Bonus: Five ways to burnout-proof your organization

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Hi, listeners, it's Reed. You're about to hear a special episode of Masters of Scale called Five Ways to Burnout Proof Your Organization. If you're a team leader The issue of burnout is probably already on your mind.

You've been navigating stressors on multiple fronts, from the global pandemic to supply chain disruptions, climate change, and the rollback. Of basic human rights around the world. I'm sure you have your own mental list of what's keeping you up at night. And a burnout. Isn't on your mind.

It should be. Because burnout. Leads to employee attrition. And churn. within an organization.

And a company that is bleeding talent. Can't scale. Even before employees leave a company, burnout can have devastating effects. on culture and mental health. Teams experiencing burnout aren't just exhausted.

They're disengaged. They start to doubt themselves and their abilities. Or they fall prey to cynicism. A feeling that can spread to the entire organization. Some causes of burnout are well outside any one manager's control.

Like the list of challenges you heard a moment ago. Others are part of the necessary life cycle of growing a business. Because the fundamentals of scale haven't changed. No matter how circumstances might. There is no blitz scaling.

Without at least some Massive work weeks. And project sprints to hit the next window of opportunity. You can't shield your team from all stress. but you can find effective and human ways of supporting your employees through it.

So we're going to hear from some of the best conversations we've had recently with founders and business leaders. Some spoke to me and some spoke to Bob Safian on Masters of Scale Rapid Response. Either way, these are critical insights you won't want to miss about stopping burnout in your organization. Before it takes hold.

You gotta have incredible talent at every position. It's like this huge push. There are fires burning when you're going out. Such an idiot. And then you go back to this is totally gonna be amazing. There are so many easy ways. I have no idea what to do. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. Oops. It just seems absolutely not all. Ten years later, I'm like, well that's just how you do it. We have it made just how you do it. This is masters of scale. I'm Reed Hoffman.

Co founder of LinkedIn, partner Greylock, and your host. And this is five way to burn out proof your organization. Number one. Spot.

The signs early. Burnout can happen. To anyone. at an organization. From your newest intern to the CEO.

But it has a way of disguising itself as hyperproductivity. Companies rely on high achievers. Who are all in on a mission. Ready to tackle problems relentlessly. But even

Your most stratospheric star employees are still Human. And all humans need rest. This sounds obvious in theory. It's definitely not always in practice.

To show you what I mean. Here's a story from Alexi RoboShow. Co-founder and CEO of the coaching platform Better Up. Maybe no organization is more attuned to the issue of burnout.

That's because BetterUp's founding mission was informed. by Alexi's own experience. Alexi had been an early employee. At the startup social cast.

And when Socialcast was acquired by VMware. He suddenly found himself in an executive role. Leading a large team at the age of twenty six. You then take on a much larger kind of job and responsibility there.

But you have a bit of a crisis moment. With the benefit of hindsight, I would say I was my own crisis. It's so weird in retrospect, but my goal was to be the youngest executive at that Fortune 500 company. And that resulted in me setting poor boundaries. That resulted in me being the guy who had a reputation for I'll fly to Munich tonight. Just let me know. Let's go do this, right? I'll do whatever it takes. And essentially I burnt myself out.

I was waking up with night terrors routinely. I couldn't sleep through the night. I mean, I took a PTSD test and I test it positive for post-traumatic stress. This experience may sound achingly familiar. Entrepreneurial culture can be notoriously

Full tilt. Hitting or missing a launch window. Can mean the difference between massive scale. And total ruin. So many of us trick ourselves into thinking a relentless pace is right for us.

Indefinitely. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I swam like every other day then, and my blood pressure was like I think they've changed the definition. Now it would have been hypertension. And you know, doctors were puzzled. They're like the only thing that can be causing this distress. When Alexi finally went to the doctor, he learned the hard way that working to the point of exhaustion was not sustainable. And was actually antithetical.

It's applying yesterday's tactics. To today's much larger challenges. And it had given Alexei. PTSD.

And I've obviously never been in the military, never been in combat. I don't have any of the normal triggers, but I was experiencing so much of similar symptoms. While working in the safety of your office doesn't compare to being a sold in the line of fire. Your body. Doesn't always know that. Not only does mental stress seep into the physical

You don't always notice it happening. Burnout is often less like a raging wildfire. And more like a slowly heating pot of water. If you're in that pot. You may not notice the water warming.

Until it's at a boiling point. Alexi didn't notice the extent to which this was happening to him. Until a friend and co worker called it out. She was working at VMware and happened to be a therapist by training. Her name was Michelle.

She told me something that really just crushed me actually in a good way because I knew she cared so much about me just like I've been watching you and you you're not you and you're not the same Alexi. And it was just like hit me like a ton of bricks of like She's right.

I forgot to be me. It was a big moment of, I guess what we call here at Better Up now, a micro Epiphany. She was a coach in that moment. Alexi would later take this experience and build on it with his co-founder Edd Medina, creating an executive coaching platform that helps diagnose and interrupt the burnout cycle early. Then they made it available to enterprise so companies can turn it into a free benefit for employees. Whether or not

You use a coaching platform. To support your employees, you can still create an environment in which it's okay to talk about burnout. Whether you're experiencing it. Or witnessing it. For Alexi.

His colleague Michelle. Helped him understand his situation. In your organization, it might mean providing information about mental health resources and opening up channels of conversation. In fact. You may accomplish a lot.

Simply by speaking up. Leaders being open about their own experiences makes the environment safer for employees to do the same. These steps can help. Your company. Become a place where burnout can be intercepted early.

Number two. Communicate to break the cycle. When we talk about burnout. It often conjures stories like the one you just heard from Alexei Roboshow.

We picture. Late night burning the midnight oil. And then sleeping under your desk. But exhaustion from workload. is just one of the many bitter flavors of burnout.

Another Is caused by stress from world events. Far outside your company. Think. Societal upheaval.

Political instability. Or A once in a century pandemic. When pressures start to mount from outside.

Companies. Need an equal increase in leadership. And communication. From within. That's a lesson Hayden Brown learned early in 2020 when she became the CEO of Upwork, an online marketplace for remote talent.

Hayden. Had been at Upwork for about eight years when she became CEO. But this new role came with a dramatically different level of visibility. And also happened to coincide with the start of COVID nineteen.

I started in 2020 with this really clear idea of what I wanted to accomplish. We were already a remote work company. We had been doing remote work ourselves for twenty years. Our customers are all doing remote work on our platform. So in that sense, we were kind of built for this moment. We kind of looked at ourselves and said, Wait. We're ready to help.

Even as the pandemic put the brakes on so many businesses. For upwork, it was time to step on the gas. So the entire team leaned in to scale up their offerings quickly. But it wasn't just Upwork customers wrestling with pandemic life. Their own employees were struggling as well.

It's in moments like this that burnout can creep in. That's When clear. Thoughtful communication from leaders can really help. In Hayden's case, she turned to a tool she'd already been using for company wide communications.

The video memo. When I was a new CEO, I had started doing this thing kind of ad hoc so that the company could get to know me better of sending these videos to them. I remember my first day going into our office in the new year. I just stood outside and recorded a little video and sent it to them. I did this when we hit this milestone of the first$10 billion in lifetime earnings that freelancers had had on our platform. At the time, this light hearted video. was a way for Hayden to introduce herself to employees and celebrate their accomplishments.

But then the pandemic hit. And I suddenly realized one day, wait a minute. My team really needs to know me, and they need to know me not just as the CEO. But as a human going through an unprecedented crisis. And I switched from sending these videos as this fun

lighthearted way to kind of celebrate moments. Every Friday there was a video from me in their inbox talking about What was going on? their health, their safety, some message from me about how I was getting through the pandemic, about what I was asking them to do, and connecting it back to kind of who we are, our mission.

Something really true and personal and important. The practice of these weekly videos became a way for Hayden to connect with employees on a human level. And as she published these videos, she also listened to whether they were succeeding. I got so much feedback from our team about how much those videos meant to them. And I couldn't end the week without shipping a video to my team, you know, and I did that for

I don't know if it was like 30, 40, 50, 60 weeks consecutively where those videos went out and giving them something that was so essential at a time when the paradigm had completely shifted. If this story sounds familiar, you may remember another guest on Masters of Scale engaging in a very similar type of clear communication with her team. Angela Errants, former head of retail at Apple. A weekly video message can't make external stressors go away. but it can be a great way to acknowledge your team's efforts.

In a time of crisis. And this acknowledgement can be a burnout interrupter. This story from Hayden got me thinking. if outgoing communications from leaders can help interrupt burnout.

What about communications that flow back in? Can they slow burnout too? According to our next guest. Ken Frazier. The answer is

Absolutely. Ken was the longtime CEO of pharmaceutical giant Merck and remains executive chairman. He's also an advisor at General Catalyst and co-founder of the social impact organization 110. He spoke with Bob Safian. on master the scale.

Rapid response. Ken's approach to communication between employees and the CO radically shifts the usual power dynamic. Without. abdicating a CO's responsibility.

To lead. Let's listen. Before the pandemic, the one thing that I knew running a science-based company is that the most important decisions that were going to be made at Mer were not going to be made at the CEO's desk. Right. I don't pick the proteins. I don't pick the peptides that we use in the research organization. So for me The answer to that question is what you want to be able to do is to expand the circle of people that you can rely on.

And you can expand that circle. If you're disingenuous enough to pretend that you have all the answers. For Ken. It was critical that employees had an open channel so they could get the right information into his hands. So he worked to create a culture at Merc that didn't wall off the CO from bad news.

He invited reporting from different departments. Give him a realistic picture of what was happening on the ground. And he empower them to make decisions based on Their best judgment. I think this concept of the pyramid that we think about

in terms of corporate structures, it really ought to be inverted. It's the people that the Manufacturing Interface. It's the people at the customer interface. The people at the scientific interface.

Who are gonna make the most important decisions. As a leader, you may not have control over the cause of any one crisis. But you have the power to interrupt the cycle of burnout before it consumes your team. And that power.

Leading. And Listening. Be clear and consistent in your outgoing messaging. And actively seek out information.

Flowing back in. Number three. Break up the solo act. As you've just heard.

There are lots of stressors in business you can't prevent. So you learn to mitigate their effects. But there's one kind of burnout you can actually avoid. If you've got. You plan correctly.

I'm going to call it. Solo act syndrome. Because it's what happens when instead of embracing co founders and recruiting at key inflection points, you try doing it all yourself. If you're succeeding as a company. it will eventually scale beyond your ability to shoulder the burden.

And that's why you need to invest in growing your team. And empowering them to lead. To show you what I mean, here's a story from Hamdi Ulakaiah, the founder and CEO of Chobani. Hamdi was born and raised in a Kurdish nomadic family.

Making cheese and yogurt in the mountains near the Euphrates River. It was a community in which everyone supported each other with no Organizational hierarchy. My brothers in my family would make cheese. We call it Tullum.

As a kid growing up, we would just make it. It was a small Business and no bets and Everybody would do the same thing. Later came to the US.

He used this deep knowledge of cheese making to start his first small business in upstate New York. Euphrates. Feta cheese. But while it was joyful work. It was also extremely difficult work.

Much of which Homney did himself. And when he wasn't physically making cheese. He was driving long distances trying to build relationships with new distributors. I was so close. to bankruptcy, to breaking myself, to shut it down, to not being able to pay for the milk or not being able to pay for employees.

It really trained me to survive. It trained me to be resilience, you know, it it trained me to find a solution and find a way to make it work. And I always said if I survive through that, I could survive through anything. You know, that was so intense. Homney's resilience in the face of this grueling routine is so central to entrepreneurship. We even have a word for it.

Grit. Without grit. you won't have the stamina to reach the next inflection point. But an over reliance on grit. Instead.

of strategic growth. will eventually push you to the brink. of burnout. For Hamdi, that point would come years later. After founding and scaling his next company, Chobani.

You've probably noticed. Their distinctive Turkish style yogurt. On your grocery shelves. Even as a thriving company, Chobani had a notable lack of hierarchy. Which helped foster

А строив конерши. Among his workers. Hamdi was wrapped up in every part. Of scaling their first factory. in Utica, New York.

Actually That was my rule. I would never ask anyone to do anything unless I do it first. So people would often see me in the first three, four years on the floor packing Driving the forklift, filling the trucks until

At some point that people said, I think you should be well Served if you're doing Some other work somewhere else. We got this covered. Yeah. In two thousand twelve Shobani built a second factory.

A huge one million square foot plant in Twin Falls, Idaho. It was a clear scale jump for the business. And it finally became clear to Homie. They couldn't be in two places at once. I didn't understand that running one plant and founder that and staying in the factory and being involved with every single thing. I didn't realize that that plan wasn't gonna work.

A lot of people really ran out of their capability and capacity because company was growing a lot faster than all of our capability, including myself. Hamdi made a choice. He moved to Idaho to help fix the new plant. That meant empowering his team at the first plant to carry on without him.

And at the new location. He worked on not just community, but structure. And leadership. It was a wake up call. That experience was a

Probably one of the biggest pick up calls for me. And say Everything you did in good in the last three, four years doesn't mean everything's gonna go great, you know, next two, four, five years. Every day is evolving, is changing, and you have to not get drunk with it. Yeah, this is one of the fundamental rules of scale is what gets you here isn't what gets you there. Almost always. That's awesome. Yeah. That's perfect. I lived through it. Yeah. Hamdi's lived experience taught him how to better spot inflection points and how to scale infrastructure and capacity. Instead.

A brute force work ethic. But it's not always so obvious when it's time to bring in help. Yeah. What kind of help you need. That's

When you can lean on your network. to point the way. To show you what I mean. Here's a story. From writer director J J Abrams.

Today, his production company Bad Robot. Makes TV shows, podcasts, games. Box. and blockbuster feature films. But back in two thousand one.

Founding a company. wasn't even on his radar. At the time, JJ and his co-writer Matt Reeves had gotten their first hit show on the air. It was felicity. A show about a college student played by newcomer Carrie Russell.

It was a breakout hit for everyone involved. Which led to more opportunities. And a suddenly overwhelming amount of work for JJ. I ended up writing a pilot for ABC for the show Alias and then directing that pilot.

We had that show on and while both shows were on at the same time, I would be in the editing room until crazy hours and it was just it just felt like It was eating me up and I didn't quite know. But I created

You can hear in JJ's story the makings of an epic case of burnout. but he had a conversation with someone in his network that would change the course of his career. I remember talking to Steve McPherson, who at the time was head of Touchstone Television. You know, it doesn't have to

Be just you. He's like, you could start a pod, he called it. And I'd never really even heard that term at the time. I was like, what do you mean? He's like he could start a company. I was like, really? So I called my agent at the time and I said, so Steve McPherson says I can start a pod? He's like, yeah. Anyway, the reason it got me excited was not because I wanted to start something for the sake of it, but was because I thought, oh Can I get help?

I could. Get help. Is it great mantra? for breaking up solo ac syndrome. Whether that help comes in the form of co-founders, key early hires,

Or better organizational structure. You'll need it. If you want to hit your next inflection point. Try to go it alone. And you'll burn up.

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There can be two types of companies. Those were great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future? That is human centered. I'm Rana El Chayubi. And on my podcast Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone.

Every week I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future. And we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find Pioneers of AI wherever you tune in. Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show because every Friday we release a second Rapid Response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topic are just as compelling and timely. From Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find, just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there.

We're back. With five ways. To burn out proof your organization. If you're enjoying this episode, share with friends by clicking the share button. In your podcast app.

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Of families. As we heard before the break. One way to avoid burning out is to hire ahead. Of inflection points. But the war for talent is real.

And intense. The so-called Great Resignation. or as we call it at LinkedIn, the great reshuffle. might have been set off by the pandemic, but it was a match dropping into a full tinderbox. Many leaders.

We're already aware of the growing demands on workers. And those demands were not being spread evenly. As you'll hear from our next guest. Rashma Sujani is the founder of Girls Who Code.

as well as a newer initiative called the Marshall Plan for Moms. Rushma has seen first hand the pressures put on workers. And their families. When companies fail to address those pressures, employees face a choice. Burnout?

or leave the workforce all together. Let's listen. My entire leadership team. We're working moms. And we were barely hanging on.

You know, I got covet and it barely registered, my liver failed. We were just exhausted. And what we were saying to ourselves was when the schools open We'll get some reprieve. Well, the schools never opened and they came up with this idea of hybrid learning where working moms got to log on their kids at nine o'clock, ten o'clock, and eleven o'clock all the while they maintain their full time job. And you literally saw

Eleven million women. Leave the workforce. At the beginning of twenty twenty Women were actually fifty one percent of the labor force the first time in the history of our nation.

So we lost Almost thirty years of progress in nine months. And so I kept thinking, well, where's the plan? Like You can't lose all those jobs like that without a plan.

Rushwoman is especially attuned to the effects of the pandemic on women in the workforce. As the founder of the non profit Girls Who Code. Achieving gender parity in STEM related fields. has been part of our longtime mission. But those girls and young women.

Are entering a workforce that wasn't built. With them in mind. So many. Don't stick around. Fifty of women under the age of thirty five will leave in tech.

By the time of thirty five. And that's culture. Right. That is because there's a broken culture there. I think what's driving the great resignation Is not that people don't want to work.

They don't want to work for you. The pandemic. exacerbated a burnout problem that was already gaining momentum. Among working parents. And especially

Working moms. Rush my tribute. Some of that to a pervasive hustle culture that sets women up for failure. I spent the past ten years telling my students to barnstorm the corner office. to lean in really hard.

You know, to girl boss your way to the top. And I was wrong. I found myself in the pandemic with two little babies and trying to run an organization and it nearly Broke me. And I learned the hard way that, you know, having it all is a euphemism for doing it all.

And it didn't matter if you got a mentor or you delegated or you color coded your calendar. It wasn't about fixing The woman. It was about fixing the system. The entire you know industrial complex of corporate feminism.

Needs to be thrown in the garbage. Because it is actually keeping us further away from equality. Rather than moving us forward. So what can move us forward? And how can companies be part of the solution? Well, Reshma has a plan for that.

I think that the first benefit that companies should be thinking about offering and leading on is subsidizing childcare. For the vast majority of parents, they pay more for their child care than they do for their mortgage. And quite frankly, the cost of attrition is higher.

Than if you started subsidizing childcare. You want to ensure loyalty. If you want to feel like people are committed to you, start taking care of their families. You know, right now ten percent of companies subsidized childcare, you know, I'm building a business coalition to m basically make that number go to a hundred. And I'm not asking you to do it out of the goodness of your heart. I'm asking you to do it because it makes business sense. And we're already providing other benefits. I mean, most companies will pay for you to freeze your eggs.

Or do your IBF. Or your gym membership. You know, well, then provide support when actually people do have children. And so as we're in this middle of this talent war We have to think about what people really want.

And I think what people really want is to spend more time with their family. You know, it's not just what working women want. It's what working dads want too. Taking care of employees means taking care of the whole employee. Including

What's contributing to their burnout beyond the office? Do that well. And you stand a much better chance. of lowering your attrition rates. And winning the war.

For talent. Number five. Sprint? Rest.

Repeat. By now, you've heard all about burnout and all the ways leaders can try to mitigate, interrupt. Or alleviate its effects. And in the thick of these conversations, you can start feeling like everything Sooner or later.

leads to burnout. Leadership. often feel caught between wanting to protect employees and For those big hairy audacious goals.

But counterintuitively. The audacity of your goal can actually be the thing that energizes your employees. If your mission is strong. A sprint to the finish can galvanize your team. To show you what I mean.

Here's a story. From Tokumbo? Koiki. She's a social worker. and the co founder of Black Women.

For black lives an organization. That sprang up nearly overnight to help African and Caribbean students. Fleeing Ukraine. In the earliest days of the Russian invasion, Tokumbo watched the news from her home in London as she saw black students facing hostility and violence in the push to leave Ukraine. Just days later, Tokumbo co-founded Black Women for Black Lives with two women.

She had only met online. We all strangers prior to February twenty sixth. I was watching the news just as concerned as everybody else, mainly on social media, specifically on Twitter, which is where I spend most of my life, unfortunately, and true seeing what was being documented by the African and Caribbean students who were trying to flee from Ukraine. I felt inspired to take action and support them. One of those students was a second year medical student named Corinne Skye.

Even as Corine was fleeing from the violence herself. On social media, she was posting guidance. Poor fellow refugees. She was signposting and helping other students to understand how to get to the nearest borders. Which border made sense for them to travel to

especially when the bodies were getting congested. She was also actively paying for students through her own funds to be able to get the taxis because students were being physically pushed out of the trains that were coming to evacuate Ukrainians from major cities in Ukraine. Green's posts. made their way into Tokumbo's Twitter feed.

And she was immediately. Inspired to help. She tweeted at Corinne and found a way to send some cash. but it didn't feel like enough to meet the moment. Videos kept surfacing of black African and Caribbean students facing discrimination.

As they fled Ukraine. The world. was watching. And Tokumbo saw an opportunity. to turn people's outrage into action.

She and Corine join forces. along with a lawyer and activist named Patricia Daly. Who had also Reached out on Twitter. The first

Twenty four, forty eight hours we had never seen or spoken to each other outside of Twitter. They work together. to stand up a GoFundMe page. and the developer logistics. To put aid.

directly into the hands of fleeing students. It was a sprint. of epic proportions. Even though the war was complicating.

Even the simplest steps. Previously when I'd use GoFundMe, the appeal is usually allowed instantly, but GoFundMe said they were going to have to verify the a campaign. So I opt onto PayPal and I created a PayPal poll and the initial target was ten thousand pounds simply because I at the time did not realize how big this was going to turn out. And I just thought, okay, 10,000 is a comfortable number that people are not going to be like, hey, who is this strange woman who's trying to collect money from African Caribbean students for in Ukraine. But they reached their first goal with astonishing speed.

So Tucumbo doubled it to twenty thousand pounds. Which they met within another twenty four hours. By Sunday morning, people were still asking to donate. People were still, you know, learning about what was happening not just in Ukraine, but specifically the anti blackness and the discrimination that black people in Ukraine were facing. And that was how we were able to raise over forty thousand pounds in Just a matter of two days of a weekend. Black women for black lives

Kept accelerating. and gained international recognition. as well as corporate partners like RGA. And Airbnb. You can hear Tokumbo tell her full astonishing story.

on mass of the scale. Rapid response. And I highly encourage you to listen. But what I want you to hear next is something she did to take in The middle of the sprint.

I've definitely felt the pressure, especially the last week. I did find myself on Thursday last week having to take a mental health day because I just couldn't cope. anymore, so after about ten, eleven days of nonstop Black women for black lives, black in Ukraine. I took a mental health day where I didn't think about black in Ukraine. I had to focus on myself, spent time with my daughter, took her to dinner, and just really got my energy back.

Even when you're sprinting. You need to build in. Short periods of rest. Even the smallest breaks. can help refresh and sustain you.

For the next big push. That's especially important. When that push happens to be because of an unforeseen emergency. You'll hear why in our final story today. From Iona Misco.

She runs a B2B startup called fuel finance. We spoke to Ilona. From Ukraine. Were she and her team.

have been working through displacements. Bombings and the deployment of colleagues. as they work to keep the lights on for other startups around the world. We have already like jokes uh between entrepreneurs that Ukrainian managers they will be like the best stressful managers and risk managers in the world because during class months here

It's really challenge for us, чален бізнес during the war. challenging in management of the team and also in volunteering and help our country so I think we feel like Fighters now. After the war broke out, Iono relocated from Kyiv to western Ukraine.

to escape the worst of the fighting. But her work days were still punctuated. But the cry of air raid sirens. During the day we have the Syrians, so we need to go to bomb shelters, but everyone in Ukraine trying to work now. And yes, people work in bong shelters, and we are happy that in most bomb shelters we have wifi, so we can work, so like a little bit like normal life now.

I Lona and her team didn't slow down. They sprinted. Less than a month after the invasion. They were voted product of the day. on the website Product Hunt. The most

Craziest day when we decided to go to product hunt, especially on this day, we will have most number of serents during the day. So usually it was like two or three before, but on this day we had seven times per day this series. So we should go to bomb shelter every time. So it's it was really crazy. One thing. This kept I Lona's team going is a tight focus on mission and goals. Listen to how she describes her communications in the first days of the invasion.

I think three four days. We were in Slack chat all twenty four hours because we understand that we need support each other now and I should support our team members. We had the first priority to relocate our team more safe places. Now I see and understand that it was very important part for our team members this communication. On the first day of the war we paid salaries to our team members, so they also like felt more safe. But also I think that we have

very strong mission in our company, so we have mission to help Companies And save them from bankruptcies and financial mistakes. And we believe that what we do for these companies can impact on GDP growth in Ukraine and all over the world. So Everyone in our team here, first of all, we have thoughts how to be safe. how to help our families and friends. But after that everyone they started to think, okay, but now we should help other businesses and our clients because it's our mission.

Many of us, if we're lucky, will never experience to run a business from a war zone. But we can take lessons in resilience from teams like Ilona's. who are doing just that. Yeah, it doesn't mean I'm not worrying. I worry, but This feeling will not help me, so I understand that okay, I can be worried.

But like several minutes. But after that Okay, let's do our job. What Ilona is describing is a great tactic. For stress management.

Before launching into action, she gives herself a small worry break. as in a moment when she's allowed to be worried or even scared. Instead of letting the fear overwhelm her. She gives it space to vent. And then

She gets ready to sprint again. Some day. It's likely that everyone in Ukraine Who has lived through this crisis.

will need time to recover. and reclaim their mental health. Post traumatic stress is real. And manifests in all kinds of ways, as we heard at the beginning of this episode. But in the meantime.

Leaders like Ilona are serving their stakeholders by sprinting. Resting. And repeating as necessary. With their mission as fuel. They're working together. To keep other businesses going.

Without. Burning themselves out. Mm. Whether you're an entrepreneur, intrapreneur. Or leader working at scale.

you're going to be constantly challenged by how to balance productivity. and mental health. I hope this special episode has given you some tools to combat burnout in your team. And In yourself.

Even sharing the show with colleagues. may help open up a dialogue. And if it does. Let us know. Find us on social media.

or at masterscale dot com. And tell us about it. Until then. I'm Reed Hoffman. Thanks for listening.

Masters of Scale is a Wakewater original. Our executive producers are June Cohen, Darren Tripp, and Jordan Cloud. Our head of content and production is Lori Hoffman. Our producers are Adam Skuse, Katherine Clark Gray, Marie McCoy Thompson, Alex Morris, Tucker Legerski, and Holly Bondi. Our editor at large is Bob Safia. Our music director is Ryan Holliday. Original Music and Sound Design by Eduardo Rivera. Audio editing by Keith J. Nelson, Steven Davies, Andrew Naught, and Mike Gallagher. Mixing and Mastering by Baron Bastanelli.

Special thanks to Chris Shay, Alisa Schreiber, Aria Finger. Say this happy ever. Greg Beato. Adam Heiner. Colin Howard.

Willem Crowls, Pim Cronen. Kelsey Capitano. Sammy Aputta. Anna Pizzano. Sarah Tarter, Lear Sarametis, Charlie Menesses, Chiname Ezequena, Emily McManus, and Mina Curosawa.

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