Leadership Tea

How leaders can protect their mental health and support their teams | S4 EP1

• Shelby Smith-Wilson and Belinda Jackson Farrier • Season 4 • Episode 1

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Our special guest, Lisa Povoni, a therapist and coach with a specialty in trauma, discusses how leaders can recognize and manage chronic stress and burnout in themselves and their teams. She shares actionable micro-practices, the difference between shame and guilt, and the importance of creating space for people to be human in quickly changing, high-pressure environments.

Whether you're an executive feeling the weight of constant pressure or a middle manager, this conversation offers practical wisdom for maintaining your mental health while performing at your best. 

In this episode:

  • The difference between chronic stress, burnout, and trauma
  • Micro-practices to re-center yourself
  • Creating a safe environment for your team
  • When to seek a coach, a therapist, or both

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Shelby Smith-Wilson:

Welcome to the Leadership Tea Podcast, where we talk about not only what it takes to reach the executive level, but how to thrive once you get there. My name is Shelby Smith-Wilson and I am joined by my amazing co-host, Belinda Jackson-Farrier, and we are really excited to welcome you to season four of the podcast. We are especially excited today because we're speaking with a very, very special guest. Her name is Lisa Pavoni and she is a therapist and a coach with a specialty in trauma. I have known Lisa for about 20 years and I can tell you firsthand she knows her stuff. She is extremely thoughtful, extremely knowledgeable and extremely candid and forthright in her craft and in sharing some valuable insights on managing your mental health as a professional and as a leader. So we hope you will enjoy this episode. Listen up and let's hear some wisdom from Lisa.

Shelby Smith-Wilson:

Thank you so much for joining us today, Lisa, to talk about a very important subject. It's something that we've been discussing between the two of us in terms of how can we give leaders all of the tools that they need to succeed, and it's very timely to have a conversation about mental health, particularly right now, as we are seeing monumental changes across the government, across the private sector across the world, knowing that people are struggling with the pace of change, with the sweeping changes that are taking place, the various disruptions that we're seeing across the globe. We mentor and we coach a lot of people who are just stressed out. They're stressed out, they're overwhelmed by what they're experiencing and we wanted to talk to you, as a professional, to understand what are some of the signs of just plain stress, but then what teeters on the border of burnout and how can we recognize those signs and what are some of the things that our listeners can do to address them as they come up.

Lisa Povoni:

Thanks, Shelby, and thank you both. This is great to be with you on this important topic, and in this topic I think we're talking about chronic stress, we're talking about burnout. There's also this stress to trauma continuum where maybe the thing that we're dealing with is in and of itself a traumatic event, but one of the definitions of trauma is too much happening too soon, it overwhelms our system. So when we have this, you know, compounding effect of so much over time, even if one individual piece of that we might not experience as traumatic the compounding effect of it, our systems don't know the difference. And so this chronic stress I mean even just taking normal daily life right now, we operate at a faster pace than anyone in our lineage did. We have more tools, in a way, at our disposal. We have more information at our disposal Also that can have an overwhelming effect. So even some of the benefits of modern life can be experienced as overwhelming.

Lisa Povoni:

There's a lot of different proverbs in different cultures that say some level of you know, when the times are urgent, let us slow down when things are going too fast. Slowing down is part of the antidote to that and it's really getting back to a lot of the basics, and I always start with our physical expression of stress. What are our nervous systems experiencing? What are we feeling? What are we noticing in our breath? You know, over time, do we even notice that we're breathing when we go throughout a day, from meeting to meeting to meeting? What are those things that are showing up? I noticed this both as a coach and a therapist. You know, someone might come to me for coaching and it's an executive who has big goals, big dreams for their organization. They want to get to the next level, sometimes asking a simple question such as how are you sleeping? Talk to me a little bit about what the rhythm of your day looks like, and what I hear is something that humans aren't meant to do. It's part of what we now attribute to kind of C-suite level positions, performing at a very, very high level for a very long time.

Lisa Povoni:

But if we don't have those practices built in that we can come back to that help us sustain and maintain a high level, then what might be an everyday stress adds up over time to this chronic level of stress, and so we start to see things like difficulty getting to sleep, sleep disruptions. Maybe there's some level of illness that comes up, you know, more susceptible to colds, not feeling that great. We see this in people you know who travel a lot for work. They complain about GI issues or things that we don't want to talk about in our executive coaching sessions, but this is what's coming up physically. I have talked to a lot of executive women over the last few months, and particularly the last year, and started noticing how many of them told me they were having some level of anxiety or panic symptoms just in the course of their daily work, and these were new. It wasn't due to a plane crash or a bomb blast or anything else. It was this mounting level of anxiety that they needed to reach out for support, to get support from.

Lisa Povoni:

And so when we talk about what our systems go through over time, noticing what's my body going through, we're very, very good. Usually, by the time we reach the executive level, we've got the cognitive level down. We can create strategies, we can create goals, we can create plans for ourselves and our teams. Where we struggle sometimes is the human level taking care of our physical bodies, remembering the importance of connection, not just with ourselves, with others, connection to the environment around us, connection to nature, things that help us slow down and manage what's a very, very high level of stress. So we can talk about specific strategies around that. But that's sort of an initial response off the top of my head of like what are some of those cues when we know we're operating too fast, too stressful of an environment? Often it shows up in what our bodies are trying to tell us that maybe we're not completely clued into and it's important to pay attention to.

Shelby Smith-Wilson:

Something you said really resonated, you know, in terms of too much happening too soon and how our bodies can be overstimulated by so many things happening concurrently. Belinda and I have often spoken about the effects of the pandemic and how, as we were coming out of that, some of us were re-traumatized by significant changes that were happening in the workplace. What are your thoughts on how we are healing or not as a society when it comes to really reconciling what happened to us during COVID?

Lisa Povoni:

It's so true. There's so many layers of unprocessed stuff which isn't a clinical term, but unprocessed stuff that we've all been dealing with and whether that be grief or trauma or any level of difficulty that was experienced during the pandemic. And one thing to demystify about trauma we sometimes automatically go to if there's trauma, then we're talking about PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder and other things. All of us as humans on this planet. It's not possible to be on earth and not experience some level of trauma. It is a factor of daily life. Whether we experience it as traumatic has a lot of different factors. And then whether we experience so many levels of stress over time that our systems have a hard time recovering from that which can look like symptoms of PTSD. There's a continuum. But many of of us most of us are experiencing all kinds of levels of trauma on a regular basis throughout life and we are resilient as human beings and can move through that.

Lisa Povoni:

But one of the principles of being trauma-informed having a trauma-informed team or family or organization treating trauma effectively is when the thing happened. Whatever the thing was, how was it met? Did you get the care that you needed? Did you get the support that you needed? What happened in and around that event and what we've seen so much with COVID is something that we experienced as traumatic happened and it wasn't met with the level of support that was needed, whether that be someone not getting necessary medical care or psychological care at the time of an event, not having basic needs met. If our basic needs aren't met and then if our emotional and psychological needs aren't met, if we aren't listened to, if we aren't believed and if there isn't an appropriate response, then that compounds onto that trauma.

Lisa Povoni:

So many folks who have been in leadership positions over the last few years, what they went through, what their teams went through during COVID, there was no space to process that. Everything was moving so quickly, it was only responding and then other levels of difficulty on top of that. So anytime that we can pause and really process and take stock and that doesn't look like, you know, completely stopping everything in life, know, completely stopping everything in life but we need spaces where we can process grief, where we can process difficulties that we've been through, where we can tell our stories, where we can be received with empathy, with connection, with compassion, and what I've heard a lot from my clients and others is it's that ladder piece that was missing. It wasn't what they went through, it was how they were responded to. It was saying I lost someone close to me during COVID, or I was a doctor or a nurse on the front lines and being met was kind of stone-faced.

Lisa Povoni:

You just got to keep moving on right, and often we're met with that because the people who are around us are themselves dealing with some level of trauma. So if we're surrounded by folks who everybody's in their red zone, no one has really the resources that they need. We're not able to take care of each other in the way that we really need to in an organization or a community, and so a lot of the work that I focus on in coaching and with leaders is how can you take care of yourself, what resources do you need, and how does that then expand the space that you're able to create for others and your team around you so that when these things happen, you have more space to respond appropriately, to respond humanly?

Belinda Jackson Farrier:

We can't control a lot of what happens and we can control the response empathy and self-awareness and understanding where we are and getting the right supports around us is really critical, especially when we think about our role as leaders. When people come to you in your practice, how do you help them tell the difference between needing support from a coach versus a therapist, versus both? How can leaders distinguish between that?

Lisa Povoni:

versus both. How can leaders distinguish between that? We can get really therapeutic support from a coach and we can get coaching support from a therapist, and so this base can overlap to some extent. And what we know through research is that, regardless of the modality or the technique that you use, the thing that matters most is the relationship, the relationship between the client and the practitioner, and whether that is a therapist and a client or a coach and a client, finding someone that you really have the right fit with the right relationship, someone that you can develop trust and respect. I think that's foundational whether you're looking at either coaching support or therapeutic support. But there is a difference.

Lisa Povoni:

Coaches are often focused on goals, on action moving forward. Our approach can be therapeutic. We might bring in things from the past, we might have a trauma-informed lens or a somatic lens, but we're looking mainly at action and things moving forward. A therapist might look at any level of functioning. Are there anxiety symptoms? Are there depression symptoms? Are there symptoms of PTSD coming up? They're impacting daily functioning. They're impacting your daily life. That's a bit of a simplistic way to look at it.

Lisa Povoni:

As a leader, I've worked with both coaches and therapists. I now see a therapist regularly and have for years and have seen different ones over time, have worked with different coaches. You know, for various periods of time either going into a new executive assignment or perhaps you know wanting to work on something in particular, and both are helpful. Both can be great in tandem. If you're working on life transitions transitioning into retirement, for example, or a career change to be this sticking point that keeps coming up Therapy could be a great way to explore that. Therapists will diagnose and perhaps use techniques that coaches would not. I think finding someone who you can bring your full self to, whatever context that is in, where you can trust that you will be supported and not judged, where you can trust that that person's going to be operating within their scope of practice, that you don't have a coach who's veering into therapy territory or someone who's treating you in a way that's not their specialty. It's that trust and that relationship that's really important.

Belinda Jackson Farrier:

This idea of pairing the two when appropriate can have such a positive impact on people and on your leadership. I'd also like to follow up on something we talked about, where I think you did a great job of highlighting the types of stressors and traumas that can impact leaders. Would love to hear some of your thoughts, as people take stock of you know something as simple as are they breathing right in between meetings. What are some of the techniques or tactics that you've seen be really effective for leaders dealing with the kind of pressure-filled, quickly moving, dynamic environments that we're seeing right now?

Lisa Povoni:

I think it is so important for leaders to know we have to know ourselves. There are a lot of techniques out there. It's not one size fit all. They might not resonate with everyone, but taking some time to experiment and see what works for us, see what you can go to as sort of a micro practice during the day. We often think of these techniques that are going to require a week-long retreat or we need to travel somewhere. That's great, there's space for that. But what can I do in 30 seconds or a minute to transition between meetings or transition between clients? So for me there's two practices that I personally go to a lot and always use with my clients A very basic level of body awareness. Use with my clients a very basic level of body awareness.

Lisa Povoni:

One thing that can happen to us throughout the day is we dissociate a little bit and we don't even know it. We're going from and it's a normal level of dissociation. We're in a meeting talking about something and we realize our minds are a million miles away. And when you invite someone to like, hey, bring your attention back to your feet, like just push your feet into the floor a little bit, I've had clients laugh and be like I forgot I had feet. I forgot that's where we are. Um, I have someone who told me one time, like, yeah, I walk around thinking that my body is basically an uber for my brain, you know, to get it from place to place to place, and a lot of us do that, forgetting that we have access to so much wisdom right here in our own system of regulation, if we can access it.

Lisa Povoni:

So, taking a moment, whether it's a moment to arrive, if you're transitioning from one meeting to another, one context to another, particularly one cultural context, to another land, where you are right, take a breath, push your feet into the floor. Along with that, I'm needing to change it right away. I invite clients to just check in. Check in with what you're noticing. Are you breathing quickly, shallowly, are you kind of up here versus you know, up in your neck versus down in your belly? So, just noticing first as we get to have a sense of our own rhythms, and then inviting to take an exhale. First, when we think about breathing, we often say, take a deep breath, and so it looks something like, and then we're up here. We often say take a deep breath, and so it looks something like, and then we're up here, but exhaling really slowly and focusing on that brings us more deeply, naturally into our bodies, more naturally grounding.

Lisa Povoni:

It is a grounding practice and so those two practices being aware of where are your feet, arrive where you are, push into that a little bit, exhale, and even doing that as you're transitioning from one task to another, bringing your awareness out of your mind and into your body it gives us access to a little bit more spaciousness, to a little bit more possibility, particularly if there are issues where we've been trying to get at the same problem a million different ways and we're looping a little bit, or we've been in a stressful meeting or a stressful environment and physically feel a little constrained. Where can we find that space? So I always go back to anything that can bring us back into that awareness. There's a system or a coach positive intelligence, yeah, coach Shirzad, coach Shirzad, yeah, but a part of it that really resonated with me years ago when I did it and I loved was the micro practices. Years ago, when I did it and I loved was the micro practices.

Lisa Povoni:

Listen to you know, notice something you hear, listen to the birds singing, what's something you smell, what's a way in five seconds to bring us back into presence. So anything that brings us back into presence and I invite clients to play with this a little bit, being aware of your feet and breathing might not do it for you. It might not be your thing, but I've had clients who have found you know what, if I light a candle, or if I smell this certain scent, or just paying attention to the cup of coffee or tea that I'm holding, thatms that aroma expanding into our senses. It brings us into what it is to be human. It might be basic. That's often. What we need is something that brings us back into center.

Shelby Smith-Wilson:

Yes, you just reminded me. I took the class with Coach Shirzad and I learned a lot. One of the techniques that he talks about is rubbing your thumb and your index finger together. I love that one.

Lisa Povoni:

And feeling the ridges.

Shelby Smith-Wilson:

Yeah, it's a very calming exercise. It seems simple, like you said, the simple things that center your body. They help you calm down, that's right, you know, especially before like a stressful meeting or an unpleasant conversation. I have definitely practiced some of the breathing exercises that you mentioned, but I do need to get in touch with my feet, as you said. That's like a different part of the body that we sometimes neglect. But, yes, like just even your posture, like having your feet flat on the floor, I believe that was one of the other practices that I learned while taking that particular course. So, yes, all of that, all of that resonates.

Shelby Smith-Wilson:

One of the things that you have consistently mentioned throughout our conversation is this notion of space. You know, creating space, whether it's space to get in touch with your body, space to grieve, space to have conversations with people. I think that is something we don't do enough of as leaders and I'm wondering, as we think, about some of the toxic environments that our clients, our mentees, have discussed with us. I guess I'm wondering for the leaders who are struggling to create space or to have some of these difficult conversations, or if there are people who are in environments where they don't necessarily feel safe, to facilitate conversations where people can express themselves and deal out loud with. You know some of the grief, some of the frustration, some of the stress that they're feeling. What advice do you have for leaders, for followers, for people who want to create space, create these environments, but they somehow feel constrained by bullies or by the? You know the difficult circumstances in which they're working right now.

Lisa Povoni:

There's so many really difficult operating environments that our mentees or coaching clients might find themselves in, and you know, any environment that starts to make us feel smaller than ourselves, that starts to make us feel like we have less of ourselves available, that we can't do something that otherwise we might naturally do in a different operating context. It's a clue to it's not you. There's something about the environment, right, and so that's a check-in there. First, do I feel like I can operate freely as myself in this environment? Can I fully be in the body that I am in? Does my body feel safe here? First of all and unfortunately the answer to that sometimes is no in a work context. And so taking time to assess what's in my control not what is my responsibility, because sometimes we take on more than it's really our responsibility but what in this environment can I control? What can I influence? What can I control right now? And sometimes the only answer to that is, like you said, shelby, I've got my index finger on my thumb and I can do this. This is what I got access to right now, or maybe it is. You know how I take care of myself physically, okay, what can I control for my team, and often as leaders, especially middle managers, there is a lot above us and outside us that we just cannot control and we are going to have to respond to in some way, and so one of the things that's very powerful if we have the ground and space to do it is not fixing anything, is not changing anything, but it's naming what's going on.

Lisa Povoni:

And you know, I've seen some hesitancy sometimes from leaders when there are so many layers of complex problems and difficulties on top of each other. The feeling is I have to fix this in some way for my team. Or, if I name the problem, I have to do something about it. I saw this a lot during the pandemic, talking to all levels of leaders, when we were encouraging leaders to make space in your teams to talk about this, acknowledge it as trauma, acknowledge it as grief, name what people are feeling. Sometimes the response that we got if I call it trauma, I got to do something about it, I have to fix it. And none of us could fix the pandemic right. There was no fixing that, but what we could do is say something like fixing that. But what we could do is say something like this is so hard, and I know that myself and everyone around me is dealing with all kinds of layers of changes that are difficult to catch up to. Our nervous systems are just under attack. We're managing kids at home, we're managing this uncertain environment.

Lisa Povoni:

So naming all the things without having to fix it, because you really can't, but naming it gives space for people to exhale, like, oh, I can be human in this space. My leader just acknowledged that this is really hard. That lets me drop a little bit and feel like I can be human in this space too. It doesn't mean we're going to open up and talk about all the things, and that often is where I see leaders a little hesitant, like I don't want to get into people's stuff, I don't want to cross the line. You don't have to. You just need to be human and authentic in the moment. And so if we have the ability to give ourselves and anyone around us the ability to just exhale in some way, you know, actually or metaphorically a little bit, by naming the reality of what's going on, it makes a massive difference in our abilities and to have more creativity to have access to how do we manage and operate in this really difficult environment. Thank you for that.

Belinda Jackson Farrier:

That's really insightful. It made me think how sometimes naming for leaders can also run the risk of making them carry a bit of shame Shame for wishing they had stood up earlier, shame for not delivering, shame for being vulnerable, for leaving, for being pushed out. When you've encountered clients who were carrying that burden of shame, what advice have you offered them? How have you seen them navigate that space?

Lisa Povoni:

Yeah, shame is often about something, about the environment or about our conditioning. It's not about us. That doesn't mean we can't experience it, but it's a clue and so when that comes up and guilt is different, we might experience guilt. And if I'm experiencing guilt about something, that's a clue that I violated one of my own values, I crossed something that wasn't okay with me, and it's a clue that maybe there's something I need to fix or repair or amend in some way. So that's a healthy sort of response that you know. Maybe I said something that I regret, I need to amend, that, I need to repair that Shame is often imposed on us from outside.

Lisa Povoni:

It might feel like an internal response. We can certainly have, you know, what I think Brene Brown calls sometimes a vulnerability hangover, a shame hangover. You know we shared and then the next morning we wake up like, oh, I wish I hadn't done that. I really wish I could bring all that back in, because if we were real and authentic and vulnerable, and then we're made to regret it in some way, it's often about what we were conditioned to believe is okay in a work or family context, what we were told was okay, what the unspoken rules are in an organization and so that knowledge and awareness. It doesn't fix the feeling of shame, but I often, when working with clients, like let's, let's figure out and play with whose shame that is, because it doesn't belong to you.

Lisa Povoni:

Whenever we're feeling shame about something that's not yours, and sometimes we find out that it's a cultural conditioning, sometimes we find out it's family conditioning, sometimes it's a leader or a mentor who unfortunately gave us a certain message that didn't serve us. And if we can distinguish between, is it guilt or shame, is it guilt where you crossed one of your values as a leader, as a human, and you want to do something about it, let's figure out what it is that you want to do about it. But if it's shame, it originated from somewhere outside of you and let's see if we can figure out where that is and then find the operating space for that. As you know, as coaches we're creating the space for our clients to find their own solutions and to come up with their own way forward. And often when that comes up and we just get curious about it and move toward that and explore that in various ways, clients always know what it is Like.

Lisa Povoni:

Oh, that's this team that I'm on. This is the message that we've gotten that we need to just suck it up and move forward, and I broke the rule and I shared what was authentic, and so that's what I'm feeling and like okay, how do we want to move forward in that environment? How do you want to hold that? How do you want to show up as a leader? It's a different layer of conversation, but I think that's the initial knowing is, the shame isn't ours, it was brought in from somewhere else.

Shelby Smith-Wilson:

That's such a powerful question. Whose shame is it? And is it shame or is it guilt? That's wow, that's really thought provoking. I'd like to wrap up our conversation, Lisa, by asking you, as an expert, what are some of your personal best practices when it comes to taking care of your own mental health.

Lisa Povoni:

First of all, I realized I have an intro reaction to the word expert and I no, no, no, no, Because one of the ways I learned is by making lots of mistakes along the way. So my current group of practices usually have come from, yeah, some clinical training and experience, but also figuring out and experiencing the counterfactual of what happens when I don't do these things. At this point in my life and my career, you know what I have learned and I'm probably sounding like a broken record because I always go back to the body, but it's the importance of taking care of my physical body. And that does not mean, you know, hitting the gym at 5 am every day, seven days a week. It means, you know, getting enough sleep. It means sleep hygiene around that. What do I need to do to make sure that's okay? Some level of movement, sunshine, you know. I've worked in places in the world where it was dark three o'clock every day and I thought I need some sunshine to operate well. So nature is a very big part of my practice, you know, and even if that's popping outside during lunch and getting some fresh air or, bigger, taking a hike on the weekend, you know, and really getting out into nature and getting into that slower rhythm.

Lisa Povoni:

I find that for me as part of the antidote to the really fast-paced world that we're living in, and connection and maintaining those connections. If I'm in an environment where it is very restrictive and I don't feel this freedom of movement and spaciousness that I'm talking about, where can I find that for myself? Are there one or two colleagues or friends that I can just be me with? I'm a big believer in the power of therapy and coaching. I'm currently not working with a coach, but I do see a therapist every week and that's a non-negotiable for me and that's my space, because we've built a relationship of trust. I can bring anything into that space and so I know that that's my space to let go and exhale, and I'm very open about that.

Lisa Povoni:

It took me a long time early on in my life when I needed that support, to reach out for it the first time, and now it's one of the most powerful tools in my toolkit to really make sure that I have a way to get back to center. I saw a meme that's like we're all basically complicated houseplants. We just don't forget you need sunshine and water, and I go back to that a lot and it's like have I given myself sunshine today? Have I drank enough water today?

Lisa Povoni:

So focus on those kind of micro moments throughout the day and probably the biggest for me is boundaries around my time and my space and what I say yes and what I say no to. All of us have to do things sometimes that we might not have chosen, and we all have busy, stressful times in life. But how do I organize and carve out my time and space in such a way that I know I can show up for everything I'm committing to 100% and I'm not running myself ragged? So I see that as my responsibility to structure boundaries time boundaries that help me show up as my best self, that help me give my fullest to whatever I'm doing, whether that be a client or some other type of engagement. That's really important.

Shelby Smith-Wilson:

You've just dropped so many nuggets of wisdom. We're really important. You've just dropped so many nuggets of wisdom. We're really grateful. I'm confident that our listeners are going to get a lot of benefit from everything that you shared with us, so thank you so much for taking the time to be here.

Belinda Jackson Farrier:

I would just add an emphatic thank you. It was a really great episode, so thank you for your time.

Shelby Smith-Wilson:

Thank you both. It's such a pleasure that we are bringing to our content, and if you prefer to listen, that's great too. We encourage you to leave us a review on Spotify or Apple or wherever you're listening to this podcast. We would love to get your feedback on topics that you would be interested in having us cover. Thanks again for your support, and we look forward to sipping wisdom and stirring success with you again real soon.

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Belinda Jackson Farrier

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Shelby Smith-Wilson

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