TLDR;

Are you a leader, founder, or CXO grappling with change, overwhelm, or burnout in your organization?

Do you wonder about the real ROI of focusing on employee well-being and internal development?

If so, you’ve come to the right place!

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Uncommon Leadership Podcast.

Here, I, Michael Hunter from Uncommon Teams, explore how you can align personal fulfillment with business success, create authentic teams, and cultivate resilience to thrive in today’s fast-paced business world.

Joining me today is the incredible Dr. Heather Backstrom—an executive coach, author, and speaker who empowers leaders to model psychological safety and integrate their whole selves for greater business impact.

Today’s episode is a deep dive into why treating your team as humans isn’t just a nice practice, but a non-negotiable for sustainable success.

In this newest episode of the Uncommon Leadership Podcast, you’ll discover:

• The shocking business value behind soft skills.
• The concept of integrating your whole self and why it’s critical for authentic leadership.
• Why psychological safety isn’t just a buzzword, but the foundation for a truly empowered team.
• A practical framework for understanding organizational overwhelm.
• The profound power of value alignment and why recognizing your choices, even in tough situations, can bring peace and clarity.

If this intrigues you or might help with some of the concerns you’re facing within your organization, tune in now.

For more help, feel free to connect with us—we’d love to help in any way we can!

Happy Watching!  

About the Speakers
 
Dr. Heather Backstrom
Dr. Heather Backstrom is an accomplished executive coach, speaker, and author—dedicated to cultivating strong, confident, and inclusive leaders.
 
With a doctorate in organizational leadership from Pepperdine University and an ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC) credential, Dr. Heather coaches executives across diverse industries like finance, biotech, retail, municipalities, aerospace, media, healthcare, and nonprofit.
 
She’s the award-winning author of Collaborative Confidence: How Women Leaders Can Activate Self-Awareness, Amplify Their Authentic Talents and Accelerate Workplace Change, reflecting her passion for empowering women leaders.
 
Dr. Heather focuses on helping leaders elevate their impact, build psychologically safe teams, and strengthen cross-organizational relationships.
 
Get in touch with Dr. Heather Backstrom ↓
 
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/heatherbackstrom/
Email: heather@heatherbackstrom.com

Michael Hunter
Michael Hunter is the founder of Uncommon Teams and the compelling voice behind the Uncommon Leadership podcast.
 
For over 35 years, he’s guided leaders across six continents, helping them navigate the demanding realities of burnout, overwhelm, and the multifaceted challenges of today’s global business landscape.
 
He champions the creation of truly authentic and resilient teams, guiding leaders to align their personal fulfillment with profound business success. His unique approach enables individuals and teams to move beyond merely surviving daily pressures, into a state where they can truly thrive and innovate with ease.
 
Michael’s mission is to help leaders, CEOs, and founding teams create and inhabit their legacy, elevating themselves in a way that is safe and sustainable.
 
Want to build an uncommon, unstoppable team? Get in touch with Michael Hunter ↓
 
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/humbugreality/
 
Website:
https://uncommonteams.com/
 
Newsletter:
https://uncommonteams.com/newsletter-archive/
 
Podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/@UncommonLeadershipPodcast
 
Presented By: Uncommon Change

Transcript:

Michael Hunter

Whether you want more innovation, more easily, you are feeling burnt out or overwhelmed, or you simply know that something isn’t quite the way you know it can be. You are not alone. I hear the same from leaders every day. On Uncommon Leadership, we explore aligning personal fulfillment with business success, creating authentic teams and cultivating the resilience, adaptability, and ease necessary to move beyond simply surviving today’s challenges into thriving. I’m Michael Hunter with Uncommon Teams, and today we’ll uncover fresh insights into what it means to lead in today’s world. Joining me is Dr. Heather Backstrom. Heather is an accomplished executive coach, speaker, author, and facilitator.

She coaches leaders in many Industries, including finance, biotech, retail, municipalities, aerospace, media, healthcare, and nonprofits, and might have been faster to say where you don’t coach.

Heather is also the author of the award-winning women’s leadership book, Collaborative Confidence: How Women Leaders Can Activate Self-Awareness, Amplify their Authentic Talents and Accelerate Workplace Change. She’s a volunteer with the tournament of Roses Association, and often spends New Year’s Eve on overnight duty in preparation for the Rose Parade.

Welcome, Heather.

Heather Backstrom

Thank you. It’s great to be here. I appreciate it.

Michael 

So, on overnight duty, does that mean you’re guarding the floats so that no one messes with them?

Heather 

Yes. Everybody always wants to know about overnight duty With the Rose parade, you know the overnight duty varies, and I’ve been a volunteer since 2012 I believe, and they change our duty every two years.

So we have the same duty two years in a row, and then we roll off onto another committee. So yes, there are some volunteers out there who are with the floats overnight. I haven’t had that assignment yet, but probably will at some point. I have had overnight duty with the equestrian teams where they bring in all of the usually 20 to 30 different equestrian teams and they all spend the night, in their trailers and horses and gear and so forth in a kind of a secluded area, not too far from the route.

I’ve been overnight with the equestrian team before. The last two years I had overnight duty at the Tournament Rose’s House itself. So, in Pasadena there is a Tournament of Rose’s House. It’s a mansion, and donated by the Wrigley family to the city of Pasadena many years ago.

That’s the headquarters of the Tournament of Roses of the Rose Parade. And so for the last two years I was at the Truman House for my overnight duty. But I’ve also spent the night on the Rose parade route itself out on a street corner and just kind of making sure everything’s okay.

So it varies. It makes it kind of interesting and, exciting. And it’s certainly a unique way to spend New Year’s Eve, a tiring way to spend New Year’s Eve, but a unique way to do it.

Michael 

So while everyone else is staying up dancing, drinking champagne, you are, oh gosh, yes. Doing random things and drinking water.

Heather

Yes. Yes, exactly.

And then I haven’t seen the parade live itself in really years because I’m working New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day and so I go home, after my duty ends, usually sometime mid-morning, New Year’s Day, and there’s a local TV station here in Los Angeles who plays the parade on a loop all day long.

So I just lay on the couch and relax and snooze and wake up and snooze and have a little snack, and watch the reruns of the parade all day long.

Michael 

I love it. When did you first recognize that integrating your whole selves, bringing that into everything that you do, might be a valuable approach?

Heather

That is such a fascinating and deep question, Michael. You know, I, as an adult, I would say that it started partway through my career as a HR professional. So I worked in corporate human resources for many years and enjoyed the work, you know, for many years. And even early in my career, I was always interested in helping other people, helping leaders and employees understand each other, work well with each other.

And as that interest developed, I learned about coaching and I was also in therapy at the time. So there was, you know, self-awareness that was also building and cultivating. I was drawn toward coaching. I was working in corporate HR, so kind of before I became certified as a coach, before I actually took, that step leading into that step,, is when my overall awareness as a person was rising and multiplying, and I was drawn to coaching because I did see it as a way for me to bring my whole self to work and for me to help others, you know, to bring their whole selves to work. And then when I went through the training program and and to become a certified coach, that experience really just amplified that bubbling up that was already happening inside of me.

Michael

Did you have any sense that coaching was the only way you could do this, that doing it in the corporate world, HR person, you wouldn’t be able to do this?

Heather

I’m not sure I would limit it to say it was the only way, I could do it. As I said, I was in therapy at the time. I was just also exploring my own self-interest outside of work, the social activities and other activities that really drew me in and that I felt like a compelled toward.

And when we look at work itself, my human resources work, at that time I was. When I started in human resources, I worked in recruitment and I also worked in university relations. Really enjoyed those. Those felt very positive to me. They felt very encouraging. We were bringing new people into the organization.

We were onboarding them, we’re creating opportunities for people with the university relations work that I did in human resources, I was. Not only was I out recruiting recent college graduates, but I also was in charge of the management training program that we had where they came in and they entered a two year program.

So I oversaw that program. Certainly that part of bringing my whole self and helping the management trainees, the new grads, also bring them their whole selves, especially in their very first job. Absolutely, there were elements of that. I think for me, coaching just took the work that I was doing as a human resources professional.

It just took it to the next level or a deeper level, whichever way you wanna look at it. Right. It either, you know, kind of lifted it up and deepened it at the same time. I also have always been comfortable being in front of groups, so facilitating workshops or even things like we would have policy, you know, human resources policy changes that we needed to convey to the organization, and we would go out and do presentations and trainings.

I was always eager to raise my hand to even go out and present, you know, policy changes or present, facilitate workshops. And even with that work, it was more intuitively, I think at that point in my life. And now I have a little more education behind this, but intuitively, I understood about the importance of making messages clear to people, making messages relatable to people, listening to their questions, being open to their concerns, being open to resistance, and so those also were elements of me bringing my whole self, of recognizing my humanity and also recognizing the humanity of the other people that I was engaged in, engaged with. So, you know, those were not coaching experiences, but they were experiences within my human resources work, where bringing my whole self was about interacting with somebody else, was about recognizing the person that they are, recognizing the questions, the resistance, the quandaries, the different opinions, that they held.

Michael

So then the move from HR and the coaching was somewhat orthogonal to the increased understanding of who you are and how to bring that into everything you do.

Heather

Yeah. Yeah. I would say that, I would say that and then on the journey, ’cause it, the journey of becoming a coach, you know, along the way my human resources work did shift and it shifted into employee relations work and really centered on conducting investigations, laying people off, doing reorganization, terminating people’s jobs, you know, firing people. So when I look at the arc of my professional life as a HR person, for me it started out very positive, right? Recruiting, employee relations, cultivating, fostering. And you know, over time I went into an area that was.

Frankly, I did enjoy it. At first I was learning, and it was interesting and I did get enjoyment out of, from it. But as that work of employee relations, laying people off, firing people, et cetera, as that work became more central to the, to my day-to-day life, that’s where it really became, not aligned with who I am as a person, and then that made my desire to become a coach as well as a workshop facilitator, you know, retreat facilitator, et cetera.

That’s where my draw to that became even more distinct and more accelerated.

Michael

The work you were doing became less, less and less aligned with who you are at the same time that you’re getting a broader and deeper understanding of who you are. And so the pull you were feeling towards coaching and facilitating became even not more strong necessarily, gained more weight because there was less on the corporate side pulling you that way.

Heather

Yes. Yeah. You captured it. Yes, perfectly. Yes.

Michael

Cool. I’m asking this because a lot of people I talk with start out thinking that working, bringing our whole self to work are two opposites, and especially in a corporate world where the eclecticness that maybe a smaller business or is more, more able to do or more sort of expected because we’re just a few people and so of course we’re a kind of quirky to, we’re a big corporation and we’re all corporate drones.

So that’s why asking the details to show to, to get straight for me and your experience, whether that stereotype was holding true or it, just kind of happened to be at the same time, it wasn’t really related, and I’m glad it wasn’t related for you.

Heather

No, nothing. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael

What was it about coaching and facilitating that was pulling you up?

Heather

You know, I think it’s aligned, you know, with my values. I think it’s also aligned with my pers and it’s, this is also values and my personal interest in always learning and growing and changing. And you know, probably if you look back in my childhood, you could probably find examples of where that got suppressed for me, where my whole self and who I am was like not welcomed or allowed.

And then probably examples of where it was welcomed and allowed. So. You know, and there’s a part of me who also wonders, well, maybe psychology might have been also a field that I could have easily gone into. So, and I think that is true. I think something in those human services types of, professions.

Though the, you know, those also would have appealed to me. It just so happens that my first job outta college was human resources. I really actually appreciate that I had that experience. I appreciate my corporate experience. I learned a lot there. Learned a lot of good discipline or practices, learned ways of thinking.

Because I was in human resources, learning about various different divisions and different departments and really knowing the whole organization, so I have a lot of regard actually for that opportunity to have to, have worked in human resources. And had I gone directly into say, you know, a psychology degree and gone into some kind of a practice, I wouldn’t have had that experience in corporate.

But then again, who knows what that might have led to and, what I would’ve appreciated out of that experience.

Michael

The choose your own adventure that life becomes. I am always curious.

Heather

Yes

Michael

But we can’t AB test life, unfortunately or fortunately, I don’t know what we’d do. If we could go down both paths and see which one had more the outcome desire.

Heather

Wouldn’t that be interesting?

Michael

That really would be. How do you build cultures where people feel safe and empowered to bring their unique talents into everything that they do?

Heather

You know, I, again, I draw from my own experience because I can think of times in my childhood and including my teen years and, you know, even early adulthood where, my behavior, my idea, how I came across whatever it might be, was not so welcomed and not so wanted, or I should have done it differently, you know, those messages of, oh, you shouldn’t have said it that way, or you should have done this.

And so now fast forward to, you know, this, you know, this time in my life when I’ve had the opportunity to be a coach and also going back even to my human resources days. And again, I didn’t know the term psychological safety then, but I know it now, and I was, I would like to at least think, when I can reflect on certain experiences in my corporate life that I was instilling, I was demonstrating psychological safety without even knowing that what that term, whether it existed or not, but without even knowing that term. So, you know, psychological safety and also inclusion, making people feel valued and included and noticed and recognized and with psychological safety, you know, infusing that into cultures and me trying to demonstrate that includes like being willing to admit my mistakes, being willing to admit when something didn’t go as well as, I had hoped, modeling that for other people. Listening to other people’s points of view, giving another person’s point of view a chance, and not just reacting and saying, oh, that, that’s wrong. Now, of course, I’m human.

I’m certainly not perfect. That still can happen. So, I fully admit to sometimes I am, I’m more reactionary than I would like to be. however, I have, I certainly have grown in that area to be more responsive of responding rather than reacting, you know, listening, asking questions, being curious about a person’s point of view, being willing to change my own, you know, point of view.

And with, and working with clients, helping them also be open to how they are coming across, how they are reacting, to their, how their words and behaviors and actions influence another person and also influence the whole environment and how if they were to shift those, what changes might come as a result of that?

If they were to start to ask more questions, to understand versus just statements to say, no, or I don’t agree, or, no, we need to do it this other way. But first being curious, asking questions, and having that open mind to want to understand first is something that I help clients grow into.

As well as the good old adage of put yourself in the other person’s shoes, you know, if you were in their shoes, if you had their perspective, if you were managing their department, if you had their pressures, what you know, what would be your, what would be your thoughts? What would be your point of view?

What would be your interests? What would you would be scared about? What would you be concerned about? So, also helping clients understand perspectives of other people is another way that I model that and try to work with clients on that.

Michael

Okay. When you’re first starting working with someone, or down the road, when you discover a block, how do you help your clients find that openness to being able to consider all of the possibilities in the different points of view?

Heather

Yeah. And it’s a process. There’s certainly not just a light switch and you just flip it on and suddenly rainbows and butterflies appear, and then a person’s completely receptive to other points of view, you know, immediately all the time. Yeah. And you know, sometimes it can happen with certain people more quickly than others.

So a few avenues that I take with clients is, and I can, I’m thinking specifically about a recent coaching client that I can draw on as an illustration where this client had a particular opinion about a colleague that was not a flattering opinion, was not a favorable, excuse me, favorable opinion.

And I work with the client to help them identify their thoughts and their feelings and their physical sensations when they thought about their colleague. And then we continued to do some more coaching to peel back the layer on the thoughts, the feelings, the physical sensations. We did some mindfulness practices as well, and the more we looked into, for instance, what is the current thought that you have about your colleague right now, and what’s the thought that you would like to have ideally? How would you like to think about that colleague? So then we had kinda on a continuum if you of, if you will, current state of thought, ideal state of thought.

And we did some exercises to try to help support the client in moving down that continuum toward the ideal thought. As I said, we did some mindfulness practices as well, because that can be very effective because mindfulness practices quiet down the amygdala, you know, the fight, flight, or freeze. It opens up the executive functioning.

So a person can think more clearly, they can be more resourceful, they can be more creative, they can be more open-minded. So that’s why we did also some mindfulness practices in that coaching session. And by the time the session ended in that hour, the client really had moved down the continuum. Were they all the way to their ideal state?

Not necessarily. But they had made some really significant, progress. So that’s one example that illustrates a way that I have helped clients, you know, shift their mindset, become more open and receptive to either other points of view or to just somebody in particular who you know, who irritates them, who irks them.

Michael

When you have someone who are working with you, maybe not. Because someone else has them. They have to maybe on their own, and yet where they are and where they wanna be, they believe are the same place. You see that there’s either, because you’re using all of your other points of view on what their experience is to know that’s probably not where they wanna be, or because other people are telling you that something isn’t working with where this person is, how do you help them open up to what could be, and that where they think is ideal might not be as ideal as they believe it is?

Heather

Yeah. You know, that’s such an insightful question, Michael, and it’s a tough scenario. I will say that I have been fortunate that I haven’t had a lot of clients who are of that ilk that you described. I have had some clients, and it can be tough, you know, when, especially I’m thinking again about a particular client who thought she was quite self-aware and was receptive to the coaching. Was receptive to our sessions, but thought she was self-aware in terms of her behaviors and the impact of her behaviors on the others in her organization. I don’t think that she was as self-aware as she perceived herself to be. And in those cases, you know, some other avenues that can’t help is to refer the client to therapy.

Now, coaching and therapy, they could certainly can be very helpful to be doing in tandem for the client to continue to see, say me as the coach, and also see a therapist outside from a psychological standpoint. So that can be a very helpful partnership, if you will, the client is supported by two different professionals.

So that would be an avenue that I would certainly, and have presented, pursued, encourage clients to consider. You know, another is similar, most, many organizations, at least larger organizations, have an EAP, an employee assistance program. You know, again, referring the client to also get support from employee assistance.

I’ve also done role playing with clients before playing the role of the other person, and also switching roles where I’m playing the role of the client. The client is playing the role of the other person to try to help the client be in that person’s shoes. So, you know, and in kind, respectful yet direct ways, point out to the client that their perception of themselves may be quite different than the perception of say, their colleagues. And if that’s true, then what client. So presenting that to the client, if the perceptions are different, and let’s just play with it a little bit. Client, let’s just see. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong.

Let’s just play with it. Let’s play with the idea that your perception is A, your colleague’s perception is B. Then what? So to use that kind of approach as well with a client to help shift them in creating even a few degrees more of self-awareness.

Michael

I like this. Encouraging them to inhabit, however, temporarily other points of view. No requirement that they believe that these points of view are correct, just as a thought experiment to explore what would it be like if this point of view was correct for this person, and then if they are open to transforming the way they are, they’ll go with that and to at least dive into the exploration, even tentatively, perhaps even a, even just a little bit can help make the shift. And if they’re just not willing to do anything, then they’re adults, we’re adults, we can’t force them to make the change. It’s a situation where other people are giving feedback that, hey, this should change, or they’re not gonna be employed here anymore, then that’s something else that can be brought in but even then, if they’re not willing to make the shift, then the prospect of having to go find a new job, it often isn’t enough to lead them to be open to those changes.

Heather

That’s true. That is, Yes. And I have seen that. Yes, I’ve seen that. Yeah. Yeah. And I will also add that, you know, another piece of data is a 360, which is pretty standard with most of my client engagements include a 360. So on those occasions where I have had clients where their self-awareness and their self-perception is quite different than other people around them, the 360 can be quite revealing as well. Again, their degree, the client’s degree of receptivity to that feedback can vary.

You know, given that their self-awareness and self-reflection is not as perhaps developed to be able to already see those things of themselves.

Michael

So what is the business value of helping employees do all this squishy people, internal self-development work?

Heather

Right? All that squishy stuff. What’s the point, right? Yeah. What’s the, yeah, what’s the value proposition? Yeah. You know, I think there’s lots and lots of value behind this squishy stuff.

Retention is one that immediately comes to mind. When your employees feel valued and respected and included and acknowledged, and they enjoy the work. I mean, there is of course, the work itself.  The work itself, is giving them meaning and purpose, then retention, the opportunity for retention, certainly increases and losing an employee and filling that position and having the position empty or temporarily filled in by, say, another employee. There’s a lot of cost involved in that. Monetary cost, time, energy, there’s a lot that ex that is expended in the departure of one person and the onboarding of another, and then who knows how long that timeframe is as well.

It can be quite lengthy. So retention is absolutely a value proposition in this squishy stuff. Another value proposition is innovation and problem solving. When I feel comfortable to know that I can toss out an idea that might sound ridiculous or do something that, you know, I actually make a mistake, but to know that I’m not going to be called on the carpet or I’m not at risk of getting written up or losing my job, or being scolded or frowned upon, then, you know, that increases my creativity and my innovation and I’m more willing to experiment or to give an idea that might sound on the surface not so, not so desirable.

So innovation and problem solving is another value proposition. Another value proposition is it cuts down on all the nasty gossip, you know, that can be pervasive in organizations, right? And gossip can just be like cancerous inside an organization. So if you’re treating people well, if you’re, if the work itself is meaningful to them. If you’re treating them as a human and respecting them and acknowledging them. If communication is open and transparent, then that gossip culture, again, I’m not going to go so far as to say it won’t exist, but at least we’re not feeding the gossip culture in an organization. So that would be an another value proposition that I would say.

And then a fourth one is the positive gossip that when the employees out and about with their friends and family, they’re talking highly of the organization that they work in. They’re talking favorably about their manager, their leader, their colleagues, the cool stuff they’re working on, the project they’re involved in.

So that positive gossip that, an employee just naturally talks about when they’re out and about in the world is a value proposition as well.

Michael

Yeah. Underlying maybe each of these is that, the more I’m able to work in the way that works best for me, the less energy I’m expending trying to work in some other way. And so the more energy I have to bring to creating those, that positive environment to plug into being creative, to having energy left when I leave work to talk with people about how exciting the work is that I did that day and how wonderful my team is.

Heather

Yes, exactly. Yes.

Michael

So this is how we build, can build cultures where people feel safe and empowered. There’s still can still be fully safe, fully empowered, bringing our unique talents and everything we do is still, be so overwhelmed with all the change and uncertainty. It’s sure seems to be all over these days. How do you help people find their way through that?

Heather

And, yeah.

You’re so right Michael. Like overwhelm and uncertainty. It just seems to be pervasive. And no organization, I don’t think any organization, no matter its size or its industry is immune to the uncertainty and the overwhelm that we’re experiencing. You know, I think there’s, when I think of overwhelm, I think of two sides of the same coin.

I think one side is the work itself, you know, the content of the work, the volume of the work, the degree of the work. So what is the work that this person is being asked to do? And is it reasonable? This is, or is this person doing the work of two or three or four people? So first part of overwhelm is the job content, you know, itself, which also includes the res, does the employee have the resources that they need to do their job?

Do they have the technology? Do they have the funding? Do they have the, whatever resources that they need to be able to perform their job? Do they have the infrastructure? And then the other side of the coin for overwhelm is the emotional aspect and the emotional overload of that overwhelm where the person perhaps is, feeling a degree of anxiety.

Maybe they’re not sleeping so well, they worry a lot. The work is always kind of weighing on their shoulder no matter where they go and what they’re doing. So that’s why I like to think of overwhelm as two sides of the same coin. One is the job content, the other side is the emotional overload.

And I think for leaders, it’s really looking at both sides of that coin and not ignoring one in favor of the other. So taking a hard look at, okay, is this person or is even this team, if we look even bigger beyond a person and we look at a team, is the workload reasonable for what we’re asking a person or a team to do?

And if not, then what do we need to do to readjust? Do we need to hire another person? Do we need to bring in a temporary staff person? Do we need to outsource a particular, you know, function or part of the job? Do we need to bring in a consultant doing summer intern, you know, you can get pretty creative about how to readdress the job content and the volume of a person’s job. Then on the other side of the coin, that emotional side, that’s that squishy stuff that we were talking about earlier, right? It’s about showing compassion, listening and like really listening to a person and their overwhelm and helping them work through that overwhelm. You know, it’s about being empathetic. It’s about remembering that you’ve been in their shoes or maybe you are in their shoes at this very moment. So it’s attending to that emotional deficit that the person is experiencing. So I think in working with clients, with leaders, with organizations, it’s when we look at both sides of those, of the coin.

Again, focus on both sides, not just one or the other, ’cause if we focus on just one, we’re really only, you know, we’re putting on half a bandaid, not a full bandaid. Right. You know, so I think it’s about needing to be continuously attentive to both the job content and the emotional, the emotional aspect of that overwhelm experience.

Michael

And to continue your half the bandaid analogy, we also want to make sure that we’re treating the entire injury. So it may be that it’s not just things on the work side that are contributing to the work and emotional overwhelm. There may be stuff outside of work as well. And it can even, I see all the time where work is a little bit overwhelming, home life is a little bit overwhelming, friend life is a little overwhelming, spiritual life is a little overwhelming. To add all these little bits up, you get a huge overwhelm and people look at, can look at it and be like, well, I’m just 5% over on each of these things. If you’re 5% over on 20 different things, that’s a hundred percent over.

Heather

Oh yeah. That is no kidding. That is so insightful. Yes.

Michael

And those can oftentimes be even more challenging than if you just have one big thing that is a hundred percent over because not only, may not be recognizing that there’s all these, that these are all building up to something huge. You’re also time slicing between this and all that context switching takes even more energy that you don’t have. You’re already overwhelmed. And so,

Heather

yes,

Michael

even if it seems there’s just a few smallest things, just the context switching can, it can magnify the impact that those are having to where it, the overwhelm becomes overwhelming, even though, objectively looking at it like, well, those are just a couple tiny things. It shouldn’t be a big deal.

Heather 

Yeah, it’s like, it is like, oh, you just have a few tiny paper cuts. You know, like, you know, one paper cut maybe is like, it’s your, but boy, if you’ve got, you know, a dozens of paper cuts on you, on your arm, that’s, you know.

Yeah. It’s tough. That’s what, it makes me think of as you describe these different pockets of overwhelm and how they, all multiply against each other.

Michael

And then if after executing all those dozens of paper cut cuts your swimming in salt water,

Heather

yeah, exactly. We’re gonna keep going with this

Michael

The impact of this is gonna really be much more than it might be if you were swimming in salt, in fresh water. Yes. Or if you were doing the dishes. Yes.

Heather

Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Yes.

Michael

Should people, Heather, who would like to learn more about how you help people through change, uncertainty, overwhelm, who might like to have you come in and facilitate a workshop to help them work through some shift that they’re considering, what’s the best way for them to find you?

Heather

Sure. There’s a few ways. LinkedIn, you know, Heather Backstrom, at LinkedIn. And then also my email is heather@heatherbackstrom.com. So that would be another way to find me as well. Those are probably the two most efficient ways to, to reach me.

Michael

That’s great. And I’ll have those links in the show notes.

Heather

Okay, great.

Michael

What would you like to leave our audience with today?

Heather

Oh my goodness. You know, first, I just appreciate the audience listening. I appreciate you giving me the opportunity for us to have this conversation. Something to leave the audience with is really learning. Learning and paying attention to their values. Because I think also values is another aspect of overwhelm that when we don’t honor our values, when we, you know, for instance, where we say, well, I have a great value around family, but then you’re working extraordinary hours and you’re working weekends, and when you are home, you’re picking up your phone or your device every few minutes to check email and listen this, I hope this doesn’t sound like a judgment about somebody who’s in a pressure filled job, because I’m, I really don’t mean to do that.

I’m just giving it as an illustration where we say we value one thing, but then our actions demonstrate differently. So pay attention to your values as also another tool, another way of, looking at your overwhelm and also figuring out how to lessen your overwhelm. And then another aspect of values is, you know, going back to my story about my career trajectory and how coaching and my values align with each other. Whereas my other work, especially my later work as a human resources professional, there was misalignment. And when there was that misalignment, you know, I was not happy and I admittedly was not the best employee. I wasn’t a bad employee, but I was just, you know, an average employee.

So I, I would leave the idea of values with the listeners. To really hone in on one’s values and really give credence to one’s values, which may lead to making some tough decisions about, you know, that a person may be left with making some tough decisions to truly follow their values and in following their values, there is great happiness and fulfillment that comes with that.

Michael

And even when we’re in a situation where it doesn’t feel like we can fully or at all honor our values, knowing that we’re consciously deciding that and to stay in a situation for reasons gives us so much grace and ability to, to make that situation much less stressful than it would be if we were having that internal fight of, well, I have to stay here.

It’s just still, I guess, my values, but I have to stay here. Even in those rock and a hard place situations, there’s ways to calm the nerves and calm the anxiety.

Heather

Yes. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And building on that, Michael, I think often a person, and I mean, I’m talking about me as well, when I say a person can feel like they don’t have any choices, like they just are stuck.

And it’s my belief and it’s my experience that there’s always a way to find an alternative. And it may take some digging and it may take some time, and you may need some support and guidance in finding that alternative. And I really truly believe there’s always some alternative, there’s some glimmer of something different, even when we feel the most, as in, the most stuck place, that we are.

Michael

I agree. Whatever shift we want to make, there’s a way to do that is safe for us and for everyone else.

Heather

Yes. Yes.

Michael

Thank you, Heather, for being with us today. Yeah.

Heather

Wonderful. Well, thank you. I so enjoyed the conversation.

Michael

I did as well. Thank you audience for joining us today. Please let Heather and I know what shifts are you taking a tiny step towards making today? Thanks and have a great day.