Melissa Monti: Hello, and welcome to our episode of the Practitioner Scholar,
a Penn Chief Learning Officer podcast.
I'm Melissa Monte, and I will be your host.
For those who don't know, the Penn CLO program is an executive
doctoral degree path through the University of Pennsylvania's
Graduate School of Education.
I'm also a current student of this program as well.
We've been fortunate to have celebrated the successes of many Penn CLO students
and alumni as they have grown into thought leaders of organizational learning
throughout the public and private sectors.
However, in this edition, we will specifically highlight
the achievements of Dr.
Candy Weans, now a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and author
of the new book, Burnout Immunity.
Getting to know her a bit more, Dr.
Weans holds multiple degrees and graduated from the Penn CLO program in 2016.
Since then, her research has focused on the topics of burnout,
emotional intelligence, and organizational resilience.
She is an executive coach.
She also holds a faculty position with the Police Executive Leadership
Institute and a 26 year track record of organizational change consulting.
Most importantly, she says she is passionate about creating learning
experiences that help people walk in their purpose and lead with their values.
With that being said, we are thrilled to welcome Dr.
Wiens to our program.
Thank you for joining us today.
May I call
you Candy?
Kandi Wiens: Yes.
Please call me Candy.
Melissa Monti: All right, thank you so much.
Today we will explore several topics, including key takeaways from your
research, how your findings impact workplace learning, details on your
new book, and how the Penn CLO program ultimately impacted your career.
But first, I would love to start with an interesting anecdote that you shared
with our program several months back.
back.
I think it provides interesting context to your research motivations.
Of course, could you tell us a little bit about your health scare several
years back while you were juggling work, school and also family life?
Kandi Wiens: Sure.
I'd be happy to share a bit about this.
And I did share my story with the Pensiello students a couple of months ago.
It's one that triggers some really difficult memories.
As you hear me tell this story, notice that I still carry a lot of that stress
in my voice, which is part of what I'm learning to do today as I apply
my emotional intelligence skills to continue to manage the stress that I
experienced and what eventually led to a life threatening wake up call.
At the time, about 10 years ago, I led a very busy life like many of
our current students and our alumni.
I had three kids at home and I was traveling a lot for work and for school.
I was in the middle of the Penn CLO doctoral program and it started to hit me.
I started to notice things weren't quite right when I was sitting in class one day.
It was a Friday afternoon and I got an email from my youngest
son's kindergarten teacher and the email contained a video clip.
Of my son making a recording and it was just happened to be a day that they were
doing what was called muffins for moms.
It was the Friday before Mother's Day and because I was not in his classroom, his
teacher took a video of him sending me a very sweet message, basically telling me
that he loved me and he missed me and that he was proud of me for going to school.
And when I was sitting in class and I saw that video, it just
all of a sudden hit me that.
I was missing out on some pretty key meaningful moments in my
personal life and my family life.
And I had this sensation for a while that I was doing too much that I
was really, losing a bit of focus on what my true core values were.
It had been there, but I was burying it because I felt like I was really
just so focused on pursuing my dream, which was important to me.
But I wasn't realizing at the time that these sacrifices were
impacting more than just me.
It was impacting my family as well.
So that meaningful moment the passage of that meaningful moment was the
beginning of a wake up call fast forward a week after that, literally
one week later, I was in my doctor's office just for a normal checkup.
The one where you go in and out of your doctor's office, you think you're going
to be in there for 20 minutes, you get your a, and you go back to work.
And the nurse took me back to the exam room.
She checked my blood pressure.
She checked it a second time, a third time, a fourth time
without saying anything.
She went out into the hallway and while she was gone, I did what most
of us would do, and I picked up my phone and I started checking my emails
and responding to a couple of texts.
At the time I didn't feel necessarily overly stressed,
but I did feel a bit anxious.
And I do remember thinking I've got to get back to work because I have a
lot of prep work to do for this big leadership development program next week.
So anyway, , the nurse leaves the room and about a minute later, the nurse
and my doctor walked in and my doctor came in and she held my hand and she
sat down on the exam table next to me.
And she asked me, she looked in my eyes and she asked me, Candy, are you okay?
And I said, yeah, I'm fine.
Felt a little anxious, a little stressed, but nothing out of
the norm that felt normal to me.
She said, we're going to give you a little bit of medicine.
I want you to lie down here for a bit and I'm going to call your husband
and have him come and pick you up.
And then I started to get pretty nervous about what was going on.
She told me that my blood pressure reading was a 200 over 110.
I did not know at the time what that meant.
I really had no idea how scary that was.
I just knew by the look on her face that it wasn't normal.
Turns out that, that a blood pressure reading that high can lead to
any number of really debilitating and detrimental physical effects,
including loss of eyesight, stroke.
heart attack, even death.
They were about to send me to the emergency room, but fortunately
the blood pressure medicine that they gave me as well as a really
strong dose of Xanax wasn't enough to bring my blood pressure down.
She then once my husband came, she then gave my husband some
instructions because I was quite tired and lethargic at that point.
But she instructed my husband I wasn't supposed to do anything
for at least the next.
three to five days.
I wasn't supposed to go to work the following Monday.
So my first thought when I heard her say that I had to stay home from work
for a couple of days after the weekend, my first thought was I can't stay home.
I have a big leadership development program to run next week.
I can't take time out of my schedule to just lay on the couch.
My second thought was finally, I think she just ordered me to
just get some rest and sleep.
This is like the permission that I've been waiting for to just slow down and
sleep and just rest, let my body rest.
And then my third thought when it really hit me was she's absolutely right.
I'm not fine.
This is not normal to have this kind of a wake up call, this kind of a
physical experience where your body is screaming at you to slow down.
So that was the beginning of that wake up call and what led to eventually
this big interest in me wanting to understand what was leading to my
stress, what was causing me to have that type of a physical reaction to it.
And ultimately it's what led me to be so interested.
In stress and burnout research and eventually the emotional
intelligence research as well.
Melissa Monti: Now, in retrospect, thinking back on sort of your operating
rhythm, are there signs that you see now that you were just going with no stop?
Kandi Wiens: Yes.
And that is a big part of what I write about.
Actually, it's the second chapter of the book.
It's all about developing awareness.
Awareness of many things, but one of the key elements of awareness
is paying attention to the very subtle signs that your psyche and
your body are telling you not just to slow down, but to pay attention
to what the stress Is doing to you.
And I learned recently, I wish I would have learned this many years ago.
But I actually just within the last several weeks, I learned recently from
an author that I've been following that every once in a while, it's
so important to just stop, pause and ask yourself, what am I doing?
And what is it doing to me?
Two questions sounds so straightforward and simple, but it really in practice,
if we ask ourselves those questions throughout the day, like not just once
in a while, but literally throughout the day, what am I doing right now?
And what is it doing to me?
So at the time, 10 years ago, when I had that scare, I wasn't doing enough of that.
I honestly, I was living in this state of almost unawareness.
I was just so focused on my goals and so focused on avoiding going back
to the lifestyle that I had before.
I achieved some of the success that I had realized.
So there were a lot of things that were driving that unawareness for me.
And that's one of the things I'm just extremely passionate about right now
is just helping people understand that how important awareness is and there
are so many ways that we can do that, that we can enhance our awareness.
Melissa Monti: Thank you for
sharing that story.
That's definitely scary.
I can only imagine what was going through your mind at the time.
Thank you again.
Let's take a moment to define key terms for the purpose of this podcast.
What are your definitions of burnout and emotional intelligence
and how do the two intersect?
Kandi Wiens: Yes, because they do intersect.
So burnout as.
The researchers who have been studying this Concept or this construct
called burnout, since the early 1990s, we all agree that it's a
physical and mental and psychological manifestation of chronic stress at work.
So it's primarily characterized by the stress that we experience at work,
although the last several years, a number of researchers have agreed that this.
Concept or construct of burnout goes well beyond just what we experience
at work and it's a result of what we experience in our entire life.
So burnout essentially is a psychological syndrome.
It does have manifestations as well, but it's primarily
characterized as a psychological syndrome where we experienced.
Three common symptoms.
And it could, those symptoms could vary person by person.
The first symptom or the first sign that we're starting to feel burned
out is that feeling of just utter and total emotional exhaustion.
If you've ever had that feeling where you wake up in the morning and before you even
open your eyes, you think to yourself.
I just can't even imagine getting out of bed today and going to work.
I'm just so depleted emotionally.
And primarily that feeling comes from serving other people.
That's why we see in the health professions, caring professions even
in law enforcement or with educators as well, professions that require.
Us to give a lot of emotional energy to other people, where at the end of the
day, we just feel so drained and depleted.
If we experience that for long periods of time, that can really increase
that level of emotional exhaustion.
The second symptom is called.
Depersonalization or cynicism.
And that's the feeling that we have about other people at work.
So it's that general feeling that I have a kind of a more negative
or more bad attitude about other people that I work with.
And that could be colleagues, peers, it could be customers
or patients or students.
It could be anyone in our work environment, but just having
a less optimistic or positive view about other people.
And then the third symptom or sign of burnout is what's called
lack of professional efficacy.
And that's just a fancy way of saying that I feel less effective
at my job than I normally do.
And that, that occurs oftentimes when people are new to a role,
they're new to a, an organization.
They're experiencing some new big change at work that's requiring them to pull
on new skills or develop new skills and that just makes them feel oftentimes
like I just not as effective or not in my groove at work the way that I normally am.
The interesting thing about professional efficacy is that.
It's the exact opposite, or it can counter affect the feelings of
emotional exhaustion or cynicism.
So the more efficacious that we feel at work, in other words, the more
effective and confident I feel in my abilities, the less likely I am to
feel emotionally exhausted or to feel cynical about other people at work.
So that's the common definition of burnout that most burnout researchers and the
World Health Organization agree with.
And then emotional intelligence is a construct that's been around for
really literally hundreds of years.
But it was around the late 1980s, 1990s that Daniel Goleman popularized the
concept and brought it to the, to our attention and in the popular media.
He later did a lot of research with Richard Boyatzis out of case
Western, and then our own Dr.
Annie McKee, who was the director of the Penn CLO program for a
number of years and is still an adjunct faculty member at Penn GSC.
So I've fortunately been able to study under Dr.
Annie McKee and the current most common definition of emotional
intelligence is that it consists of four different domains.
The first two domains have to do with Self awareness and self management.
So my ability to be aware of, understand, and manage my
emotions, thoughts, and behaviors.
That's a very simplistic definition of those first two
domains of emotional intelligence.
The second two domains of EI have to do with my ability to
perceive, understand, and manage.
What's going on in my social environment, my ability to build
strong, healthy relationships with other people, my ability to empathize
with other people my ability to participate in and lead effectively
lead other people in a team situation.
So the two intersect.
Burnout and emotional intelligence intersect in really interesting
ways, which is what my research has been focused on.
And I'd be happy to tell you more about that, but it, my, my studies have been
some of the first that have directly looked at ways in which leaders and
even individual contributors, and you don't have to be a leader to use your
EI, but people of all walks of life, any profession, any industry in any country.
My research has been looking at ways that we can use our EI
specifically to manage stress and truly protect ourselves from burnout.
Melissa Monti: You mentioned a few key sources for information.
Who else have you worked with to determine what burnout really means?
This could be anyone from medical doctors to psychologists,
possibly other academic scholars.
Tell me a little bit about how you gathered your information.
Kandi Wiens: So Lots of great research out there in both the fields of
burnout and emotional intelligence.
So I've been reading and resilience and some of the other constructs
that have been formed these other, big bodies of literature.
So I've been looking at.
Scholars in these fields for a number of years, Daniel Goleman, Richard
Boyatzis, Annie McKee, are the primary thought leaders and researchers in
the emotional intelligence space.
And then in the burnout space, it's Christina Maslach, Michael
Leiter, a number of others.
As far as primary research, my Research has been focused
on chief medical officers.
I do a lot of work with law enforcement.
I've now done focus studies with a number of large law enforcement
agencies, Los Angeles Seattle, Portland, Vancouver Oklahoma City and a number
of other smaller law enforcement agencies where we're studying both
police chiefs as well as that one or two levels below a police chief.
I've also studied leaders in many different industries, and I've been known
to even interview bartenders and baristas.
I will literally talk to anyone and everyone who is interested in opening up
to me about what their experiences are.
When it comes to stress at work and how they deal with it.
And it turns out I, I believe from my research anyway, that regardless of
the industry or the role, or even where you work in the country or really any
country, it really doesn't matter.
These tools and strategies of emotional intelligence can be applied in any type
of role leadership or non leadership role.
Melissa Monti: And what are the sentiments?
I'm just curious from some of your research participants.
Do they say thank you for bringing awareness to this?
I thought I was alone or something similar to that.
Kandi Wiens: Yes.
Yeah, that's been one of the most rewarding parts of my research is that
if you think about it for those of us who are qualitative researchers, we are
there to collect data, we are there to hear people's stories and to walk away
with data that we can then turn into.
Codes, and those codes get turned into themes.
So there's a whole process of data collection as a researcher.
But one of the things that I didn't fully appreciate until I got into the interview
process is that qualitative interviews are essentially an intervention.
They're an intervention in your study participants lives.
And just to give you one example, I'll never forget one chief medical officer
that I interviewed Before our interview, he took the Maslock burnout inventory.
It's basically a research instrument that tells us whether
or not someone has burned out.
And I saw his results before I conducted the interview with him.
And he rated his stress level as a nine out of 10, meaning that he was
describing his stress as very severe borderline, worst possible stress.
And he did characterize.
As burned out on the mouse lock, burnout inventory actually had
a quite a high level of burnout.
And in my interview with him he was kind enough to share a number of stories with
me that I reported on, but towards the end of the interview, he started weeping and
and we were on zoom and I saw him weeping a bit and I asked him if he was okay.
And I immediately took off my researcher hat and I put on just my executive
coaching hat and my supportive friend hat.
And I asked him, doctor.
Smith disguises name, but I asked him, Are you okay?
And he said, I am okay.
Actually this Conversation is really opening my eyes.
He said, I'm starting to realize more and more that I am suffering.
I'm suffering and my family is suffering.
And I've known for a while that I need to do something differently.
So notice that his story was similar to mine, that he noticed a little bit.
He had some level of awareness, but he wasn't necessarily
doing what he needed to do.
He wasn't what I call aware and care.
So he might have had a bit of an awareness that he was struggling and
suffering, but it wasn't until the interview where he was opening up.
To do something different.
Melissa Monti: So that awareness is kickstarting the journey,
which is super important.
Yes.
Good.
You've published several Harvard Business Review articles on using emotional
intelligence to building resilience.
In fact, just wanted to let you know, I was scrolling down LinkedIn yesterday
and I saw a new article from you.
I think it was just recently published.
So congratulations.
Kandi Wiens: Thank you.
Yeah.
It just came out yesterday.
Melissa Monti: In your opinion, how is this done using emotional
intelligence to build resilience?
And is it sustainable over the long term?
Kandi Wiens: Yes.
Yes, we can build it and yes, we can use our EI and yes, we can sustain
it, but it does take hard work.
So that's what we're going to talk about is truly the foundation
of my book, Burnout Immunity.
So in Burnout Immunity, you'll see that the chapters are organized by a
resilience framework that I created.
The acronym is ARMR, A R M O R.
So really briefly, the A is for awareness.
And so in that chapter about awareness, you will learn all
kinds of tools and strategies.
There are a number of exercises that describe how becoming aware of not
just what's making us more vulnerable to burnout in our current work
environment, but also an awareness of my temperament and my personality
and ways in which I might be.
Causing and amplifying stress for myself based on my temperament, my
personality and my past experiences.
It also includes a whole section on having an awareness of what triggers our
stress and why things are triggering us.
Melissa, for example, you and I could be working in the same stressful work
environment, have the same boss, same conditions, but I might experience that
stress much more intensely than you.
Just based on my past experiences or again, because of my personality
and I might be triggered by things that you are not triggered by.
So having an awareness of all of these things and more, there's more
in that chapter are the first and the most important step to then
moving through the armor framework.
The second chapter is our, which is all about regulation.
That's the emotional intelligence competency that we often
hear of as self management.
Self regulation impulse control.
So that chapter is all about how we manage and regulate our emotions,
our thoughts, and our behaviors.
It also has a lot of information in there about how to really learn
about your unique stress response.
Each of us has a very different stress response, biologically
and psychologically.
And so the more we learn about our stress response, the better we're able
to regulate it, the better we're able to tune into what are the things that help
me regulate my stress response, whether I'm experiencing acute or chronic stress.
The third chapter of the book, the M is for meaningful connections.
And in that book I talk about how we can use our emotional intelligence
to connect to relationships.
To our values and to meaningful work and each one of those things requires
us to have an awareness of what's important to us, as well as having
the ability to regulate our emotions, thoughts and behaviors so that we
can focus on and dedicate time and energy to meaningful connections.
Our values and our and meaningful work.
The O in the armor framework is about our outlook.
Think of it as I think of outlook as mindset.
So the ways that we look at life, the way that we look at how we lead other people.
So in that chapter, I walk readers through the four vital
mindsets of resilient role models.
Of people who have burnout immunity.
So I talk about servant leadership, how that helps us.
I talk about how having a stress is enhancing mindset, helps us navigate
stress and protect ourselves from burnout.
The third mindset that really contributes to burnout immunity is
having a positive outlook, which happens to be a very specific
emotional intelligence competency.
It really encompasses all of the ways in which we view things as either
optimistic or pessimistic and how having a positive outlook really changes our
subjective experience of stress itself.
And then the fourth vital mindset that I talk about is the aware and
care mindset I mentioned before that it's not just important to have an
awareness of what stress is doing to us, but we have to take that next step
and actually care enough for and about ourselves to do something differently.
So that aware and care mindset is that fourth vital battle mindset.
And then the final are the final chapter of the book is all about
recover, reconnect and reimagine.
It's what I call the three Rx prescription for resilience and for burnout immunity.
So recover is all about how to heal from burnout, or if you are
at high risk of burnout, how to back off and build more recovery
into your schedule, into your life.
So that you can reduce your risk of burning out.
The second R is about reconnecting.
So it brings us back to the meaningful connections chapter, where we learn
how to reconnect to our values, our purpose, and to relationships.
And then the last R in the 3RX prescription is re imagining.
So once we've healed from burnout, once we're reconnecting to the things and
the people in our lives that are most important, and once we can change our
view of our stressful work experiences and our environment, we can begin to re
imagine the type of relationship that we want to have with work going forward.
I'll never forget a question that I was asked in an interview is that actually Dr.
Annie McKee asked me this question when she interviewed me for my job at Penn.
She asked me, how do you want work to fit into your life?
And that question right there is about re imagining.
So that final R in that final chapter is about not just imagining your ideal
self, but really re imagining this relationship that you want to have with
work and how you want work to fit into your life and not the other way around.
Melissa Monti: Hearing this.
Some may say I simply don't have time to be more mindful.
How can we debunk this myth of not having time for better wellness practices?
Do you think?
Kandi Wiens: Number one, I advice to all my friends who are listening and advice
to myself after remember that you can't afford not to truly, I mean if you care
about your health and your well being and if you were to sit down and be completely
honest with yourself about what you value, and many of us say that we value our
health and our wellbeing and all of that, but we can't afford to ignore the signs.
So a lot of the tips and strategies that you will learn in burnout
immunity, don't take extra time.
Some of this stuff is just a mindset shift.
It's training yourself to think differently.
About your stressors, it's training yourself how to recognize the signs.
So they're not necessarily the type of things that will take you
more time or even more effort.
You're just going to be thinking about things differently.
And yes, you will be doing things differently.
You may be setting boundaries differently.
You may be distancing yourself from toxic coworkers and putting
up more emotional boundaries.
But that doesn't necessarily take you more time.
It's just a different way of doing things.
Melissa Monti: To many of us, myself included, the process of researching and
writing a book seems pretty daunting.
You're on your way to your very first book release.
Congratulations again.
Thank you.
How did you embark on those first few steps, if you wouldn't mind sharing, from
thinking about a topic, which it sounds like you had one in mind, to translating
your research into relatable literature?
Kandi Wiens: Yeah.
So while I was conducting all my research for my dissertation, and then I continued
conducting a few studies after I graduated, I always had this idea in the
back of my head that I wanted to write a book and more than anything, it felt like
a fantasy and a dream, something that I wanted to do, but I wasn't, I didn't
actually think that it would happen.
I really didn't.
And I came up with the armor framework one day when I was out on a walk and
it just all of a sudden hit me and I thought, wait a minute, if I can
put this into a framework that makes sense when I teach it, when I teach
a workshop or deliver a keynote.
then maybe there is something there that I could turn into a book.
So that's where it started to get real, turned from fantasy and a dream
to actually do something with it.
So then I started to get really practical.
Okay.
What do I need?
If I have the idea, I have the research, I can actually envision what will
be in this book, but I need help.
I can't do this alone.
I felt like I was a good writer, and I knew academically that I could write I
could write scholarly pieces, I could write Harvard Business Review pieces, but
writing a book is a very different animal.
It's scary, especially when you have a full time job and
three teenage boys at home.
I started looking into writing coaches and I worked with a couple
of different writing coaches who were incredibly helpful.
But it wasn't until I met Catherine Nepper.
Catherine was introduced to me by one of my HBR editors and Catherine and I
just hit it off immediately and I knew.
I need to partner with this woman.
And so she and I wrote the book together.
She helped me conduct a lot of the secondary research.
She took a lot of my stories that I would record into a voice recorder,
or I would send her what she would call a word salad, just messy drafts.
And then she would help me just put it together in a way that just made it sing.
So for anyone who's considering writing a book and, but you're not quite sure
about your writing skills, or you just don't have the time to write.
I don't think there's nothing wrong with hiring a writing coach.
She didn't write the book for me, but she helped me learn how to write the book.
And then she introduced me to my agent and then from there, it just things
turned into a snowball effect of different introductions here and there.
Melissa Monti: Yeah, and many are likely not aware that it truly takes a village
to publish a book as you mentioned, so tell us a little bit more about the
team you've surrounded yourself with in order to bring this work to life.
Kandi Wiens: Yeah, I love my team.
Absolutely love my team.
Catherine, my writing coach, introduced me to Jill Marcel,
my agent who then introduced me, will help me get my contract with
HarperCollins, who is my publisher.
And so there's an entire team at HarperCollins, editors, marketing
team, sales team, that they're helping me at this point with
the whole marketing strategy.
I've surrounded myself with a team of social media experts.
I have a publicist actually two publicists now that I'm working with,
and I'm also working with a marketing firm that focuses on bulk orders.
So that group of people will help me process books.
People, if people want to order 10 or more books, they help me with
that part of the marketing strategy.
So yes, I've surrounded myself with a lot of people and yes, It's expensive.
But when you write a book that is being published by a big publisher, oftentimes
it comes with a sizable advance.
So that advance has been able to help me afford to surround myself
with just an incredible team.
Melissa Monti: And I'm not sure if you mentioned, but it's a woman led team.
Kandi Wiens: Yes, about 99 percent of the people that I'm working with on my
team, I forgot to mention my, I have a team that's helping me design and develop
a new website, which will be launched in a couple of weeks, but almost all
women, 98, 99 percent of them are women.
I'm super excited.
And they're all invested in and excited about this book and
getting this message out to folks.
Melissa Monti: I love that.
That's amazing.
Now, beyond the marketing, in terms of other engagements that you have
lined up, tell me a little bit about some media interviews or possibly
some keynote speaking events that you have in relation to the book release.
Kandi Wiens: Yeah, I think one of the best investments I've made
with my advance payment was to hire this publicist called 48 PR.
They have been securing media interviews.
Last week I did one with men's health and another with fortune magazine.
I have just yesterday, they scheduled me for four podcasts coming up.
There's a lot of.
Traction going on.
They're lining up outlets for me to publish articles.
I just wrote one for leader to leader, which is Francis
Heiselbein's organization.
They are pitching me to New York times.
They will eventually pitch me to all kinds of media television they have a
podcast strategy, but in addition to that, I continue to do a number of keynotes,
which I've been securing on my own.
I have a number of private clients that I work with, and then I'll have
people reach out to me occasionally, just have heard from me through Harvard
Business Review or have heard about me on LinkedIn and invite me to do either
a keynote or a workshop with them.
Melissa Monti: Very good.
I wish you luck.
Kandi Wiens: Thank you.
Melissa Monti: When readers finish your book and put it down, what
is the one thing you hope they are taking away from it all and possibly
applying to their everyday lives?
Kandi Wiens: I am confident that readers who actually read the book and internalize
what I'm sharing with them will walk away with skills and strategies and tools.
I guarantee that it is written for people to walk away with practical, realistic
and accessible tools and strategies.
What I think people will also walk away with that they may be surprised
about is a feeling of empowerment and a feeling of inspiration that they will
see not just from me sharing my story, but from a number of other stories of
interview participants, people that I've been researching for years, that
these stories are truly inspiring.
These are everyday people.
And executive leaders who experienced just extreme levels of stress at
work, yet they are not burned out.
And so their stories are just incredibly inspiring as you read the
details of what their day is like and what the types of stress that
they are experiencing, yet they are applying their emotional intelligence
to protect themselves from burnout.
And if they can do it.
I know that we can do it.
I've been using and applying everything I've learned from
my research participants, and I feel incredibly empowered.
I know that I can do it.
I rely on my organization.
I don't have to rely on other people's work.
I rely on myself and my emotional intelligence to improve my psychological
well being, and that's really empowering.
Melissa Monti: Being a former penn student yourself through the CLO
doctoral program, how do you feel that experience contributed to where
your career has taken you today?
Basically, how is the program shaped and influenced your identity, do you think?
Not just shaped.
My identity transformed really I can't say enough about the Penn CLO program.
Kandi Wiens: It was during the program that I had that major life
threatening wake up call with stress.
And it was during the program that I started learning about emotional
intelligence and it was during the program that I started gaining my confidence
in my ability to become a researcher.
I met so many amazing people in the program that have been such
an incredible support system.
Of course, during the program, but also since the program, one of my very
best friends to this day is someone that I met 10 years ago in the program.
He was one block ahead of me and he's just been an incredible
support system ever since then.
And so it's not just the content.
It's not just the.
The work that we do to become researchers how that transforms our identity.
But it's also just the experience of being surrounded by like minded
people who are just so intellectually curious about different topics.
That's so inspiring.
And it's almost impossible to, for me anyway, it was, would have been
impossible to not transform my identity.
And I see that with so many of our students and alums who go
through the program who have similar experiences, just.
really having that transformational identity transformation experience.
Melissa Monti: For prospects out there considering a doctoral
program who may also wonder if they
can balance it all, I have definitely been there myself.
What advice would you share?
Kandi Wiens: The advice I would share is to trust your faculty members, trust
the Penn CLO program directors that they will help you get through it.
They see every single one of our students.
I should say we see because I'm a part of that faculty team.
We see our students, we see what we have insight into their personal
lives and we know how difficult their careers are and balancing their family
life with school and everything.
And we are there to support you.
And so to every person out there who's thinking about applying to
the program, just know that you will have an opportunity to be surrounded
by an incredible faculty team as well as the peers in your cohort.
The other thing I would just advise everybody to think about
is think long and hard about.
Managing your work schedule.
And so if there are things you could do now to adjust your work schedule,
take time off, maybe go back to only 80 percent time, something like that.
I scaled my hours back for a period of time when I was working on my
dissertation, but anything you can do to just manage some of your
work boundaries so that you can really focus on your schoolwork
during some of those crunch times.
Melissa Monti: In your opinion, what is the best part of seeing results with your
consulting and your teaching endeavors?
How are you measuring success, both personally and professionally?
Kandi Wiens: I measure success in a couple of different ways.
Number one, the impact that I see this work having on other people.
There have been countless times where I have finished a keynote, I've come
off the stage, a few minutes later I go to the bathroom, freshen up, and
someone will approach me in the bathroom.
Sometimes a couple of people will approach me in the bathroom.
One woman just several months ago was in tears and she told me that
was really inspiring her to make some changes that she knew she needed to
have a hard conversation with her boss about her workload and her hours.
To me, that's a clear indication, a clear example of the impact that
this work is having on other people.
The other way that I measure success is my ability to keep my stress in check.
It's very easy for me, someone who's a serious.
Insecure overachiever.
Serious insecure overachiever.
That's hardwired in me.
So it's really easy for me to throw myself into a million different things
at once over commit, and then regret it a little bit later because I'm just
not setting the boundaries that I need to manage my psychological health.
And so to me, a measure of my success is my ability to protect myself from
burnout, to really live and role model.
The skills and behaviors and the mindset that I hope other people will learn
Melissa Monti: on a more lighthearted note.
And maybe I'm looking for recommendations here.
What is one unique, possibly quirky thing that you do or like to do to relax?
Kandi Wiens: Oh, I love this one.
One of my coworkers, a friend of mine is having her first
baby in a couple of weeks.
And so for her baby present, I bought her.
Hopefully this won't air until after she has her baby shower, but I bought her
this pink blanket and it is the softest blanket I've ever seen in my entire life.
And so when I was taking it out of the packaging and wrapping it for
the baby shower, I was touching it.
And I thought, Oh my God, this is, this blanket is it could be life changing.
I need to order one of these for myself.
So I went online and sure enough, they have an adult version of it.
And the blanket feels like.
rabbit fur, like bunny fur.
And so when I am just like really overwhelmed, I find myself going through
emails and I feel like I have way too many things coming at my psyche faster
than I can manage and just starting to feel my anxiety level go up.
I'll just take a moment and just go sit on the couch with my blanket
and just meditate for five minutes.
And five minutes out of my day is yes.
I can rationalize it as it's cutting into things that I should be doing, but no,
that's probably one of the most important things I can do for five minutes to
just sit with my blanket and meditate.
And that right there can bring my stress response back to an equilibrium level
where then I can get back to work with a little bit more of a clear head.
Melissa Monti: I have been there as well, just so you know, I'm
a big fan of the cozy blankets.
Kandi Wiens: They work.
Melissa Monti: All right.
One final question for you.
Can we do it all and do it well at the same time.
What are your thoughts
Kandi Wiens: I think that depends on what your definition of having it all is.
Years ago, I remember one of the best pieces of advice I ever got was
make sure you're very clear on what your definition of having it all is.
Don't live by anyone else's definition of what having it all is.
So that's job number one is what does that mean?
And that takes us back to our values.
So for me, yes, I do have it all because my values.
Include my psychological wellbeing, my physical health,
my relationships with my family.
So when I stay focused on my values and those values are
informing my definition of success.
Yes, I can have it all because I've started with the right definition.
Melissa Monti: Dr.
Wiens, thank you again so much for your time.
This has really been an inspiring session for me and I'm sure a lot of
our audience members as well, too.
Your book that we mentioned, Burnout Immunity, will be released on April 23rd.
Congratulations again.
And for those who would like to contact you or follow some of your great work,
what is the best way for them to do this?
Kandi Wiens: Yeah, please free to reach out to me on LinkedIn, or you
can email me directly at candy weans.
com.
And I'd love to hear from people.
Melissa Monti: All right.
Thank you so much again for your time.
Kandi Wiens: Thank you.