Build a Better Team with Less Workplace Stress & Burnout with Paula Davis
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Description
Stress and burnout are among the greatest workplace challenges that workers and employers face. Leaders must deal with how to overcome them now more than ever if they want to foster a workplace where their employees feel valued and like their work matters.
As an author and internationally recognized expert on burnout prevention, resilience, and leadership, Paula Davis has engaged in conversations, both within and outside the legal industry, about how to reduce stress, prevent burnout, and foster greater resiliency within organizations to build stronger, more adaptable teams. She’s also the founder and CEO of The Stress & Resilience Institute, and draws from her expertise as a former lawyer trained in applied positive psychology to address pressing workplace issues.
In this episode of Branding Room Only, you’ll learn Paula’s two-pronged approach to navigating the challenges of stress, burnout prevention, and resiliency. She’ll also teach you her five-mindset framework for better leadership so you can develop a work environment that engages, retains, and inspires your team.
Chapters
1:20 - What personal brand means to Paula, how she describes herself, the quote she keeps coming back to, and the music that hypes her up
5:22 - How growing up in a small Wisconsin town with entrepreneurial parents shaped Paula’s childhood and attitude towards business
9:34 - How Paula’s tendency to just go for it had her stumble along a path with many forks in the road that eventually led to a direction that really resonated with her
15:38 - The role of the United States Army in helping Paula feel more open about her burnout experience
20:14 - The struggle to start conversations around mental health in the legal profession and what pushed Paula to work outside of legal
23:46 - How the pandemic has impacted people’s feelings about their well-being in the workplace and the other side of post-traumatic stress disorder
28:40 - Paula’s approach to coaching others around navigating stress, burnout, and resiliency on two fronts
34:11 - Why so many lawyers don’t see themselves as leaders and the five mindsets you should encompass to become a better leader
43:12 - How a feeling of belonging or mattering intersects with greater resiliency
47:59 - What Paula and her daughter Lucy do for fun together and her three-pronged resilience strategy
51:34 - What Paula will never compromise on regarding her brand and the magical thing she uniquely brings to a standing roomful of others
Connect With Paula Davis
Paula Davis is the founder and CEO of The Stress & Resilience Institute and has been a trusted advisor to leaders, teams, and organizations for over 15 years, helping them make work better. She has dedicated her career to addressing workplace challenges with practical, research-driven solutions. Her work extends across industries, from training U.S. Army personnel in resilience skills to guiding Fortune 500 companies and educational institutions like Harvard and Princeton in creating cultures that value well-being.
With her roots in applied positive psychology and years of hands-on expertise, Paula offers a unique perspective on transforming workplace dynamics for lasting impact. Her latest book, Lead Well, delivers a fresh perspective on how leaders can build cultures that benefit everyone.
The Stress & Resilience Institute | LinkedIn | Instagram | X
Mentioned In Build a Better Team with Less Workplace Stress & Burnout with Paula Davis
Beating Burnout at Work and Lead Well by Paula Davis
The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward by Dan Pink
“Mapping and measuring leadership practices intended to foster meaningful work” by Zachary A Mercurio, Tamara Myles, Wesley Adams, and Jeremy D. W. Clifton
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Transcript
Paula Edgar: Welcome to The Branding Room Only Podcast where we share career stories, strategies, and lessons learned on how industry leaders and influencers have built their personal brands. Now, let's get started with the show.
Hi, everybody. It's Paula Edgar, your host of Branding Room Only, and I'm so excited to speak to another Paula today. I'd like to introduce you to my guest, Paula Davis. She is the founder and CEO of The Stress & Resilience Institute, and Paula is an internationally recognized expert on burnout prevention and resilience, and she works with leaders and organizations to build stronger, more adaptable teams.
She's the author of the best-selling book, "Beating Burnout at Work," and the upcoming book, “Lead Well: 5 Mindsets to Engage, Retain, and Inspire Your Team” set to release in February of 2025. Paula's expertise has been featured in The New York Times, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Washington Post, and many other publications.
Drawing from her expertise as a lawyer and her advanced training in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, Paula combines cutting-edge research with practical strategies to address today's most pressing workplace challenges. Paula, welcome to The Branding Room.
Paula Davis: Thank you so much, Paula. I love this, two Paulas.
Paula Edgar: Exactly. Paula times two. Tell me this. What is a personal brand? What does it mean to you? How would you define it?
Paula Davis: I love this question. I actually gave this a little bit of thought. I was jotting down some notes. For me, it's really how you want to be seen and remembered by others. To me, it’s like the stake you're putting in the metaphorical ground out in the world and how you want others to see you and remember you.
Paula Edgar: I love that, I love that. That being said, how would you describe yourself in three words or short phrases?
Paula Davis: Okay, so this was also another really interesting and amazing question. I was once asked to describe myself in six words or less. I chose small town girl with big dreams because I feel like it captures where I came from. I come from a really, really small town in southeastern Wisconsin, with a population less than 2000. I've always felt like I wanted to just be out in the world doing something. There's that phrase.
Then the other three words that come to mind for me are really what my values are, kindness, courage, and love, and how I like to try and see the world through that lens, make important decisions through that lens. A lot of what I do in my business is through that lens. That was the other piece of the puzzle.
Paula Edgar: I love that. Kindness, courage, and love. I love that. Do you have a favorite quote or mantra?
Paula Davis: I love quotes. I have entire books of quotes. People will send me quotes. I flip to different ones depending on what I need to draw from the universe or what have you. But there's one that I really, I think, keep coming back to a lot, and it is “Between what is said and not meant and what is meant but not said, a lot of love is lost.”
Paula Edgar: Woah, oh, oh, that just took my breath away. That is, oh, wow, that is a great quote and so true, and everybody just thought about the relationship that they're in or want to be in [inaudible].
Paula Davis: I think it speaks to, and I'm really interested in Dan Pink's work across the board, but his latest book is about regrets. I think it just helps me keep front of mind, if there's a relationship I want to foster, there's something that I want to say to somebody, I guess even business or personal, the quote's probably oriented a little bit more on the personal side, it's just that say it.
If somebody inspired you, say it. If somebody is on your last nerve, try to figure out a nice way to bring that up. But I think it just really speaks to a lot of how to minimize those relationship regrets.
Paula Edgar: I love that. Thank you for sharing that. Tell me this, do you have a hype song? This is like when they're going to get full Paula Davis, what song is playing in your head? Or if you're having a terrible day, what song are you putting on to hype you up and it can be the same song or two different songs.
Paula Davis: I am obsessed with music. It is one of my great loves and great passions. I love listening to all kinds of music and it was hard for me to really pick one, and the genre that I really kept coming back to was like 80s music, being a girl who grew up in the 80s. Gosh, I mean, there's just so much.
I mean, I was thinking of Livin’ on a Prayer by Bon Jovi is a really good one. Welcome To The Jungle is one that I usually play when I'm working out or running to try and make it through the hill or whatever it is. Anything with that underlying amplification from a musical standpoint I think would work.
Paula Edgar: I love it. I love it. Love it. My song is always the same song. It's Prince: Baby I'm a Star. Shout out again to the 80s. Exactly. All right. You talked about growing up in a small town, but tell me about growing up and how do you think that shaped you?
Paula Davis: Just, I mean, tremendously. As I mentioned, my hometown now is a little over 2,000 people, but growing up was population 1,607. It was one of those just really cool childhoods where it was like you leave the house at whatever time in the morning, playing with all the neighbor kids, check in at lunch, go back outside, come back in when you know it's about dinner time so your mom and dad won't get mad at you, things like that.
It was just a really lovely way to grow up. I lived across the street from one set of grandparents, all the neighbors, we all knew each other. There was just this keen sense that there were a lot of really watchful eyes, but in a supportive way, really looking out for me and my brother, and really just everyone else in the neighborhood.
It was I think just a great little cocoon of relationships, which I think first cemented friendships and relationships being so important to me, but also my parents owned a business. My parents owned a plastic injection molding company for 15 years. My dad started that. This is the intro to my new book. I talk more about their business and my dad started it.
He left his full-time job and this was his side hustle and he made the decision to pursue the business when I was like eight. I was about eight and my brother was five and so it was a pretty bold move to make when you have two young kids. But really seeing that courage take shape, really seeing how much hard work it took to really start a business and what that looked like, but how much freedom and flexibility.
He and my mom are always at my and my brother's sports games and events and school stuff and all of that. That autonomy and that freedom to call your own shots was really, really demonstrated for me and cemented within me at a very, very young age. I've known for a long time that I was going to own a business of some sort. I just didn't know how it was all going to play out.
Paula Edgar: I love that you drew that connection from there. That is a huge risk. Again, I'm an entrepreneur, and so are you. I always tell people, “It wasn't very risky for me because I have a husband who's got a job and he's got insurance and we're going to have food.” But again, it's still a risk and it's still a lot of ups and downs, but to do that with two young kids at home in a small town, I mean, wow, you come from good stuff.
Paula Davis: No, right. I asked him, “What made you think you could do this? Were you scared? You've got two small kids, what's going on?” He said, “Well, I was young, and I just thought if this doesn't work out, I'll do something else.” It's just such a practical answer, like, “Duh, I'll just do something else.” I don't think we oftentimes think about that when we're faced with “Should I take the leap or should I make this big decision or should I pursue a path that might seem different or not what most people are doing, but it's where I feel called to go?”
I think too, I never asked him this question, but I think he would answer that if he hadn't done it, he hadn't tried it, I think that's something he always would have regretted. That also stuck with me too. That response of like, “Oh, okay, well it isn't really the end of the world if this doesn't work out. I really can go back and do something else,” or what have you, gives you at least a little bit of extra cushion and courage, perhaps.
Paula Edgar: I love it. I love the connection between that as a lesson, even if it wasn't a lesson in, “Hey, I'm doing this because when you were young,” but you saw that and it did shape what you did. Talk about career. Take me from small town to today.
Paula Davis: Sure. I was always very interested and oriented toward healthcare-facing professions. I thought at first I was going to be a doctor or wanted to be a doctor. As I grew up, I realized how squeamish I was around blood and how much I don't even like people wiggling their teeth in front of me. My daughter's got loose teeth and that just freaks me out. I figured that might not be the best way for me to go.
I actually ended up deciding to go to do my undergrad in physical therapy, to study physical therapy, to potentially be a physical therapist, because I thought this was a healthcare type role, but I wasn't exposed to all of the typical doctor, nurse, PA stuff. I started that, I started down that road and it was a super competitive program.
There were like 860 of us going for 24 slots. Most of us are not going to make it. I knew as I started to get into some of the more advanced science classes and things like that, my interest in it started to wane a little bit, but I had to take a lot of psychology classes as part of the core curriculum and I absolutely loved everything about the psychology classes, like what made humans tick, what was present when humans weren't functioning well, all of those things.
I very practically just decided when I wasn't going to continue on with physical therapy that I would just finish and pursue my undergrad in psychology. I thought very hard about going on for a PhD or an advanced degree in psychology, but I didn't really want to spend my time on what was called abnormal psychology or the mental illness side of psychology at the time and I love my con law classes and undergrads. I'm like, “I'll go to law school.”
I mean, that's literally the extent of the thought in terms of why law school. So I got into law school and I remember really the first week, it was either the first week or the first couple of weeks, I was in the dean's office and I was sitting in front of him and I'm like, “I don't know that this is right for me.” I was getting very emotional about it. Something about it just wasn't connecting.
He said, “Well, a lot of people say that.” So I just figured like, “Okay, well, other people must be feeling this too. I'll just stick it out or whatever.” So went through law school and practiced commercial real estate law for seven years. Then really during the last year of my law practice was when I started to burnout, but I didn't realize what it was or that there was this term called burnout.
Really over the course of this last year, that total year, really experienced the full range or spectrum of what we now know burnout to be. Really starting with procrastinating, “Ugh, I don't want to deal with this 125-page lease negotiation thing that I have to do so I'm going to research recipes,” because I thought I was going to go to pastry school and become a pastry shop. There was that.
Then over the course of the year, I just couldn't get myself unstuck. I started to notice that I was getting more frustrated with the people who I worked with. I was getting more frustrated with my clients, outwardly, always very professional. But I really noticed myself really separating from just really wanting to be a lawyer and feeling like I was really attached in some way.
I think part of it was that I never really had that anchor. I never really had that deep reason, like why I wanted to do this. It made it easier for me to start to think about what could be next. So I stopped my law practice. It was June of 2009. I started with my master's in applied positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania in September of 2009.
That came about because as I was trying to figure out how to get myself unstuck from the burnout, I actually ended up working with a coach and she had just finished the master in applied positive psychology, the MAP program at UPenn. I said, “What is this program? Positive psychology, that sounds so amazing. That was my undergrad.”
She told me about it and I basically just became obsessed with everything about the program and of course, applied and got in. I, again, didn't really go there seeking, I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to find. It was only a year so I figured, “All right, I'll have a master's after a year.”
But I feel like something's going to be here in this program that I can glom onto, that I can create a business around, that I can to help and teach other people so that they don't experience burnout, that we can somehow address some of these sources of stress in the world of work, and sure enough it did.
What I didn't realize at the time, there's a lot of these themes in my path is that I didn't really realize what I was walking into. I just said yes and then just went for it and then stumbled along upon the thing that really resonated with me. But a lot of the professors at UPenn are some of the world's foremost scientists in the science of resilience, researchers in the science of resilience so when we started to get into that segment of learning, I was just really, really drawn to it.
Like, wow, if you stumble, if you have failure, setback, obstacles, stressors, challenges, there's a healthier way to maneuver through that, to navigate through that. I just again became obsessed again with that science and did my master's thesis in that.
As it turns out, when I graduated in 2010, the United States Army had just reached out to [Martin] Seligman and others at Penn to say, "Hey, you all have figured out how to teach and scale this resilience stuff within organizations. Could you potentially create a version of your Penn Resilience Program for Army drill sergeants and soldiers that we could use, that we could send our senior non-commissioned officers and officers through your program, you can certify them and they can go back to their units and start to teach the lower ranking soldiers, some of the skills that you know really work in service of building resilience.”
I had a chance to apply to that program. They really managed our expectations and said, "This program is just starting. We don't know if it's going to take off. You may never be called." But they wanted to train people up just in case. I think I waited like a month and they're like, "Hey, we've got an opening. Can you come to see [inaudible] and do this training?" and I was like, “Sure.”
It was just amazing. I mean, it was really the second part of my education because I had the research piece of the education, but I was a lawyer for seven years, I didn't know how to teach this stuff to adults or to people or what have you. To be part of that and learning how to design teaching and things like that was just phenomenal.
I always say the soldiers helped put me back together. So it was more than just me teaching them, it was me learning from them. It was me hearing them talk about their challenges and their struggles because at the time I wasn't very open about my burnout experience and didn't talk about it a lot and felt really, I don't know if embarrassed is the right word, but really was struggling trying to figure out how it happened in the first place.
So hearing them talk about all their challenges started to make me lower my walls a little bit and feel more comfortable going in that little bit more of that vulnerable direction.
Paula Edgar: That's so interesting because of course, when you think about folks who are in the service, you don't think about their vulnerability and sharing and so they have gotten that lesson. As I was listening to you speak, you experienced burnout basically right after the downturn.
Paula Davis: It was leading right into it. It was right as it was starting. Part of I think why it happened, when I unraveled all of the reasons back, some of it was what I brought to the table, but a lot of it was, I mean, in the 2000s when I practiced, commercial real estate, you could do whatever you wanted to from a real estate standpoint. Everyone got a loan. You could hardly have to do anything and you would get whatever you needed to buy and sell property. So I was always busy. I was never not slow for seven years. That was certainly a factor as well.
It's funny, you mentioned that about the drill sergeants. We always did a segment on one of the days talking about their character strengths, so we'd have them take a specific strengths assessment. One of the strengths of the 24 that we assessed is capacity to love and be loved.
A ton of them, that would be one of their top five or one of their signature strengths and they hated it so much because we'd have them post what their strengths were on flip charts around the wall and they hated putting their names down for capacity to love and be loved because they thought it was so squishy and soft.
But when you look at the definition, you look at what they do, I mean, they're tasked with training up brand new soldiers and putting them into the Army system with Army values and what have you and it is very much teaching-focused, they go at it, they go about it in some pretty intense ways, but the root of it, for some of them, for a lot of them, is that.
Paula Edgar: I'm married to a former Marine, and he talks about his experience at boot camp. It's not hearts and flowers, but he also thinks back very fondly on the experience, and so it's like the definition of tough love to get you into a space. I always say to him, "You are the one from our family to have sacrificed because I could never have done that." Again, that resilience piece, I don't have it there. I have it in other places, but definitely not there.
I'm really glad I asked you about that to bring us to where we are now. Is that then when you decided that you were going to launch The Stress & Resilience Institute?
Paula Davis: I actually started my business as I was going to, and right before I went to start at the MAP program at UPenn. My business existed while I went to school and while I was doing the work with the soldiers. But I didn't really have a clear—we're talking about branding—I didn't really have a clear idea of what the business was going to become or even what I wanted it to become.
I mean, in my mind I took a week off of work and went down and did coach training and coach certification. I thought I was going to take whatever I learned at Penn and start coaching lawyers in some respect. I mean, that's really where I thought it was going to go.
As I finished the year at Penn, I realized that there were so many more applications for what could be done. I wouldn't say I put my business completely aside because I spent about what turned into, “Oh, you might do one training a year with the army,” turned into once a month every year for almost four years. That was a pretty intense obligation.
When I wasn't doing that, I would try and find speaking opportunities. I would try and write articles. I remember in 2010, I wanted to write an article about lawyer well-being in Wisconsin Lawyer Magazine, and I had to write three drafts of the article. I remember, I think I even had to have a call with someone on the editorial board to explain why are we talking about well-being. It was not what it is today.
I was trying to do those little things to try and just start the conversation and have some sort of presence in this, but the business stuff really just was on the side while the military stuff was happening.
Paula Edgar: I mean, obviously without knowing it, you've had great foresight because now this is like you can't turn around without people talking about wellness and wellbeing and the need to address how stress impacts our lives and how to navigate that. So, again, you are obviously psychic.
Paula Davis: Or you could say, from an entrepreneurial perspective, I mistimed the market because, yes there was some forward thinking there and I realized that that was a need, but trying to get anything going in the legal profession at that time, I mean, there were a couple of people who happened to find me and I found them and there were some initial things like the PDC conference maybe or one or two maybe firm conversations are like, “We'll take a flyer and we'll bring her in and we'll see what happens.”
Certainly not enough to sustain a business, but in a sense, that's also what pushed me into looking at other industries. I've always had, across the industries, work versus just being in the legal profession because I had to. I didn't have a choice. Otherwise, I wasn't going to have a business.
Paula Edgar: Good reason to do it. But obviously, it applies everywhere. I think ears are much more open now for many reasons, including obviously, science and understanding that you're not your best self at work, which the business case to figure this out. But also, we've just survived the pandemic and I cannot imagine that people are not thinking about the well-being of their workforce in many different ways.
If they are not, then I'm sure their workforce is going to slim down because people are not going to stay. Then thinking about the intersection of the work that you do and the fact that the workforce is changing and that people are much more open and they're also more demanding of spaces that will accommodate, understand, and provide resources for who they are and what they're going through.
I hope that now the street and the car have met, I think it's the road and the path, whatever the thing is have met so that the business is, I'm sure very busy because, and if not, after this podcast goes viral, it will be.
Paula Davis: Absolutely. But to your point, I think it's one of the things, I think some leaders right now, when I say right now, today at the end of 2024, I think there are definitely quite a number of more leaders who get this and understand this than certainly back in 2010. But I will tell you, I still think that a lot of leaders and a lot of people at work, they underestimate the impact and continue to underestimate the impact that the pandemic had on people's lives.
I think it was just such a sudden halting literally impacted every single person on the planet kind of experience where we saw life and death circumstances happening to people who we loved and people around the world. Because it lasted as long as it did, we really took a step back and said, “Is this what I want to do? Do I want to continue to do this, whatever this was?”
You saw people in the moment selling businesses and doing their thing and hopping in an RV and tooling around the country and all that. But even if you didn't leave your job, I think people still really carry that with them, to a much more heightened degree such that they're now really scanning the workplace lens to look for things like, “Do I matter? Do you see me? Am I just a cog in the wheel? Do I have meaningful work? Do you care about me? Do I like the people who I work with? Do I feel like I belong? Are you drowning me in a mountain of work and I can't go home and see my family now or have meaningful hobbies?”
I think the questions that we're asking about how we want to work have been reshaped. I'm still not sure that leaders quite get how deep that runs.
Paula Edgar: Yeah, my therapist says, everybody knows, my podcast audience knows, she saves lives every day, she says that we have not even started to pull apart the trauma that we have experienced. We're still in the wake of feeling the trauma as opposed to processing.
You know how on your phone, it'll flashback and say, “Oh, this picture happened whenever it is,” I literally go into this space where I'm like, “Oh, my god, that was the worst thing.” Every time I'm wearing a mask. I did the pandemic in a house where we all had a space and we think about folks who didn't and the loneliness. There's just so much that I went into that and the piece that you mentioned about folks re-evaluating.
My friends who were divorce attorneys were like, we see everybody's deciding that this is not the thing for them anymore because stress and resilience don't only happen just at the workplace if you think about the stress that we have at home too and how it leads to all of the things.
Paula Davis: Yeah, and I mean, it crosses over. It'd be lovely if we could just keep our work stress at work and then go home and do with our families and then keep our family stress at home and then come to work. It doesn't work that way but the one thing it did is it allowed me to start to talk about and I introduced the concept in my new book of post-traumatic growth that really we did go through something that we can very aptly label as trauma or traumatic.
I think a lot of people are familiar with post-traumatic stress disorder, but the other side of the coin is post-traumatic growth. When you go through something that's traumatic or super challenging, most people make it through that event. When they look back on it, go, "Ah, I wish that would not have happened. If I could do it all over again, I would not have wanted to go through that. But I did.”
They start to notice a renewed appreciation for life, relationships become much more important, more spiritual growth. There are some interesting things that come from it that again, I think as a way for people in the workplace to understand, we've been rewired a little bit from a human standpoint.
Paula Edgar: Wow. Speaking of that, obviously, my podcast is on personal branding. I think all of these things impact how you show up. When I think about burnout and stress and how it can show up in individuals, why it's important for us to acknowledge and figure out ways and strategies to navigate that, and why leaders especially need to prioritize this is because you're not just hiding it on your own, it impacts everybody around you as well too because of how it comes out.
I think of one time that I had a lot going on, I had my son. My son is a cancer survivor and he was in the hospital and I was at a Bar Association meeting. I was doing way too much and I was in this meeting and I flipped out in this meeting. I hit my point and it's totally not me.
My nickname is Pauliana. I'm always like, “This is the smile on my face. It is what it is.” But I showed up and I didn't even realize it was happening until somebody afterward was like, "What's going on?"
When you think about if you don't manage the stress and the work and all the other things you have, how it can show up and impact your brand. Tell me what are the things you talk to people about when you’re coaching them around navigating this and the resilience of it.
Paula Davis: Yeah, I think it's really important to talk about, especially if we're talking through the lens of stress and burnout, to look at it on two fronts. This is another place where I think certainly that I've learned a ton over the years doing this work is that particularly with the resilience work, I very much started with, “Okay, how do I help individuals foster and build their own sense of resilience and capacity? How do I help them increase their capacity to navigate challenges, uncertainty, failure, setback, what have you, and then not just bounce back, but actually grow from it?”
I approached it through that lens. I think it's really important for us to use that as a starting point because what really helped me start to unravel my understanding of why I burned out was when I started to have those deeper conversations with myself about how I'm wired.
I am very much a people-pleaser. I'm very much a recovering perfectionist now. I'm what I call an achievaholic. I'm all about goals, and let's build the thing. Let's scale the thing. Let's do the thing. All of those things have served me very well, but they have also really served to undercut my ability to take intentional pauses.
The things that I hear myself saying are harder for me to do because of that wiring, but I now know that, and so I can really start to manage around that. I don't think people realize with burnout how deep we have to be thinking about those core values and beliefs about the way we think the world should operate and some of those deeper conversations.
But the other piece of the puzzle is actually the more significant piece that we often don't talk about, and I certainly didn't even stumble across it all until well into my studies and after when I started to interview more people about their burnout experiences, is the role that the workplace environment plays, that the system plays, that the culture plays, that your leader plays, and how strongly that can impact whether or not people experience good stuff from work, whether they're engaged at work, whether they're motivated at work, or whether they experience some of these other pieces.
When I'm talking to people about this, we'll talk on both of those levels. We do a lot of really deep introspection around that wiring piece. Then I'll be like, “All right, let's talk about the workplace. What are you doing or not doing in the work environment? How is the work environment conspiring to be part of this problem or part of this process?”
So they can understand that there's a lot that they have control over, but there are other things, other forces that are impacting and leading to burnout, that they have to acknowledge and understand, but may not necessarily have complete control or influence over to deal with.
But it also then takes a little bit of weight off their shoulders because it's not just them. I could give you 5,000 stress management techniques or what have you and it's still if you are working in a system or an environment that just isn't working for you and that is a mismatch, it's going to be really hard.
Paula Edgar: Self-assessment is a part of every growth spurt that we have. You've got to figure it out. But asking those questions about the environment is such a huge piece. In the work that I do for inclusion, it's high. What is here, to your point, is that supports everybody belonging and what doesn't support it.
Without even knowing the organization, I can tell, it's probably the same things that impact burnout culture, which is we meet too much and I don't have time to do my work. You evaluate me unfairly. You're passive-aggressive. You don't communicate. There are all kinds of things without knowing that people experience.
There's this replication of it too, because when people don't stop and think about how they are leading and how they are modeling, then it just continues to happen because folks think that's what success is. In order to get there, you're doing work that needs to be done.
Paula Davis: In fairness, particularly in the legal profession, we're not taught any of this. We don't have leadership 101 training a lot, certainly not in law school, certainly not in the earlier parts of your career.
Then I still run into so many lawyers who don't even see themselves. They could be a mid-level associate or a senior associate, and they don't even see themselves as a leader, even though they're handing out work assignments, and they are interacting with people at different levels.
It's really a set of behaviors and not a title, but we don't see it that way. That's one of the things that I think that working with the military helped me understand in a keen way is that they're all about leadership and leadership training and how we build this into everyday stuff and formal programs. We started on day one and here's what's expected and here's our values and this is what you have to do.
It's just treated in such a different way than, and it's not just a legal profession, I think it's just generally our world of work, if there is leadership something, it's not necessarily through this lens that we talk about it.
Paula Edgar: Right. People think of leadership as aspirational like Martin Luther King, as opposed to everyday folks who are doing the action of leading whether or not they considered themselves leaders, speaking of branding, or hate, and so that if then you're only thinking about what happens to you, then you're causing trauma without maybe even intending or knowing that you are doing so. Oh, this is fascinating. All right, so let's talk about the book.
Paula Davis: Yes.
Paula Edgar: The new book talks about leadership, and why you should be leading well. Tell me about the mindsets that you think leaders should be encompassing or to lead well, lead better.
Paula Davis: Yes. This really came from, I would say, certainly all of my work up to this point, but really concentrated over the last five-ish or so years, particularly during the pandemic, when I would go in and I would sit with a team. We would workshop and train.
I would talk to leaders here very specifically like, “Here's where my team is struggling,” or, “Here's where I'm struggling,” or, “Here's the issues we're facing,” or, “Here's what I'm not doing well.” The same common themes kept coming up. I realized that this could be like a framework actually for leaders generally moving forward.
A lot of this certainly has the research underpinning support to it, but was largely born out of all of the conversations that I had and the interactions that I had during this period of time. The first one, and I would say the first mindset is where I usually will advocate leaders start in part because it's “easy”.
I put that in air quotes because if you're not doing a practice, it takes time and it is not necessarily easy work to do, but it's what I call sticky recognition and mattering. Prioritizing sticky recognition and mattering, and so really letting people know, giving them the evidence of their impact when they do something well and being able to speak in those words, whether it is just simply saying, “Thank you so much for summarizing the depositions. The way you summarized them helped me see the key takeaway points quickly so that I could have a better conversation with our client.”
That little plus piece becomes super, super sticky, and fortifying for people. Then that leads to this sense of not only am I achieving something, but you're also recognizing me for it, which are the two big components of mattering. That, I would say, of all the things that I researched in this book has really had the biggest impact on me.
It really reshaped how I see and how I interact with my friends, how I interact with Lucy, my daughter, how I talk about a lot of this work because really what it comes down to is that I want to feel important, I want to feel noticed, and I want to feel needed.
How are we conveying that to people day-to-day basis? It lives in that, when I interviewed one of the leading researchers on mattering, he said, “Mattering lives in the little in-between moments of your day-to-day. It lives in how you talk to somebody in the 10 minutes you're walking down the hall.”
When we patch in for a Zoom call or conversation, are you asking me about my family or are you asking me about what's on my plate today or what have you? It's just noticing people. We have to unwind all the way back to the foundation of just being good humans, essentially. That's a big one.
The next one is what I call ABC needs. Focusing on ABC needs. Autonomy, belonging, and challenges, I call it. It's literally those three components of self-determination theory, essentially. Humans want to have a little bit of control over their own adventures a little bit.
We want to feel like we belong and that we're part of teams that care about us and care for us. We want to do good work. We want to feel challenged at work. We want to be continuously working on new things and expanding our horizons. That's the second one. Workload Sustainability. I was almost not going to write this chapter because I got into it, it's complicated in and of itself and could be its own five-part book.
Paula Edgar: Wow.
Paula Davis: But it was the biggest issue that I consistently heard leaders say, “My team is burned out or stressed out,” or “I’m burned out or stressed out because I have an unmanageable workload. I just cannot deal with the sheer quantity and volume of everything that I have to do.” To the point that you were saying, “I don't have time to do my actual work because I've got like 18 million things that I'm trying to do.”
I really wanted to dig into that and try to tease that apart a little bit. Really what it came down to is having the right teaming practices, and having the right types of recovery and building in that time for be charged. That was that one. The next one is systemic stress resilience.
Another huge theme that I heard very consistently was that we have no idea how to navigate the uncertainty, the change, and the challenge within our team, within our organization, “We just went through a merger. We're worried our company is going to be sold. We have new technology coming at us all the time, and we just don't have the capacity to be able to take it on.”
I talk about it in the book from a little bit more of a team's lens, so teams and resilience, and then the organization itself. How can it develop resilience? There's that piece. Then the last one is just meaning and values alignment. If we are going to go from what I call generational conflict generational curiosity.
If we're going to lead in a way that promotes meaningful work because we're hearing so much from the younger generations that is an absolutely critical and crucial thing that I need to have to be engaged in my world of work is to know that impact in that sense of meaning.
There's a great new study framing six different areas or capacities that leaders can develop that lead to a sense of meaningful work. It's not that leaders have to do all of these things or go through all of these mindsets, but I'm guessing that there's probably one or two where they realize, “Ooh, this is a significant area of concern for us. Let's hop in here and start to go through some of the practices that can start to help.”
Really, big picture at the end of the day. What I realized in going through this process is that what comes down to leading well is a little bit of better teaming practices and a little bit of better human practices. It's a combination of some teaming stuff and some human stuff that I think is really going to carry us into what the future of work is becoming and looks like.
Paula Edgar: I love the framework. The study you just mentioned, who did that study?
Paula Davis: The study about meaningful work?
Paula Edgar: The one with the six pieces.
Paula Davis: Yeah, the six leadership practices that lead to meaningful work was actually done. Three of the four researchers are colleagues of mine from the Positive Psychology Program. Then the fourth person is the researcher who I interviewed, who is one of the experts on workplace mattering. The four of them got together.
It's really, really a lovely study. There've been certainly other studies about meaningful work and what have you. It was just so great that they were able to zero in on the specific practices that really matter and help.
Paula Edgar: I mean, the five mindsets sound so comprehensive. Then thinking of that first one, though, that's relationship advice that can be used. I think about this from that brand perspective is that when you make people feel loved, and that's really what this is, they love you back.
When you feel seen, they see you back and they stay. I love that the post the colon is talking about retention because listen, if nothing else, then much of the work that I do when I go in places and talk about branding and talk about professional development, just generally, this is happening so that you want to stay, so that you're being invested in.
If you're not investing and people don't feel that, my friends laugh at me because I use magic and love a lot in my talk, but it's exactly that, then they will trust you more too. Because they feel as if the work they're doing is not just going to be a cog in the wheel, but you're actually being seen. I love that. I love that.
Paula Davis: It's huge and mattering intersects with belonging, mattering intersects with resilience. When I feel like I matter to an organization or to my family or to my community, when I encounter challenging or difficult things, when I stumble, when there's an obstacle, I'm more likely to be able to push through it if that's what makes sense or to make the right decision about plan B or maybe I've got to stop something altogether when I know that I come from that place.
I just recently did a survey study with ALM where we asked lawyers and legal professionals to rate the frequency of a number of different statements related to the three different dimensions of burnout. One of the statements that I actually really wanted to put in there, I have a few things in there about appreciation at work and mattering and things, I don't call it mattering.
But one of the statements was, “I feel like a cog in the wheel at work.” Then the frequencies were things like never, once a month, a few times a year, a couple of times a week, or every day. I believe 44.1% said at least once a week, multiple times a week, or every day, “I feel like a cog in the wheel.” It was 23.1% who said every day, “I feel like a cog in the wheel.”
Then we wonder why are people disengaged? Why are people leaving? Why can't we retain people? Why are people so checked out and frustrated? It's not the entire answer, but I mean, it's a pretty big part of it.
Paula Edgar: Yeah, it's a huge part of it because if you don't find value or you don't feel as if the work you were doing is valued, that's just yeah, I know that all of you are, as you listen to this, you're probably thinking about all the traumatic work that you have been in or are in currently and my hope is that thinking about this, because there are a lot of leaders who listen to the podcast, that number one, they get the book and really think about these pieces and how they can be the catalyst.
I'm a big believer in you read a book and you have to spread the word, but you don't just read it for yourself for your own modification, you have to spread what you have learned for those of us who were first out speaking of reading since law school. I'm like, “Tell me everything that you read and what you've learned.”
But you have to read it for yourself. But that being said, I was glad to hear that you are doing this on audiobook because everybody knows I have to listen to it on audiobook for my ADHD, but also just in general, me and books since law school, I can't, it's just too much. So there's that. Judge me if you want to, it’s fine, I don't care.
Paula Davis: No, and that's fascinating because I cannot consume books that way. It just goes-- and then I start thinking of something else. It just doesn't keep me focused, like actually having a book in front of me does. I was so thankful that I got to read the audio version for this book because I didn't get to do it for my first book. It was a very unique and fun process to go in and read that. If you ever do get the audio version, it will be my voice.
Paula Edgar: It's just so much better. I'm an audiobook gal. It's so much better when the author reads it because you can hear the passion, you can hear the conviction, and I just like it better as somebody who listens to audiobooks, except for the folks who have voices where I'm like, “Okay, maybe,” but most of the time, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine.
Okay, so I knew this was going to go by quickly, our conversation, so I'm trying to think. I'm going to ask my three final questions, but I'm going to do a sub-question on this next one. What do you do for fun?
Paula Davis: Oh, yeah, so this is an interesting question because this past year, it's so funny because as somebody who talks about burnout, I was literally coming up around October, November, and I'm like, “Am I burned out?” Because it was like, I wrote the book the entire year, I was still traveling my same amount. I am one of those folks who got divorced during the pandemic. Solo parent, Lucy, and I, so it was like, “Well, that was a lot.”
But one of the things that Lucy and I particularly love to do that I personally have always loved to do is sports and athletics. She and I share a short little season ticket package with our neighbors to the Milwaukee Brewers baseball games. We will go to probably half a dozen games or so during the summer, but it is just one of our most fun things that we do.
I, again, personally, but her and I together, we absolutely love to travel. Anytime we're trying to figure out hotels with good pools, if anybody has suggestions, all of the good stuff. Those would be the two big things.
Paula Edgar: I love it. As a fellow baseball fan, I love going into a game. I was raised a Yankee fan and this year I was forced to go to a Mets game. I actually loved it because they have a really great stadium. There's that. You started answering the question I was going to ask you, but I'll ask you directly. What is Paula Davis's resilience strategy?
Paula Davis: Yes. There are a few things. For me, back to that athletic athlete piece of the puzzle. I used to play team sports well after college and for quite some time but got away from it quite a number of years ago. But I love to run. I love to work out and exercise. I run anxious. So running or kickboxing or things like that really helped to drain some of that reserved mental just chatter and things that I experienced on a fair amount. That's a huge piece of the puzzle.
The other big piece is my friendships. I think of my friendships as my chosen family. One of the things I'm most proud of is that I have friends that go back 35 years-ish or so. I've got my friends back from starting high school and grade school and things like that all through current.
I've gotten better, certainly in the last probably six to seven years or so about really, really making sure we stay connected and that we talk on a regular basis and that I reach out to them on a regular basis and draw so much support from them. Very much that relationship-y piece of the puzzle and volunteering. Volunteering I would say would be the third prong both separately and of course with Lucy. We have our fun that way too.
Paula Edgar: That's a great addition to it, too, because obviously, I think one way that we can offset some of our own stress is to really be of service to others and think about others' experiences to get a little clarity. Even if you don't take it away, clarity. I always say when I hurt, I give, I hurt, I give, I hurt, I give, yeah, yeah.
Paula Davis: Same, it's like where I first feel like I need to orient, I need to give back. I need to be just out with others doing that. Yeah.
Paula Edgar: Okay. Well, great. Now that I've gotten all of the tea about what you do, and everybody knows that my resilience strategy is a massage as much as I can. My masseuse knows me better than most of my family members. Anyway, so I ask folks on the podcast two things. One is, what is the authentic aspect about your own personal brand that you will never compromise on?
Paula Davis: I don't know if this answers the question or not, but it was just where I kept coming back to, that I always want people, whether I'm talking to a lot of people via Zoom or I'm in person and we're going through a training or what have you or certainly one-on-one with coaching, I just want people to feel like they're talking to a friend.
That somebody who's not just researched a bunch of stuff, but is trying to meet them where they're at and talk to them where they're at, wherever their life is at, and also from a place of like, I've messed a lot of this stuff up too. Not only have I burned out, I mean, I got divorced, I’ve been there, done that with a lot of mistakes and hurdles and things like that.
Just wanting people to know that I am there to help, I might be there to teach something or impart a lesson or what have you, but then I'm really trying to do it from a place of “I'm in this with you” versus “I'm just trying to teach you something and then I'm going to leave.”
Paula Edgar: Right. That relatability is a really important piece of that and that's what I heard from you. Branding Room Only is a play on the term standing room only because I am clever. My question for you is, Paula Davis, what is that thing about you, that magic about you that would have a room filled to the gills with standing room only to experience about you?
Paula Davis: Again, I think it goes back to what I just said. I think it's that blend of kindness with she knows a bunch of stuff about some cool things. I always pride myself, and what I actually honestly see myself as is somebody who can take complex ideas that you might find in a 45-page research paper, and what is the essential one or two nuggets that you need to know and break it down in a way that you can feel like you can practice it. I think it's that combination of things. It's a little bit of the sciencey stuff with a little bit of the human-centered stuff, essentially, that makes for a unique me.
Paula Edgar: Well, I will say, because there's a special rule that if your name is Paula, you want to be on my podcast, you have to be very special. You can't just be named Paula because again, it's my brand. But I will say that what you just said is exactly right. When I saw Paula speak at a conference, I was blown away. Usually, I am not. I'm like, “This is what I do for a living.” But I was blown away so much so that I sent you a note to say how much I really appreciated you and the way that you presented and how relatable the content was and how much I learned during it.
So I will say that you put your money where your mouth is in terms of what you've just said, it is absolutely true. I appreciate you taking the complex to make it accessible, digestible, and more importantly, most importantly, actionable. Tell everybody how they can find out about you and your work, please.
Paula Davis: Yes. The central place to go for all things about me and my work would be my website, which is stressandresilience.com. There are lots of resources there. It's a place where you will find more information about all my trainings, books, and what have you.
From a social media standpoint, I am on Instagram and X, but I really, really just prefer LinkedIn. It's usually where I will post all my new articles and research and things of that nature. Paula Davis on LinkedIn is where you can find me as well.
Paula Edgar: Fabulous. We put all those things in the show notes and everybody, tell that friend, you know the one that's stressed or the leader who's causing the stress that they need to get all of these books and they need to listen to this podcast. Don't forget to like and download and everybody, remember to stand by your brand and do it hopefully less stressfully and without burnout. Thanks for joining me, Paula.
Paula Davis: Thank you so much, Paula.
