324: The Hidden Mismatches Driving Burnout with Cait Donovan

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:11]:

Burnout is one of those things that is getting a lot of airtime these days. It’s something that’s quite top of mind for people, I think, because a lot of people are feeling really overwhelmed. Now, today’s conversation on the Happier at Work podcast is all about burnout, and it’s probably one of the most honest and deep conversations that I’ve ever had about the topic and provides some real practical solutions as well. I’m your host, Aoife O’Brien, and joining me today is Cait Donovan to talk about her upcoming book, Mismatch. And we dive deep into where burnout actually comes from and how it’s actually blameless. As well, so I know you’re really going to enjoy today’s episode. Do let me know what you think. I would love to hear from you.

Aoife O’Brien [00:01:00]:

As always, feel free to reach out directly on podcast@happieratwork.ie, and I look forward to hearing from you. Cait, you’re so welcome to the Happier at Work podcast. I have been really excited for this conversation for ages because we’ve had it in the diary for a long time. I’ve just finished reading. an advanced copy of your new book, and I’m so excited to talk to you about that. For the people who don’t know who you are, do you want to introduce yourself to listeners? Let them know a little bit about your background and why you care so much about this topic.

Cait Donovan [00:01:35]:

Yeah, so I burned out as an acupuncturist who worked for herself. So I was doing a job that I loved, passionate about the work. Nobody becomes an acupuncturist by default. This is a very intentional choice. You have to go to a separate school. There’s only 5 of them in the United States left. You know, like it’s a very particular pathway. So I chose that pathway, followed my heart, followed my passion, opened successful acupuncture practices, and ended up extremely burnt out.

Cait Donovan [00:02:06]:

We were talking beforehand and you said that you think burnout is like all the way to hospitalization. To me, the line between I’m in chronic stress and I’m in burnout is a question of— Recoverability. So, are you able to recover if you are stressed and you go to sleep on Friday and you spend the weekend resting? Are you restored on Monday? Can you restore? Can you recover? And when you’re burnt out, you can’t. You could sleep for a week, it wouldn’t matter. You could sleep for a month, it wouldn’t matter. It takes 12 to 18 months on average to recover from burnout. So, to me, that’s the drawing line. So, I was at this place where nothing I was doing would recover me, and I was embarrassed and feeling full of shame.

Cait Donovan [00:02:49]:

I was blaming myself for it happening. I was thinking, I know about stress physiology. I’m a healthcare practitioner. I’ve been meditating since I was 18. I run regularly. I eat well. Like, what, how could this happen to me? And then I dove into the research and the research said, well, workplace, the workplace is mostly at fault for burnout. And I was like, cool, but I’m also the workplace.

Cait Donovan [00:03:16]:

And I started looking into the big burnout researchers that, you know, all of us that work in this line of work know, Maslach and Leiter and Schofield and all these guys, right? And all these people. And I was reading through their work and I thought, well, some of this applies to me. I can see where this is, but some of it just doesn’t. So I dove in, I did another degree, I wrote my first book. I did my, a really big paper when I did my degree on the correlation between childhood trauma and later predisposition to burnout. So, that was a really, that was a big sticking point for me. I thought somebody could have created a perfect workplace for me, but I probably would’ve burnt out anyway because of this history. So, that workplace wasn’t gonna matter there.

Cait Donovan [00:03:59]:

Like, that wasn’t gonna influence me in that way. So, I started to fight back against this idea that burnout is solely a workplace issue. And as I was going through it, the emotion that guided my recovery the most was resentment. Every time I found resentment, I found a place where my boundaries were off, where I was self-neglecting, where I was not aligned, where just something was not quite right. Then I went back into the research about 8 years after doing this work. I have Fried: The Burnout Podcast with 300+ episodes, a million downloads. I’ve got my first book. I’ve done hundreds of keynotes.

Cait Donovan [00:04:38]:

And I go back into the research and I read a sentence, and the sentence basically says, the biggest predictor of burnout is a mismatch between a person and their job. And it stopped me.

Aoife O’Brien [00:04:51]:

Hmm.

Cait Donovan [00:04:52]:

And I looked at then all the rest of their research again with fresh eyes after years. And I thought, but we’re not naming the mismatches. We’re not calling them out directly. You’re telling me it’s a mismatch, but you’re not telling me how to find that. where it is, what it looks like, and how to fix it. And that’s where all this work that I’m doing now spawned from. So this is 10 years in the making, and here we are.

Aoife O’Brien [00:05:18]:

Love it. And you very rightly said that my, you know, before we started recording, I was sharing what I thought was like, I’m close to burnout, but I’m not burnout. But I love the distinction that you’ve made that it’s whether it’s recoverable or not. And clearly I have recovered and I didn’t get to that stage where it was unrecoverable, but it was definitely chronic stress and I was close there. And I was just driven to keep going and keep doing more. Is there anything to be said for that? Like, do people get into that state where they’re like, I just have to keep giving, I just have to keep doing?

Cait Donovan [00:05:53]:

So one of the things that people say the most when they’re in the beginning of, oh my God, I’m burnt out, and oh my God, now I have to somehow maximize my recovery, which is the exact wrong attitude because that’s how you got here.

Aoife O’Brien [00:06:03]:

High achiever.

Cait Donovan [00:06:05]:

Yeah. Yeah. Like, let me do the, let me be the best at burnout recovery ever, which is, you know, that’s a bad, it’s a bad sign. People don’t like to hear that. But one of the things that people say most frequently is, oh, I can’t believe I missed the signs. I feel so embarrassed that I didn’t notice this happening. And this is where the research into adverse childhood reaction, adverse childhood experiences or childhood trauma comes in because what I learned when I was diving into that research is that your brain development patterns are different if you have a certain number of what they call an ACEs score. So you can score up to 10.

Cait Donovan [00:06:41]:

If you have 4 or above, your brain development will be different than somebody that has 3 or under. And part of the brain development that’s different is that the part of your brain that’s responsible for a skill called interoception, which is your ability to sense internally what’s going on in your body and respond to it appropriately, That part of your brain doesn’t grow particularly well. And most people that have high trauma backgrounds have learned to be more in tuned to other people than in tuned to themselves.

Aoife O’Brien [00:07:13]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:07:13]:

Because that’s what keeps them safe, right? They call themselves empaths. I’m like, girl, that’s trauma. When I learned that, I thought, okay, if childhood trauma has such a large predisposition for not only burnout, but also addiction and poor health behaviors and all sorts of other things, but burnout is one of them.

Aoife O’Brien [00:07:30]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:07:31]:

If there’s such a large correlation here, and I can, let’s assume that at least a portion of the people that burn out have an underdeveloped sense of interoception because of their life and history and story. They weren’t ignoring the symptoms along the way. They weren’t even missing the symptoms along the way. They couldn’t feel the symptoms.

Aoife O’Brien [00:07:52]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:07:53]:

Yeah. You didn’t really notice. So, when you say, I caught myself and I made a pivot. It got bad and I wanted to push through because that’s my tendency, but I realized it was bad enough for me to pay closer attention to myself. That tells me that your level of interoception is naturally higher than someone that so easily overrides signals that are really minimal, that they’re not really feeling because their body isn’t connected in that way.

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:20]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:08:20]:

So there’s this advice that says, listen to your body. And they’re like, what?

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:24]:

Yeah, that they don’t even notice. So I noticed that I was fatigued, I noticed that I was depleted, I noticed that I was stressed, I noticed that I was working ridiculous hours, where someone who doesn’t have that same level, that same level of interoception— and we’ll come back to the ACE score in a second— but they just wouldn’t even realize that that’s what’s going on.

Cait Donovan [00:08:47]:

They might say the words, Yeah. But still not internalize what it means.

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:52]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:08:54]:

And there’s a level of mismatch that comes from a chaotic background, a trauma background, that also tells you that you should withstand more.

Aoife O’Brien [00:09:04]:

Okay, yeah, yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:09:05]:

So your desire isn’t—

Aoife O’Brien [00:09:06]:

You just want to be able to cope. Yes.

Cait Donovan [00:09:10]:

So you’re not in this place where you’re like, oh, I should change something to make it better for myself, because you didn’t learn that that was possible.

Aoife O’Brien [00:09:16]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:09:17]:

You didn’t learn that you have that influence. So first, you’re not getting the signals, and second, you don’t believe that it could change. So there’s no extra impetus for you to actually pay, to even force yourself to pay attention to the signals. You’d be like, I’m so tired, I’m so busy, I feel like crap, but it doesn’t mean anything to you.

Aoife O’Brien [00:09:35]:

But I have no agency because I can’t change or control anything that’s going on around me.

Cait Donovan [00:09:39]:

Yes, so the combination of these 2 things And people are like, burnout is a workplace issue. And I’m like, sort of.

Aoife O’Brien [00:09:46]:

Maybe before we go any further, we stop it there because we talked before we started recording, like the whole premise of the book is that it’s blameless. And we have this tendency to blame individuals who can’t cope, who need to be more resilient, or we blame the workplace for various different reasons, like the workload and lack of wellbeing and lack of boundaries, et cetera, et cetera. But actually your book explains why it’s blameless. It’s not, it’s just factors. I would love to come back now and explore the ACEs score in a little bit more detail because there could be people who are listening who are not really sure what that is. And maybe your interpretation of big T trauma versus little t trauma. And my understanding of when we talk about childhood trauma, it doesn’t have to be something that’s massively dramatic. It could be just multiple things layered on And now you have a score of 4 or more, and you’re more likely not to have developed these in this sense of interoception where you understand what’s going on internally in your body and you can sense that.

Aoife O’Brien [00:10:52]:

And then you have agency and you can put a stop to whatever’s going on because you recognize it.

Cait Donovan [00:10:57]:

So ACEs right now, as they’re, as they’re tested right now, and they will continue to develop because this is, you know, science and that’s what science does. But right now ACEs are described as any sort of abuse or neglect, and that includes emotional neglect. And if you grew up before the year 2000, chances are your parents were not meeting your emotional needs because that wasn’t a thing.

Aoife O’Brien [00:11:21]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:11:22]:

I love my parents.

Aoife O’Brien [00:11:23]:

Sometimes we don’t talk about it as much, but it’s true. No.

Cait Donovan [00:11:25]:

Yeah. Like, and I love my parents and they did the best they could with what they had. And they are magical people. We’re very close. I adore them. And also my father was an addict until I was 6. You can’t meet somebody’s emotional needs when you are high. That’s not doable, right? My mother had a husband who was an addict and was working more than one job to keep life alive.

Cait Donovan [00:11:52]:

And her mother died when she was 17 and her father died when she was 23, when I was 6 months old. And I had an older sister. So she’s got 2 kids, a drug addict husband, a couple of jobs, and no parents.

Aoife O’Brien [00:12:04]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:12:06]:

That woman could not have met my emotional needs.

Aoife O’Brien [00:12:08]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:12:09]:

She couldn’t have. That wasn’t possible for her. And her childhood history, she lost a sister to leukemia when she was a child.

Aoife O’Brien [00:12:17]:

Wow.

Cait Donovan [00:12:18]:

And she was praised out of 7 children, they lost one, and she was praised for being the easy kid, the one that didn’t bother anybody, the one that sat in the corner, the one. So she was emotionally neglected on some level as well. So it’s, I mean, it’s not like, Again, I’m not blaming anybody. This is just the situation for what it was.

Aoife O’Brien [00:12:34]:

It is what it is, yeah. Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:12:37]:

And so in this situation, if there is any sort of physical, emotional abuse or neglect, that’s part of the ACEs questionnaire. If you had a parent who had a mental disorder of some sort that was untreated and/or unpredictable, that adds to it. Any sort of incarceration, any sort of long-term absence, any sort of like we could violence, any sort, like all sorts of other things, witnessing violence, witnessing really strong bullying, a narcissist in the family, all of those things will add to your ACEs score. The good news for those of you out there is that ACEs are adverse childhood experiences. We also have positive childhood experiences, and you could have like a very high ACEs score, but have one very intense positive childhood experience, the best grandmother that ever lived, an amazing teacher, a super mentor, and that will negate a lot. Of what happened to you. It will, it, it will push back on so much of that because you don’t need everyone to get you, but you do need somebody to see you and show up for you. You do need that sense of safety net from somewhere.

Cait Donovan [00:13:43]:

Um, and it doesn’t always happen from your parents and that’s just reality.

Aoife O’Brien [00:13:48]:

Yeah. It could be someone else.

Cait Donovan [00:13:51]:

But it could be somebody else. And if it wasn’t somebody else, I had wonderful, wonderful grandparents. I did have a lot of support and still I’m on the, I’m, I’m on a 4.

Aoife O’Brien [00:14:00]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:14:00]:

Right. I’m just at the beginning of things not being quite right. And I had people to support me and this is still the story.

Aoife O’Brien [00:14:07]:

Yeah. Yeah. It still happened. You still realize these things. Um, one thing, Cait, that stood out to me in the book, but also I’ve seen you post about it online. I think I’ve heard you talking about it in the podcast as well, is the idea of needing to pee. And when I first saw it or read it or heard it, I was like, oh my God, are we allowed to say that. And also I feel so seen because I do that.

Aoife O’Brien [00:14:34]:

And do you wanna explain a little bit more about how you discovered that or how that came about?

Cait Donovan [00:14:39]:

Yeah. So this came about because when I was learning about this skill of interoception, which is still new science, this is, we don’t know a ton about this. I might change my mind about what I’m saying right now in a couple of years when we learn more. But right now, the things that I’ve learned about it so far are that That skill can be built. So, if you weren’t granted a skill of interoception, to me, part of your burnout recovery must include building the skill of interoception so that you can catch it in the future, so that you can notice yourself differently, so that you can show up for yourself differently. And also, when your ability to notice your physical stuff and respond to it increases, your emotional regulation goes up too. Because instead of saying, oh, I’m mad, you can say, oh, I’m feeling resentful. You can get more granular with your emotional— understanding, which means you can take a better action toward fixing it because you understand what’s really happening because you can feel it in your body.

Aoife O’Brien [00:15:36]:

Yes.

Cait Donovan [00:15:36]:

Right? So if we need to feel into our bodies in order to build the skill of interoception, then we go to what I now call in my business foundational self-care. I need you to pay attention to your bladder. That is an interoceptive skill that if you practice it will build that part of your brain.

Aoife O’Brien [00:15:59]:

Hmm.

Cait Donovan [00:16:00]:

Because anything that you repeat, anything that you practice builds your brain, right? Like this is basic wires together fires together neuroplasticity stuff. So if you pay attention to that one thing, then you will improve your interoceptive skills across the board. You don’t just improve it in that one thing, they improve across the board. And I noticed that I was often overriding my need to go to the bathroom to write 3 more emails.

Aoife O’Brien [00:16:29]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:16:30]:

That weren’t, I wasn’t on a schedule. I wasn’t waiting for a call. I wasn’t, I was just like, no, I’ll just get these 3 more done.

Aoife O’Brien [00:16:37]:

Just this one thing. Why?

Cait Donovan [00:16:38]:

Go to the bathroom. Your body said it’s time to go to the bathroom. Go to the bathroom. And when I started talking about it on the podcast, people really responded to it. In a way, I said it as like an offhand— I was like, girl, just go pee.

Aoife O’Brien [00:16:53]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:16:54]:

Like I said it as an offhand comment 5 years ago and people were like, yes. So I started repeating it.

Aoife O’Brien [00:17:02]:

It’s obviously a common problem.

Cait Donovan [00:17:04]:

Yeah, it is a very common problem. I even had a listener stitch me a quilt, right? The name of the podcast is Fried. She stitched me a quilt in the shape of a fried egg. And on one side of it, hand-stitched, #peeWhenYouNeedToPee in the center of the quilt.

Aoife O’Brien [00:17:22]:

Nice.

Cait Donovan [00:17:22]:

Like, it has this much impact on people.

Aoife O’Brien [00:17:24]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:17:24]:

And that’s not all of foundational self-care, right? Foundational self-care is pee when you need to pee, drink when you’re thirsty, eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full, move when you’re antsy, rest when you’re tired, connect when you’re lonely. If you can start to build The foundation of interoception by meeting the core— before you get to your wants, desires, preferences, just the needs that your body has in order to maintain health, to combat stress. If you can just do those things, everything else becomes easier. And you don’t think it’s going to help, right? Because you’re like, how is peeing when I’m supposed to pee? I had a client once that was like, how much money am I paying you to tell me to pee when I need to pee? And I was like, I don’t know, just do it for a month and let me know what happens.

Aoife O’Brien [00:18:11]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:18:12]:

2 weeks in, she wrote me this big long message. I connect with clients through like a shared Google Doc. And she wrote me this big long message. She was like, I can’t believe how much peeing is changing my life. And I was like, I know.

Aoife O’Brien [00:18:27]:

A simple answer, but actually really profound as well. We’ve talked, Cait, about the individual and some of the things that we can do as an individual, which sound kind of a little bit simple, but actually they have a disproportionate effect on how we interpret and how we approach burnout. But I’d love to explore a little bit more about the workplace in particular, the kinds of things that you see, the kinds of things that we do, where the responsibility lies between the organization as a whole, the leader, and then the individual agency that we should be showing as well in these situations. So A big broad question there, but what are you seeing out there in the world?

Cait Donovan [00:19:13]:

So, when I started writing the book and I looked at the 6 burnout mismatches that are named by the researchers most commonly, the first one that they name is workload. And then, they talk about it a little bit, but they’re not naming mismatches specifically. And I was like, okay, well, what are they? In workload, a mismatch can be hours that you have to work.

Aoife O’Brien [00:19:33]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:19:34]:

Like, people often think that that’s the biggest sort of additive to burnout is overworking. It’s not, but it can be part of a burnout story. But if it’s not ours, then what else could it be? It is access and use of resources. So, if you are a hyper-independent, people-pleasing perfectionist, there might be resources at your workplace that you are not using because you feel like it’s cheating. You feel like if you’re not working hard, then it’s not worth it. So this is a, this will end up being a combination between leadership responsibility for letting you know what resources exist and encouraging your use of them. And then personal responsibility for allowing yourself to use resources without feeling like you’re cheating.

Aoife O’Brien [00:20:17]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can so relate to that. Can we dive into that in a little bit more detail when you say hyper-independence and when you were talking about it in the book when you were writing about it, I was like, yes, hello. Is hyper-independence and high achievement kind of, do they go hand in hand or?

Cait Donovan [00:20:38]:

Often, yes. There’s not too many high achievers that are frequently asking for help. Most of them don’t like it. And this is the hallmark sign of being hyper-independent is not even in a, like not just an inability, but an Like, an aversive reaction. Not even unwillingness. A pain, a fear, and in a, like a true, like aversion to asking for help.

Aoife O’Brien [00:21:11]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:21:11]:

Because it makes you look weak, bad, whatever. Like the, the, for me going through burnout recovery was the first time in my life that I was like, oh, I got here. I didn’t notice. I had no idea that it was happening. I’m not going to be able to get out of this by myself. I need help.

Aoife O’Brien [00:21:27]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:21:28]:

The first time in my life.

Aoife O’Brien [00:21:29]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:21:30]:

I was 30-something years old, 34.

Aoife O’Brien [00:21:33]:

Hmm. I can so relate to that. And I’ve been doing this process of documenting all of the work experiences I’ve had going back to when I first started work. So like 25-odd years ago and, you know, explaining in stories, this is what happened. And I think this is what was going on and whatever. Through a very rich career history, and there are lots of stories in there. And I’ve been using AI to help me to understand what’s going on. But one of the stories that I shared was this idea that when, and this is, well, actually this is going back even further than that.

Aoife O’Brien [00:22:14]:

So this was like a summer job in the US and other people had their books open and they were cheating. Essentially. And I was like, I don’t want to do that. I want to do this by myself. I know that I can do the role. And what resulted in, or what that resulted in was that I was on a lower wage for the entire summer. I didn’t get to wear the fancy, you call it in the US vest, we call it a waistcoat. But I, so I was very visibly Different to the other people that I worked alongside, which was demoralizing, embarrassing, whatever.

Aoife O’Brien [00:22:54]:

And so, yeah, like, so from a very kind of young age, I’ve been this hyper-independent, I don’t need anybody’s help. And if there are people listening today who can identify with that, like, I can do this on my own, I don’t need your help, and actually don’t even think about offering me help because I’m going to say no.

Cait Donovan [00:23:16]:

And I’m going to be insulted.

Aoife O’Brien [00:23:17]:

Offended.

Cait Donovan [00:23:18]:

Exactly.

Aoife O’Brien [00:23:19]:

If you offer me help and think that I need help. And I, and I have to say, I’m still there a little bit.

Cait Donovan [00:23:26]:

Oh, me too.

Aoife O’Brien [00:23:26]:

Still hyper-independent. So what are the steps to— I won’t say, I was going to say identifying it, but actually I think we’ve identified it and I think people know, but what are the issues with it and how do we take those steps to be okay with asking for help and for getting help?

Cait Donovan [00:23:47]:

So hyper-independence is a protective mechanism, right? You create it because you were taught that that’s what you need to do to survive. So that’s okay. So the first thing is don’t judge it. Drop the judgment immediately. There’s, that’s not helpful. It’s not getting us anywhere and it doesn’t matter. You did it and you repeated it because it worked.

Aoife O’Brien [00:24:06]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:24:07]:

That’s step one.

Aoife O’Brien [00:24:07]:

It got me, it got me to where I am today. So something—

Cait Donovan [00:24:10]:

Exactly.

Aoife O’Brien [00:24:10]:

Right. You know?

Cait Donovan [00:24:11]:

Yeah. You wouldn’t have repeated it.

Aoife O’Brien [00:24:12]:

We repeat ourselves. Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:24:13]:

Yes, but you also wouldn’t have repeated it if it wasn’t successful. You probably got praised for it along the way in some way, shape, or form.

Aoife O’Brien [00:24:21]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:24:22]:

From your parents, from teachers, from, oh, she doesn’t even need— Oh, she doesn’t need anything.

Aoife O’Brien [00:24:26]:

Look at her.

Cait Donovan [00:24:26]:

Yeah.

Aoife O’Brien [00:24:27]:

She got it all.

Cait Donovan [00:24:28]:

Look at you go.

Aoife O’Brien [00:24:29]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:24:30]:

Right? So you did it.

Aoife O’Brien [00:24:33]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:24:34]:

And you did it for a reason, and that’s okay. Now it’s preventing you from true relationship. It’s preventing you from using resources, and it’s preventing you from the supreme joy of allowing people to love you and support you. So this is, right now I’m in the book process, and you have to ask a million people for a million things, endorsements and podcast episodes and buy my book in preorder sale, please, and do all these things, right? You have to do all these things because otherwise your book will flop. And you don’t write a book because you don’t want it to impact people. So if you want it to impact people, it has to reach as many people as possible.

Aoife O’Brien [00:25:11]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:25:12]:

So you have to do the asks. You have to do them. You can’t do this by yourself. It is not tenable. And yesterday I sent out my first request for book launch team.

Aoife O’Brien [00:25:21]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:25:22]:

And overnight, thank you. Overnight I had 34 people sign up, which is incredible. And when I saw the names pop up, I realized that about a third of the names on the list right now were people that did this for me 6 years ago when I released my first book too. And they commented, so excited to do this again with you.

Aoife O’Brien [00:25:39]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:25:39]:

I sat with that and allowed myself to absorb the joy of being seen by that many people who have a desire to support and promote the work I’m doing in the world. That is incredibly special, but I have had to learn how to enjoy that. And the step, the first step is this. Are you ready, folks, for my hyper-independent people? This is the first step. You start by practicing asking for things you don’t need and are of no consequence to you. So, somebody at your office is walking by the coffee machine and you say, hey, could you pour me a cup? You’re not thirsty. You might not even drink coffee. You don’t even know how you want it.

Cait Donovan [00:26:27]:

They’re like, how do you want it? You’re like, black. I don’t know. That’s what they say in the movies. It doesn’t matter. So, you have to train your body and your nervous system that you can ask for things in a simple way. Sometimes somebody’s going to say no, and you have to learn how to absorb that too, right? Not every request or ask you make is going to be responded to positively.

Aoife O’Brien [00:26:50]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:26:51]:

That’s— but you have to learn that disappointment, managing that disappointment as much as you have to learn managing to accept the fact that If you ask somebody to bring you a coffee, you sit at your desk until they bring it over. You don’t get up after they poured it so you can bring it back to your desk yourself. And this is not a learn to ask for help. It’s a train your body to accept support.

Aoife O’Brien [00:27:14]:

Yes.

Cait Donovan [00:27:15]:

Train your nervous system to allow people to support you. And you do it by asking for things that just don’t actually matter. If somebody says no, it doesn’t really change anything because like you didn’t want it anyway.

Aoife O’Brien [00:27:27]:

Yeah. And if they say yes, then you’re training yourself to accept it.

Cait Donovan [00:27:31]:

Yes.

Aoife O’Brien [00:27:31]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:27:32]:

So you ask for inconsequential things.

Aoife O’Brien [00:27:34]:

Interestingly, before we recorded this podcast, I had a call with someone else and he remarked that it’s incredible, the community that I’ve built around the podcast. And he said that he, for one, if I was doing anything, uh, he doesn’t, you know, He said, if you ask me to do something, I’m there. He said, you haven’t even told me what it is. I’m there because it’s you and I believe in you. And he said, you’ve built this community. And I was astounded because I don’t see that. So that’s probably part of that problem.

Cait Donovan [00:28:12]:

Yes.

Aoife O’Brien [00:28:12]:

The hyper-independence. I don’t need help. I don’t want to build people around me. And it’s like, you need to get used to that.

Cait Donovan [00:28:19]:

And, but people want to.

Aoife O’Brien [00:28:21]:

Exactly. Exactly.

Cait Donovan [00:28:22]:

And the joy, the supreme joy of allowing and accepting help.

Aoife O’Brien [00:28:25]:

You give other people that joy of being able to help you.

Cait Donovan [00:28:28]:

Yes.

Aoife O’Brien [00:28:29]:

Because I love helping.

Cait Donovan [00:28:29]:

The things that I heard.

Aoife O’Brien [00:28:31]:

We love helping other people. Yes. Yes.

Cait Donovan [00:28:36]:

The things that I heard over the past 24 hours have been such a boost to me.

Aoife O’Brien [00:28:42]:

Amazing. One of the things that I want to come back to that we touched on at the start and we certainly touched on before we started recording is this idea of fit versus match. So I had a 20-year career and I had a, what I consider really fantastic experience for the most part. And then I had a couple of experiences that were unfavorable. It’s a nice polite way of saying it. And when I left my last corporate role, I went on and I did a master’s to understand what was going on in these workplaces. that I just felt like I couldn’t succeed. And my lecturer said, it’s about fit and it’s about your fit with the environment.

Aoife O’Brien [00:29:26]:

So I think that’s why I’m so intrigued by this idea of match. And you do kind of address the idea of fit versus match in the book. When I was speaking on your podcast, we were talking about this and you were so intrigued by the different pillars within my framework because of this idea of fit. And it’s not just you satisfy this thing. It’s, you have to find what works for you. So how can we do that in an organization when there is so many different levels to consider and there, we’re dealing with individuals who will have different needs? And then I’d love to come back to this idea of agency as well, because there’s probably a lot of people who don’t feel like they have agency when actually They do. They could be doing more to support themselves.

Cait Donovan [00:30:16]:

So, the first thing, how do we do this? How do we help people find match? How do we allow more match for ourselves? I think the first thing to understand when we are looking for match in our own lives, in our workplaces, et cetera, whether we are leaders, individual members, what we’re looking for, folks, no one is 100% matched. If you go at match as a perfectionist and you try to get everything correct, Yeah. It’s not gonna— there’s just no such thing. I have created my own life, my own business according to the ways that my body works, and I’m still not 100% matched. Nobody’s 100% matched. So what we’re going for, and what I say in the book over and over again, is a sort of pretty good most of the time match.

Aoife O’Brien [00:30:59]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:31:00]:

We’re going for like a C. Like, Cs get degrees.

Aoife O’Brien [00:31:04]:

You guys do different In high school, yeah, so secondary school, what you call high school, we have, I’m sure we have A, B, and C at that level, but then at university level, it’s—

Cait Donovan [00:31:17]:

It changes, yeah. But we say Cs get degrees, like we’re going for 75%, we’re going for just like a decent enough alignment and match so that the things that are bothersome are manageable to you. And Side note here, like asterisk. This book says, the title of this book is Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations. Why good people burn out in good organizations. This book is not for toxic behaviors, bullying, ostracism, harassment, and incivility. This is not what this book is for.

Aoife O’Brien [00:31:53]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:31:54]:

I am not here to train people to find enough match To withstand.

Aoife O’Brien [00:32:01]:

Yeah, yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:32:02]:

Being abused. That is not what we are going for here at all. This is, in a mostly pretty good sort of way, is this good enough so that you can live your life fully?

Aoife O’Brien [00:32:15]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:32:16]:

Is this good enough so that the company can continue to grow and serve its mission? Is this good enough to support the stakeholders? Is this good enough to support the people that are at the receiving end of the mission? Is this good enough to That’s what we’re after. So I think that part’s really important to understand. You’re never gonna be 100% matched. And we’re not talking about if you are mismatched in a way that is in any way, shape, or form harmful to you, you need to GTFO. You need to get out. That’s, that’s your only option.

Aoife O’Brien [00:32:44]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:32:45]:

You, there’s no reason.

Aoife O’Brien [00:32:46]:

That’s what I did. That’s what I did.

Cait Donovan [00:32:47]:

To absorb that.

Aoife O’Brien [00:32:48]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:32:48]:

Yes. There’s no reason to absorb that. That being said, there are your family history mismatches that might make, might make it more likely that you would keep yourself in a situation like that. Yes. So then that’s, that That part is your job.

Aoife O’Brien [00:33:00]:

It just feels familiar to me because I grew up in chaos or whatever it might be.

Cait Donovan [00:33:05]:

And/or you’re a fixer and you think you can fix it, or you think you can meditate enough to not be bothered by it. Like, your body is reacting whether you think you’re past it or not, your body is still reacting. Inflammation is happening, cortisol is raised, like all sorts of things are happening in your body regardless of what you think about it. So when we’re going after match, we’re going after sort of mostly pretty good.

Aoife O’Brien [00:33:28]:

Yep.

Cait Donovan [00:33:29]:

And to find match, we need to understand where the mismatches are first. So, we talked just a mini bit about workload, but there’s also workload, autonomy, fairness, communities, values, rewards, recognition. There’s all these other places where mismatch can pop up. We need to understand where the mismatches can happen, and then, as team leaders, as As people leaders in organizations, you need to understand where they can happen. And as an individual, you need to understand what your wants, needs, desires, and preferences are. You need to know what will match for you. In order to know that, you have to actually do some work. Most of us don’t know what matches us well.

Cait Donovan [00:34:09]:

We think we— my sister is a chief people officer, and she said, I cannot tell you how many times somebody has come into my office and told me that they want a particular promotion. And I’m like, That doesn’t match your skill set. You’re not gonna enjoy— not only— you could probably do it. I’m not saying that you are incapable. I’m saying you won’t like it.

Aoife O’Brien [00:34:27]:

Yeah, you don’t find it enjoyable, but it looks—

Cait Donovan [00:34:30]:

you’re trying—

Aoife O’Brien [00:34:31]:

I said it looks sexy or whatever.

Cait Donovan [00:34:32]:

Yes. Yeah, but you’re going to be miserable in that role, and that’s not a good move for me, you, or the company. So why are you going for that? Because you think it sounds good, looks good, whatever. But what is a good match for you? And your leader Folks, your leader is not responsible for that part. My sister stepped in and said that to that person that day. And you’re lucky if you can have somebody like that who can see you and see that. But that is not technically their job.

Aoife O’Brien [00:34:58]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:34:59]:

You have to know what your matches are. And you are clouded by culture, by LinkedIn, by Instagram, by your family’s ideas of what success means. I have a friend who will not stop wearing blazers because her parents told her, you’re going to work in a big company someday. That’s the big goal. And she’s like, I’m like, I have a doctorate in spiritual studies. Like, why am I in this white blazer? I’m like, I don’t know.

Aoife O’Brien [00:35:26]:

Is she still working in corporate?

Cait Donovan [00:35:28]:

No.

Aoife O’Brien [00:35:29]:

She just wears the blazer to make it feel like she is? Yeah. Okay. This makes me feel a lot better.

Cait Donovan [00:35:33]:

Because she’s afraid to let go of that desire from her family that made her feel successful.

Aoife O’Brien [00:35:38]:

The identity level type of thing.

Cait Donovan [00:35:41]:

Exactly.

Aoife O’Brien [00:35:42]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:35:42]:

But it doesn’t match who she is. But nobody in a workplace, if she was in a workplace, a leader’s not here to— that’s not their job.

Aoife O’Brien [00:35:50]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:35:51]:

But a leader’s job is to respond when you know what your matches are and you advocate for yourself to help you find something that is as good a match as possible for you within the restraints that they’re working within, right? Everybody’s got restraints that they’re working within. So within whatever bureaucracy restraints, rules, confinements, whatever they happen to be, is to help you find the best match possible for you in this space. We did have somebody listening to the podcast a couple years ago. She was a coaching client in a group coaching program with the person that was the head coach of my company at the time. And she was like, I work in a toxic work environment. My leader’s a mess. And we put out an episode on what constitutes, per research, a toxic work environment.

Aoife O’Brien [00:36:36]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:36:37]:

And She listened to it and came to the next coaching session and she said, oh my God, you guys, it’s not a toxic work environment. It’s just a bad match. We just have different values. I just have different values than my leader. They’re not bad. Not bad.

Aoife O’Brien [00:36:52]:

I had 2 experiences and one I would call toxic and the other one I would call it a bad match, but I kind of also called it, it’s toxic for me. So kind of 2 levels of toxicity, almost one generally toxic and another just didn’t match me from a values, from a needs, from a skills perspective.

Cait Donovan [00:37:12]:

But that’s not toxic.

Aoife O’Brien [00:37:14]:

It felt toxic. And I think that’s why.

Cait Donovan [00:37:18]:

But it is not intentional. Intentional harm creates different change in the body.

Aoife O’Brien [00:37:23]:

Well, there was that as well.

Cait Donovan [00:37:25]:

Okay. Well, that’s intentional harm is toxic. And that is one of the core tenets of a toxic workplace.

Aoife O’Brien [00:37:32]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:37:33]:

Right? But—

Aoife O’Brien [00:37:33]:

In that case, yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:37:35]:

Yes, right? And also, having it happen in awkward one-off situations does not a toxic culture make.

Aoife O’Brien [00:37:43]:

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:37:45]:

Right? So, we have to be really careful for saying, I was in a toxic situation. I was in a mismatch that lasted too long that led to this toxic behavior.

Aoife O’Brien [00:37:57]:

Yes.

Cait Donovan [00:37:58]:

But that doesn’t mean the culture is toxic. It doesn’t mean that they allow for incivility and ostracism and harassment and bullying on a regular basis.

Aoife O’Brien [00:38:07]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:38:07]:

This got ugly over here. That happened.

Aoife O’Brien [00:38:10]:

It’s such an important distinction.

Cait Donovan [00:38:11]:

It’s a very important distinction, especially because people love talking about toxic workplaces right now.

Aoife O’Brien [00:38:16]:

I think it gets bandied around quite a lot. It does.

Cait Donovan [00:38:19]:

And sometimes it’s real. A lot of times it’s real, especially if you’re a Black woman in corporate America. It’s a different set of rules, right? Like it’s, you are being treated differently and yes, 100%. And there are a lot of times where people are like, well, this is toxic. And it’s like, no, you just had a values misalignment. That’s, there’s, it’s not bad to have different values. We all have different values from one another. Like that’s just life.

Cait Donovan [00:38:45]:

That’s not bad. Values are inherently like morally neutral.

Aoife O’Brien [00:38:49]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:38:49]:

And this is the idea behind mismatch. Mismatch is inherently morally neutral.

Aoife O’Brien [00:38:54]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:38:55]:

A mismatch is a mismatch. Like we were talking about fit in the book. I talk about fit as like you put on a blazer and it is tailored to fit you. It feels wonderful. It fits. It just doesn’t match your coloring, the rest of your clothing, the place you’re going, right? Something can fit and not be a match.

Aoife O’Brien [00:39:12]:

Yeah. I think the example that I loved from the book, if I may say, was the wallpaper. And you and I are both old enough to remember what it Means to paper wallpaper.

Cait Donovan [00:39:23]:

I papered a wall back here 2 years ago.

Aoife O’Brien [00:39:25]:

Oh, well, there you go.

Cait Donovan [00:39:27]:

Yeah.

Aoife O’Brien [00:39:28]:

Um, but when you, it, it fits in the place that it’s put, but, but you have a hard time trying to find that match because it doesn’t always line up. So I think it ruins the whole room. Memorable way to think about it. Like, yes, it fits, but actually, no, it’s not a match if you just keep it. kind of pasting it any old way to make it fit, then it’s not necessarily a match.

Cait Donovan [00:39:54]:

Yeah. And it’s forcing something that’s not a match into what you assume should be a fit.

Aoife O’Brien [00:39:59]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:40:00]:

Because it’s the right shape. It’s the right consistency. It’s the right, it’s got some right factors.

Aoife O’Brien [00:40:07]:

So what do we do when there is, so if we’ve identified something that is not a match for us, which I did. And the first place, toxic. Second place, not a good match. Both of them I left because I was like, this is just not working out for me. And I wanted to understand why that was happening. And so I went on and I did my master’s. But if we recognize that something is not a good match, then like, what can we actually do? So if we say the leader’s responsibility is to help you to find that best match. It’s your responsibility to understand what that match is and to understand where the mismatch is, what’s actually driving it.

Aoife O’Brien [00:40:48]:

Communicate that, I think, is a really— another really important point that you’re putting in your book. You actually have to tell people that this is what’s happening.

Cait Donovan [00:40:57]:

And not hint.

Aoife O’Brien [00:40:58]:

And not just hint.

Cait Donovan [00:40:59]:

No hinting.

Aoife O’Brien [00:41:00]:

Passively, passive-aggressively mention something.

Cait Donovan [00:41:04]:

Oh, would be nice to have an office with walls.

Aoife O’Brien [00:41:08]:

Yes. Like, no direct communication about your needs, about your values, about your strengths.

Cait Donovan [00:41:15]:

Which again is harder when you’re from different groups of people.

Aoife O’Brien [00:41:19]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:41:20]:

Right. Because how you say things and who you say them to and who your boss is will affect how your words and who, what you look like and what your background is will affect how your words are interpreted.

Aoife O’Brien [00:41:29]:

Right.

Cait Donovan [00:41:29]:

And directness works really well where I’m from in the Northeast and doesn’t work as well In the South. So you also have to, it has to be culturally appropriate. It has to be person appropriate. It has to be matched.

Aoife O’Brien [00:41:39]:

Yeah. So everything has to match.

Cait Donovan [00:41:42]:

Everything sort of pretty good most of the time.

Aoife O’Brien [00:41:44]:

In Ireland and the UK, there is that tendency to hint.

Cait Donovan [00:41:50]:

Yeah.

Aoife O’Brien [00:41:50]:

And to be less direct. I think in Europe in particular, the Swiss and the Germans are known for being quite blunt and direct, you know, say it like it is.

Cait Donovan [00:41:59]:

Yeah. The Dutchies will do that too.

Aoife O’Brien [00:42:00]:

If you do that, the Dutch as well. If you are that direct, I think the perception is it’s actually being kind of rude.

Cait Donovan [00:42:08]:

Well, it depends if you’re a woman or a man or a— the rules change depending on who you are. So, you do have to find a way to get your point across, whatever that means for your culture and for your personality and for your leader, whatever that means. In the book, there are particular suggestions for each of the mismatches. Here’s how you get a little bit closer to a match. And the answer isn’t always change this thing exactly. Sometimes the answer is, let’s get a fuller picture of what’s going on overall.

Aoife O’Brien [00:42:44]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:42:44]:

So, the Match Index, which is the assessment that goes through the book, can be done at an organizational level, so we can find mismatches on a systemic level, and it can be done at a personal level. So, there’s 2 kind of different versions of it. But if you do your individual level and you’re looking, And you’re saying, I have all these mismatches, you take care of— if you are not ready to handle some of the ones at work, handle other ones that are easier for you to influence at home. So if you know you have hyper-independent nature and you’re looking for more support, well, start asking for things that don’t really matter.

Aoife O’Brien [00:43:17]:

Hmm.

Cait Donovan [00:43:17]:

Start practicing building that muscle before you start advocating for yourself in a way it’s— it makes you so uncomfortable that you’re gonna come across weird.

Aoife O’Brien [00:43:25]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:43:25]:

Because you don’t know how to say it because you’re so uncomfortable. Build that comfort so that you can have that conversation. If you don’t know what your own values are, you need to do some sort of values exercise to figure out what works for you and what doesn’t. Nobody else can do that for you. If you have a mismatch in values, that’s not something somebody else can fix. You have to address that. So I don’t want— the onus is not on the individual. And if you can start by taking care of some of the bigger mismatches in your own life, you will increase the amount of tolerance you have for managing the mismatches in places that are more uncomfortable to manage them in, and for asking for things that are more uncomfortable than they are for changing them at home or with yourself.

Cait Donovan [00:44:18]:

So oftentimes that’s the way forward. I don’t think you should do one without the other. You should not try to match the workplace without doing anything with yourself, and you should not try to match yourself without doing anything in the workplace. It should always be a both/and.

Aoife O’Brien [00:44:34]:

It’s that holistic approach.

Cait Donovan [00:44:35]:

Yes, it needs to come.

Aoife O’Brien [00:44:37]:

Your life as a whole. And I love how you share this as well, Cait, the idea that, well, If you fix one part, it’s going to make you able to cope better with another part that’s maybe not in alignment right now. That’s, that has a bit of a mismatch. Anything else that you would like to share before we wrap things up? The book is so rich with ideas, with practical exercises, and we’ve covered a lot today. But if there is maybe one thing that you wanted to, to, for people to take away.

Cait Donovan [00:45:07]:

Whether the problem is burnout, disengagement, lack of productivity, whatever it happens to be, there is a mismatch somewhere that is driving that problem. Right now, what I see most often in the corporate and nonprofit worlds is that they’re interjecting solutions before they’re ready. So, they’re not doing a diagnostic of what’s actually going wrong.

Aoife O’Brien [00:45:31]:

Yeah, that’s true.

Cait Donovan [00:45:32]:

They’re doing an employee engagement survey. They’re saying, oh, we have a trust issue, and then going after it instead of looking at that trust issue and finding the mismatch underneath it. A trust issue can be from the values on the walls don’t match the values in the halls. A trust issue can be a values mismatch between you and your leader. A trust mismatch can be so many different things. So, you can’t just address it as a trust issue. You have to find out what’s going on. What is underneath it?

Aoife O’Brien [00:45:59]:

People are trying to solve things as symptoms, but they’re actually not going below the surface to see what the root cause is.

Cait Donovan [00:46:06]:

Yes. And burnout is a signal. It’s a symptom of a larger problem, of a larger number of compounding mismatches in a workplace.

Aoife O’Brien [00:46:13]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:46:13]:

So, let’s figure out what those mismatches are so we can help you prevent burnout in future people. And those people that are already burnt out, well, they need support to recover. Those are 2 different actions.

Aoife O’Brien [00:46:23]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:46:24]:

I think burnout is a disease process. I don’t think it’s an occupational hazard as it’s labeled right now. Your brain changes, your microbiome changes, your muscle mass changes. It’s a physi— there’s a physiological response happening in your body. This is a disease process. So you’re going to get cancer. You’re going to get burnout. You’re going to have heart disease.

Cait Donovan [00:46:40]:

Things are going to happen to you in your life.

Aoife O’Brien [00:46:42]:

Yeah.

Cait Donovan [00:46:43]:

The repair is necessary. I am not mad at burnout recovery. We got to do it. You deserve to feel better.

Aoife O’Brien [00:46:49]:

Yes.

Cait Donovan [00:46:50]:

And we need to put some things in place to help other people avoid that if, if, if and when we can.

Aoife O’Brien [00:46:55]:

Yeah. And maybe people don’t feel that they deserve the recovery. Is that part of the problem?

Cait Donovan [00:47:01]:

That’s a whole nother podcast episode.

Aoife O’Brien [00:47:04]:

Yeah. Cait. The question I ask everyone who comes on the show is, what does being happier at work mean to you?

Cait Donovan [00:47:10]:

To me, being happier at work means being as matched as you can possibly be so that you can utilize the gifts and talents that you were meant to utilize on this earth.

Aoife O’Brien [00:47:18]:

And if people want to connect with you, if they want to find out about the book, I know at the time of recording, it’s in advance of the book coming out, but I know when the show is released, it’s still slightly in advance of the book coming out or around the same time. How can people get their hands on this book?

Cait Donovan [00:47:35]:

caitdunivan.com/book.

Aoife O’Brien [00:47:38]:

Best place to go. caitdunivan.com/book. Cait with C-A-I-T. Thank you, Cait. I’ve loved this conversation so much. I think listeners are gonna take so much away. I think some people will recognize themselves in our conversation immediately. Maybe other people, it will, the penny will drop.

Aoife O’Brien [00:47:57]:

a little bit further down the line. But thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise today.

Cait Donovan [00:48:04]:

Thank you so much for having me. You are always such a joy to be with.

Aoife O’Brien [00:48:08]:

That was Cait Donovan talking all things burnout and her upcoming book, Mismatch. I really hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Don’t forget to reach out directly to me on podcast@happieratwork.ie.