Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Burnout Lessons for Executive Leaders in Tech & Cyber
117 Plays5 days ago
This conversation hits different. Mohammed "Moh" Waqas, CTO Healthcare at Armis, joined us to talk about burnout, mental health, and the hidden costs of our "always-on" cybersecurity culture.
George K and George A talk to Mohammad about:
- Why perfectionism in cyber is literally making us sick
- How epilepsy taught Moh to recognize burnout triggers before they hit
- The real cost of saying "yes" to every sales deadline
- Why your team needs mandatory disconnect time (and how to make it happen)
- Leading with radical transparency during layoffs and industry chaos
This isn't just feel-good advice – it's business-critical. Burned out teams cost more, perform worse, and leave faster.
Drop a comment: What's your biggest burnout trigger in cyber? Let's normalize this conversation.
---------------
🏳️🌈 Pride Month is just around the corner! We're once again running our t-shirt campaign to raise money for scholarships for LGBTQ+ students in cybersecurity programs.
In the month of June, all profits from any Pride gear purchased from the BKBT Swag Store will be donated.
Set your reminders for June, and check out the collection: https://bkbtpodcast.shop/
Recommended
Transcript
Preventing Burnout through Prioritization
00:00:00
Speaker
I think it's very easy to just keep on going full steam ahead. um And then you you tend to see people starting to kind of fade a little bit. They're starting to burn out a little bit. My thing is i tend to get overprotective of teams and actually push back myself on external requests um for meeting extremely tight deadlines when I already understand the load and the work streams that they're already working on.
00:00:26
Speaker
And a lot of times when you start having that conversation of managing and what is it that we really need to deliver and the next couple of days versus the next week versus what you can actually push off as opposed to just turning into, um you know, for lack of better word, yes men or just agreeing to every single thing.
00:00:44
Speaker
That prioritization, um it's extremely important. And I think folks, when you start having that conversation, are more open to having it.
00:00:57
Speaker
All right, here's
Introducing Mohamed Wakas and His Mental Health Advocacy
00:00:58
Speaker
the thing. this is your favorite cybersecurity podcast. It's Bare Knuckles and Brass Tacks, the cyber podcast that tackles the human side of the industry. i am George K. on the vendor side. And I'm George A., Chief Information Security Officer.
00:01:11
Speaker
And today we have Mohamed Wakas, CTO Healthcare care at Armus in the chair and a blast. We had a conversation with him a couple weeks ago and he was telling us about some of his own mental health advocacy and some of his struggles in the past and it being Mental Health Awareness Month. We really wanted to have him on because it's important for C-Levels to have that conversation openly and he came to share and also had a lot of good ideas to drop for other managers and ah line level folks on how to manage the stress in cyber.
00:01:45
Speaker
He provided us with a lot of really good practical advice on on creating a culture of mental health awareness, of creating an open space for communication, big, and heavy emphasis on communication.
00:01:57
Speaker
he just, you know, it's really a half an hour of gold where he says all the right things, where if you're at that edge and you're like, hey, I'm not feeling the best about my job right now, I think listening to this episode will give you a little bit of inspiration and try to help you out.
00:02:12
Speaker
Mohamed Wakas, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. All right. Well, you are CTO healthcare, care but you're on the vendor side, which means that the CISO gets first crack. So I will kick it over to my colleague, George A.
00:02:31
Speaker
Hey, thank you very much. And hi, Mohamed. Welcome to the show. As we were saying just before, it's good to see you again for full disclosure. We've dealt with each other in like an actual business environment. It was a super cool time. So this is hopefully going to be continuation that vibe. And George, it kind of nice going back to our old format. It's been a few weeks of us just kind of winging it.
00:02:53
Speaker
oh at some We are actually, we you know, high regard for you, Mohamed, we did put some thought and actually structure into this thing. So we always focused on healthcare security. So I mean, to go from Trillium to Symantec and Apollo and now Armis, and you're specializing in healthcare tech there, it paints a pretty clear pattern around, you know, the care for customer privacy, ultimately.
00:03:16
Speaker
Can you tell us little more about that?
Mohamed Wakas: From Health Studies to CTO
00:03:18
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. In a nutshell, no. When I first started off, um pretty much had no idea what I was going to do with my career. I started off the doctor route in university. ah That only lasted a couple of months. and then all I knew is I didn't want to do university anymore.
00:03:34
Speaker
So ended up graduating with a bachelor's in health studies, but really always kind of fell back to my computer expertise and whatnot, if you want to call it that, and just found myself as a help desk at a hospital.
00:03:47
Speaker
Um, so that's where I really got into, um, eventually found my way into cybersecurity and was fortunate to to be involved in some different areas, you know, access administration and then implementing some technologies and kind of living through a couple of battle scars. I'm sure we all have, um, going to the vendor world. It wasn't just specific to healthcare, care but I think once I transitioned over to Armis and I Really got into things like visibility in a healthcare environment and the medical device security challenges. I really honed in on it And I think that's what really kind of reignited my my passion for healthcare care security. And from there, it's just got very involved in healthcare organizations globally. So it's been it's been quite a ride.
00:04:30
Speaker
You know, it's funny though, in your times, um I was on the client side for both Symantec and Paolo, previous shops. So it's kind of funny when i was like studying up about you a little bit, I was like, oh, like this is all, it's all smart market Ontario, right? So you're like, we've dealt with each other before, probably we just didn't know it.
00:04:47
Speaker
And it's just kind of funny how the world ends up like that. It's a small world. Yeah. Well, speaking of Toronto, Mo, that's where you and I first met a couple, maybe just a month ago or so.
00:04:59
Speaker
And um
Burnout and Mental Health in Cybersecurity
00:05:00
Speaker
we got to talking. We were sort of offline, off color, whatever, off side. But um we got to talking and you were telling me about your own personal burnout experience after i was telling you about my work with Mind Over Cyber.
00:05:16
Speaker
thought it was curious, right? We don't hear many sea levels, let alone in healthcare, talking about that. We definitely don't hear it in cyber enough. It's now coming to the surface more and more. So your story was quite moving. i think it has a lot to offer our listeners. So just want to give you some space here to tell that story, and then we might pull on a few threads here and there.
00:05:38
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I think... I think burnout as well as the greater ah umbrella of mental health related um issues or just in general, the state of mental health. ah I think across cybersecurity is something that doesn't get talked about enough.
00:05:55
Speaker
And this can range across a wide spectrum of manifestations. um What I've always found at least for the individuals I work with in cybersecurity, I feel like at some point innately, we're all perfectionists.
00:06:08
Speaker
um you know And we always have to be right all the time, right? So there's that obsessive almost nature that starts evolving in order to stay ahead of the the attackers or the bad actors.
00:06:19
Speaker
We got to be right 100% of the time. Now, I think that leads to whether it's over analysis, whether it's just always blurring the lines on call. I used to be on call for all all throughout the night, obviously, 24 hours and whatnot, and dealing with alert fatigue, but even in my own personal time, even in my own personal space. and really, your mind just never gets a chance to shut off.
00:06:43
Speaker
But beyond that, you look at LinkedIn, then there's headlines. So cybersecurity became this thing that's just twenty four seven pulling at your different senses. It's overstimulation, right? And i think, ultimately, I'm seeing quite a bit of burnout in the industry, but As I as I peel back some of the layers with a couple of folks, it's it's more than that. I'm seeing at least my personal journey with mental health was ah starting off with anxiety attacks um back in late high school.
00:07:14
Speaker
um I will say I was on the the gifted route, and I think that also built that pressure or built that strive perfection. Yeah, as a pressure cooker. Right? If you're just always striving for that 100%. The plight of the washed out gifted child. There you go. And then ah then it turned into, i think, just depression. ah Well, clinically depressed. was on antidepressants as well.
00:07:37
Speaker
Just... trying to figure out what I want to do with my life. Right. And that's where I think that really had me fall off that entire doctor route that I was talking about earlier, just because and don't see myself doing studying for 12 hours a day, every single day.
00:07:53
Speaker
um i just want to, you're trying to figure out how to be happy. Right. um And then eventually, Trying to wean off of that, that was a whole journey in and of itself, cutting everyone off, trying to rebuild myself from the ground up.
00:08:07
Speaker
um And now it's turned into epilepsy. So I deal with seizures if there's a lot of fatigue. And you know again, in the cybersecurity realm, you're dealing with a lot of fatigue. You're dealing with a lot of late nights. It might be a lot of last minute, whether it's incidents that happen in the industry. And all of a sudden you drop everything and you're right back into work mode.
00:08:27
Speaker
So I think there's a whole gamut of different types of mental health states. And
Managing Workplace Stress and Anxiety
00:08:32
Speaker
I'm just seeing that, especially in cyber, I think it's definitely magnified. Yeah, for sure. i think there's a lot there um about the stimulus, you know,
00:08:44
Speaker
if you work in front of screens all day, that's like all visual stimulus, right? And we are sort of like a three-dimensional body. You'd be surprised how little people are in their bodies, right?
00:08:57
Speaker
There's all the stresses coming into their eyeballs and it's all in their head. And so they're usually not aware that they're like clenching their jaw or they've got their shoulders up near their ears. They're just like, or they're even like, they're like looking at logs or they're trying to dig into something and they're sort of like,
00:09:14
Speaker
bent, you know, curved over the laptop but for hours and you don't sort of feel that in your body. But yeah, there's a lot there. And then we'll come back around to this, but there's something there that you said about even after the incident passes, you know, like what do you do with that cortisol that's just running in the bloodstream?
00:09:31
Speaker
um But yeah, thank you for sharing that. ah We'll definitely pull on a few things there, but I'll turn it back over to George for now. Yeah, no, it was um a lot of the practitioner kind of, I guess, tales from the war, from the warpath, whatever you want to call them.
00:09:48
Speaker
um i remember specifically, ah talked to George about this, when things were at their worst economically, like when the interest rates really, really took the crash. And, you know, I'd say this is like 2022, 2023, right? The layoffs, like really started to hit and were shocking people, right?
00:10:07
Speaker
um I remember I had like a few times of just like the, the anxiety attack thing, or just like the middle of my day, I'd have to literally like stop put on my, do not disturb and just like lay down beside my desk for like 20 minutes and just like,
00:10:24
Speaker
hit some kind of reset. ah Because like the stress of the whole thing and you all having to lose people and having to figure out how do I how do i make this operation that was already kind of on like popsicle sticks and glue and take it to a real budgetarily stressed mode. And how do we find success in this? And how do I not lose all my people? and the Yeah, I don't know, man. Like it's there's stuff like that. There's stuff like when you're dealing with the incidents and I've been on the floor of an Irish restaurant in Dublin in the middle of an incident trying to get some kind of reception and be able to hear stuff. ah likes your dad it's It's funny, man. You see all these things and it kind of like triggers the.
00:11:03
Speaker
Well, it's it's hilarious because you use that word reset. And if I were just to pull, I had a couple of seizures. um My first seizure happened in 2010. um That was totally on me. Modern Warfare 2 had come out. Me and my boy rented it. And we were just playing 24 hours, like literally just straight 24 hours.
00:11:21
Speaker
um And then we were going to go chill with some friends. He went to get ready. I popped in Left 4 Dead 2. Lo and behold, that's what happens. Now, the the what I wanted to pick on when you said reset is,
00:11:33
Speaker
If it might, you know, when I have experienced a seizure, it is literally your body resetting because what happened is it takes about two weeks at least to recover fully recover from a seizure.
00:11:44
Speaker
um And during especially the first couple of days, you're just sleeping. You're exhausted. And I remember even between meetings, if I had a five or 10 minute window,
00:11:55
Speaker
I would go and take a power nap. And then I'd come back, a couple more meetings, take another power nap. I couldn't stay up past 6 p.m. My body, when I first, like the initial days, 22 hours of straight up sleeping. So I found that extremely interesting that the body almost kind of risk to your point, resets and says, no, I need to unwind. I need to catch up on my sleep. I need to reboot here.
00:12:17
Speaker
And it takes that amount of time to do it.
Team Management and Communication
00:12:20
Speaker
The epilepsy strikes me as you have, we talked about this in Toronto, right? Because you have a physical response. It has made you highly attuned to...
00:12:31
Speaker
The precursors, right? You're like, oh, I i know this will trigger it. I know this will trigger it. And so you can now more proactively take steps around those things. I wonder if you have any insights from your burnout experience as also C-level executive.
00:12:49
Speaker
how you're talking to your teams about this, right? Because it sort of always starts at the top and it's great that you have had this experience in a way because you can more readily empathize.
00:13:00
Speaker
So I guess I'm curious there as a, as a team leader, like how are you talking to your team and making sure they don't martyr themselves in front of the computer? Yeah. And I think, I think is even being on the, the vendor side presents its own sets of challenges, right? Cause you're,
00:13:19
Speaker
you're looking to meet customer requests, customer demands. There's the sales cycle that's happening pretty much, you know, you got to do what you got to do in order to bring in the sales, bring in the clients. I think it's, um, it's extremely interesting with, with, with my, with my teams. My big thing is I think in order to get ahead of this is managing expectations.
00:13:39
Speaker
I think it's very easy to just keep on going full steam ahead um And then you you tend to see people starting to kind of fade a little bit. They're starting to burn out a little bit. My thing is i tend to get overprotective of teams and actually push back myself on external requests um for meeting extremely tight deadlines when I already understand the load and the work streams that they're already working on.
00:14:05
Speaker
And a lot of times when you start having that conversation of managing and what is it that we really need to deliver and the next couple of days versus the next week versus what you can actually push off as opposed to just turning into, um you know for lack of a better word, yes men or just agreeing to every single thing.
00:14:23
Speaker
That prioritization, um it's extremely important. And I think folks, when you start having that conversation, are more open to having it. So I think that's something that Yeah, I think that they may not even feel like they have permission to say like, hey, Mo, should we talk about like, do I have to do this first? you know Yeah, 100%. Same thing with clients, right? At the end of the day, we're all human. So just to have an open conversation with our clients, um with our teams, with everybody, its it should be a topic that's completely approachable.
00:14:51
Speaker
And, you know, there's been issues or there's been things that have come up when folks are on vacation and they're putting in time before they go on vacation or they're logging in during their vacation. And it's like, hey, listen, there's nothing that needs to happen today that cannot wait until after the weekend. And that's actually something my, my previous boss kind of instilled in me because I was going ham on a Friday and it's like, I get you're putting in all this work, but listen, they're not going to respond until Tuesday.
00:15:16
Speaker
So don't kill yourself over the weekend when something can wait for Monday. So kind of changed my way of thinking a little bit. And that's how I try and also work with my teams to make sure they're not putting additional effort when the timelines can be adapted.
00:15:31
Speaker
um Hey, listeners, this June, we will once again be supporting Pride Month with our T-shirt campaign to raise money for scholarships for LGBTQ plus students in cybersecurity programs, both graduate and undergrad.
00:15:49
Speaker
In the month of June, all profits from any Pride gear purchased from the BKBT swag store will be donated. That's all profits. Last year, we put this together in a hurry and we still managed to donate a thousand dollars.
00:16:02
Speaker
This year, we are looking to do a lot more. Why? Because this year is not like last year. Queer communities are facing backlash and corporations are shrinking back into the shadows.
00:16:14
Speaker
To that we say, that noise. We've never feared a fight for just causes. And we believe hiding is just pre-surrender. So set your calendar reminders to start shopping in June.
00:16:27
Speaker
Check out the link to the store in the show notes. are Yeah, i I go through the same thing with my team. I really don't micromanage them as as a management principle. Like, I really believe if you treat people like adults, they behave like adults.
00:16:42
Speaker
So like I don't need to know what you're doing every specific minute as long as you meet your deliverables on time. And if you can't, let me know what's up. There's like proper SOP and communication. But I find the minimum micromanagement approach, like as a CISO, it allows me to focus on executive functions with a lot more focus and clarity. Whereas I know day-to-day operations are being handled by line managers and the guys beneath them.
00:17:03
Speaker
So I think if you don't have that approach, if you're that overlord type, I just don't know how you don't burn out in any kind of management role. But I want to take it back to kind of the structures, because George brought a good point of working through the sales organization piece. And that pressure, that quota thing is a real issue you know that the pure practitioners on the client side don't have to deal with.
00:17:23
Speaker
was wondering if you could
Balancing Sales Objectives with Technical Capabilities
00:17:24
Speaker
talk to us about some examples of how do the right thing as a technical practitioner in a sales driven organization in particular. Yeah, i think I think at the end of the day, the sales team obviously have their objectives. We have our means of either know growing the product or doing like the technical proof of concepts and things like that.
00:17:44
Speaker
um Of course, here to support however we can, but I think what's really important to help manage that burnout and manage that you know resource allocation, if you will, is really, again, for me, it just comes down to those ah expectations.
00:17:58
Speaker
um And sales in other organizations I've worked in, a lot of them are yes yes, yes to everything, to every timeline, to whatever it is that's needed. I think what i what I like about what we're doing currently as as our team is really having the conversations up front with prospects and with clients to say, okay, what are you really looking to get out of this, right? How do we really drive that value for you?
00:18:20
Speaker
So we're not just putting technical resources and they're kind of chasing their own tails, trying to figure out what the client needs and putting in hours and hours and just... for for For what? For no essential gain. So I think really the process side is what's really helped sales and technical folks achieve a level of efficiency that all starts with having just very frank conversations and very candid conversations with prospects.
00:18:45
Speaker
And I think for for from the client side, I think it establishes a ah credibility and a level of authenticity that they're also more willing to work with us as opposed to dealing with a couple of salespeople that are just saying yes to everything.
00:18:59
Speaker
Ooh, Mo, you said my favorite word. i got goosebumps when you said process because you didn't say AI. riches say Like, say this time and time and again. i feel like we are you know, over indexing on technology.
00:19:17
Speaker
um But I, you know, if we tie in what you just said now about setting expectations with like the customer and the prospect, how that cascades down through your team is basically not just like this chaos waterfall of tasks to do. Right. So,
00:19:32
Speaker
I think when it comes to managing the mental health, the burnout, right, you said like just having so much process in place to control what could otherwise just be like a fire hose of demands.
00:19:45
Speaker
um So, yeah. Yeah, and I think with with technical folks as well, it's um there's so much that they have to also stay on top of. riley We talked about headlines. oh there's a latest attack that might happen at a hospital, utilities, whatever it might be.
00:20:00
Speaker
Now to dissect that, now customers are all reaching out to them. So how do we make it also from ah a scalability perspective? And I think scalability is actually a really big thing. that we need to tap into in order to combat burnout and combat ah mental health related issues when it comes to cybersecurity or any other um any other industry, if you will.
00:20:19
Speaker
And we're only going to get to that once we understand what an efficient process looks like. And then to your point, right, since you said it first, using whether it's AI or any other technology, just to streamline whatever we can to achieve those efficiencies at the end of the day.
00:20:33
Speaker
Yeah, my favorite ah cheat code came from a very recent guest, Jake Bernardes. He's so over at Anecdotes. He uses the IDP to lock his employees out of systems when they're on vacation. like They literally can't get into Slack or email. That's a good one. ah sometimes sometimes you got to force it.
00:20:51
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I think it's important to really set that open atmosphere where you can have the culture to talk about it, which I think is one of the biggest things. um And I think it speaks to... you know Us as leaders, I can sit here as one executive who runs people to another. And we can say, we're going have a healthy culture and we can talk about how to do it. And then we go back and like, well hey, Mo had some good ideas. Let's try these out too. And you learn from each other. That's great.
00:21:14
Speaker
i think what's tough is how do you, your advice, context, your advice for someone who is not at a management level yet so they're not the team lead they're not the manager they're not the director and maybe they're not in the the healthiest culture for open communication how do they start building that going against the wave of kind of the status quo in their organization how would you recommend that oh that's a good one um i think for me personally
00:21:45
Speaker
If i was in that shoes, if I was in that situation, for me, it's about first and foremost, starting by guarding my time. um
Creating a Supportive Work Environment
00:21:53
Speaker
Because if it's very easy to grade a line and you're starting work at eight, the next day you're starting work at seven, then it's bleeding over to five, six, et cetera. I think the very first thing is for me to have structure in my day.
00:22:04
Speaker
And I think it's about starting to have just certain conversations or just starting one-off, like small little initiatives, whether it's with an individual, if we're in the office, hey, let's go for, you know, whether it's a quick walk, let's go grab a coffee is a simple example.
00:22:18
Speaker
I remember when I was at Trillium, we had a group that would go, You know, two times to the furthest Tim Hortons just to be able to get those steps and just to be able to get that walk in. Right. For for context, Tim Hortons is like our Dunkin Donuts up here.
00:22:30
Speaker
Carry on. so
00:22:34
Speaker
There you go. um So I think and then and then lo and behold, what started coming out of that was something like the walking club. right? Just because there was three, four, or five people and just started creating a, ah creating a culture, creating just a group that was interested in doing some of this stuff.
00:22:51
Speaker
Um, likewise, I think when it's virtual, it it's definitely a bit tougher, but I don't, want whenever I'm talking to folks, the mutual interest, just to jump in and, you know, I'm a bit of a gamer, um a lot of interest in just saying, hey, let's jump on, let's play let's play around, let's let's get a Steam gang going or a Steam party going.
00:23:11
Speaker
And it's just about, you know, it doesn't have to be an official thing. It can just start off on a much, much smaller scale. And then it just evolves and it grows. And there's people ah even within Armist that,
00:23:23
Speaker
aren't into games where said, you know what, this is great. I just get to kick back. I get to connect and we can just be ourselves in a, um, in for a couple of minutes, for a couple hours, whatever it looks like. So you it'll naturally gather and garner people towards a more social aspect. even Yeah.
00:23:38
Speaker
So no, no mandatory fun. but see Yeah. Yeah. um All right. So that's great. That's awesome question, George, because mine is in the reverse, which is your advice for your C-level peers and how they can begin to model some of these things.
00:23:58
Speaker
um I have a few arguments that I will probably make later, but what would you say to either colleagues within Armis or even just other folks that you used to work with? You know, you're at a similar level and you're like, hey, if you you should think about doing x Y, and Z to kind of, you know, help your team manage the stress in this work.
00:24:18
Speaker
Yeah. i think, I think number one is give your time, give your teams the time and space to be able to disconnect, right? Whether that's 30 minutes outside of lunch or a break or whatever, it's just, Hey, a mandatory disconnect. Everybody go offline for this 30 minutes for this one hour, what have you, ah including the C-level, right? Like it needs to be a top down that, you Leadership can say we're all going to go offline. We'll come back to emails. We'll come back to whatever it needs to be.
00:24:44
Speaker
I don't think personally 30 minutes in a day is going to lead to some catastrophic backlog or failure or fingers crossed it won't. um But beyond that, I think it's what can we do from a team building perspective that everyone's comfortable with?
00:24:59
Speaker
Again, just getting folks away from a screen, getting folks away from their work, getting them disconnected. I know some folks had started a, you know, a group reading. So, hey, let's read this book. Let's discuss chapters every other day or or sorry, every week or what have you.
00:25:17
Speaker
It really depends on the interest of the groups, to be honest.
C-Level Strategies for Team Management
00:25:20
Speaker
And honestly, at the end of the day, though, it's not a perfect formula. It is just a matter of getting started, take the jump, build your wings on the way down. But for me, the biggest thing is just start by disconnecting them from work, small periods of time, get them interested, get them engaged, get them talking, and then just take it from there.
00:25:37
Speaker
Yeah, because, you know... Cyber has a hero complex. You said perfectionism can become martyr complex. Only we know how to do this.
00:25:48
Speaker
I get it. We're protecting critical systems. Armis is doing a lot and healthcare care hospital systems that are under attack all the time. But at the end of the day, we're mostly software delivery companies.
00:26:02
Speaker
and We're not actually the ah ER doctors, right? So like, You know, that thing getting pushed to the next sprint is not life or death. And I think we've got to contextualize that.
00:26:14
Speaker
And then I think from an executive perspective, if your team burns and churns out, it's super expensive, right? Hiring is like the expensive. expensive cost for any company. And so I think the long term value of the company degrades in these really pressure cooker cultures. And I just think they don't account for that churn and burn higher against what is happening inside. So I think, yeah, you just get more out of your team if they're just sane, you know. but But I have i have one one thing that forewarn about this, right, and talking to a bunch of other C-suites and
00:26:49
Speaker
you know There's CISOs I talk to every day. Because of what's happened with the recent news at CrowdStrike, this whole, i don it's kind of a made up excuse. The whole AI efficiency thing is, it's the new, it's new, we're looking for efficiency, right?
00:27:05
Speaker
And it's going to be the thing now. And I think we're going to see a whole other wave of of ah layoffs that are based on additional AI efficiencies across the entire tech sector.
00:27:16
Speaker
So I think what's hard is is how do we, and Mo, I'd like to get your take on this, how do we get people who are mostly remote workers who are clinging on to the you know few positions that have not been impacted by all this wave, um how do we get them in a place where they can like get through the work day.
00:27:36
Speaker
And then if something happens, they're they're able to kind of take the shock and handle it in a healthy way. Because I think when someone's going through an area of of peak burnout, peak stress, and their resilience is already just at its like last little wick, and then critical blow comes in.
00:27:55
Speaker
i mean, I've seen it really, really break some people. and i had some friends from early in my career. you know Maybe they might got laid off for whatever reason. It just wasn't a good time in their life. And just seems they never pick the ball back up. They're kind of still where they're at, you know, where they were almost 10 years ago.
00:28:11
Speaker
How do you, how do you give resilience to that remote worker? What's your advice there? Yeah, that's interesting. If I were to maybe slight segue, but kind of reflect on my own journey,
00:28:24
Speaker
So I was, know, I'll say at some of the peak of my depression whatnot, it was to your point that burnout and kind of clinging onto one last, one last thread, if you will.
00:28:36
Speaker
And it took a lot just to be able to unpack the emotions. Right. And I think it's when you able to unpack, when you're able to process it, when you can figure out the why behind what you're feeling and you can start, um,
00:28:53
Speaker
start addressing it, start figuring out what it is that's making you feel how it is and address that anxiety or that stress that's associated with it. Only then can you actually get to addressing the root cause.
00:29:06
Speaker
um Now, this is going to be unique to all the different individuals by all means. i think I think we as all industries, we as all leaders um need to, not only during these times of you know, ah tough decision making, business efficiencies, whatever you want to call it, economic pressures,
00:29:28
Speaker
make available, whether it's resources or get into a get into an exercise with our employees to have them, give them an outlet of some form, some shape or form. um If we're talking about kind of going back to the previous one on, you know, I think something as simple as we don't have enough of a gamified culture to get people happy, excited, kind of laughing this on the other while they're going through their work days, almost as a little bit of a break.
00:29:53
Speaker
But to manage that anxiety during these times, especially for a remote worker, I think it needs to have a ah direct one-to-one reach out. I know it's easy to have many-to-one, let's get my whole team together and let's just address everyone and let you guys know that, hey, don't worry about what's happening or...
00:30:11
Speaker
the changes are done and you guys are all here to stay. I think it's a matter of reaching out one-on-one, making sure that we're making the time ah and helping them, whether it's, I don't want to say counseling services per se, but being able to navigate with them what the situation truly is. And I think transparency from my perspective is one of the key things here. um giving the ah Giving the employees the floor and the the the room and the and the the safety to just talk things through. I think when you have that ah manager report or leadership um type of relationship or that openness, I think that goes a long way.
00:30:49
Speaker
like Like a radical transparency as a manager to the staff. Some of the best leaders I've had that have helped me navigate times of uncertainty in my career, it just simply came down to that.
00:31:01
Speaker
um They can't always tell me everything that's going on by all means, but you know that there they're there in a position, they're trying to help you navigate through it. And it just had me open up more about what I was feeling to help navigate some of that.
00:31:14
Speaker
So I can't tell you exactly what it was, but for me, it's just got to have those open lines of communication, and kind of that safety for folks to be able to open up. All right. Well, Mo, I want to thank you very much for taking the time to share your experience and share your thoughts.
00:31:31
Speaker
And thank you also for reaching out specifically about this topic, right? It's we're coming here to the end of May. It's Mental Health Awareness Month. And it means a lot for C-level individuals to come on and have that conversation at, you know,
00:31:45
Speaker
basically gives people license to have the conversation more openly. So yeah, thank you for your time and your attention. Yeah. Appreciate you guys having me on. Take care, man. All right. Well, we will hope to catch you soon Yeah, absolutely.
00:32:04
Speaker
If you like this conversation, share it with friends and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts for a weekly ballistic payload of snark, insights, and laughs. New episodes of Bare Knuckles and Brass Tacks drop every Monday.
00:32:17
Speaker
If you're already subscribed, thank you for your support and your swagger. Please consider leaving a rating or a review. It helps others find the show. We'll catch you next week, but until then, stay real.