Why AI Anxiety Is Pushing Teams Past Empty

“Alex Cullimore: People are definitely feeling overextended, because they feel like they either have to use AI while there's no clear use cases being put out, or they feel like they're in danger of being replaced by AI, which is just driving a huge cycle of emotional worry. You're just constantly concerned that any day might be the last day. We've heard this from leaders, we've heard this from people, just everywhere in organizations. There's this pervasive fear of, "I don't know how many months I have left," and I'm watching just LinkedIn posts of people burnt out who don't have jobs, because they're trying to find a job, and it takes months and months sometimes to land anything.”

[EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to another episode of Uncover the Human. Today, we have two very special guests, the two of us. It's a host episode.

Cristina Amigoni: This is take two, but at least we went from –

Alex Cullimore: This is take two.

Cristina Amigoni: We went from one special guest, which was just me. Apparently, having been kicked out of being a host without being told I was going to get kicked out. But now, we're both kicked out, so we don't really know who's going to show up in the next episode.

Alex Cullimore: Yes.

Cristina Amigoni: Maybe one of the cats.

Alex Cullimore: We've removed ourselves as hosts, despite being the guests that show up on every episode and do the interviewing. But not like a host.

Cristina Amigoni: No, no. Not like a welcoming message person.

Alex Cullimore: That's because, apparently, we are burned out as hosts. Which really is my gentle segue into our topic today, burnout.

Cristina Amigoni: We may have to define gentle.

Alex Cullimore: Our screaming left turn of a segue into our topic.

Cristina Amigoni: Because feeling fired is not a gentle way –

Alex Cullimore: I will point out that last time –

Cristina Amigoni: - of communicating.

Alex Cullimore: - on take one, I just said, "A very special guest, just us," and you interpreted this as you being demoted as a host. This whole narrative has been spun out entirely separately.

Cristina Amigoni: No, in the last take you actually said, "A very special guest, Cristina."

Alex Cullimore: No, I said, us. You invented that. We have it on tape. We can go back and listen.

Cristina Amigoni: Maybe, instead of burnout we should talk about gaps in communication.

Alex Cullimore: Yes.

Cristina Amigoni: What somebody says and what the other person hears.

Alex Cullimore: Yes, and we can find out what stories we fill in when we think we hear something.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Which brings us back to an episode we did a couple of weeks ago, that I think it's coming out soon, on what baggage are we bringing to conversations?

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, what do we bring to the conversation?

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. 

Alex Cullimore: That's actually often the case is.

Cristina Amigoni: I hear us, and I interpret Cristina, and I hear me. Somebody says us, and I hear you.

Alex Cullimore: Which interestingly means –

Cristina Amigoni: You are not wanted.

Alex Cullimore: - us is just you, so I'm excluded in the us in this. My, how the turntables have turned.

Cristina Amigoni: Oof. All right. That's a whole new take on burnout.

Alex Cullimore: And a whole new take on this intro.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Back to burnout.

Alex Cullimore: Talking about burnout, why do we want to talk about burnout? Because everybody's talking about burnout, because everybody is quietly –

Cristina Amigoni: It is burnout.

Alex Cullimore: - or overtly burning out. I don't know if you've been on LinkedIn lately, but it all reads like a subtle cry for help.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. It's funny how attention goes where the feelings are. The whole burnout thing is that's how we're all feeling, so we're going to keep talking about it and see if we can feel better by talking about it, and somehow that's not helping, so we're burning out even talking about it. We're definitely burning out reading about it, because now it’s, "Oh, it's all around me. It's not just me." Which it's one of those weird things, because you feel better when it's not just you. You don't think that you're faulty. At the same time you're like, "Oh, wait, this is actually a lot worse if it's everybody." Because then, who's going to make the changes to end this?

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. I was actually just reading an interesting book about – it was labor movements that came out about the Great Depression. A lot of people assume there was the Great Depression, lots of people were unemployed, and thus, there was lots of strikes, and that's when we started to take unemployment more seriously. That's somewhat true, but it's such a part of our culture as Americans to be this self-dependent rugged individualist that it actually was about a year and a half after most people had lost jobs, there was severe unemployment everywhere, but people had been just basically leaning on communities and doing anything they could to not actually register as unemployed, because there was a especially large stigma then about it. It actually took a year and a half, and for people to start realize that so many people were experiencing it that it was a system problem. I get the feeling that there's a good parallel with that in burnout, because I think that that's where we've been. We've been burning out for a while, I think, as people. Now, it's being shared more, and I think there's things that are happening to everybody all at once, where now suddenly, it's more of a collective one instead of certain industries, or certain companies being the only indicators of burnout, just a little bit at a time that ebbs and flows. Now there's a big ebb.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. It's no longer just investment bankers and consultants. It's everybody all the time. Everywhere.

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Everyone, everywhere, all the time burning out, which is going to be the title of this episode.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes.

Alex Cullimore: Everything burning out all at once. Like that other, that movie, Everything, All the Time, Everywhere, Whatever.

Cristina Amigoni: Which I heard it's very good, but I haven't watched it yet. The title is – It's overwhelming, honestly.

Alex Cullimore: The movie's overwhelming. It's a good movie. It's crazy.

Cristina Amigoni: That's why I've been resistant, because I'm like, "I don't need more overwhelming stuff." I need calm.

Alex Cullimore: Oh, it's not calm.

Cristina Amigoni: I've started to just turn my TV on. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, it's way before.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. I've started to turn my TV on and then not do anything, not select a channel, not do anything, and it's nice, because then this really calm spa music gets turned on, and these really nice sceneries of water, very calm waves hitting the beach, and then birds chirping on top of mountains, and I'm like, "This is actually much better than watching TV." This is good.

Alex Cullimore: Now the people tuning into your smart TV through the CIA are like, “Man, we got to update Cristina's file. She's burnt out." She's not even using her TV. She's just staring at the spa music loading screen saver.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yeah, yeah. Well, I do think that if the CIA knows what I'm doing, it makes me feel very special. It’s like, I must matter, and I must be doing something that's worthy of being noticed.

Alex Cullimore: I think between this and assuming that you've been left out as a host by saying that we're guests, maybe there's something to this, and that is a preview of our next episode on community.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. It's okay that I'm left out as a host, because the CIA knows what I'm doing.

Alex Cullimore: I don't feel lonely. I'm being spied on.

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. That explains that weird feeling of being watched when you're sleeping, and realizing your cat is actually in a different floor.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, the CIA, my CIA file just says, "Ah, this guy snores. We're going to have to – We should probably send him to a doctor."

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Well, it sounds like the doctors that you reached out to are facing burnout, too, because they ended up sending you to a dentist.

Alex Cullimore: I clicked a sleep specialist and ended up getting a text about a cleaning and an X-ray, and I was like, "Excuse me?"

Cristina Amigoni: In a different location, and a different office, and a different practice. Nothing is not working well.

Alex Cullimore: Our pet theory on this is that there's a bad AI bot linked in here.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. 

Alex Cullimore: That, I think, is actually one of the reasons that we have such a massive wave of a burnout currently, because there's a lot of – I'm going to just break down a little bit of what the current research on burnout is. There's Christina Maslach, who's one of the main persons, people who has researched burnout and has created the Maslach Burnout Inventory, which is the usual way people review their companies for burnout, says that the key dimensions are emotional exhaustion, feeling overextended, or really drained. Depersonalization/cynicism, feeling detached, or negative and callous about work, colleagues, clients. 

Cristina Amigoni: Two for two for so far, so.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. What colleagues are you talking about?

Cristina Amigoni: Nobody in this room.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, the hosts. We're both irritated at the hosts. I don't know who they are, but grr. Finally, reduced personal accomplishment, or inefficacy. Feeling incompetent, or unable to be productive. I think AI actually pushes into all of these, because I think that – people are definitely feeling overextended, because they feel like you have to use AI while there's no clear use cases being put out. Or they feel like they're in danger of being replaced by AI, which is just driving a huge cycle of emotional worry, or just constantly concerned that any day might be the last day. We've heard this from leaders. We've heard this from people just everywhere in organizations. There's this pervasive fear of, "I don't know how many months I have left," and I'm watching just LinkedIn posts of people burnt out who don't have jobs, because they're trying to find a job, but it takes months and months sometimes to land anything.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes.

Alex Cullimore: Which is also driving, I think, cynicism. It's hard to feel pretty positive about things when there's this push for AI, while simultaneously this undercurrent of, "AI's going to replace you, and we're going to try and kick you out the door." I think AI might be driving some of this wave of burnout.

Cristina Amigoni: I think so. It's a whole new definition of you're succeeding at work when you work yourself out of your job. I don't think that they meant be kicked out of your job. I think it means like, oh, now you can learn new things and do other things and be promoted, or move to a different department and keep growing. I think it used to be a good thing to strive for, because it meant constant learning and growth and new opportunities. Now, it's like, maybe I don't want to work myself out of my own job, because I'm going to lose my job.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. If I work myself out of this job –

Cristina Amigoni: Even if I don't work myself out of my job, I’m going to lose my job.

Alex Cullimore: - there's not a next thing to go to. There's just, yeah. Yeah, it's hard to feel good about the world, and then to keep showing up. There's a lot of people who have talked about how bleak it is to be, essentially, training bots that are doing their jobs, knowing that the goal is just to have them replaced. I think your point stands in both ways. First, that I do think people do feel like there's not something to step into, but it's also sad that we didn't treat this like something where we could have just grown people that way. IKEA did it. We talked about that –

Cristina Amigoni: IKEA did it. Yes.

Alex Cullimore: - on a recent episode. They knew that they could replace most of their customer support with AI, so instead of throwing out the people, they trained them as interior designers, and they added an extra billion euros in revenue, because of this interior design service that they started to offer. That's exactly what you could do.

Cristina Amigoni: There's ways. Yes.

Alex Cullimore: Everybody talks about growth all the time –

Cristina Amigoni: My guess is that there's less –

Alex Cullimore: - but apparently, not people.

Cristina Amigoni: - burnout at IKEA.

Alex Cullimore: Yes.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Since we're both getting –

Alex Cullimore: I've had that one moment.

Cristina Amigoni: - fired as hosts, maybe I'll go work at IKEA.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Yeah, we're going to train some bots that do this podcast for us, because there's nothing that says Uncover the Human quite like two bots having almost nonsense conversation. It's way better to have two humans having an almost nonsense conversation.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, I was going to say, the nonsense conversation is happening no matter what. No, this is not a call out to our friend Sterling. It's not that type of no matter what.

Alex Cullimore: Not that type of no matter what.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. The very confusing type of no matter what.

Alex Cullimore: Well, I've lost the thread. Burnout.

Cristina Amigoni: Burnout. We should add to the list that you just provided. Losing the thread every three seconds is a sign of burnout.

Alex Cullimore: Yes. I think the inability to keep the focus is probably indicative of this. Which again, is part of the, I think, increased by AI. We've seen it happen in companies long before AI. There's this hectic, everybody's got to be moving even though there's not always clarity on where you should be moving, or how you should be moving. Just get things done, and then later we'll find out that none of them match up and we have a lot of rework to do. But that's okay, because then we can keep busy on that. Here has been that busyness, and I think AI has –

Cristina Amigoni: Oh, my God.

Alex Cullimore: - expanded that.

Cristina Amigoni: Busyness. Yes, yes.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, unnecessary busyness.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Unnecessary busyness.

Alex Cullimore: Ambiguous busyness. It's like, do things, but is it doing what we need? Do we like it? Do we not like it? Is this okay? Uh, no. Not a lot of answers, plenty of questions.

Cristina Amigoni: Well, given that your snoring appointment got rerouted to a dentist cleaning 40 miles away from where you live, my guess it's not doing what we're hoping it does.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the companies are definitely finding that out the hard way. But at least they destroyed trust on the way. At least they fired a bunch of people unnecessarily. At least we added a layer of precarity to the economy. We don't know what's going to happen now.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, exactly, which is great. Because now that we start reading that companies are hiring people back because, oh, wait, we actually – It's not success formula to eliminate the humans. This is not quite working well, which could've taken maybe a day of planning to figure that out. Besides that, it's because I told you so. It's not working out, so whether it's because it's more expensive to buy tokens than to actually have engineers do the work, or whatever other reasons, or customers are unhappy, so you're losing customers, or now there's a bunch of people that have no money, so nobody's buying your products and services. Whichever angle of, oh, we need to hire people back thing. It's now going to take, my guess is a good 5 to 10 years to rebuild that trust. At least it was worth it.

Alex Cullimore: Well, that's assuming that they're going to focus on building trust. That's one thing I feel like I have not seen companies do regularly, is actually invest in the trust of trust building exercises. There's just a lot of this feeling of everybody can be transient, and that actually shakes down a couple of the different angles that people tend to digest for identifying workout. Is there excessive workload? In this transience, there's always some kind of transition. Somebody's in or out, and so you're figuring out who new to work with. There's also just changes, because companies/executives get bored and just rearrange the company.

Cristina Amigoni: Love changes.

Alex Cullimore: In one point, they make the changes. There's this lack of reward, inadequate financial, or social recognition, this was they identify it as. I mean, wages have been stagnating for 50 years in the middle of otherwise growth. We're reaching breaking points there. There's lack of autonomy, feeling like we have, wait, we don't get to choose whether we do AI, or not. There's so many things that are just adding to burnout currently.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yes.

Alex Cullimore: Interestingly, Christina Maslach talks a lot about it being an organizational issue. Is this something that happens –

Cristina Amigoni: No way.

Alex Cullimore: - at a workplace, not a personal place? We often say like, "Oh, that person's burnt out. They best go watch their TV spa screen for a few hours."

Cristina Amigoni: Yes.

Alex Cullimore: Research suggests it's actually a system issue, which is, I think, for anybody who is experiencing it, they know it. It's just always like, leaders and executives who seem somehow surprised by this like, "Oh, what? That's the system?"

Cristina Amigoni: We created this? Yes, you did. We could've prevented it.

Alex Cullimore: Over and over and over again.

Cristina Amigoni: Absolutely. Again, go back to IKEA. There are other ways to do things and still make a shitload of money –

Alex Cullimore: Yes.

Cristina Amigoni: - for your big annual bonus.

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Yes, go prove that you added value, not that you just cut some costs.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. I do actually really love the fact that China has made it illegal fire people, because of AI.

Alex Cullimore: Purely for AI. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you can't just reduce based on AI. I mean, I'd be interested to see how they can enforce that, but it's China. They're pretty controlled. They can probably figure that out. It's not a bad policy, though. The policy is about like, hey, you have to retrain and rework, which that's a good economic move. We just somehow don't see people as part of the economy here. Somehow the economy's just separate from this.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, somehow the economy's going to continue without people being part of it.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, it's, it's a recipe for success, I am sure.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. What would be nice is if sure, if you want to try that out, try it out. Can you go to Mars maybe to try it out?

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. See if you can get the economy spinning up when there's no people.

Cristina Amigoni: If you don't want the humans to be part of the economy, then just go where humans don't exist and do it there.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. I will be the first to volunteer Elon Musk to go set up a moon base. He can go start it.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, exactly. Maybe we can do a GoFundMe for a whole group of people that can go try this out, where there are – I mean, why go through the transition? I mean, that's just a waste of energy and time. Why try to eliminate –

Alex Cullimore: They're trying to eliminate people.

Cristina Amigoni: - where you have humans?

Alex Cullimore: You can do it today.

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. Now you have to go through the whole thing of eliminating the humans, which is what you don't want. You don't want the humans around, then go somewhere where there are no humans. Maybe try to do it with penguins in Antarctica. Are penguins in Antarctica, or Arctica? I can't remember.

Alex Cullimore: Antarctica.

Cristina Amigoni: Okay. Maybe try it with the penguins. I'm pretty sure they'll slap you in the face, too. Go where the humans don't exist. Bottom of the sea. There you go.

Alex Cullimore: The penguins don't deserve that.

Cristina Amigoni: No. Well, the penguins won't stand for that. The penguins will call their orcas and polar bear friends and –

Alex Cullimore: They're already sick of the yachts.

Cristina Amigoni: And figure things out pretty quickly. Or the bottom of the sea, the bottom of the ocean, which is also a great place for data centers, because of all the heat that they need. You could just do, build entire cities under the sea with no humans and data centers.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. That's where you –

Cristina Amigoni: And try it out.

Alex Cullimore: - keep all your data centers. Super safe.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Meantime, the humans on Earth will actually be less burnt out.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. I think that organizational and personal hits not only for the company, but now it's hitting for the global economy as an organization/globalization as organization. This is a time where everybody's experiencing this in a giant systemic way, globally systemic way. I don't know how long it's going to take before people are like, "Yeah, no, I'm upset about this, and we're going to have to change this." I mean, I think people are upset, but we seem to have lost the fact that we do have some say in this. We do have some choice in this.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. I go back to French Revolution. I mean, there is a reason why the people revolted the way they did.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. They continue to do it. They stand up for everything. They burn down Paris for every announcement they don't, which kudos. You're really working it out. Figuring it out. There's lots of pictures I've enjoyed of people just still enjoying their coffees and cigarettes on a coffee with a literal burning dumpster fire in the background. Because, well, that's just what's happening today.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, exactly. Yes. Yeah. To be clear, we're not anti-AI. We use AI tools.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, doesn't have to be –

Cristina Amigoni: Probably more than we should. We're not anti-AI. We're anti-inhuman AI.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, 100%.

Cristina Amigoni: We're anti leaving the humans behind and thinking that that's the solution, because life should be about how much wealth I collect.

Alex Cullimore: Yes. You individually, rather than just – Also, what good is it going – Anyway, I'm not going to go on that soapbox.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Back to, back to burnout.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Now, the AI one, I agree. AI is not what's replacing jobs. People are like, "AI's replacing jobs." No, people are choosing to replace people with AI. Somebody is making that choice. Then acting like it's some natural market force, which there's magic natural market force. There's choices that are made. We can make different choices. There's a huge frustration in that, I feel personally about this. Like, no it’s not. 

AI could be useful, and there's lots of things it can be used for. I think there's significant copyright issues, and we definitely have environmental concerns that should be much more seriously concerned, and data security, just to name a few. There's definitely a lot of things that are issues with it.

Cristina Amigoni: Hey, the CIA is already watching me listen to spa music on my TV, so.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. You're not worried about the data privacy.

Cristina Amigoni: I'm not worried about the privacy of data.

Alex Cullimore: Those are all legit concerns, but the choice to use AI and replace people with AI is a human one, and we don't need to be making it, and we are making a severe human cost by making that choice. It's not that AI is inevitable. We could find ways to use it to help ourselves, and we could be making sure that it doesn't destroy our environment on the way through. But we're doing neither of those things. We're replacing people and destroying our environment. It's very cool. Great choices.

Cristina Amigoni: Go somewhere else to do this.

Alex Cullimore: Try it on the moon.

Cristina Amigoni: Try it on Venus. You won't last long, because it's a little too hot.

Alex Cullimore: Just a little bit. It's like 800 degrees.

Cristina Amigoni: I'm sure you can figure that out, too. With all the money that you've saved from eliminating humans, and tanking the economy for everybody involved. Back to burnout. We are talking about burning, Venus. So, burnout.

Alex Cullimore: We're definitely highlighting the second pillar here, the depersonalization/cynicism. We've definitely had that one. Let's talk about, one of the things that we go back to a lot, and this is again, not to say that it's an individual thing, because it's not. It's a systemic thing, and you should think about systemic things. There are two things that we like to really lean on, when we go help ourselves as well as other organizations address burnout, and that is internally for personal things, values, understanding whether there's conflict between your personal ethics and organizational practices. Is there something that you believe in that you can't honor here, or feels particularly suppressed? Where you're at? That will also just lead to burnout at the more, to use the influencer language, at the more spiritual level in that it's your more, what's leaning towards a purpose that you feel good about or not. If it starts leaning too far away, it can severely add to burnout, mental fatigue, emotional exhaustion.

There are so many ways in which we've seen little ethical compromises that build up to large ethical compromises happening within companies. Even if it's not a big core value, it can just be the feeling of, "It's not right to do that. That's not right to do. Ooh, this is a little dangerous." Which helps break psychological safety, helps all the other things that go trash culture and add to burnout.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Here's a way to know if it doesn't feel right before you do it. It's probably been around since, well, the birth of men, of humans, is would you like it to be done to you? If your answer is no, or if your answer – actually, I'm going to go all the way. If your answer is not, "Heck yes, how can I help you do that to me?" That's not the right thing to do.

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Yeah. If you don't have –

Cristina Amigoni: You don't need to be an ethics professor. That's your measure right there.

Alex Cullimore: That also dovetails right into everything we have to talk about and change when people are like, "Why are people resisting change?" Have you given them anything to hold onto? Do they want to be part of this? Is there a reason they should go through the hardship, or is it just hardship to, that on the other side of will be more hardship?

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Are you having a good time? Because you're probably not having a good time. Maybe do it differently.

Alex Cullimore: Yes. That was a great one. The idea of empathy coaching, opening space, building those relationships, and understanding your own personal set of values and what you want to live by, all great tools, and helping share those and model those, all great ways to help combat burnout by creating a more safe space, a more ethical space, a more ties to values space, and something where people feel they can actually share a better community and a better set of relationships and connectedness.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Yes.

Alex Cullimore: That's angle one. 

Cristina Amigoni: That's one.

Alex Cullimore: Angle two is that we tend to go to, because it's a fun one and it helps people jump into this kind of stuff much easier, is the working genius, which we've talked about many times. We use that assessment with teams, so that they can understand what parts of work for every individual do they really enjoy, what do they gravitate towards, what are they drained by, and how can they split more evenly amongst the team, so that everybody gets a piece of their own fulfillment and is covered when they're falling too far into frustrations. That's another great team/department tool for organizing to try and prevent burnout and just try and keep up with flow states, rather than draining states.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. I was just talking to a client with whom we've worked. Clearly, they were a client, so we work with them.

Alex Cullimore: Clients that we thought about.

Cristina Amigoni: Imaginary friend, the client.

Alex Cullimore: Clients that I dreamed having one time. No, this is a real experience.

Cristina Amigoni: Real experience. An actual client of ours that we've worked with. Because they're a client, we try to at least provide value.

Alex Cullimore: We like to self-define.

Cristina Amigoni: I will get to the point. We've done working genius with them multiple times in various ways through team restructures, and they're still – We're currently working with them directly right now, they're still using that on a daily basis, and she was sharing how useful it's been when there seems to be miscommunication with each other and with their direct manager to actually look back at the geniuses in the room and figure out like, "Oh, we're not speaking the same language, because we're getting a lot of W, a lot of wonder from our boss, but we're all at the end of the descent. We're all in the implementation phase, and so we are having a hard time connecting."

I don't know if this was intentional, or unintentional, but they are now able to have a person in between that it's actually discernment and galvanizing, and has wonder and tenacity as competencies. I ended up sending this huge text message to this former client saying like, "Oh my God," "How is that working out?" Because from a working genius perspective, from a team perspective, she's actually a perfect bridge between the VP and the rest of the team, because she's in that phase that was missing. 

Also, with wonder in her competency, she can actually connect with the wonder of the VP, which is where the VP lives. It's her genius, so that's where she lives most of the time, without getting drained. Because she has also tenacity as a competency, she can understand what everybody is dealing with in the weeds, without burning out. It was a very fascinating piece.

Alex Cullimore: That's a great example. That's a great use of both values, as well as personal interests, as well. Those are good ways to fight that depersonalization and cynicism. That's a good way to lean on other people and build that community, have more empathy for people so that you can more easily follow that, would I do this to myself rule.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes.

Alex Cullimore: And a way to spread out the workload, so it doesn't feel excessive, because doing the things that you enjoy doing doesn't feel as draining. You might eventually get more tired, but it's much more filling than it is draining. You can do those tasks for longer and you can share the load, and everybody can get through the things they're supposed to get through without it burning them out. Those would be the things I'd lean on if I was to say, "What are the first steps if you're feeling burnt out?" I think, I don't know, about 97% of people are feeling burnt out at this point, so it's worth thinking about.

Cristina Amigoni: You probably assume that everybody is, so.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Yeah. There's 3% who are not yet born. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. I'm pretty sure they're burnt out.

Alex Cullimore: No, I'm just kidding. They're burnt out.

Cristina Amigoni: They get that from the mothers.

Alex Cullimore: It comes right in from the mom.

Cristina Amigoni: They get that from them It's coming through, believe me. It's definitely coming through.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, the stress markers are there.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. And breakdown of community is a big piece of burnout, whether it's working genius, or other ways to actually all be in the same place and even say it out loud and realize you're not alone can help, because it counteracts the breakdown of community. One of the worst pieces is what you don't know. When you're burnt out, or feeling any type of emotions, and you think it's you, and you're alone, and there's nobody else feeling the same way. I may feel burnt out, but look at the other 8 billion people in the world, they're totally fine. What's wrong with me?

Alex Cullimore: They're not fine.

Cristina Amigoni: They're not. They're not fine. Given that we've just established that if it's not 100%, it's very close to 100% people right now are burnt out for very different reasons. Let's come together and actually help each other. Again, French Revolution style, but help each other.

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Yes. We have to redesign pieces of the system, so we don't have a system creating burnout. If you could individually help recover from burnout, but then step back into a system that creates burnout, it's a temporary measure. We have to address some of these things at the root systemic cause. That's one thing that we are now offering. We're doing conversations that we're calling Siamo on the DL, which we are making stand for Dialogues in Leadership. Which is a place for leaders to get together and talk about some of the struggles. It can be difficult to do that as leaders, and it can be difficult to find places to share these thoughts. I don't mean leaders as in you have a title, a person of title. I just mean leaders who have influence over other people. Leaders in that people who want to make sure that they're being proactive with themselves, with their work, etc., and would like to just be able to get help from other people, and it feels like you don't have that within the workplace, because it's hard to find that within peers sometimes. It's hard to find that if there isn't the psychological safety. We're hosting those once a month. Anybody can drop in for however long. Feel free to check that out on our website, wearesiamo.com.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Look for the Speakeasy graphic.

Alex Cullimore: Yes.

Cristina Amigoni: It's going to be a little bit like that. It is usually in the morning, but you never know. I mean, it could also, given time zones, it could also be 8:00 at night for somebody.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Depends on where you are.

Cristina Amigoni: Bring your favorite beverage to the Speakeasy, to Siamo on the DL. We won't judge. It could even be a mug, which I used to have a mug that said, "I have wine in here." I wonder what happened to it. Or, "I don't have wine in here." I can't remember.

Alex Cullimore: This is definitely not wine.

Cristina Amigoni: It's definitely not wine. But I wonder what happened to that mug. Now I have to go find it.

Alex Cullimore: Memory loss, the final symptom of burnout.

Cristina Amigoni: That's just, yeah. That's a given.

Alex Cullimore: One thing we'd encourage is share that with others. Feel free to reach out to us if you have good strategies you've come to for fighting burnouts. Or if you're just feeling it yourself. We know that lots of people out there are feeling it. We don't have to be alone in this, and we can design a better future together.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Good luck. Seriously, LG TVs, spa music, nice. I'm not a beach person, but even that helps me to just see the water, just hit the beach, the waves, very calming waves.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, I prefer the 30-second-long Samsung washer ending song. Washer cycle ending. It's absurd. I don't know why they programmed that. It's obscene.

Cristina Amigoni: I thought I had a Samsung, but mine is too old. It doesn't have –

Alex Cullimore: Maybe it's LG. I can't remember. It's something.

Cristina Amigoni: It has a very loud buzz. It's not very calming.

Alex Cullimore: A nice nuclear buzz, yes.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Doesn't do a lot for calm. Yes, happy to share. I can record and even send that if that will help your burnout. Not the buzzing, the LG TV.

Alex Cullimore: The LG TV. That sounds much nicer.

Cristina Amigoni: Just spa music. Yes.

Alex Cullimore: Keep on –

Cristina Amigoni: Thanks for listening.

Alex Cullimore: - keeping on. Good luck with burnout.

Cristina Amigoni: Good luck. We'll be here, burning out. Actually, we won't, because we just fired ourselves. Alex fired both of us.

Alex Cullimore: This is a wild interpretation of these events. When we find who the hosts are, we'll have a new episode.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Good luck.

[END OF EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Thanks so much for listening to Uncover the Human. We Are Siamo, that is the company that sponsors and created this podcast. If you’d like to reach out to us further, reach out with any questions or to be on the podcast, please reach out to podcast@wearesiamo.com. Or you can find us on Instagram. Our handle is @wearesiamo, S-I-A-M-O. Or you can go to wearesiamo.com and check us out there. Or, I suppose, Cristina, you and I have LinkedIn as well. People could find us anywhere else.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, we do have LinkedIn. Yes. Yeah. We’d like to thank Abbay Robinson for producing our podcast and making sure that they actually reach all of you. And Rachel Sherwood for the wonderful score.

Alex Cullimore: Thank you guys so much for listening. Tune in next time.

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you.

[END]