every week.' I was like, "Yeah, I know." It's the hardest part. You know, I'll write a document, I'll sort of lay it all out, do a great job with that. I put it out there and then people forget. They're like, "I gotta do it again." And again and again and again. But here's the thing: that's our job. To repeat ourselves again and again and again. Sometimes we have to repeat ourselves in a product design session. Sometimes we have to repeat ourselves with clients and customers, right? But that's our job.
Yuriy: You have to learn to love it.
Jerry: You have to learn to love it. That's right. And you have to find a way. You're nine years in. We're going to end up talking about a year from now when you're like, "Jerry, 10 years in, I'm losing my fucking mind. Bored." You have to not just learn to love it. You have to learn how to be intellectually stimulated by the same problems again and again and again.
Yuriy: Yeah. Yes. That's a plan to reinvent the company every seven years.
Jerry: That's right. Why did you pick seven?
Yuriy: The number I've heard a lot is that after seven years you have to fire yourself from your previous job and start something new because you will stop developing.
Jerry: You want to hear a funny little biological fact about human beings, which I don't even know if it's true, but I've heard this. Every seven years, every cell in our body has died off and been replicated by a new cell. So every seven years, you're reinventing. You have been rebooted. You have been reinvented. And I think that there's something to that. I think every seven years, there's a complete refresh. What are we in business to do? What do we want? What's our objective? Where are we going? Yeah. Otherwise, you talk about burnout. Otherwise, you get really bored. And then you either start messing with the business or you see the founders go, "I'm going to be kicked upstairs. I'm going to be executive chair. I'm not going to be CEO anymore." You know, Brian, I think, has found a way to maintain his own internal vivaciousness, his love, his drive by climbing new mountains and solving new challenges. Otherwise it's just maintenance mode, and that's boring.
The founder's dilemma
Yuriy: The last question. So about any company, I guess, but for service companies the most, there are three missions. One is to make happy clients, second is to make happy people with whom you work (the company itself), and third, the founders also should be happy because they will quit and sell the company or just close everything. And ideally, most of the companies on the market would say that clients should be priority number one. Sometimes you feel like the same people can say, "Our clients are most important" and "Our team workers are most important." It's impossible to have two things that are most important. Yes? You always have to make some decisions and decide. And then also stakeholders, investors, people who have to benefit from the business. As a founder many years ago, I decided, "Okay, you need to prioritize because you have to have a framework for decisions." For example, "Let's see, we see that talents are most important in our industry. If you have great people, everything else will come. So I will focus on the team as most important." But it's also the challenge of balance because It's very easy, as you mentioned, you can be left with scraps after the family dinner, you say, 'Let's the family have the food' and then... yeah. And also... yeah. So do you have any advice for balancing interests of different stakeholders and yourself in life?
Jerry: I loved your framing. And I love where you're going. You're teaching me something by the way you did it. And it's something I actually can feel within my own self. My own company is 11 years old. If the company is not organized in a way that the founders are having fun, then what's the point? And so if you hold on to your own personal values and prioritize your own self to the degree that you're prioritizing the experience of your employees or even your clients, then I think you've kind of hit a winning formula. The challenge I've always had with the notion of "balance" is it implies... do you know, we would call it a seesaw or teeter-totter. It's a toy you find at a playground. The problem with balance is that it implies that there's this optimal state where the seesaw just stays still. And I don't know anybody's life that is like that. I think what's more applicable is that when I look at the totality of my life, have I been available to myself? Like when we're done, I've got one more phone call. And the reason I'm wearing this white shirt is I'm going to go for a hike in the mountains for two hours. I've had a wonderful conversation with you, a wonderful conversation with a friend, I've got a few notes I've got to write, and then I'm out. So the balance is in the totality of how I spend my time, not in the... you know, like I'm on sabbatical right now. And I said to my wife last night, "Yesterday afternoon I spent about three hours just thinking about where I want the company to go, what I want to do for my work." Was I working? It was incredibly enjoyable. And it felt like relaxation. It certainly wasn't walking into the kiln. So there's a long-winded way of saying is: I think prioritizing a sense of self and the experience is really important. I'll leave you with this quote from the Bible, which I will mangle, which is: "What does it profit a man to gain the world if he loses his soul in the process?" I don't want you being successful only to feel miserable. That's not the point of it all. I want you to be a good person, to end your days feeling great and looking back and saying, "Boy, I had one hell of a career, didn't I?" I think going way back, all those sacrifices that ancestors made to create opportunity for you, that would make them happy: that at the end of your days, you were a good man who did good work and felt good about your life.
About Jerry Colonna and Reboot.io
Yuriy: Thank you, Jerry. Do you have anything to plug in for our viewers? How would you like to finish? Because this was already a great finish line.
Jerry: You're welcome. The only thing I would say is you can follow all things Reboot at Reboot.io. We've got coaches, we've got podcasts, we've got books, we've got retreats and all that stuff. But really, if it hasn't come through, I love what I do. We love what we do. And we love making a difference. And that's what we're committed to.
