Speaker 1  0:00  

Burnout is not caused by too much work. I’ll say that again because it runs against everything most of us have been told. Burnout is not caused by too much work. It plays in the same sandbox as the work, but it is not the root cause. And if you’ve ever taken a vacation, used a mental health day, done everything with the Wellness perks promise would help you with, and come back just as depleted as you left. That distinction is the reason why. My guest today is Yana Costens. Yana spent 12 years in the design and tech space before shifting into an executive coaching career, where she now focuses on burnout prevention and authentic leadership for women in tech. And she’s one of those rare coaches, a genuinely tech native coach, which means everything she shares in this conversation comes from having lived the environment she helps women and others navigate. This episode is also about taking radical responsibility for our own well-being, not the surface-level version, the real-level radical responsibility. We get into an analogy that anchors this whole conversation about the high performance car. You have to listen to understand that. How do you take care of a high performance car instead of saying, “Hey, you take care of a high performance leader. It turns out, we also dig into hyper responsibility, that instinctive, automatic reflux where the deadline slips, the boss walks in with a bad mood, a project wobbles, and your brain immediately concludes this must be your fault. We talk about how rest is not a reward for doing great work, but is often treated that way, and how it should be instead a prerequisite for doing great work. One honest note before we start: Yana and I both acknowledge in this conversation that none of this say just let it go fix this stuff is hard. It comes back under stress. I shared my own recent experience of exactly that. So listen with compassion for yourself. Listen with a “Hey, I hear this now. What do I do? kind of approach. If you’re stepping into a new role, carrying everyone around with you, or quietly wondering why their vacation didn’t make you feel better, this episode is for you. Let’s dive on in. Welcome to the Leading Women in Tech podcast, the show that celebrates women in technology leadership. I’m your host Tony Collis, and this podcast is the result of my passion for building better tech by diversifying the leadership of the technology sector. Join me on this journey as I discuss all things leadership, what it takes to be innovative, breaking through the glass ceiling, be a great leader, and how to navigate the unique experiences we face as women in tech. So sit back, grab your headphones, and get ready to be inspired to become a better leader. Welcome to the show, Yana. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Speaker 2  2:49  

Hi, Tony. So nice to be here.

Speaker 1  2:52  

Yeah, well, I’m really excited about this conversation because the conversations we’ve had, we seem to have a lot of shared ideas. But before we get to that, tell me a little bit about you, your you yourself, your journey, where you got to where you are today. Let’s tell everybody a little bit about you.

Speaker 2  3:08  

Yeah. So my name is Yana Yana Karstens, and I have been in the design and tech space for about 12 years before I shifted into executive coaching, so I’m still in the design and tech space. However, in a different capacity, and I’m really thrilled to be talking to you and to your audience because, as a fellow woman in tech, there’s just so much alignment that you and I have in regards to our experience, what we’re passionate about, how we can help the audience, but I focus mainly on executive leadership, authentic leadership. My focus is on burnout prevention, and I just love, love, love empowering women in tech, especially because there is a certain point that I have found that we all tend to reach, that either breaks our careers or it shifts them drastically, and I’m really passionate about helping women not just survive that shift, but to help them thrive. So I’m here really to talk to you about like the root causes of burnout, and what keeps women in tech progressing without losing themselves, and what makes them like really, really successful without burning

Speaker 1  4:30  

out? I love this as a topic. We know that burnout is so prevalent in the industry. I would say all industries actually, but I do think tech has its own special form of burning people out. A lot of people think it’s startup culture, but it’s not just that. I deal with so much burnout from big corporate as well. There’s something about it. But tell me a little bit more. You must be only the third executive coach with a tech background who is coaching in tech. I have met who I haven’t trained, so I’ve trained quite a few women in tech to become coaches at this point. But I I’ve been coaching for a decade now, and you are only the third women in tech coach that I’ve met that I haven’t trained. Why are we so rare when we’re so needed? Do you think that I know that’s not what you expected me to ask you? But like, what is going on? We’re so rare.

Speaker 2  5:22  

Honestly, great question, and I don’t think I have the answer to that. But I have my suspicions. I have met quite a bit of senior designers who have left the industry to become coaches, mainly because of the problems that we’re experiencing, and when I was moving into leadership, I remember it was finding a industry-specific coach was like finding a needle in a haystack. I mean, it it was intentional search, and there are quite a bit of consultancies, even in tech, who are hiring coaches who have more of a general executive coaching background, but the answer to like why I honestly don’t know. Like I personally believe it’s a calling. Like I love tech. I love design. Like I’m still a designer at heart. But what pulls me towards coaching is designing lives, designing experiences, design helping people really thrive in their environment. Because as a designer, I use the same approach in terms of human center center design, applying it to somebody’s life. So for me, it’s more like okay, I’m being pulled towards something that seems really important that gives me purpose, and I don’t know if many people are really answering that call. I think we need more courage to actually step into it. However, my decision to do it professionally had to do with alignment with what I wanted to do, like in the future. But I believe that, in my experience, at least, like when I do coach women who are in tech, whether they’re men or women, having an experience being coached professionally turns them into coaches, so they can actually apply that on their teams. So it doesn’t just take like, hey, switch your career. More like let me have a model who can show me how to motivate, how to extract motivations, how to adapt to different personalities, how to be compassionate and set goals with assertive without being mean about it. Right. So now that I’m speaking about it and like hearing myself out loud, I just I think that we’re coming out of the woodwork, and I think because tech is tentatively still such a newer industry, everything else, like we’re we’re being born, we’re being indoctrinated into the profession. Like the more of us really progress up the ladder, once we start experiencing things. It’s like a natural shift that may happen for some of some of us.

Speaker 1  8:06  

I love that. It’s actually one of the reasons I started training coaches is because I there’s so many reasons, but one of them was I saw what you see, which is like often you start coaching people and they start becoming natural coaches in their own environment, but I saw it. There is a difference between being coached, knowing what that means, and actually being trained as a coach, knowing what that means. And so I started training. Actually, first of all, I started training coaches to help the leaders I was coaching use coaching in their work environment. And then I realized there was there’s a demand for coaches out there doing the same kind of coaching that both you and I-I know I didn’t train you-but when I was speaking to you before, like the frameworks you use are very similar to mine. Your approach is very similar to mine. It is not what I would say. Like a lot of the coaching industry does, we’re a little bit different, and I think that’s healthy. And and you know, ultimately, that’s been one of the things I found out about becoming a training coaches. But I started because I saw the people I was coaching starting to use coaching, and I was like, “We we need to hone that before you really call that coaching. Like, let’s get that skill down. So I, I love that you see that too. Like the the people we we coach need to bring this skill into their workplace because it oh it makes such a difference. Anyway, before I talk about that all day, let’s talk about the our we’ve got quite a few things that we are both passionate about, and one of the ones that we’ve talked about privately, and I want to now to bring to the show is leading from a place of personal well-being and empowerment. And I don’t think I talk about this enough on the show. I talk a lot about the tactics and strategies that we can use as leaders. I don’t often talk about how taking care of you. I talk about taking care of ourselves, but I don’t link that explicitly to how that makes you a better leader. So, tell me, talk me through your process of how you believe as leaders we need to own our well-being, and what does that mean for our leadership?

Speaker 2  9:56  

Such a great question. So, owning our own well. Being and what that means for our leadership. I mean, there’s so many ways that I can address this, but the top three things that really come to mind, like first, when we focus on our well-being and not just physical well-being, but holistic well-being, emotional, relational, mental, physical-we start modeling that for others. So, if I’m showing up a certain way, that’s going to impact my team. It’s going to impact my peers. Like we’re all bringing ourselves to the workplace. So much of modeling is this box that society has defined. This is what a leader should be. You know, they need to show up strong, collected, grounded. You know, decisive, all that stuff. But we don’t have enough modeling of, hey, I can take care of myself, but when I take care of myself, I show up as my best self, and that is

Speaker 1  11:04  

what my team

Speaker 2  11:05  

deserves. So that’s number one. Number two, when we start taking care of ourselves, I think that is the ultimately like the the I believe that the most powerful, most effective, most impactful leaders lead from the center of who they are, not from the top. So I’m a huge advocate for authenticity, authentic leadership, and that’s not something that we find outside of ourselves. Like we need to go within, really understand. I need to understand what are what’s pushing me. What are my wounds? What are my impulsions like? How do I show up, and what are my core values? And again, like connecting to that is felt. It’s a felt experience. All of a sudden, I was able to connect with my team more. I was able to address conflict better. I was able to set an example. I was able to hold people accountable without like losing connection. So, the second piece, like why why it’s important to take care of ourselves, really is let’s be an example. Let’s show the example. And then the third ultimate way is that burnout is just so prevalent. And the biggest headline, the biggest belief is that burnout is caused by too much work.

Speaker 3  12:23  

Oh,

Speaker 2  12:25  

I do not believe that burnout is caused by too much work. I was there too. I get it. It makes total sense. However, as somebody gone through it myself, as somebody who’s coached more than a dozen of people in this in that particular area, it turns out, burnout is not caused by too much work. It’s related. It it plays same sandbox with the work, but it’s not the root cause. And ultimately, when we take care of ourselves, when we really understand our own personal root causes of burnout, we can a start creating success without burning ourselves out, and also start creating success with others without burning them out.

Speaker 1  13:06  

There’s just there’s so many threads I want to pull on there. In particular, I love your focus on like the holistic well-being, the role modeling. I’m going to warn

Speaker 2  13:15  

the audience. Tony and I have so much to talk about. We really do really centered and easy to follow.

Speaker 1  13:24  

The first thing I want to talk about is this modeling because I’m a big believer, and part of my coaching practice is: if you want to change culture, you have to believe you have to be the culture you want to be. And as a leader, you can change culture at least beneath you, often sideways, sometimes upwards. It depends, and I truly believe if you can have that personal well-being focus, you can literally change the culture. A lot of people still tell me I can’t change the culture, and I’m like, yes, you can at least for bare minimum for your team, you can. You think I decide whether or not it’s it’s something you want to do. That’s a whole other conversation. How have you seen this play out? Have you seen when you’ve worked with somebody, have you seen the the shift in their team as you work with them? You talked about this modeling being so important. Like, what shifts do you see?

Speaker 2  14:10  

Oh, 100% 100% So the main outcome really tends to be that internal shift within somebody’s self. So, for example, if I’m somebody who’s leading a team and I’m always under pressure and I’m known to like handle pressure all the time, to push through all the time, to ignore setbacks, just you know, push, push, push, push, push. I’m going to be embodying that culture, maybe that I’m just like plugging into that already exists, especially when I work with consultancies. Where get it done, figure it out. You’re you’re hired to do to solve problems. There’s so much covert pressure that is being that is being put on people that. It’s just part of the culture. So when we shift, like how we operate, and show that hey, we can still get things done, we can still be successful, we can solve problems, but at the same time, not only pushing through, but treating ourselves like we’re these fancy, super expensive cars. Like, imagine yourself as a Ferrari. It’s

Speaker 3  15:25  

maintainable.

Speaker 2  15:26  

It’s meant to fast. It’s meant to, you know, it’s built for speed. It’s meant to like win races. But if you don’t go into the pit, if you don’t maintain it, if you’re not intentionally taking care of it, it’s going to break down really quickly, and when we shift from hey, we’re going to be a high-performing culture still, but we believe that rest is not really a reward for doing a great job, which a lot of us like. That’s how we believe. That’s how we operate, but it’s actually a prerequisite for being successful. It shifts a culture, and ultimately, cultures are made of people, right? So we can be the ones who are plugging in, but as leaders, we need to embrace that we are also culture setters. Like yes, we’re within that culture, but we also have to blaze that trail. We also have to start someplace, and I truly believe. I mean, it’s like, like one analogy comes to mind is like drinking a cocktail. If you add just like a little bit of a some other ingredient, a little bit more sugar, right? Or if you add some bitters in it, it’s just going to change the the chemistry of of the drink. It’s going to taste different. It’s going to impact it, so just because it’s one person making a shift, it actually tends to have a lot of impact, more impact than we believe it does. So it always starts with one person at a time.

Speaker 1  16:52  

I love that example of the Ferrari because I often, you know, I’m a big believer in high performance leadership, and is is like, what does that mean? Well, what’s the high performance car? As you say, it needs care, love, attention, in order to perform as a high-performance car, as the Ferrari. It’s the same with us, and I think that leads lovely into the thread, the second thread I wanted to pull on from your opening piece, which is about these root causes of burnout, and that actually the thing that a lot of people talk about, which is working hard causes burnout, is they often go hand in hand, as you said, in the same sandbox. But they are not one of the same. I’ve seen burnout from people who are being who are bored, who have nothing to do, and they get burnt out too. Burnout is actually, as everybody around here who’s listened to me long enough knows, burnout is chronic stress, and you get chronic stress from lots of different things. You can work crazy and not have that chronic stress that causes burnout, and that’s where the car analogy really comes in, which I want to just like expand a little bit for the audience because you can have a high performance car that’s like really on the road all the time, but it’s downtime, it’s being looked after, it’s being maintained, it’s being polished, it is, but it’s doing 1000s upon 1000s of miles, and it’s really well looked after. But you can also have the high performance car, which just sits in a garage, gathering dust, ignored, not used, and it you start it for the first time in a year, and it won’t start. It

Speaker 2  18:12  

rusts out. It rusts out.

Speaker 1  18:15  

Yeah, and I, I really that it’s a really great analogy for burnout here because we we’ve probably both seen this that it isn’t about being busy, although too much busy has its limit. If you put the car on the road too much without servicing, that’s a problem. It’s servicing the self care, the well being that’s so important. Which is, I want to now talk about taking radical responsibility for our own well being. And again, this is something I know you’re very passionate about. What does it mean to own our own responsibility for our own well-being, rather than struggling through maybe blaming other people for how busy you are? What does it mean to own that ourselves? Take ownership of it. Yeah,

Speaker 2  18:55  

yeah. I mean, we can continue with that car analogy if if that sounds good, but because I think that’s that’s an easy way to to teach the concept of what it means to take care of yourself, and I think most of us miss the mark, even when we are embracing well being. I actually work with a number of very caring companies like who invest in people’s well-being and they offer PTO, unlimited PTO. That’s the big thing, right? Take as much time as you want. They offer mental health days, spa days. Like they have all of these external perks, which is great. But that’s similar to, hey, I’m gonna take my car in to get it washed, and I’m going to polish it, and I’m gonna make sure the leather is, you know, taken care of, and everything is nice and sparkly, which is not nothing, it’s something. But how often do. Look under the hood.

Speaker 1  20:01  

It’s polishing the surface, not looking under the hood of the machinery. Right.

Speaker 2  20:04  

Like we’re taking care of ourselves, and I think a lot of us have embraced, like, hey, I’m gonna take the time off. I’m gonna go on vacation, but when I’m on vacation, I can’t stop thinking about the client, or I can’t stop thinking about the team member, I can’t stop thinking about the conflict. Like something under the hood is still looping and taking the cognitive energy, taking that that emotional space. You know, how often would do we actually hire a pit crew and be like, “Hey, take care of all the things. Look at all the signals. Most of us drive these cars, these fancy cars that we are, but we ignore the signals that are showing up on the dashboard until we need to, until we crash and burn or force to. So I think, like to answer your question, like how do we radically embrace this well-being? Is first, hey, I have the right to take care of this car. I have the I have the right to pause, to recalibrate, to reconnect, to realign to what’s most important, I have that right because again, going back to like rest is not a reward; it’s actually an essential part of well-being. So I need to take care of myself when I’m on that vacation. If that is how I choose to rest, how do I delegate effectively? Like, how do I turn off my brain? How do I switch off and like really absorb and allow wherever I’m at? If I’m in Mexico, Croatia, like on a retreat, like how do I receive the rest, the nature, the space? How how do I become present? And that has a lot to do with things that are under the hood, like within the engine, within how things are connected. Another way to embrace our well-being is to really like understand that rest is actually more than cognitive or physical, it can be emotional, it can be relational, it can be it could be physical, it could be there’s just so many different ways that we’re not even aware of. And again, going back to the car analogy, if I were to be in a Ferrari, to be honest, I wouldn’t even know what all the buttons are. Yeah, like I would, you know, like there is also a learning curve. Like, hey, what are my body? What are my signals actually telling me instead of the usual of numbing them, of pushing through, of treating them as annoying? Like, how do I actually embrace? Hey, this rash is telling me something. This anxiety is telling me something. To pause, like, is it emotional? Is it a relationship? Is it actually pressure that’s coming from the outside? Like, is somebody telling me go fast, fast, fast, or it’s like, am I am I doing it to myself? So embracing well-being in a radical way really is giving myself permission to actually take care of myself, and also, I understand there is different aspects of well-being that are beyond the surface level that I can start advocating for.

Speaker 1  23:14  

Well, I know one of the things we both talked about is particularly when the starting a new role. One of the things that we all have a tendency to do is to take responsibility for other people’s emotional states, for other people’s feelings, and I’m a big believer in a mantra I have that I coined with another coach of a friend of mine: “Hold, don’t carry. Hold the person in their experience, in their moment. This is what we do as coaches, but we don’t take it with us. We don’t carry it with us to the next meeting, to the next conversation, and I think that is such a good way of thinking about when, particularly in a new role, when you’re like starting out, we we we want to hold everybody. We find we’re doing that after two years as well. We want to hold everybody’s emotions. I was just talking to one of my clients this morning, and she’s a month into her new role, and her boss is interesting. Let’s go with that. And she’s holding every tiny little thing he says to her as I have to manage his emotional state. And I’m like, “Well, do you? Why are you managing his emotional state as well as yours? Is that your responsibility in this world, there is a time for that. That’s a longer conversation. But what’s your view here? How can we step into new roles, new responsibilities without holding everybody else’s feelings alongside our own?

Speaker 2  24:33  

That is just such a great, like, direct way of stating. And because you’re a coach, you’re able to name it. Like, hey, it’s it’s your taking on all of this responsibility that’s not yours. I love I love talking about them and you mentioned there’s a saying that you said don’t hold everything hold

Speaker 1  24:53  

and carry.

Speaker 2  24:54  

I I can just

Speaker 1  24:55  

yeah yeah

Speaker 2  24:56  

I can just say observe don’t absorb. Because we tend to like absorb like our environments, so there is a couple of things that I really want to address here. So in my program, like I’ve identified four or five core traits that most of us have that we carry that actually make us really great at what we do, and that’s being high achievers. You know, perfectionism plays a role in it, people pleasing. But what you were referring to, I call hyper responsibility, and that literally is you’re stepping into a new role. You are feeling hyper responsible to create success, and we become really sensitive to everybody’s moods, to all the things that are happening, and we’re not observing; we’re absorbing it. We’re feeling like, “Oh, it’s my responsibility. And an example that I can use is: I have a client who told me, “Hey, I walked in into this meeting and my boss had like a really mad face, and I immediately thought it’s something that I. Yeah,

Speaker 1  26:10  

God, how many of us do that? Yes,

Speaker 2  26:13  

common example. Like, what did I do versus observing, not absorbing? Like, absorbing is I must have done something right. Observing is oh you’re in a bad mood today you seem to be in a bad mood anything I can help with did I do something like checking in to see this is actually the reality and it could be like hey you missed the report which is unusual right you wouldn’t decide you you know everything and like you would typically get it done, but in her specific example, the boss had just lost a parent, and he was really mad. Like, there’s so many different reasons why people carry what they’re carrying, and we really need to embrace developing the skill of not taking responsibility for everything, it shows up in all different ways. Like a deadline gets missed, I must have done something. I didn’t, you know, clarify it enough. I wasn’t on top of it. I should have done it myself. Companies get sold. Companies go bank bankrupt. Oh my gosh, I should have been better. Like it’s just like this instinctive, obligatory. It’s my fault, and that’s the biggest pressure that we put on ourselves. That once we start addressing, can lead us to create success without the burnout. Because that is one of the most responsible, the hyper responsibility causes of burnout that I have found that once addressed goes from, hey, I’m I’m a person of integrity, like I’m a responsible person. I’m gonna do what I say I need to be done, but not everything is. I can learn to share responsibility. I can learn to observe, not absorb, And that, combined with some of the other things that like show up, some of the other traits. Once we actually get to the root of like what’s driving this hyper responsibility, and we start balancing it, so it actually becomes core value of just hey, I’m a responsible person. I have I’m a person of integrity. It goes from this push energy like it’s me, me, me, my pull. Like that anxiety that gets built up within to oh, I’m being pulled by being a person of integrity without taking it on yourself. And I call it like now you’re you’re moving from hyper responsibility to becoming your response able. So response ability. So pause, take it in, ask questions, get clarity, build that internal boundary system, and that usually releases so much of that internal pressure. It’s it’s almost like like it’s almost a think of it like cooking

Speaker 4  29:00  

something

Speaker 1  29:00  

pressure cooker, isn’t

Speaker 2  29:01  

it? And the pressure cooker, and all of that energy that you’re like that that it takes to keep the lid from flying off, you start releasing, and now there is steam that comes out in a very healthy way, and you can keep going. So, if there is anything that I would want the listeners to focus on is that hey, how is this hyper responsibility showing up? And that’s where in my coaching practice, I practice the r4 method, which is get in touch with that with your body with those signals that are showing up in the dashboard because hyper responsibility shows up differently for different people. Like, what are the signals in your body? Okay, well, what is the mindset like? What is that anchor that’s actually keeping you from from moving forward? Like, what is the disempowering belief? Like, do you believe that if you don’t take care of your yourself, like you’re going to be thought of as bad, or is it a fear of you know being criticized? Like there’s something there’s there’s an internal subconscious belief that’s driving that sense of responsibility, to moving it to an empowering belief to something that really realigns the mindset to something healthy, and then really get to the root of like what does it actually represent? Like because a lot of these traits they have a healthy, truly healthy trait underneath, and that’s not fear driven. And and for hyper responsibility, it’s it’s integrity. Like I’m a person of integrity. I’m a person who who takes responsibility very seriously. But working from that not pressure cooker state, all of a sudden we’re being pulled by it, and we’re not be pushed by it, and that’s that psychological, like looking under the hood, that rebalancing, recalibrating that needs to happen in order to to move away from from from that. It’s nagging. It’s compulsive. It is impulse. It just hijacks so much of our well-being, and I’m mad at it. I’m mad at it. Oh,

Speaker 1  31:07  

I get you. I mean, this is this is a meaty topic in its own right. How to let go of that immediate urge to think, “Oh, this is about me, when it’s not about you. And I just, I want, I want listeners to hear. It would be very easy for Yana and I to be like, you just need to let that go. It is a process. Be kind to yourself if you’re listening to this, and this is what I call the BS filter, where you’re like, I hear you, and I can’t just let that go. BS. Um, I hear you, and I want you to know, like, we get how hard this is. We’re giving you the high level here. If you want us to go deeper, drop me a DM. Drop me a comment on YouTube. Drop me a DM on LinkedIn. Let us know if you want us to go deeper on this because I get that the how to let it go is really hard. It’s what we do for a living, Yana and I. So if you would like an episode on that, do drop me a note.

Speaker 2  31:58  

It is hard. I just want to emphasize that, like, yes, you and I, as coaches, we’ve been through this. I’ve been doing it for five years. You’ve been doing it for a decade. Like, we know the process. Like, it’s it’s common sense to us, right, as professionals. But so many, if not every, of my clients has a sense of hyper responsibility. It’s so normal. It is give yourself compassion. It’s almost like, oh, I didn’t know it was there, but now you have a language for it, and there is a way through it, and it’s life changing. It is. It’s hard, and it’s totally something that doesn’t need to be fixed. You’re not broken. It’s something we realigned, recalibrated, so that you can you can you can really live from your most authentic self.

Speaker 1  32:48  

It was I just give a little bit of honesty here. When I am super stressed, and this happened earlier this year, but it’s going through a bit of a family issue. Guess what came back? What came back was this. It’s I was making everything my fault. Everything was my fault suddenly, and equally at the same time, I get very frustrated at people around me. When you’re super stressed, it’s I was like this for so many years that it’s a default operating procedure for me that I’ve mostly dealt with. But when I’m super stressed, it comes back. So be kind to yourselves, listeners. If you’re listening to this,

Speaker 2  33:22  

and that’s all that it’s about. Like when we need to be aware of it, it it doesn’t magically go away, but instead of automatically hijacking us, we become aware of it, and we can make a different choice. And the more often we make that different choice, the more we train that new muscle. And eventually, you know, it’s not going to have that much of a grip. But it’s okay. There still, it just means you’re a responsible human, right? And it’s something that can be. It’s something that can you can evolve from. You can, you know, heal from. You can become empowered in an empowered way, And again, it’s so critical to to to look at when it’s showing up. Like you, Tony, you mentioned like, “Hey, I was in this family situation. It started coming up. Like that’s what actually happens after coaching. We learn what is going to show up, and then we can take care of ourselves even more.

Speaker 1  34:20  

Yeah, 100% I love that. I could talk about this all day, but let’s move on to the quick fire round for those people coming to the end of some some people listen to this on their commute and they’re thinking we’re normally done by this point at this point in the road. Let’s talk about the worst piece of advice you’ve ever been given. What was that?

Speaker 2  34:38  

Oh my gosh, so much.

Speaker 1  34:40  

Honestly, I need to write a book on all the answers I’ve got from this podcast because horror stories. But give give me a couple of highlights.

Speaker 2  34:49  

Oh, jeez. So one of the worst pieces of advice that I have been given was actually. In one of my leadership positions, by another executive coach who I really looked up to, and she said, “You need to put on an act. She said, “You need to put on an act and learn the game, and just like an actor goes on stage. You need to go on stage with all these new skills, and I took it to heart. Like I mean, you know, she’s a coach, and like I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I was feeling all these feelings, and I was miserable, and I wanted to succeed. So I took that on, and I quickly said, “That’s bullshit. No thanks.

Speaker 1  35:36  

I’m so glad you did, and I mean, just for listeners here, like it’s this breaks my heart because I think it gives people concerns about having a coach. I have had a number of people coming to me over the years who’ve had bad experiences of coaching, and it breaks my heart. There are really good coaches out there, but somebody like that, you know, my heart goes out to that coach because that makes me think that coach had not dealt with their own masking, putting on an act. That’s what I used to do. It’s what I used to talk about. You know what it was? It’s what I did before I realized I was masking some of my neurodivergence. There is a place for putting on your best self that is not the same thing as putting on an act. Exactly,

Speaker 2  36:14  

exactly. Which is why I thank these more current coaches. You know, she she comes came from a really good heart. She’s a lot more seasoned. She had been doing what she’s doing for like decades, and I actually got had a really great experience with her. I learned quite a bit. However, that was one of the things that I rejected like early on. And you know, to her credit, she came from the before Me Too movement. So just to paint a picture, right? But I do do believe that things have evolved, and it’s less about you you building skill. You need to build skills and apply them that are authentic to you, not fake who you are just to make it at the top, and that is the worst piece of advice that I have ever gotten, and it’s a surefire way to burn out.

Speaker 1  37:06  

Yeah, 100% Well, on that note, what’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Speaker 2  37:12  

Best piece of advice is actually a quote that I have embraced and internalized so deeply that it just like runs, runs my life, and that’s if you believe things are going to work out, you see opportunities, and if you believe they they won’t, you will always see obstacles, and that’s one of the best pieces of advice that I have absorbed because our mindset, our beliefs, really shape how we experience things. So even in the midst of burnout, just believing there is a better way, there is another way to create a life that I want. I don’t need to be giving up all of these things. You will find a way.

Speaker 1  37:54  

I love that so so much. I’ve not heard that quote before, but my gosh, it’s me. It’s it’s how I operate. It’s part of what underpins my coaching philosophy. Actually, is work on the person’s emotional state so they can see the opportunities in front of them. If you don’t work on the emotional state, you’re not going to see the solutions to the problem you’re facing. How can people connect with you? Find out more about what you do because this has been brilliant, and I’m sure there are plenty of listeners who would love to connect with you. Where do we find you online?

Speaker 2  38:24  

So you can find me on LinkedIn if you would like to get in touch. LinkedIn Yana Karstens, and if you would like to stay in touch, I invite you to sign up for my newsletter. If you go to realignandthrive.com forward slash newsletter, I have been told it’s a straight shot into the heart of positive, encouraging insight of what it’s like to be a leader without burning out. And I send a note out every month, and I think that is the most value you can get outside of just working with me one on one.

Speaker 1  39:01  

Oh, brilliant! Thank you so much, and I will put all those links in the show notes. So if you’re interested, whatever platform you’re on, go and check out the show notes to this episode, and you will find those links to go and follow Yana. And I would definitely recommend giving her a newsletter a follow. This has been fabulous, and I have a feeling we may well be doing a follow up at some point down the line. But for today, what final thoughts do you want to leave the audience with?

Speaker 2  39:24  

If there’s one thing that I would like you to take away from the talk today is that burnout is not your fault; it’s the waters that we’re swimming in, and if you find yourself experiencing overwhelm and you wish there was a better way to do things, there is. And by all means, give yourself compassion. Burnout is not caused by too much work, and embracing radical responsibility, showing up the way you want to show. Creating success on your own terms-it really is possible for you.

Speaker 1  40:05  

I love that so much. Thank you so much, Yana. There are so many nuggets from today, but what I would really like-if you listen to this, if you got this final in the episode-I really like to sit down and do a little mini audit of: Are you owning your well-being, or are you letting it just happen? Are you being proactive? If I talk about proactive and reactive leadership all the time, it’s time to be proactive about our well-being. And no, I don’t mean bubble baths and manicures and pedicures. Those are great, but as we talked about, they are the polish on the Ferrari. They’re not maintaining the engine. I want you to ask yourself: Are you taking ownership of your well-being, or have you given that over to somebody else, or your company’s culture, or your family’s situation? Have you taken ownership, or are you just giving it away? Answer that question honestly. You don’t have to know what to do with that, but the first step is to answer that question. From there, you can then decide how to fix that, but if you don’t know the problem you’re trying to fix, we can’t fix it. So ask yourself that question. If you do nothing else, the other thing I just want to remind listeners of is that if you are thinking about learning to coach, I haven’t trained coaches for two years. I was too busy last year, too much going on in my life. But Ignite Coach Academy is opening its doors. The cohort starts on the september 14, but doors close on September the eighth because I spent the weekend getting everything set up and ready. If you would like to learn how to coach, whether that is to do better self coaching, whether that is to bring your coaching skills into your leadership repertoire, or it is to set up your own coaching business, like Yana and I have done. You might want to go check that out. Go to tonycollis.com/ignite-coach-academy, or check the link in the show notes. Lots of mouthfuls in there. It’s definitely one of those things which I would say is the is the icing on the cake to a leader is having the coaching skills. But as I said, if you do nothing else from this episode, go and give yourself a little check-in. Are you owning your well-being, or have you given that over to somebody else? In the meantime, keep leading, keep changing the world, and I’ll see you all next week. Bye for now.