Beating Burnout at Work | Paula Davis

Transcript

Paula Davis 00:00

If we can start to influence how teams look and act and talk about each of those kind of components, we are really going to be touching on a number of different facets of culture. And if I can get these little individual systems to go in a direction that makes burnout less likely to happen, could that potentially have ripple effects within the larger organization as a whole?

Candice Reed 00:25

This is Leveraging Latitude, cultivating a full life in the law. And we are your hosts, Candice Reed.

Tim Haley 00:32

And Tim Haley.

Candice Reed 00:33

Please join us on our journey as we discover how to leverage the hard work of becoming a lawyer, to achieving success and leading a rich and fulfilling life in the law.

Candice Reed 00:48

Hey, everybody. Today, we’re going to be talking about burnout. Something that I’m sure a lot of attorneys and other listeners out there have either experienced or have witnessed in some of their colleagues or friends, particularly in the practice of law. We’re going to be talking to Paula Davis, who is a resilience and burnout expert, a former practicing lawyer herself. She’s recently written a book entitled Beating Burnout at Work: Why Teams Hold the Secret to Well-Being and Resilience.

Candice Reed 01:28

This seemed like the perfect speaker to help us recognize Well-Being Week in law, which is held annually, the first week of May, to have discussions like this, Tim, where we can talk about well-being and all of the ancillary topics that are often under that umbrella topic. I’m curious, Tim, what are your thoughts on burnout? Have you ever experienced it? Do you know someone who has?

Tim Haley 02:00

Gosh, you’re going right for the throat right from the beginning. It’s good.

Candice Reed 02:02

I know. We’re just jumping right in the deep end.

Tim Haley 02:05

Yeah. Podcasting debut. Here we go. I don’t know, man. I mean, I was a lawyer for 14 years, and I’m sure there were days going back in time, I’d be like, “Yeah, I’m totally burnout.” But in the moment, recognizing it is hard. I don’t remember right now off the top. Maybe it’s blissful ignorance, right? I do remember watching other people go through it.

Candice Reed 02:27

It sounds like childbirth, where once you get out of the practice of law, you kind of forget how hard it was and decide that you want to have baby number two at some point down the road.

Tim Haley 02:37

Well, I mean, it’s probably a good example because it’s people who are lawyers for life, they love it, the really good ones. It’s something that is more than just a profession or a job. I mean, it becomes a passion. Yeah, you probably have to go through those things up and down and up and down and up and down just to get through it. I don’t know.

Candice Reed 02:57

I think that everyone recognizes that the practice of law is difficult and there are going to be days that are challenging, there are going to be weeks and possibly even months that are challenging.

Tim Haley 03:10

And years.

Candice Reed 03:10

Yeah. I mean, all of us have experienced that in the last 12 to 15 months with this pandemic. I’ve seen a lot of burnout just in the last year because we’ve had to pivot so hard in many ways and how we are practicing or how we’re working, and we’ve had limited resources. I mean, I know personally, I lost my village. I lost all my helpers, as we refer to them in our home. And my daughter started school at home and my husband is practicing law at home, and I’m working with Latitude at home. We’re all together all the time, and it’s just us.

Candice Reed 04:00

My parents would normally help out with my daughter, but we’ve tried to stay socially distant from them over the last year because of the pandemic. And all of the helpers that we used to just manage life, from house cleaners to handymen to even going to the grocery store has changed. So, I do think that those stressors and the fact that we’ve lost a lot of resources that we were previously relying on have made it a lot harder over the last year to do our jobs. That’s resulting in some burnout that is visible, and certainly the legal industry has not been immune from those side effects of the pandemic.

Tim Haley 04:47

Yeah. Candice, I think you’re right. I mean, I’m a parent too, and, I mean, I think parents have, especially with kids at home and jobs, and it’s not one job. It’s three jobs. Before, we were able to compartmentalize and do this job on the weekends, this job before school, this job during work, maybe this job at night and move things around. But when everyone’s home, all of those jobs are happening at the same time, and it’s a lot.

Tim Haley 05:14

I was thankful personally that I wasn’t one of those that had to bill last year. I don’t know how I would’ve done it. I probably would’ve burnt out, but it was… Yeah, I don’t know. I moved my office outside as I took some phone calls on walks, and Ross, our CEO, would always accuse me of going straight to find the loudest wood chipper to stand behind of.

Candice Reed 05:36

I was always impressed with the number of birds that were in your office over the last year.

Tim Haley 05:42

There’s a chickadee nest, in the gutter right above… It’s a three season porch, so it’s awesome until it gets cold, and it gets cold up here sometimes.

Candice Reed 05:52

I’ve heard. Well, at least, perhaps those chickadees and all of the people who are now in our homes are at least helping buffer some of the stress, because one of the things that we know, or at least that Paula’s book highlights, is the buffering effect of teams and not working in isolation. I think as lawyers, we often default to a solo practice. Even if we are among hundreds of attorneys in very large firms, we are often sitting at our desk grinding out research or briefs or deal documents alone, and that loneliness can contribute to burnout and some of the symptoms of burnout.

Candice Reed 06:46

It’s interesting to me to think about burnout not so much as an individual problem, but I think we are seeing with the research that’s coming out recently, that burnout is really an institutional or a workplace cultural problem that needs to be addressed on a systemic level, not just an individual level. While it affects individuals and affects them differently, burnout is something that requires the system to address. Or as is the case with a lot of our listeners, probably the leaders, people in leadership positions, to address the causes of burnout and how they may be impacting individuals differently and negatively.

Candice Reed 07:42

But I think it’s a good time for us to turn to Paula and see-

Tim Haley 07:46

Yeah, let’s turn to Paul.

Candice Reed 07:46

… what she has to say. She’s the expert and she’s been there. She’s worked at both a law firm and was in-house counsel before she experienced burnout herself and made a hard pivot into a new career, studying resilience and well-being.

Tim Haley 08:06

What’s the title of her book again?

Candice Reed 08:08

Her book is Beating Burnout at Work: Why Teams Hold the Secret to Well-Being and Resilience, published by Wharton Press. It’s just hit the markets, and it’s a great, great quick read with lots of pragmatic suggestions for leaders and lawyers to incorporate into their own work environments very quickly. I’m interested to hear what she has to say.

Candice Reed 08:43

I’m speaking with Paula Davis, CEO of the Stress & Resilience Institute, and author of the new book, Beating Burnout at Work: Why Teams Hold the Secret to Well-Being and Resilience, which was recently published by Wharton School Press. Paula, thank you for joining me today.

Paula Davis 09:02

Oh, Candice, I’m so excited to be on. Happy to talk to you.

Candice Reed 09:05

I’m happy to talk to you too. Now, for context for our listeners, in addition to being a resilience expert and bestselling author, you’re a former practicing attorney. You graduated from Marquette University Law School in 2002 and had a thriving legal career practicing commercial, real estate law, both at a firm and then later in-house at Kohl’s department stores. In your book, you mentioned that you had what others would likely have seen and described as a thriving legal career, but you mentioned that your burnout story, your personal burnout story started in 2008. Would you mind sharing that story with us?

Paula Davis 09:51

Oh, of course. This is the question that I am asked most frequently because naturally, people wonder. You practiced law, you were practicing law, and now you’re doing this. That was a hard right turn. What happened? So, the very simple answer is that I burned out during what became the last year of my law practice, and my burnout was pretty severe. It didn’t start that way, but it certainly ended that way. I always tell people about the three big warning signs that I missed, because I didn’t realize what burnout was. Maybe I should have known what it was, but I didn’t know what it was. It wasn’t until I got out of it and reflected back on it that I realized there were some markers that I could have been paying attention to.

Paula Davis 10:34

The first one was that I was chronically physically and emotionally exhausted. Very much, obviously practicing law is stressful. You have tired days and weeks and periods of time where you’re just exhausted. This was more often than not, no matter what I did, I couldn’t quite shake the tiredness. So, hanging out with my friends and playing co-ed softball and all the things that I used to do that were so enjoyable just weren’t really doing it for me, so I stopped playing in my leagues and hanging out with my friends as much and really just wanted bad reality television in the couch and leave me alone, because it was like I just need just something with the bare minimum of effort to just help me out. And so that was really something that was present.

Paula Davis 11:20

And then secondly, I was very chronically cynical, which is not my personality at all. People were annoying to me, people bugged me. This was my family, this was my colleagues, this was my clients. So outwardly, I was always very professional with them, but inwardly there was a lot of like, “Oh, do we have to have this conversation? And you’re not going to listen to my advice anyway, so why are we doing this kind of mentality that was going on?” Instead of really feeling like I was like, “Yes, I’m there,” helping them with their legal challenges, I felt very much like I was pulling away from that, wanting to detach and disengage from that type of relationship.

Paula Davis 12:01

Lastly was just over time then realizing this sense of lost impact. I didn’t really feel like I was practicing law and getting a lot out of it. I was wondering if I was truly having the impact that I wanted to have in my career. It started me thinking, “Should I be doing something else?” That was not my first thought. My first thought was to go to my boss eventually and tell him-ish what was going on. I said, “I feel like I’m just wearing out doing all these commercial real estate deals. It’s a corporate legal department. Can I work on other things just to get a break?” He thought it was a great idea, but it just wasn’t something that, internally within the department, they could make work.

Paula Davis 12:44

I felt kind of stuck, and at the end of the day, felt like it left me with not a lot of options but to really consider what could I do as a potential business owner? What is that really the next step that I should be taking? And after a lot of thinking and investigating, the answer was yes to that. That’s how I progressed through all of that. But by the time I left my law practice, my last day practicing was June 24th, 2009, by the time I was done, I was getting panic attacks almost every day. I had been in the emergency room twice because I had really bad stomachaches from the stress.

Paula Davis 13:25

Really over the span of that year, seeing the progression of what started as one thing really ending in a pretty significant way was certainly an experience to go through.

Candice Reed 13:37

Hearing your story, I suspect that there are a number of people who can relate to it, and also a number of people who think, “Well, that’s just the practice of law.” So, you mentioned that you didn’t know what burnout was while you were in the throes of it. For our listeners, what is burnout? You’ve given us one example of what it looks like, but what causes it?

Paula Davis 14:11

Yeah. I define burnout as the manifestation of chronic workplace stress. So where we have to really start going with the conversation, because we oftentimes, because we see it manifested in the individuals, in the people who work within an organization, so it’s very tempting, and I will say this is where I started with my whole journey understanding burnout, is that I thought it was very much an individually-caused thing. There was something that I did or didn’t do that caused my burnout. That was very much where I was at with it.

Paula Davis 14:40

And just now having dug into the research for so long and done my own research in this area and talked to people and everything, I know that we have to really start moving away from this individualistic idea that burnout is all about individuals. It’s a piece of the puzzle, so we’re not going to eliminate it totally, but we also really, in a big way, have to start drawing in conversations about leadership and teams and teaming and the organization collectively, because burnout really is an individual expression of a workplace culture issue.

Paula Davis 15:15

I think that’s really important for people to know. I also think it’s important to punctuate that. It’s really technically not a medical condition, and I feel like sometimes it gets pegged that way because you can certainly have mental health and physical consequences from burnout, as I did. But for the most part, for most people, it certainly doesn’t start that way. So even the World Health Organization has been cautious about not labeling it as a medical condition and really calling it an occupational-related issues.

Paula Davis 15:48

I think if we can start thinking about it that way and understanding then to your question, what’s truly causing it, we can start to have the right conversation because the causes are things like lack of or low autonomy, lack of leader and team support, values disconnect. I want something from my work that work isn’t giving to me. It’s workload. I don’t think I’ve talked to a team or to an organization that doesn’t have a workload issue certainly now, but of course prior to the pandemic as well.

Paula Davis 16:21

Lack of recognition. I don’t feel like I’m getting thanked enough. I’m not getting the positive feedback that I need. I’m doing work at a certain level, but my title is below that, it doesn’t match what I feel like I’m doing, so there’s a lot that goes into that lack of recognition piece.

Paula Davis 16:36

When you think about it, when you hear that those are some of the key causes or drivers of burnout within an organization, you can then see how some of our self-care, individual-based strategies are misapplied. They don’t treat or fix those particular types of causes. So I think when we start to have the right conversation about what’s really happening, then people start to understand, this is really a different conversation we have to have.

Candice Reed 17:04

Yeah. I see a lot of discussions around burnout fall into the larger category of attorney well-being. And a lot of firms and a lot of corporate legal departments and employers across industries with very good intentions are offering Flex Fridays or healthy lunches, healthy meal deliveries, chair massages, those types of individual treatments as you mentioned. And in your book, you say you can’t yoga or meditate your way out of burnout. What do you mean by that?

Paula Davis 17:48

Yeah. I’ve had some interesting conversations with people who are yoga practitioners.

Candice Reed 17:54

With no offense to yoga practitioners whatsoever.

Paula Davis 17:58

Right, right. And the things that you mentioned, I think it’s important to punctuate the things that you mentioned are important. What we have to start doing is thinking about all of this in terms of a puzzle or an equation that we need to start getting our arms around, and they’re a piece of it. So, what we have to step away from is thinking that these… I understand why firms and organizations do this. It’s easy to roll out a healthy lunch program. It’s easy to do some chair massages. It’s easy to bring in somebody and have them talk to a group of lawyers about yoga and meditating and other self-care practices like that, and they’re all a very important part of the stress well-being equation. But we have to realize they don’t apply to treat or fix everything.

Paula Davis 18:41

So to what I was explaining, when you start to dig into what really causes burnout, it’s the types of things that yoga just isn’t going to fix. Yoga can help you deal with the stress that you may be experiencing because you have a micromanaging boss, or because you don’t have the team or leader support, or because you’re a brand-new associate so you have very little autonomy. They can help with some of those manifestations of stress, but they’re not in and of themselves going to actually treat the micromanaging boss or the lack of autonomy or the lack of recognition. Those have to be dealt with and treated in a much different way.

Paula Davis 19:21

One of the things that I hope with the book and what I try to encourage with firms and organizations is to start thinking about burnout as more of a leadership and teams issue versus a well-being and health issue. It can have those consequences, but it starts very much in terms of a workplace culture conversation. That’s where I hope to lead the charge with this.

Candice Reed 19:47

It may be misplaced under that well-being umbrella because well-being does tend to address the individual or be something that the individual has control over through yoga practices, physical activity, nutrition, meditation, mindfulness, those types of things. But you’re really talking about a cultural condition, not a medical condition but a cultural condition, and you explained that teams are the key to addressing burnout. Why is it that teams are so important when we’re talking about this issue?

Paula Davis 20:28

Yes. This has been, for me, really kind of an aha just in my own work over the last handful of years, because what I wanted to do really with my work generally, but also with the book, is really start to drive the right conversation so that we can start to see change happen on some level. So, knowing that the individual only path or prescription isn’t going to get us there. The research is very clear about the organizational factors and things like that. I also thought to myself, “Well, this has to be doable,” and I can’t just roll into a law firm or into an organization and say, “Hey, we have to change your culture.” That’s not going to happen for a whole host of reasons. So, that seems misplaced and not a good use of time either. Where in the continuum is going to be our best bet was what I was thinking?

Paula Davis 21:19

I just got really interested in the science and application of teams generally, especially at the intersection of resilience in teams, and really thought to myself, teams are these little mini systems essentially or little mini cultures that exist within the larger organizational culture structure, and teams are made up of individual contributors, leaders, and then the collective team itself. So I thought, “Wow, if we can start to influence how teams look and act and talk about each of those components, we are really going to be touching on a number of different facets of culture. And if I can get these little individual systems to go in a direction that makes burnout less likely to happen, could that potentially have ripple effects within the larger organization as a whole?”

Paula Davis 22:06

That really became my marching order and my thesis for my work and my book, and it’s been most interesting to really dig into how that looks.

Candice Reed 22:15

I love the distinction you’re making between wholesale cultural changes within an organization or a profession, like the legal profession, which we all know is very reluctant to change on a large scale.

Paula Davis 22:33

Yes.

Candice Reed 22:34

But within smaller groups, you have a lot of people wanting to make changes, looking for ways to change not just their individual experiences but their places of employment or their firms, their groups. So when you talk about teams, and you alluded to this in your last response, but what is a team? What are you talking about? How big does a team have to be in order to be this linchpin to cultural change or beating burnout?

Paula Davis 23:14

Yeah, it’s a fantastic question. It’s like I walked right into it myself when I first started doing this work, because I would be talking to a practice group, for example, at a law firm. I would be talking to a corporate legal department or to a team just generally, and I created my resilient teams inventory and was asking them to answer questions about their team. I would say, “Just think of your team and think about that,” and I would get so many confused looks back at me. Just people really like, “What are you talking about, lady?” kind of pauses.

Paula Davis 23:48

I really realized I had to take a step back and think about how are people thinking about teams, because I was thinking about a team from a static, collective group of a handful of people who always work together, who always, quote, travel together within their organization. And for most people, that’s not their experience of a team. So especially-

Candice Reed 24:12

Certainly not in the practice of law, right?

Paula Davis 24:16

No, no, exactly. So for most folks in the legal profession, we team when we team, so we use it as a verb. We may get together with a group of people to work on a particular deal or matter or project, and then that finishes. It could be something quick and over within a week or two, it could be a piece of litigation that goes on for two years and all points in between. And then when we’re done, we disband and we reform as a different teams, maybe sometimes with the same people but oftentimes with different people. So, we have this ongoing aliveness about how we experienced teams. I had to kind of switch and think about what teams meant, thinking about it more in that orientation. But I define teams as two or more people working together in service of a common goal.

Paula Davis 25:09

When I am talking to younger associates or younger professionals about teams, it might just be you and your paralegal, or you and an assistant, or you and one other person who you’re working on a project with. That’s a team. Your team can be your family essentially. Your team can also be the 20, 30, 40, 50 plus size practice group that you may be part of. Your team can be the organization as a whole if you really want to think about it that way. So, there’s lots of different ways for folks to think about what a team is.

Paula Davis 25:42

Now, I oftentimes will just ask people, “Think about the team that you most frequently or commonly identify with, and that could be just maybe the team that you’re working with right now for this particular moment.” But I think it’s a really important conversation to have so that we’re all on the same page in terms of what actually is a team to begin with. That’s a great question.

Candice Reed 26:05

Well, I know when I read the book, I kept thinking about the stereotypical lawyer working at their desk alone with the door shut on a matter that may not even involve any other attorneys. I mean, we often talk about how the practice of law is a lonely profession or how attorneys are siloed even within very large firms with hundreds of attorneys, thousands of employees. So, how do we create or become a part of a team as a lawyer when often it seems like we’re dissuaded from practicing collaboratively?

Candice Reed 26:55

We have outside counsel guidelines that often won’t pay for multiple attorneys to be involved in the same meeting or participating in the same tasks. How do we address that culture of individualism within the practice of law and encourage teaming, as you said, as a daily occurrence as opposed to just that one-off you might do whenever there’s a big case or a big deal that requires multiple people to be involved?

Paula Davis 27:33

This is such a great question, Candice, and I’m so glad that you asked it. It really gets to… I think these are conversations we’re going to have to start having within the profession if we want to really start to meaningfully get our arms around burnout and some of these concepts that we’re talking about, like well-being and really understanding if we’re going to start to get now to the systemic 2.0 conversations that we really need to have with all of these topics. These are some of the things we’re going to have to address and face, and it comes up in a lot of my work, because I think, I know we don’t team well in the profession for all of the reasons that you cited.

Paula Davis 28:09

But even if you’re in a large organization and you have access to and do really honestly function as a team, you’re not really functioning oftentimes as a team because as lawyers, we’re just not thinking in that way. We don’t think in team’s language or orient ourselves about that because we’re never taught it. We don’t get any of this type of training in law school. We don’t get any of this type of training or leadership development training in law school. And as we start in our careers to understand what is a team, why are teams important, I put a whole section in the book talking about the benefits of teams, and when they look high-performing and resilient, what are some of the outcomes that you see? That is an important piece of the puzzle. So, it’s we’re back to square one a little bit kind, building the case for why is this important.

Paula Davis 28:55

When I have an opportunity to coach lawyers one-on-one, oftentimes what they will tell me, I think on almost every instance, “The hours aren’t the thing that is really bugging me. I can deal with the fact that this is not a 9:00 to 5:00 job. There are aspects of it that aren’t great, but I can manage it. What I can’t stand is the unpredictability. I want to just be able to go to my cousin’s wedding and have fun and not have to stare at my phone every 10 minutes to see if something has blown up that I have to deal with.” So, it gets back to injecting, I think, a measure… Teams can help us inject a measure of predictability in a highly unpredictable environment, but we have to start having now the right conversation about teams, and we have to start having the right conversation with our clients.

Paula Davis 29:46

So, there’s a lot to tease apart in all of this, and I’m hoping to be able to pilot this type of approach with a couple of firms who are very forward-thinking about this, to the point where we may be identifying a small practice group doing a project for a very well-respected forward-thinking client, where we can start to put some of these processes in place and see if it makes a difference. So somebody who needs to have that weekend off or a few days off can really do it and detach in the right way knowing that they’re not going to come back to 800 emails, they’re not going to come back to all of these fires that they have to deal with, because why would I leave for three days if I know I’m going to come back and create a huge mountain of work for myself? And just see how that plays out.

Paula Davis 30:34

I think there’s going to be some phenomenal results from those types of experiments, but, A, we have to be willing to try them. We have to be having the conversations to make those happen. And then just seeing what works and what needs to be tweaked, but we have to start having those conversations and going in that direction if we’re really going to say we’re serious about these topics.

Candice Reed 30:57

And to give credit where credit is due, I am seeing a lot of that leadership coming from corporate legal departments, especially general counsel, who are building teams, and they’re not just building teams with people or attorneys who are all doing the same job, right?

Paula Davis 31:15

Yes.

Candice Reed 31:16

We are seeing teams include both in-house counsel, paralegals and support staff, as you mentioned, outside counsel, alternative legal providers. The team is a lot of different parts to the team. The team does not have to all be multiples of the same person. So when we talk about attorneys working with teams, I do think it’s important to recognize that that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re working with five other attorneys on the same project. It could be that you are the only attorney on that team, but you have various team members that are supporting you and covering for you when you may get pulled onto a different project or get sick, or like you said, just want to take some time off personally and enjoy your family and friends on a weekend.

Paula Davis 32:14

Yeah, no, 100%. I mean, I think that’s right. It’s interesting, because sometimes I feel like I’m like an occupational therapist going between corporate legal departments, and then I talk to my law firm folks, and then I go back and tell the corporate, the GCs what the firms are saying. I’m like, “You guys need to be communicating a whole lot more about this.” You’re right, the way that I think GCs and folks are thinking about teams and corporate legal departments is ahead of the curve. And when I talk to them about that, I also encourage them to give your outside counsel though also Latitude to be able to create those types of systems for them as well.

Candice Reed 32:52

Absolutely.

Paula Davis 32:53

Right. So back to you, it’s going to say, “I can’t do that because of cost.” Now, have a conversation about that. Maybe there’s a new approach to the monetary side of this that can work for both of you to make this happen. These again are the conversations that have to be happening, so don’t just assume that can’t have that conversation with the GC, they’re going to push back and say cost. Okay, well, let’s be a little innovative and creative here. Let’s start thinking about what could that potentially look like then to make some scenario happen, because I’ll tell the law firms what the GCs tell me is the one thing that they really can’t stand more than anything else is turnover. They don’t want to keep bringing a new outside counsel team member up to speed and paying for that either.

Paula Davis 33:36

So, paying attention to the predictable time off can help with some of those stress and well-being issues that may make it such that the teams stay together longer, which will save money in the long run too. You have to look at it from all of those facets.

Candice Reed 33:52

There are so many facets to consider. You talk about how the team itself needs to be both thriving and resilient. What does that look like? I mean, other than happy people walking around with smiles on their faces all the time. I mean, what does it really mean to have a thriving and resilient team that is going to function well and stay together for a while, so you don’t have that turnover that you’re talking about or the burnout that leads to the turnover?

Paula Davis 34:31

Yeah. It is actually, I would say, one of the things that hit home for me pretty strongly is it doesn’t mean that you have to be smiling and happy, and really shouldn’t mean that you’re smiling and happy all the time. So, the model that I created, the PRIMED acronym model from my book really draws heavily from the resilience in teams research, but as you mentioned, to also the thriving research, but self-determination theory and a number of different strands of research that show us a path for if we want to have these teams look the way that we need them to, as you mentioned, slow down burnout and see some of these things, where do we have to prioritize? So, thriving is really just feeling energized and you’re learning and growing and continuing to develop. There’s actually a lot of components of self-determination theory baked into some of the thriving research.

Paula Davis 35:24

Resilience just means that you can collectively, as a team, when you are faced with a challenge or a setback or a problem or a situation, a stress or a failure, that you can navigate through that appropriately, and you can stay cohesive as a team, and you can draw in the resources that you have, and you can react quickly to situations and pivot the way that you need to. So, really what bubbled up is a lot of different competencies, again, in that PRIMED model that really support those efforts from a foundational aspect, really centered on psychological safety. So, building that sense of trust really within the team, which is going to be integral to the cohesion aspects of things. And quite honestly, in psychologically-safe environments, it’s almost the opposite of a culture of nice.

Paula Davis 36:14

If I go into an organization and I work with a team, sometimes I will hear them describe their culture as a culture of nice. We’re polite, we say hi, we’re good at the thank yous and stuff. But what I realize is that they’re not having the conversations that need to be had. They’re not having the difficult conversations about is this really working. I have to give some constructive feedback to somebody and I really don’t want to, is this process what we should be undertaking? They’re not having any of those critical conversations that really help to cement and set the stage for trust and for psychological safety. That’s, again, the foundational or deeper level piece that we’ve got to start with.

Candice Reed 36:59

How do leaders create that psychological safety that you’re talking about in addition to having frank, and not just nice or not merely nice, conversations? I guess the flip side of that same question is what do you see lawyer leaders do unintentionally even to undercut that psychological safety among their teams?

Paula Davis 37:28

Yeah. One of the big things, to answer the second part of your question, I think as lawyers, we’re advice givers and we’re paid lots of money to give our advice and to say what we know. I think there’s also amongst all of us as high need for achievement professionals, the sense that we can’t admit when we don’t know something, when we’ve hit the boundary of our knowledge base. So, one of the most powerful things that leaders can do to create psychological safety is to say, “I don’t know,” or, “I’ve never seen this issue before. What do you guys think? What do you as the team think? What do you as a junior associate, how would you handle this? Because this is the first time that I, as the senior level partner has seen this, why don’t we try to figure this out collectively?”

Paula Davis 38:11

That’s one of the biggest things that build psychological safety. I think it’s one of the hardest things for lawyers to be able to stand up and say is, “I don’t know,” because we feel like we’re going to be judged and whispered about like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe he actually didn’t know what that was,” kind of a thing. Sometimes, we are, so then that really shuts us down and reinforces the fact that we should wing it or we should not have that comfort level.

Candice Reed 38:40

You gave a cringeworthy example of that in your book, where you mentioned speaking or leading a workshop and asking the participants if there was anyone in the room who didn’t know what ROI stood for, and someone raised their hand. Can you explain what happened?

Paula Davis 39:04

Yeah. It was a very high level executive. Again, we make the assumption that people at a certain knowledge level in any industry should just almost know everything, because how could you not know what that was? Quite honestly, the executive who raised her hand saying she didn’t know what that acronym was maybe misheard me. Maybe I just slurred my letters so much that she heard something different than what I had described. It could be any number of things. This was a group of engineering executives, and maybe it’s just something that she doesn’t encounter a whole lot. There’s a whole host of reasons why she didn’t know what that was, so I just explained what I was talking about and moved on with the presentation.

Paula Davis 39:47

And then, another executive in the back of the room just happened to say, just blurted out, “Hey, wait a second. I want to know who was the person who didn’t know what that was.” And didn’t say it in a kind way like I didn’t hear. He said it in a very critical, “How could you be so dumb to not know what that acronym is,” way. So, that was a moment. And at that point, going forward, whenever we encounter those types of scenarios within our day-to-day work, right away we say to ourselves, “Oh, there is such a thing as a stupid question for some people.” So, I got to watch myself. I don’t know which questions are going to be okay and which questions are not going to be okay, so I’m not going to ask any questions because I can’t predict what’s going to happen, so I’m going to shut down. And then, as leaders, we wonder, “Why aren’t people saying anything?”

Paula Davis 40:36

So, it’s really these really small behaviors. This was something really driven home for me about this research. Really small behaviors done consistently over time that matter tremendously when it comes to building this sense of trust within teams. So, it’s the thank yous, the “Nope, that’s not a stupid question at all. Here’s what I think.” It’s seeking out everybody’s opinion and asking for everybody’s contribution regardless of what level you are within the team, saying I don’t know, and acknowledging when something hasn’t gone right. It’s when somebody comes to you and says, “Oops, I messed up,” or, “This didn’t go as I thought.” Not making an example of them and saying, “How dare you mess up this.” It’s using it as an example to educate and to teach folks and to help people learn. So, it’s in limiting side conversations and gossip.

Paula Davis 41:27

It’s these little behaviors that create what some researchers call you matter cues that send signals to people saying, “Yep, you don’t have to worry about this.” They create really an open the door to a sense of belonging. You’re on the team that’s the right team for you. You’re on a team where you are cared for and valued, and that gets cemented in our brains. So, things like trust and psychological safety continually have to be built. If you have great and high psychological safety on your team, you still have to continue to do those behaviors. Every single, those little five to 10 minute micro interaction moments still have to be done consistently to preserve that because it can be eroded very quickly.

Candice Reed 42:11

Now that so many of us are working away from an office or away from our coworkers, many of us are at home, we’re working virtually, we’re connecting in Zoom or Teams meetings, but we’re not in the same space, are there certain tips that you would give to leaders who are trying to build a cohesive, psychologically-safe, trusting team where all of the team members are dispersed? Is it the same things that we should be doing even if we were all together in the same room? Or is there something different about leading and supporting a virtual team?

Paula Davis 42:54

I mean, really, I think this is one of the reasons why I’m such an advocate of when we go back to whatever work is going to look like, and it sounds like it’s likely going to be a hybrid of something, that we don’t overcorrect and sort of engineer out connection because it’s hard. It’s hard enough to build trust when we’re all together. It is exceedingly difficult when we are spread geographically and we’re geographically diverse 100% of the time. It’s just a really tall order and a really tall task. Things like onboarding and reviews and mentoring and innovation and sparking ideas and things like that are just so… No matter what kind of systems and procedures you have in place, they’re just going to be so hard to replicate in a purely virtual world. So, that’s one of the messages that I want to send.

Paula Davis 43:41

But yeah, there’s some specific things that leaders and people can do, because obviously this is going to be part of work going forward. What the research shows is one of the most important things that you can do is to just remind your team of its common purpose. Whether it’s the three of you or the 20 of you or more, what are you doing? What are you tasked to do in this particular project? Why have you been called together? What’s the impact it’s going to have within the organization, within the team? What impact is this going to have potentially to your client? Because it’s literally the similar thread that goes through everybody. You’re all here together working on this project, why are we doing it? And reminding people, here’s our goal, here’s how we’ve been accomplishing that goal over small periods of time, and keeping that front of mind is really one of the strongest things that can happen in virtual teams.

Paula Davis 44:35

But other things that folks have been talking to me about are those regular sort of no-business touch base calls, or just simply checking in on people. We forget about those, again, those little five-minute micro interactions of time where we are just seeing how people are doing. You can’t be communicative enough in these environments. So, probably over-communicating, being as transparent as you possibly can. As soon as you as a leader know that a change is coming or there’s an issue that’s happened, letting people know to the extent you can on the teams what that’s about. So, all of that really preserves that sense of trust and cohesion and continues to grow that, but it’s very difficult to do in a virtual environment.

Candice Reed 45:18

I mentioned earlier that I imagine there are many people listening to this conversation who either relate to some of the symptoms of burnout that you’ve described or recognize those symptoms in someone they work with. And in your book, you talk about the importance of having difficult conversations around burnout or any of the other ancillary topics that we’ve discussed today. For anyone who may be thinking, I may be in the throes of burnout, or I know someone who is, how would you suggest they approach starting or having that difficult conversation either with an employer or a manager or someone on their team?

Paula Davis 46:17

Yes. That’s such an important question because so many people, I think… I don’t know that I’ve had somebody say the opposite, but so many people who I’ve talked to directly have said, “I’m so thankful I said something,” or, “I’m so thankful somebody said something to me when they noticed it.” So, very rarely, if ever, have I heard, “Oh man, it was such a bummer to hear somebody care about me,” essentially is what it comes down to.

Candice Reed 46:45

Yeah, sure.

Paula Davis 46:45

If you’re the one who’s feeling that sense of like I’m worn out, I’m worn down, I’m burned out, understanding, first of all, here’s where language matters, and this is why education on this topic also matters too, so that leaders understand. And when somebody comes to them with this expression, you’re not just saying, “Well, take Friday off or just take a long weekend,” because those are band-aid approaches to someone who is truly experiencing those three big dimensions of burnout.

Paula Davis 47:13

If you are the person who’s experiencing burnout, literally use those words, “I’m feeling burned out, and it’s because I’m chronically exhausted, feeling this sense of cynicism, and lost impact.” Really explaining what that is and what that feels like, here’s how it’s kind of manifesting for me. And before you have that conversation, be very intentional. Really take time to think about what do you need. What are you asking of your leader, your HR person, your boss, your colleague, your friend? Do you just want to vent? Are you looking to switch teams? Do you want to switch out of your division, perhaps potentially, or into a new practice area? Are you asking for a significant amount of time off? What is it that you really want that you think will help you best deal with this issue? Because you need to be able to present that to a leader, to the person who you’re talking about.

Paula Davis 48:11

For some people, there may not be somebody within the organization who they feel comfortable enough saying something to. In that instance, I usually will say, “Tell a friend, tell a physician, tell… Is there some sort of person outside of the workplace who you can talk to about that?” But that would be the first step is the intentionality piece, really understanding what is it that you’re experiencing and what is it that you need to help you address what this is. Because when people know what those things are, they’re oftentimes able to help or at least help you have a conversation or direct you to the right resource or what have you.

Candice Reed 48:49

It’s also interesting, and you have done such a remarkable job with your book in both laying out the research and providing practical science-backed suggestions for those small steps that we can begin taking right away, that are going to have an immediate impact, and that will lead to much larger systemic change initially within our own teams but then presumably throughout the culture of the legal profession as a whole, I think. So, thank you for your work.

Candice Reed 49:29

As a last question, I’m always drawn to the acknowledgements and the dedication of books.

Paula Davis 49:39

Me too. Me too. I love them.

Candice Reed 49:41

I love them. It’s one of the things that when I’m sometimes reading a book on my Kindle or my tablet, they’ll skip over the dedication page and start you with chapter one, so I’m always returning back to the cover so that I make sure that I pick that up. You dedicated your book to Grandpa Davis and his best friend, Ray. As my last question, I was hoping that you could tell us a little about those two men and explain the role that our relationships with other people with whom we work have in both our well-being and our effectiveness as workers and as teams overall.

Paula Davis 50:26

Yeah, I love this question. No one’s asked me this question, and it always makes me a little teary-eyed because I keep a picture of the two of them in my wallet that was taken… My wallet, whatever. Probably because you’re thinking about them-

Candice Reed 50:42

You’re dating yourself just a little bit.

Paula Davis 50:47

Whatever you carry your money in, I have a picture of the two of them, and it is taken right before they both leave to go off to fight in World War II. My grandpa, he’d never talked about his time in the war. It was just something he struggled with his entire life. He had a lot of emotional and mental health consequences because of his service in World War II. So, I think that is one of the common themes and strands in terms of why I wanted to do this type of work. But the reason why he went to war was not because he was drafted, it was because his best friend, Ray, was drafted and he didn’t want Ray to go alone.

Paula Davis 51:33

I come from a town of 1,607 people. Everybody knows everybody. Ray lived kitty corner from my grandparents. I lived across the street and grew up from my grandparents. I knew who Ray was and visited with him and his wife Maggie when I was a little kid. So, there’s all of these themes, and he just thought to himself, “I’m not going to let my best friend go do this by himself,” so he enlisted. They went through a lot of their training together, and at some point, their paths diverged. My grandpa fought on D-Day and he was very severely wounded. He fought at the Battle of the Bulge also and was wounded again and almost died.

Paula Davis 52:06

So, I think about the two of them and how there was such an I’ve-got-your-back mentality. And I’ll tell you, for the after party to Well-being Week, I am interviewing lawyer veterans. I’m interviewing a group or a series. I’m going to do a series of articles interviewing different lawyer veterans and lawyers in the military to talk about their leadership experience and what can we learn from their leadership lessons in the military, where leadership is so highly prioritized and prized, that we can take back into the legal profession, because I don’t think we have the same priority there.

Paula Davis 52:43

But in interviewing the soldiers who I’ve talked to as well, there’s just this common thread of I’ve got your back and people caring and going the extra mile. I feel like so much of that has gotten lost in so much of work, and we tend to think of it as squishy and not all that important. But I think that if there’s one thing I have taken from this last year is that how important those moments of connection are. And it’s not by screen. It’s walking to the meeting together. I literally have heard that people say the same thing, the water cooler moments. I just want to take a walking meeting together with somebody and just see how their day is going and checking in on them, and back to the sense of empathy and caring.

Paula Davis 53:28

So, I hope that we can preserve that and not engineer that out of how our workplaces are going to look going forward. Think of my Grandpa Davis, my Grandpa Wally, and his best friend, Ray, and just understand what that friendship and that I’ve-got-your-back mentality I think can do to just fortify how we feel at work and outside of work and our teams and things like that, I think their story will be well-served.

Candice Reed 53:59

That’s wonderful. I really appreciated you including that story in your book, and I’m happy to hear you tell it in person too. It sounds like such a great upbringing being across the street from your grandparents. What could be better than that? I’m pretty sure that’s my daughter’s idea of heaven right there to be across the street from grandmom and granddaddy and poppy. So, thank you for sharing that story, and thank you, Paula, for sharing your expertise and your personal story of burnout with us today. It was a pleasure to talk to you as always.

Candice Reed 54:40

I highly recommend your book, Beating Burnout at Work: Why Teams Hold the Secret to Well-being and Resilience. Like I said earlier, it’s a quick read, full of practical science-backed suggestions for cultivating thriving and resilient teams and keeping burnout at bay. I think everyone could benefit from reading it. So, thank you for joining us today, Paula, and everybody go out and buy the book.

Paula Davis 55:09

Thank you, Candice. I so appreciate it. Fantastic job.

Candice Reed 55:12

I hope that listeners heard what I heard, which was this abundance of hope and optimism and opportunity and what Paula was saying about burnout and workplace cultures that may cause burnout. That there are things you can do both in the job that you currently have or in finding a new job that may have more of the characteristics that you’re looking for, that mesh well with your priorities, that align with your goals, that will support you in ways that don’t cause burnout.

Candice Reed 56:04

So, I hope everyone heard that because I felt like there was a lot of opportunity in what she was saying. That as lawyers, we’re not just stuck in the place we find ourselves right now. Sometimes, I feel like a lot of us think that. I certainly hear that when I’m talking to lawyers a lot, the sense of feeling stuck where you are. And right now, there are so many opportunities for lawyers out there.

Tim Haley 56:31

That’s right.

Candice Reed 56:31

If you’re unhappy or burned out where you are right now, this current job market is white hot and there are opportunities to make a move.

Tim Haley 56:39

It’s getting hotter too. We’ve got, as companies are opening up, as the headcount freezes are thawing as… Even during the pandemic, I remember talking to different people. Yeah, your resources are more limited, but the legal work’s not going anywhere. If anything, it’s growing exponentially. So, there is a reckoning coming, and that’s probably a good thing for lawyers.

Candice Reed 57:03

Yeah, and there are many ways to practice now. I mean, we’re seeing that obviously in what we do with Latitude, but there are lots of ways to practice law, and I think there are lots of opportunities for lawyers to find a situation or a position that works well for them.

Tim Haley 57:22

That’s a great segue into our next episode in two weeks, Candice. Who do we have?

Candice Reed 57:28

Yeah, we are going to have Latitude’s own Director of Legal Recruiting and Placement, Katie Bennett, will be joining us to talk about the current job market and the number of new opportunities that are out there, and to help listeners learn more about working with a recruiter. I know that many of us have not done that, especially if you’re in the same job that you got straight out of law school and helping with a new job search. Again, there are many lawyers out there that may not have done one for a while.

Candice Reed 58:05

Then also, again, just discussing the myriad of opportunities that are out there right now, the new ways that lawyers are practicing beyond a law firm or an in-house legal department. So, it should be a great conversation. I look forward to talking to her.

Tim Haley 58:22

The new way that companies and firms are onboarding people now, because you can’t do the face-to-face all day interviews like the old days.

Candice Reed 58:28

That’s true.

Tim Haley 58:29

There’s a lot of changes that have happened in the last 15 months, so I’m looking forward to hearing it.

Candice Reed 58:33

Me too.

Tim Haley 58:38

Thank you for joining us today. If you found this content valuable, please tell a friend or colleague about us. Also, if you can, please give us a rating and a short review on your podcast-listening platform. The more ratings and reviews we have, the more people will find us. If you have a question, reach out to us at latitudelegal.com.