MK Palmore and Woodrie Burich discuss the importance of setting boundaries in the workplace and the impact it has on leadership and team dynamics.
Guest: Woodrie Burich, CEO at The Integration Group
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/woodrieburich/
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Host: MK Palmore, Host of The Leadership Student Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/mk-palmore
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Episode Description
Woodrie Burich, CEO and owner of The Integration Group, joins MK Palmore on the Leadership Student podcast to discuss the importance of setting boundaries in the workplace. Woodrie shares her personal journey of finding support for herself in the workplace and how it led her to start her own coaching company. She emphasizes the need for individuals to advocate for themselves and the positive shift she has seen in people becoming more comfortable articulating their needs. Woodrie also highlights the role of leaders in creating a supportive and empathetic work environment, and the challenges they face in recognizing the importance of coaching.
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Mastering Boundaries: How to Create Space for Personal and Professional Growth | A Conversation with Woodrie Burich | The Leadership Student Podcast with MK Palmore
MK Palmore: [00:00:00] Hey folks, welcome to this episode of the Leadership Student Podcast. This is MK Palmore. I'm joined today by Woodry Burich, who's the CEO and owner of the integration group Woodry and I have crossed paths and came to know one another through our common membership in the Forbes Coaching Council.
MK Palmore: And that's been a great opportunity for me to learn and get exposed to other leaders in the coaching space. And Woodry, welcome to the Leadership Student Podcast. We're really happy to have you here.
Woodrie Burich: Thanks so much, MK, super happy to be here.
MK Palmore: So Woodry, you've been in the leadership coaching space for quite some time now, your company, the integration group has been around for 12 plus years. Talk to us a little bit about how you show up in the in the coaching space.
Woodrie Burich: Yeah, absolutely. So I think to really see how I show up in the coaching space, some context as to how I even got to be a coach is sometimes supportive. And so I'll give you that. I think for me, when I was in my twenties, I [00:01:00] really worked some pretty crazy hours and I needed some support for myself.
Woodrie Burich: And I was really challenged with finding support. Workplace for myself. I would find myself going outside of the workplace to manage back pain or chronic back pain that I was dealing with it at work and different things. And so I would try to find tools to support myself in the workplace. And eventually that led me down a path to starting my own company, to teach others how to do the same thing and how to support themselves a little bit deeper in the workplace.
Woodrie Burich: So how I show up in coaching, I really. I really show up for whatever's arising in that moment. Sometimes that is stress management and how to set boundaries in the workplace. Sometimes that's how to hold executive presence and how to be more supportive for oneself so that we can show up for others in a deeper way.
Woodrie Burich: So it's a little bit.
MK Palmore: So it's. By my estimation, I've been a professional now for over 30 years. People advocating for themselves in the workplace is, it's pretty hard. And not a sort of common [00:02:00] feeling people don't, especially early in career folks don't feel like they can advocate for themselves. How have you seen that change over time?
MK Palmore: And do you think it's better, worse, or is there, still a need to make sure that folks know that they can do things to help make their experience in the workplace better?
Woodrie Burich: Yeah, absolutely. That's such a good question. So how have I seen a change over the years? I. I see that people are getting more comfortable articulating their needs, although that's highly dependent upon the environment that they're in. Some environments are more supportive of that than others. But I do see an overall trend towards this recognition of, Hey, I have the ability to speak up.
Woodrie Burich: I have the ability Stop a microaggression, for example. There's a lot more support for that across the board. There's a lot more writing about that. There's a lot more conversations in that space, which I think is really healthy and for a personal advocate, to be a personal advocate, I think that we really just.
Woodrie Burich: My experience is it really has to do with how am I supporting [00:03:00] myself at a personal leadership perspective? What tools do I have for that? How comfortable do I feel with myself? How comfortable do I feel with my beliefs and my mindsets around that? And how comfortable do I feel expressing those in whatever setting I come into?
Woodrie Burich: That's what I find.
MK Palmore: By your estimation, do you think leaders get this? Do they understand that they need to give space and room for their employees and others to, I don't know, have a better experience in the workplace? Is that, has that gotten any better? Is it, what's your estimation of what that looks like currently?
Woodrie Burich: Yeah, I think it's getting better in some spaces. I think for sure there's a big push for it. We can see it with McKinsey Institute is putting on a lot of information in regards to that Gartner and Gallup polls. I think there's a lot of push there. SHRM has done a really great job pushing a lot of people centric focus.
Woodrie Burich: And so I think it's absolutely at the leadership tables is what I see across the board. That said, there's still, I still find that there's a major gap between [00:04:00] Supporting people at a foundational level and leaders really providing that across the board. So I find, for example, when we get to a certain level within organizations, we'll get coaching or we'll get leadership support.
Woodrie Burich: But there's still that major gap to get to that point where you get funding and support from organizations to get that personal leadership support. Support so that you can take that next step, and I think it's really about bridging that gap so that leadership support and personal development is really provided across all spectrums.
MK Palmore: Any thoughts on how existing leaders, even folks who might be senior in leadership can make sure that they're paying attention to a topic like this or making sure that they're showing up correctly in their day to day interactions with their employees.
Woodrie Burich: Yeah, I think developing the conversational skills to really have the difficult conversations, I think, is really key. I think sitting, if you hold a position of power, [00:05:00] making sure that you're having conversations at multi layers and multi levels, so that you're not just hearing, Kind of the echo around you of what you believe to be the case.
Woodrie Burich: Developing one on one conversations, group conversations, certainly some realistic realistic like check ins throughout the team by having like surveys and things like that. Those are helpful. They're data points, but they're not the deep dive conversations that we really need to be having.
Woodrie Burich: That's been really hard in hybrid environments I've found. Finding that through group initiatives and different things like that can be supportive.
MK Palmore: It would seem to me, or at least my experience has been, is that trust is a huge component. Developing that trust between leaders and folks on their staff or employees is really important. But that's also, from my estimation, the most difficult thing to really establish so that you Allow your employees the space and the freedom to feel as though they can advocate for [00:06:00] themselves.
MK Palmore: I don't know that all leaders recognize that trust component is a requirement of the job. And I know that you said that you've seen, at least some more talking about this and some more action. How do you feel about leaders in the need to recognize that they have to have this as a component of sort of their own personal leadership characteristics?
Woodrie Burich: Yeah, it's such a, it's such a need and I'm reflecting right now. A dear friend of mine and mentor actually had made the comment to me that of all the different leadership disciplines, he felt like psychological safety was possibly one of the most important traits that a leader could have.
Woodrie Burich: And yet it was also the most difficult to teach. And I think there's some truth to that. I was also having a conversation with another colleague and friend, and we were talking about the need for psychological safety and trust and how to develop that through leadership. And I think it's more of a byproduct than something that we can actually go after.
Woodrie Burich: And why I say that is that I think trust. That [00:07:00] the real deep trust and psychological safety that we have within teams. I think it's built through personal skills and personal depth of character that can be built upon. Now, I certainly believe leadership is something that can be taught, but I think psychological safety is actually more of a byproduct than.
Woodrie Burich: Something that you go after directly. I think the other components of leadership, such as composure and tenacity and dedication and all these different components that make up leadership, right character, morals, ethics, all of those pieces, I think, are what start to build that foundation for that true psychological safety and action.
Woodrie Burich: What are those actions looking like versus just what are the words? I think we get a lot of times what I see a kind of across the board. And I think the younger generation is really pointed to this, right? There's a lot of words, but there's not any real action behind the words. And there's a disconnect there.
Woodrie Burich: And I think that's where the opportunity is for leaders to step into.
MK Palmore: So I, I think I explained to you in [00:08:00] our prior conversations that I'm a bit new to the formal coaching realm. I've been a coach informally for decades, but new to the formal coaching realm. And I'm wondering what your thoughts are, generally speaking around why it takes convincing to folks to understand that coaching might be a viable way to enhance their own leadership profile.
Woodrie Burich: Yeah. As we had chatted before, MK, and I really enjoyed that conversation too, and my experience is, I don't think organizations and leaders quite know what to do with coaching yet. There's real, my experience in the corporate spaces is that, across the board, there's been a handful of people who've had coaching, and when they've had it, and they've had a good experience with it, Everyone across the board that I've spoken to is wow, this is a major game changer, right?
Woodrie Burich: Just like having a coach as a professional athlete or something like that, right? It helps you reflect on your own skills and your abilities and your strengths and weaknesses and all that good [00:09:00] stuff. And it's very unlike any other modality, right? Like consulting or advising or mentorship, that's very different than coaching.
Woodrie Burich: Coaching really at the root, it takes a look at what that individual needs, what their own next steps are. It's always client led, right? So as a consultant or advisor, we come in as an expert and I don't think organizations or leaders have figured out what to do with wait a second. You want me and us to, all those answers are here.
Woodrie Burich: We're so used to going to the expert externally, that meaning that, that light, if you will, internally, it's a little bit of a different, it's a different mindset and. Creating that space I find is one of the most difficult and challenging things within organizations because we are so busy. Taking that time to say, Hey, I'm going to have an hour and a half with a coach that alone, setting that time aside is challenging.
Woodrie Burich: And then to really understanding what that might look like within the framework of an organization, I think it's hard to
MK Palmore: what are some of the tools [00:10:00] that you give folks to get through that initial stage of both creating trust and giving them this space to understand that really, as you indicated, much of the direction actually comes from them. You're tapping into to the things that are within them to help them identify the strategies that they will use in order to enhance their capabilities.
MK Palmore: What are some of the things that you do to get folks to that initial stage where they're You can't do trust falls on video, right? So you gotta use other tactics to to get folks to the necessary stages. How do you look at the, that initial part of the relationship?
Woodrie Burich: Yeah. So how we usually manage it and how I manage it is I create the space, first, I think creating that space and having the conversation of where do we really want to go? What are the goals? What are the initiatives that we're looking at? for the team. If we're doing a group coaching session, for example, and then just, I find that if you create the space and have some really pointed questions, usually there's a theme that individuals are going after, right?
Woodrie Burich: A team might be going after, Hey, we want manageable workloads. How do we make that feasible in a [00:11:00] really fast paced high demand environment? Or maybe it's, Hey, we've lost some trust in the team and we need to have better communication. Okay, great. Let's take a look at that. And let's see what that might start to look like.
Woodrie Burich: When we're moving too fast, and maybe we're a little bit shorter, or we're having transactional conversations versus real deep, meaningful conversations or checking in with each other, which is really necessary and so challenging in a hybrid environment. So when we look at that, we can just start to ask questions.
Woodrie Burich: For example, MK, if you were in there, we just create that space for people to have some dialogue around it. AnD oftentimes I find as long as the space is just created for that dialogue to occur, the coach's role is to really sit back and listen deeply and then figure out what kind of powerful questions come out of that space. And. Then they do the work. That's where it's really lovely. It's, and it's different than it's a little bit of facilitation, but it's a little different. It's really sitting back and listening pretty deeply.
MK Palmore: So I think the [00:12:00] idea of team coaching is even further behind individual, like one on one executive or leadership coaching. How have you seen that space develop and are there, is there a willingness, I think personally, it takes a lot. For a leader to say, Hey, maybe we need some help to come in and help us work together better in a more efficient fashion, share, provide the space necessary so that we can understand each other's capabilities, strengths, areas where there may be a need to to, to beef up our capabilities.
MK Palmore: I think that in and of itself for a leader to say that to, Hey, look, I need help. Making sure that we get the most out of this team in terms of presence in corporate structures, have you seen that grow? And have you seen positive results in terms of teams being able to say that by you coming in and helping them organize their thoughts around identifying things that they could be doing better?
MK Palmore: Has it been impactful for them?
Woodrie Burich: Yeah, absolutely. And I, that's been my experience, not [00:13:00] only with our work, but a lot of the coaches that I work with as well, we have all these cohorts, if you will, of groups and partners in. Absolutely. I see that across the board. We have some phenomenal case studies and different things like that.
Woodrie Burich: But what I see, and this goes back to your earlier question, MK, which is why are organizations or teams or leaders a little bit slow to catch on to coaching? I think that we don't have a lot of outcomes across the board. built into work structures. So when we take a look at teams finding strong outcomes, for example, we can measure that we do pre and post survey outcome reporting, everything like that with our teams, which is great.
Woodrie Burich: But what I see is there's like this broader need to even get to that question that you just asked, which is, When is a leader going to say, okay, we need to support the team. I find oftentimes team coaching or coaching is seen as a wellness bucket thing. So there's like a check [00:14:00] mark. Oh, we need to do the wellness thing.
Woodrie Burich: So we'll have some coaching on the side. And I don't think it's fully seen as the performance optimizer that it truly can be. What I see with coaching is very similar to project management, say, 20 years ago. And I think you and I were chatting about this a little bit earlier, right? Me and my gray hair, project management 20 years ago, some of the small and medium sized businesses, you had to fight to get a project manager on a team, right?
Woodrie Burich: You had to fight to get that PM. And nowadays, we wouldn't do multi million dollar programs. We wouldn't do multi billion dollar mergers and acquisitions without tons of project managers, all certified, right? I feel the same way about coaching. I think that coaching within organizations, it's really only been utilized to your point right at the it's some of the one on one levels.
Woodrie Burich: We're just starting to do the chain. We're just starting to do the team coaching and you can see this convergence. There was a really great conference recently that ICF, International Coaching Federation, and ACMP, which is the Association of Change Management Professionals, they [00:15:00] came together and they've done a couple different cohorts on this, on the importance of coaching as part of change management.
Woodrie Burich: And I really think that's the route coaching is going to start going. Because when organizations and teams start to see these outcomes and really start to see I think it'll change how we do work. I think it'll completely shift work structures. I think it'll change how we do work. I think it'll completely shift work structures.
MK Palmore: Yeah I hope for both of us and the rest of our coaching colleagues, I hope that. Does come to fruition. You actually I'm I think I'm in a PTSD mode about the whole program manager thing. So it just refreshing my memory on the conversation we had about that. Some of us are still in the midst of advocating for program management support in areas where we feel like that can be helpful.
MK Palmore: So I, I think that we touched upon at least a couple of topics where things that are new to leadership [00:16:00] that haven't quite caught on in terms of their impact and importance. I think, for example, the subject of empathy. I think probably within the past, it hasn't even been a decade, five to seven years.
MK Palmore: Maybe folks have figured out that, leaders need to be empathetic. Because if you're not, you can't expect the highest level of efficiency and performance out of your group. There's people involved like it, but folks need to have that empathetic arm. And then earlier in the conversation, we were talking about.
MK Palmore: Other things that can be identified as like this crucial piece of leadership characteristics that need to be in place for folks to be able to develop trust or do the kinds of things that they need to do for their teams to excel. Is there something that we're not talking about in the leadership circles that like we should be?
MK Palmore: That like folks are just completely missing the boat on in the same ways that kind of empathy, I think, has taken on a new role of prominence and leadership characteristics.
Woodrie Burich: Yeah, for me, I feel that very strongly. I feel like [00:17:00] the thing that we need to be talking about that we're not talking about is the amount of stress we're under. And while we are talking about that, we're not looking at how to really change that in our work structures. And I think that is the root of lack of empathy, lack of personal leadership.
Woodrie Burich: All of these challenges is just simply the time and the speed with which we are going right now. And we can look at all the research on this. You can take a look at one of my favorite books right now. It's called Stolen Focus. It's written by Yohari. I don't remember his first name, but it's fantastic.
Woodrie Burich: And he talks about how spread out our time is right now and how it's, we're really losing our capacity as humans to Think cognitively and creatively because our focus is so scattered right now. And he talks about ways to combat that both at the individual level, the collective level, and all the different issues going on at hand.
Woodrie Burich: I see that across the board with leaders that I work with and teams that I work with. We are just strapped for time. We have time. It's just, it's [00:18:00] filled. All of it's filled. And we're taking our most exhausted, depleted selves home at night to our loved ones and our families and our communities.
Woodrie Burich: And we're wondering why our communities are having such challenges because we're working however many hours we are, and we're not able to tend to all the needs around us.
MK Palmore: So that this boundary piece is foundational, I think, to the work that you do. Certainly, I don't know if folks are tired of talking about the pandemic. It seems like we're not even. Really at the point where we quite understand the impact that the pandemic had on all of us with regard to the removal of boundaries between our personal lives and work, I think we're still suffering from it.
MK Palmore: And I work from home most days. if I'm not traveling. And my experience has been that I actually work more from home than I ever have. And the entirety of like my, the first 30 years of my professional career, I had to show up someplace and be in an office and there was commutes [00:19:00] involved and all that kind of stuff that were natural boundaries to work.
MK Palmore: When you got home from a nine, 10 hour day at work, you were less inclined to then go back in and start doing additional work to finish up the day. And I find that being at home is I call it breaks. In between work and sometimes I'll find myself working until eight, nine at night having taken breaks for dinner or taking a break to go run an errand or something like that, but the number of hours that just there's no, no one's gonna be able to tell me any different that I actually believe people are actually more productive working from home.
MK Palmore: And I know not everyone can work from home. I don't want to establish that as a It's a precursor to enjoying like the fruits of this conversation, but my experience has been is that the boundaries are less and less prominent for folks in remote work status. So what are some things that people should be doing to what should I be doing to do better at that?
MK Palmore: I should say people I'm the worst at it.
Woodrie Burich: yeah, and you're not alone with that, MK, I always joke with people that I certainly got into the work [00:20:00] of work boundaries, not because I had it all figured out, but because I desperately needed that support for myself. There's so many things I find when we really look at boundaries in the workplace.
Woodrie Burich: First off, I always like to put the disclaimer out there. Boundaries at work, it's not an easy place to play for a variety of reasons, right? One is that we have a roof over our head and we need food. Food on the plate, right? And so there's a lot of stress and pressure added to setting boundaries in our workplace that setting boundaries in other places, like with friends or family members, there might still be some stress associated with it.
Woodrie Burich: But it's very different because we're dealing with issues such as professional reputation, our promotions. Fiscal stability. There's a lot of pressure there. So it's important to recognize that's the foundation, right? Of when we're going to set a boundary in the workplace and say no to work, or we're going to start to shift how we choose to engage our work.
Woodrie Burich: We have to know that underlying fear and or underlying issue is there. So with that with that in mind, then it becomes. really two things, a mindset issue and a work structure [00:21:00] issue. And you have to address both. One is a mindset issue we could look at the individual level or the collective level.
Woodrie Burich: It's both, right? So at the individual level, for example, I'm a striver. I've always been a striver. I've always been a hard worker. Most of us who are working a lot of hours are cut from that cloth, if you will. So We're going, and we're going, and we're going. But very similar to a high performance athlete, I use that a lot of times as an analogy or metaphor, is We need rest and for some reason oftentimes we forget the importance of that and the real deep need for that there's a physical and mental need and if you look at that book Stolen Focus or we can look at the book Overwhelmed by Dr.
Woodrie Burich: Bridget Schulte, or I'm sorry Bridget Schulte or the work book Over, or what is it? Oh, it's by Dr. Jeffrey Pfeffer. It's called Dying for a Paycheck. There's a lot of great statistics in there that talk about the importance of taking that time and needing that time both creatively and how overworked we really truly are.
Woodrie Burich: So there's a mindset piece that we have to address. [00:22:00] A lot of times that also has to do with permission, right? What's holding us back from taking that time. Sometimes I find the gap can be in research, just helping people understand. When we take that pause and that break and not just a 30 minute break, but if we're consistently working, I look at trend lines, right?
Woodrie Burich: I look at trend lines. So if I'm consistently working 60, 65 hour weeks, if that's a conscious choice, great, right? Because some people I work with one leader, for example, completely mission driven, wants to work 65, 70 hour weeks and has consistently done so for decades. That is their mission.
Woodrie Burich: Totally focused. Great. That's a conscious choice. But for many of us, that's not a conscious choice. It feels like a habit. And there's a difference between that, right? Sometimes that gets into permission, and it gets into, what do we really understand about the research of what we're doing? And what does our full world look like in that?
Woodrie Burich: Am I able to be present with people? Am I able to [00:23:00] connect? Do I have access to empathy? Because one of the things that we see is that when we're multitasking consistently, our cognitive abilities as well as our abilities for emotional control, they drop. So if we're busy and we wonder why we're short with people, there's a connection there.
Woodrie Burich: So that's one mindset piece and then the work structure piece really has to deal with how we look at work structures, how we look at workflows, team connections, how many people, what's your workload level scale and when to 10. And what's everybody on the team's workload level scale of one to 10 starting to track that.
MK Palmore: If we can generally agree that. People tend to overwork themselves like any thoughts on, or has there been research around like what the potential long term impact may be to us either as humans or as a species? I, I don't know, personally, I feel like work completely dominates my life.
MK Palmore: It's, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that. It makes, I have a family married the whole nine, [00:24:00] but I feel like work is the. main thing when I get up in the morning that I'm either already thinking about, engaged in, it dominates my day. And as I already indicated, I have trouble shutting it off late, like what's the impact to us as a people.
Woodrie Burich: Yeah I think we can look at it through the statistics, like the International Labor Organization talks about how excessively long work hours are 49 hours or more, or 48 hours or more per week, pardon me, 48 hours or more per week is excessively long work hours. Now, tied to all sorts of poor health outcomes, as well as poor work outcomes, that's the key.
MK Palmore: Interesting.
Woodrie Burich: Tied to poor performance too, but in the U. S. our average full time worker averages 49 hours per week already. That's in the U. S. Those are based on 2014 Gallup poll numbers. And after the pandemic, researchers average that we're estimate that we're averaging [00:25:00] three hours or more two to three hours or more per week from that.
Woodrie Burich: So collectively, it's an issue in terms of how to address that. It's so individual. It's such an individual piece. It can be addressed through group work. And that's what we do. I find that there's a lot of value in getting a group together, talk about psychological safety, when we're all talking about the same issue that we all have to deal with and really starting to strategize solutions that are feasible in our work environments.
Woodrie Burich: There's a lot of camaraderie that arises just through articulating the collective pain of that. And what I would also say is at the individual level, I would take a look at cost benefit, right? Get really clear on what's the cost benefit. Maybe you want to be working those hours. Maybe that's feeding something, right?
Woodrie Burich: But if we reflect individually and say, I am working too much. I want to be a little bit more present for this, for my family, for my volunteer work, or for whatever that [00:26:00] is, maybe just for myself, maybe I just want to take more walks, really getting clear on what that is. But in order to even get to that, we need to start claiming strategic time for ourselves in our day, in the midst of our day, consistently, we just need that little bit of space to even start to begin the process for some of that work.
MK Palmore: You touched on this. oTher cultures seem to have gotten this point as it relates to work. I know that my colleagues in in places like Europe and other places around the world, they they seem to think differently about. This whole thing to include. I know it's common fact that month of August in Europe is a tough month to get things done.
MK Palmore: It's that's their big vacation month. And people sometimes take the entire month off to spend time with their families and such. I think you would rarely find in the U S anyone who takes, More than a week or so vacation, two weeks is the max. And even then, when someone takes two weeks vacation, look at them on like [00:27:00] envious wow you're unplugging for two weeks why do you think other cultures seem to have gotten the message on this?
MK Palmore: And we haven't
Woodrie Burich: I think a big piece of that is policy. I think policy goes a long way. And Bridget Schulte's work talks about this quite a bit. Government policy and different things like that. Corporate policy. But I also hear, it's interesting though, because I work with a handful of organizations in different countries as well.
Woodrie Burich: People in Japan, Australia, the UK, and I still hear stress levels. And it's actually really interesting because I do, I think it also depends
MK Palmore: so there's no hope for us. It's overtaken everybody.
Woodrie Burich: And that's what I'm a little bit nervous about. To be honest, I am, to be honest, I am a little bit. Certainly other countries, they do seem to have gotten a better handle on it to some degree.
Woodrie Burich: But I still find when you get to those upper echelons of leadership, it's still crazy hours.
MK Palmore: No, I and I think there's some, maybe just some. Truth that we have to face that at certain [00:28:00] levels of leadership, you just, I don't know, maybe there's a combination of an obligation you feel, a desire, certainly for the folks who achieve those levels. Like you said, the personalities that it takes to get to those levels are often people who are very highly driven and accomplishment oriented or now always thinking about how do I, how do I tick the box on this project, get it done and into the finish line.
MK Palmore: as A form of accomplishment so I can move on to the next thing. I feel that a little bit myself. I'm sure a lot of people share that sense that you're constantly driving to outcomes. in an effort to, to do what you feel like you're both being paid to do. And it's just part of your personality.
MK Palmore: Again, I think it's, there's a combination of things that get people to that level. And I think that you would find probably across the board for senior leadership levels, a very high degree of people who feel personally obligated to achieve things.
Woodrie Burich: Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. And absolutely. It's a beautiful thing. I how I always say is [00:29:00] effort is great, right? Like we need effort and we need drive. We can't get rid of it. That's absolutely needed. What I do find, though, is People, myself included in that realm, we get more benefit when we choose to back off, because we're not used to it, right?
Woodrie Burich: We're not used to backing off. How I've been trained and how I've been taught is you go, you drive, you push, you go, right? And if there's something in front of you, find a way through it. That is deeply valuable. It's gotten me a lot of success in my life. However, If I really want to take it to the next level in terms of performance and connection and presence and empathy and all of those pieces, which are deeply needed.
Woodrie Burich: That's personal leadership. That's shifting all of that action towards doing externally. And it's shifting that lens and taking it internally. And that's the game changer. That's the shift. But in order to get there, we need to slow down. We need to slow down, carve [00:30:00] out the time and the space needed to really connect in here.
Woodrie Burich: To make sure, is this a conscious choice that I'm making? Is this outcome what I want? Is this a strategic decision? Am I looking at all the players? Am I holding enough empathy here? What are the trust levels on my team? Have I connected with so and yes, in the last week. All of these things that those creative connections They require space. And the faster we go collectively, and I know both of us come from the tech industry, or you're in the tech industry right now, military before, tech, cyber security but my point is in the tech industry, we've got AI too. That's just going to speed everything up, and I think the difference, really, between the tech world and the AI world and the human world and the humanity is going to be that space.
Woodrie Burich: And for those of us [00:31:00] who are willing to step into that place, That's where we're gonna see massive benefits and shifts and we haven't figured out how to get there yet. We're
MK Palmore: So that's I think a great place to button up the conversation. Any final thoughts that you want to leave folks with in terms of high level strategies or just thoughts around creating those boundaries looking for opportunities to, to develop their teams into better, more efficient teams.
Woodrie Burich: Yeah, I think, I leave with the three non negotiables. If you really want to start focusing on boundaries, there's three non negotiables. One is you have to claim strategic time for yourself and strategic space for yourself consistently in your schedule every week. Second one is micro pauses throughout the day.
Woodrie Burich: That's really critical. For one thing, I work on breathing exercises. Breathing works for some people. It doesn't work for everybody. But breathing exercises are a wonderful equalizer. Everybody has access to it, and it can shift the energy really quick, especially if you consistently do it.
Woodrie Burich: One of my favorite books on that is Peak Mind from Dr. Amishi Jha of [00:32:00] Florida. She's fabulous. And then the third real non negotiable is taking a look at When you look at your work structures, how are you managing those workloads? Are they manageable? What's your trend line? Those are the three main pieces.
Woodrie Burich: That third one being, what is my trend line? Am I overwhelmed and exhausted every day? And if I am, that's something in my work structure needs to be shifted. Because that trend line won't change without that shift.
MK Palmore: Fantastic. If folks are interested in your services for coaching, otherwise, maybe your thought leadership, how do they find you?
Woodrie Burich: Thanks. I can be found at workboundaries. com and there's not very many Woodry's out there, so Woodry's pretty easy to find on Google, but workboundaries. com.
MK Palmore: Awesome. Woodry. I appreciate you taking time to have this conversation with me. And thanks for joining the podcast. Folks, that's it for this episode of the Leadership Student Podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation and we'll see you [00:33:00] next time.