Building Self-Awareness: The Secret to Avoiding Burnout with Jen Hope
Are there days when you feel energized and motivated, and other days when you feel drained and stressed? Have you considered how the tasks you do each day might affect your level of energy and motivation?
Developing self-awareness allows us to understand our behavior and discover what motivates us naturally, as well as what tasks we dislike and tend to burn us out.
In this episode, we discuss how to tap into and build an understanding of how you and those around you prefer to tackle difficult situations. Learn about your motivation triggers and problem-solving processes so that you can drive remarkable success.
In This Episode, You Will Learn About:
Unlock valuable insights to reduce stress
Discover motivation triggers
Conflict resolution to drive success
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About our guest:
Jen Hope is an executive and leadership coach for startup leaders. With a background as the Vice President of Marketing for multiple high-growth startup companies, Jen understands the complexity of startup leadership. She leverages data and evidence-based tools that accelerate growth and scale individual and collective leadership.
A self-kindness and mental health advocate, Jen is passionate about creating safe spaces for women and non-neurotypical leaders in the startup and corporate leadership. Clients will tell you that Jen provides systems and habits that improve life and leadership. They love the sharp insights, structure, compassion, and accountability that come from Jen’s coaching process. Jen’s client list includes Tenable, Oracle, Altana.ai, TOMBOYX, DocuSign, Relayr, BlueJacketeer, and Uplevel.
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How Leadership Behavior Affects Burnout
You had a unique background going from marketing to being fitness coach and for the past 10 years you’ve been doing leadership, but please share where did this journey lead you to being an expert on behavior types.
So I got my start working in the agency world in marketing which you saw, and along the way I worked in startup organizations and landed in Seattle about 15 years ago now. I was working in startup companies and really seeing what it looked for myself around me, what it looked like when there were leaders who were put in positions that were, they were definitely skilled in, but not ready necessarily, or even provided the resource of leadership education and not provide any like, self included in mistakes made along the way in leadership journey of not understanding self. And that comes from not having the self-awareness, not having the leadership maturity, not having the professional maturity to understand self-awareness. And for some of us, this happens really early, it happens in our education, it happens at home.
For some of us we're out here bumping into all kinds of stuff in our career, and that's how we figure out that we need to go on this journey inward. And so that was my own experience - learning, looking around, seeing the leaders around me at the time I was working in startup organizations were given a lot of responsibility, a lot of complexity. Not necessarily the tools or the experience to really handle the complexity in front of us in leadership.
You know, managing a rocket ship, managing a team of 15, managing a thing that is filled with ambiguity on top of it, as you're building a plane flying in at the same time, which also happens a lot in startup organizations. How does it relate to fitness? It maybe does, it maybe doesn't. I think it does. I think there's a lot of behavior change that happens in the fitness world and being a fitness instructor and seeing that there is a process that all of us go through to create behavior change from the pre-consideration stage of, “Wow, I think I should join a gym,” all the way through to the high fives and the building of community that keeps us coming back.
All of that is the positive reinforcement that happens when we become someone who decides to keep walking into the gym everyday. And then I got to study, right? I got to study tools like the disk. I got to study leadership assessments. I got to really dive into what it means with some of the most recent research around what we know about leadership, what we know about effective leadership and geek out on data.
We talked a little bit before this about that, about how I started as an internet marketer back in way early two thousands. And so that was how I got my start there in data and I think it's really informed a lot about who I am as a coach today, the leadership development work that I do today. Using information to guide that process, not everything, right. The human being who sits in front of me is always the keeper of the truth. That's kind of how I set up feedback and the way we look at data. But it helps inform and, and we kind of go from there.
Before jumping on, you and I were both geeking out about the certifications that we received and all the different courses that we've taken and we have both had that experience where there's been times in our career where maybe we didn't necessarily have the training and development. And then there's the moments when you take that you, as you say, geek out on the data and the research, and you really dive into what makes us tick and how we can learn to thrive as leaders when we have the tools at our fingertips.
There's just so much that we get too unpacked with this, and I'm so excited to dive in because leadership is so complex. Leading people is very complex, but also, even if we're not leading people, there is a direct correlation and research shows this, that people that have a high level of self-awareness are more successful. Most of the CEOs out there that are successful have a high level of self-awareness, and it starts by understanding our different behavioral types and how we can use our behaviors to improve communication, to level up our strengths. I'm gonna have you kind of dive in a little bit, and we wanna understand how the behavior affects our stress? How does it affect when we get to burnout? How does it affect when we have those emotions of overwhelm and frustration and we are feeling like we're rushed all the time. I want you to kind of share with people your expertise on behavior types and burnout.
I'll start with an example of what we mean by that. I have leaders show up who have roles in all different parts of organizations. And they have responsibility that looks like leading a sales team, we have folks who are leading a product organization, folks who lead the performance of, of a global organization. For each of those, there are the innate strengths that an individual likely needs to bring to their role.
For example, if I'm in a role and part of my responsibility is to be engaged with people all day long, I'm in a sales role, I'm in a customer facing role, I'm spending a lot of time in market, even if I'm leading a large organization, I'm spending a lot of my day doing one-on-ones, right? And if I am a person who is truly like, extroverted - extroverted, not extroverted - introverted, where we like on some level of the extroversion and then really get our rest or fill our cup in. isolation. And I mean that in a good way, not covid, isolation. But really understanding what we need and how we fill our cup. And if I'm somebody who wants to spend my time out in the world, and I'm raising my hand because this is like a lot of who I am, I really function this way with people. And that person is in a role where they're looking at a spreadsheet all day long. And really having to be in this reflective internal, not getting the feedback of an individual, that they're connecting with doing their relational opportunity or even spending time in a role where they need to be even pessimistic, would be a really hard challenge. I'm giving an example of somebody who's high in influence, above the line in influence.
And they need to be in a role all day where they're quite factual, really logical, even going all the way to pessimistic. So if I need to be somebody who spends time just analyzing risk, that may not be the role that fills me. And it may be the role that feels, because I'm adapting, so call it a 85 on influence, and my role requires that I'm out of 15. We have a mismatch. We have a mismatch in a way that will feel stressful for that individual to the point where in early days it's tolerable in its most difficult days. We get to a point where we start to avoid, and it's most challenging. We get to a point where we will permanently avoid and we will quit.
And so that's, that's the starting point. Where it just feels like we can get into this place where we are forced to either buy the role, the culture of the organization. This can happen as well if we're a super optimist, like almost borderline, overly optimistic, that happens. Raising my own hand here, sometimes can happen.
And we are asked to be in a position where that's not our strength. The culture of the organization, the season of the organization is requiring something different from us, that can lead to this stressful feeling. And it's one of the questions that I'm looking for when I'm talking to a leader.
Analyzing Behavioral Traits in Improving Self-Awareness
A lot of us will think that, okay, they're extroverts, so therefore they thrive when they're around people. I am one of those you spoke this, extrovert but also introvert, and understanding that just resonated so much, because in sales, we would go to these conferences and we would go to these trade shows and we'd be on the trade show for four days straight, and we would be talking all day, and I would always come home exhausted.
I had the energy while I was there and it was like this motivation, it filled my cup because it helped with that extrovert behavior that I am. And at the same time, I would always come home and block out the next day and I would curl up on the couch with my beige, snuggly soft, velvety blanket. And I would be in my PJs the whole next day because I knew that if I didn't fill my cup up with that time of being that introvert and just relaxing on my own, and I just kept going, going, I wouldn't give myself that time to recharge. So understanding our different behaviors, where you're saying that, can help us understand when we want to be in certain roles or doing certain tasks so that we are not bogged down, and we can actually put ourselves in situations where we can thrive.
Absolutely. I have great examples of this too in working with CEOs around their board presentations, around being out fundraising. It's an exhausting, can be grinding moment where we're getting constant feedback if we're out there and we're highly influenced even if we're not. Like the exhaustion that comes from being out. Doing fundraising, telling our story, that's another place where even if it's the story of the organization, even more so, if it's our own story, raising my hand here as somebody who, you know, did a lot of public speaking. Very similar story to yours, where even the lead up, so much preparation, so much using problem solving and structural skills and executive functioning to get the story right and the creative muscle to flex and be that vulnerable, also can create this downward feeling.
Once it's complete, we've birthed this thing out into the world, and then we go internal and go into that reflective state and say, “I've put myself so out there and now I'm gonna like spend a little bit of time in recovery.” Build our cup, do those things that nurture us. I think your story is like so many folks that I work with where we're out there, part of our role is to be so publicly facing and to put ourselves out there in a way. And then be so relational, like when you were telling the story, I was thinking about the strengths of somebody with high influence, such a relational skillset. Like innately someone who is quite trusting and is likely to give that to others, if I could make some leaps maybe about how people feel in your presence, but I'm guessing it's pretty comfortable, like you put folks at ease. I'm here with you right now, so I can tell you that's my experience with you. You put folks at ease, and that you can hear it in your interviews too. You're really conversational. That also comes sometimes at a cost, right? We then have to take care of ourselves and that nurturing of self that you talked about in the big snuggly blanket.
You and I, we understand the disk behavioral assessment very well, but what advice would you leave other people who are saying, who maybe do not know it, but they're trying to understand, well, where do I fit in and where can I understand maybe my behavioral traits and characteristics? My how and my why, so that I can take the steps to when I am stressed, to pivot and to reevaluate or even increase our self-awareness so we don't get to that point of overwhelming stress.
It's starting with disk, we can look at the strengths. Based on a couple hundred years of studying human behavior, folks came up with the disk and particularly like a digital version of the disk. It's a great tool in that we can start looking at strengths and potential limitations. What can help us in a leadership environment is understanding our strengths and how they relate to our team. That will tell us a lot if I'm in a conversation with someone if I'm building a team or building a conversation around the table, knowing that there are folks who are going to be task oriented, so let's get to talking about the task. Knowing that there are folks who are going to be relationship oriented, people oriented, sitting around the table. I'm never suggesting that somebody hires specifically for that balance, but knowing the balance, knowing that I've got a table full of task oriented individuals that we might not have the moment to pause, innately to pause and think about how does this change that we're talking about or how does this impact the people of our organization? How does it impact the people of the team that this may be affecting? Same thing with, like pace, right? So are we slow paced? Do we prefer a faster pace? If we're sitting around a table and we've got a group of folks knowing that there are folks who may be slower paced and may prefer time to come to the table with ideas later. We're sitting around a table. How do we give time to folks to say, “I'm gonna go think about solutions and bring something back to you that's practical, that's well thought out.” That may not be happening at the moment, if everyone at the table isn't the same style as maybe you are or maybe you're that leader who's saying, “Hey, time out. I'd like to pause. Think about what we're talking about here, and I'd like to come back to you tomorrow after I've walked on my treadmill and fed my dog and had a long hot shower where I do my best thinking.”
So as a team, one of the things I did as a leader is everybody took the assessment. And I do this too, when I'm doing my consulting with my clients, when I'm leading leadership programs, we always start with the assessment, understanding our different behavior traits and characteristics. What I did when I was leading a team is I actually put their primary and secondary as a picture so that every time they called, I was like, okay, this person leads with a conscientious type behavior or this one leads with a steadiness. I knew that with that particular person. I have some employees, they asked a lot of questions. They wanted a lot of details. They wanted to analyze it, and I say, okay, I would look at my phone and go, “do I have the time right now to be a hundred percent attentive?” Knowing that that conversation's probably gonna be a little bit longer than a personality who is a little bit more direct and just wants quick answers right off the bat.
And then the same goes when it comes to our region meetings and leading presentations. There would be individuals who thrived on the business acumen that was they loved to dig in the data, they loved to understand where's their business coming from, who is growing within their business, who's declining, what are the strategies to get everybody back on track? And they would present that section of our region meeting. And then there's other people who are like, okay, now that we understand the data, how can we make our training really fun for our customers? And so I'd put somebody who's in the influencing type behavioral, and they would be leading like the fun part of how to take training and make it really fun.
So when we understand our team and where they're at, we can help lead them in different tasks or responsibilities where they get to thrive. That's what I'm hearing you say, and that's kind of the way that I did it when I was a leader.
I think it gives us too an opportunity where if you are thinking about your preferences and if you're debriefing with an individual who's taking you really a step further than just understanding yourself and thinking about the folks opposite to you.
I really like to have folks who spend time as we go deeper together, thinking about the folks around them. We sometimes find that there's a rub. I can tell a quick story about working with a colleague who I'm mid-level seek, which is compliance so kind of closer to the mid, the energy line where I can play above the energy line, which is higher compliance, more data orientation, detail orientation. There's below the line compliance, which is somebody who's gonna be really comfortable with ambiguity, big picture thinking, likes to play outside the box, that kind of thinking. And even my midpoint, so I was like 40 something, and this person was like a five on compliance. And we had rubbed because that individual, based on the way that I thought and went into details on projects, felt really boxed in by my leadership style, asking questions that were detailed right at digging into how the process would work of an idea. And not immediately into the weeds, cuz I'm not even that, I'm pretty low compliance by the big picture standards.
But it really led to some areas where there was rub around this compression, around this boxing of ideas. And it took the disk to really surface it and give us language to say, “Oh, that's your compliance. I'm lower on compliance than you are. And here is how we can work together and see, oh, this really truly feels like nails on a chalkboard to me, when you put me in this box, when you put ideas into a box and to be able to create empathy around it.” Same thing for somebody who wants to work at a really fast pace and they've got somebody on their team who prefers a methodical thought through never, you know, more conservative with a change approach. And to them it feels like nails on a chalkboard when we're foot on the gas pedal. And it really helps, it helps to see, oh, this is your stance. This is where I can, I think you mentioned this earlier, creating empathy, creating connection for this is truly painful for this person. It's not just them. You know, trying to get the best of me, or they didn't wake up today trying to like, rub me the wrong way. This is truly their gift. This is truly their strength. It's truly what they show up with this is, and how do we harness, collaborate, create that empathy for one another and say, “Hey, thanks I, I have the language now to understand the how of your why. This is how you do what you do, and we can respect it. Still be driven slightly batty by it sometimes.”
Finding Opportunities to Showcase Your Skills
So even if you're not in a leadership role, this can still apply for a variety of ways. One of them being thinking about understanding your behavior and understanding the tasks that you like to do, because those are the moments when you get to raise your hand if there's particular projects to get involved in and raising your hand for those particular product, those particular projects, you know that if you like to be more compliance, you like to be more analytical detailed, then raise your hand for those particular projects.
If you're saying, “I really thrive with that relationship, that communication, that connection. I've got a lot of energy.” Then raise your hand for those opportunities where you get to lead presentations and maybe get the team involved in things. And also I wanna take it a step further just because coming from medical sales and having 20 years of medical sales experience, the same applies to understanding your customers. If you have a physician who wants all the data in our world it was, they wanted the journals, they wanted the publications. They wanted to know the details of what the side effects were for every single product. And knowing when you understand your customers to that level, you can tailor your approach to support their behaviors and where the detail, or maybe the not so much detail that they want for.
I have experienced something quite similar doing development and consulting for an organization that is led by folks who are really relational and they're selling into engineering organizations. And it can be right, not always, but it can be a really logical, data-driven organization. And so really helping folks to understand that when we're creating marketing material, when we're building in sales teams, even building in customer success, the balance of having these folks in our organization who really can help us translate what our optimism, our incredible sales pitch into this really logic driven, data driven message, to your point so the audience can receive it and to your customer, your ideal customer, who you're really trying to and can help. But we need to speak the same language.
Adapting to the Environment
You talk about optimism, I think that sometimes when people are asking, let's say in the tech world, you've got an engineer and they're asking a lot of questions. Sometimes the perception may be, they're pessimistic. They’re asking all the questions because they're trying to find the holes in the particular product. And it has nothing to do with that. They're asking the questions because they want a lot of detail because they wanna know that they're making the right decision. They wanna anticipate all the problems could or could not take place by implementing a particular product. And that's understanding, it's not so much with certain personalities that they're pessimistic. Those questions are just their behavioral style.
I talk about this with folks sometimes, and it resonates where they say, “there's the individual who is going to read the TV manual and there's the individual who's gonna throw it away.” And this is truly like, “I'm going to throw it away, I'm not even gonna open it and I'm gonna put it directly in the recycling.” And then there's somebody who's reading it, truly cover to cover. And that is how far we have to go to understand the spectrum of behavior. This is where bias shows up, and this is my own story on bias, and being in a sales and marketing role for so long, I was surrounded by a lot of folks like me, like really rewarded for extroversion, really rewarded for this influence style, high influence style. And it wasn't until disk came along for me that I got a real eye-opener around how that can really push folks away.
You brought up Orange Theory as this example, where you're in this room and folks are motivated so differently. For some folks, it's a big old High five. For some folks it's a shout out on the mic, and for others they barely want me to acknowledge their presence in the room. It may be like an elbow bump or a wink or a nice job in private. And that is one of those areas we're really learning that I could go in with like all of my extroversion. Same thing in a sales call, right? You show up in a sales call and you can go in with all over extroversion and we're shutting folks down, and it was a big eye-opener for me. Kind of knock you over the head eye opener that could really be getting in my way and really did. The same thing with optimism, not being able to have some flexibility, which can happen when we have really high or really low scores, really clear preferences. We don't necessarily have an opportunity to flex and to enter an environment with that as our starting point.
And to be able to adapt this information gives us the moment of pause that says, “That person's leaning back in their chair. What do I need to know? How can I lower my voice? How can I change my stance? How can I make this where the energy that sometimes builds trust and builds relationship also can work really against me?” It can erode trust. It isn't what it's gonna take for this person to build trust with me. They need information. They need facts, they need data. And that's gonna be so different, that's gonna give them what they need to come with me to come closer.
There was an episode that was all about languages of appreciation in the workplace, and let's just use words of affirmation. For example, there were some people on my team where they wanted the public to say, “Hey, great job. Congratulations. Here's where your successes were.” They wanted that, and then there's some people that did not want the spotlight on them. They actually appreciated the words of affirmation more when it was picking up the phone, calling them directly and saying, “Hey, thank you so much. Congratulations on your successes.” There's the people that want to be on stage, receiving the awards. And then there's some people that's like, don't put me on stage, just like, give me the award. I'll go celebrate on my own. And that just really speaks to the extroverts versus the introverts and how it applies.
We've talked a lot about building teams and understanding behaviors. We've talked a lot about where we can put ourselves in different roles, how we can raise our hand when it comes to raising our hand to different opportunities within our career and flexing our behaviors to go for those particular opportunities. And then also understanding your team and individuals when it comes to celebrating their successes.
