Burnout is Sneaky! (Challenge #67)

So back in Episode 60, I mentioned the bonkers life I was expecting during April and May, between working on TWO different universities’ re-accreditations, moving house, multiple hiring processes, the end of the school and fiscal years at my place of work, and just the sundry ups and downs of life as an educational leader in late spring. In episode 60 I also laid out my roadmap of how I (and by extension you) would try to get through that craziness without burning out. It’s now 6 weeks later, about half the stuff on the list above is done or at least progressing, and it feels like I owe y’all a progress report in the name of accountability. Am I indeed stopping burnout before it starts?

Well, mostly. 😉
 
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Welcome to the Kind Leadership Challenge, the podcast that empowers leaders to heal their organizations in ten minutes! I’m Dr. Sarah Clark, founder of the Kind Leadership Guild, where I use my PhD in Higher ed leadership and nearly 2 decades of experience in academic libraries to coach educational leaders to sustainably build a better world. 

Kind Leaders aren’t perfect, which is actually as it should be. In our unique ways, We make tough decisions without becoming jerks. We create impactful and burnout-proof systems for our organizations. And we know that once we stop controlling and start collaborating, even the most ambitious vision can become effortless. Kind Leadership’s pretty simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. So if you’re up for a challenge, stick around as I teach you how to create a resilient, thriving legacy that will strengthen your community long after you’re gone.

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I’m writing and recording this episode on May 6, 2023, a week and a bit before you’ll hear it in your feeds. As of today. I’ve finished the accreditation that I was a peer evaluator for, and am accelerating into higher gear on the accreditation at my place of work. My piece of the three job searches I was part of are all done, I am a week out from graduation and three weeks out from the end of the fiscal year. We closed on the house earlier this week, But I still have to supervise a few minor repairs and the move proper at the end of the month. So let’s do a check-in on how well the Kind Leadership process is serving me through the chaos! 
 
 Back 7 weeks ago, I told you my ideal outcome to the problem of my life craziness was to be able to say by the beginning of July that “work is flowing, the podcast is growing, and we’re settled comfortably into our new home with a marriage that’s as strong as ever.” To get there, I identified some key steps that I’d need to take to implement the three kind leadership skills of growing humanely, managing effectively, and creating collaboratively. 

 For growing humanely, which is the skill of staying in touch with your self and your values so you can make decisions from a place of confidence, my plan was to “watch my emotions and protect my sleep”. Results are a little mixed on the former, and pretty solid on the latter. However, burnout is a sneaky thing! I’ve far I’ve mostly handled my expected burdens with aplomb, I had a couple unexpected events crop up that triggered some old emotions around past personal and professional traumas and left me a bit wobbly for a few days. The fact that those surprise triggers cropped up wasn’t the issue so much as I spent more time than I should have numbing the feelings that followed rather than actually processing them. In both of those instances though, I caught myself within a day or so, found someone I could talk to, and figured out what I could learn from both situations. Sleep was much better—I’m a bit tired, but have been good about my bedtime, and even slept in yesterday and skipped my workout because I needed rest more than I needed leg day. All in all, I find myself a little scattered and rushed as a decision-maker right now, but nothing untoward. I’ll give myself a B here.
 
 Next up is the second kind leadership skill of managing effectively, or creating resilient plans and processes for whatever you’ve decided to do. There my strategy was simple—wherever possible, DELEGATE. And I will happily give myself a solid A here. Yeah, my confidence has been a bit shaky, but it’s remained solid enough to allow me to give up control and pass stuff on to others wherever I can. The movers and cleaners are all scheduled, and we’re meeting with our new handyman service next week to finalize the list of must-dos before we move at the end of the month. Side note—if you live in the Philadelphia or DC areas and would like to hand off your home maintenance needs to someone who is actually skilled in those areas, check out Birdwatch. My realtor turned me on to these folks, and they’re basically like having an on-call handyman. Link’s in the episode description. 
 
 Finally. We’ve got the third skill of creating collaboratively, where you build the trust needed with others to build the better world you envision. I didn’t need to do much I wasn’t already doing for my work craziness, but when it comes to the move, I had to make sure I wasn’t being too much of a control freak about things, and that my husband was part of the process. He’s got a huge work deadline coming up in early June, which meant I’ve been the de facto project manager. My challenge in collaboratively creating a successful move with my husband was handling a lot of the day to day items that needed to be done, while ensuring I consulted with him on the bigger stuff. With the exception of a few things I should have checked in with him on sooner, we’ve handled this pretty well! I waffled back and forth on whether to assign myself an A- or B+ here, but I’ll give myself some grace and go A-. Which is also where I land on the kind leadership skills as a whole at the midpoint of our springtime of craziness.

So, back to my vision of “work is flowing, the podcast is growing, and we’re settled comfortably into our new home with a marriage that’s as strong as ever.” At least right now, work is flowing tolerably well. The podcast is definitely growing, especially with the addition of the thursday challenging conversation livesteams I’ve been testing out. I’m also about 80% decided that I’m going to launch a cool new project over the summer, but not till after we’ve moved. If you follow me on linkedin or facebook, you’ve may know what I’m talking about. It’s too early to say that we will settle comfortably into our new house, but things are looking good. And I’m biased, but overall my husband and I make a pretty good team, though we’ve added one thing to our vision for this spring. It will be followed by a summer where we pretty much do NOTHING. 
 
 Gotta keep life in balance, right?

And that’s your challenge for this week—how can you grow humanely, manage effectively, and create collaboratively through your hectic times, while giving yourself both room for imperfection and a season of recovery? Let me know in the comments wherever you follow me.

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  Thanks as always for listening to the kind leadership challenge. Before you go, here’s a quick way you can spread the word of kind leadership. I’d like you to take a moment to think of one friend or colleague who could most benefit from this week’s challenge. Then, open your app or head over to kindleadershipchallenge.com/66 and share this episode with them. And add a friendly note as well. Never doubt that day by day, you’re building a better world, even if you can't see it yet. So until next time, stay kind now.