56 Leadership for the Long Haul: Avoid Burnout & Navigate Office Politics for Career Success

Are you successful on paper but exhausted in real life?

In this episode of Joyfully Unstoppable, executive coach and Women Lead Well founder Becky Hamm shares practical leadership strategies to help ambitious women avoid burnout while building a successful, sustainable career.

Many high-achieving women were taught that hard work, expertise, and saying "yes" to every opportunity were the keys to success. But the habits that help you advance early in your career can eventually become the very things that lead to burnout, overwhelm, and frustration.

Becky explores how to lead for the long haul by adopting a long-term mindset, navigating office politics with integrity, building influence through authentic relationships, and protecting your energy so your success remains sustainable for years to come.

Whether you're leading a team, managing a department, running a business, or preparing for your next leadership role, this episode will help you avoid burnout and create a career you genuinely enjoy.

✨ In this episode, you'll learn:
✔️ Why sustainability matters more than intensity
✔️ How to avoid burnout before it impacts your health and happiness
✔️ The hidden signs of burnout many women overlook
✔️ How to navigate office politics without compromising your values
✔️ The difference between influence and manipulation
✔️ Why relationship-building is a leadership superpower
✔️ Practical strategies for delegation and boundary setting
✔️ How to build a team that succeeds because of you, not because it depends on you

If this episode resonates with you, be sure to like, subscribe, and share it with a friend who needs encouragement to lead from alignment, not adrenaline.

Download your copy of the Burnout Recovery Checklist

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Transcript

Becky 0:05

Welcome to Joyfully Unstoppable, the podcast for women who are ready to succeed without the stress. Whether you're leading a team, a classroom, a boardroom, or your own big, beautiful life, I am so glad you found us. I'm your host, Becky Hamm, executive coach, speaker, and founder of Women Lead Well. Join me each week for straight talk, practical tips, and a dash of encouragement. Hello, friend. I hope you are having a great day. I had the amazing fortune of speaking at two different events last week. Both were full of highly capable, successful, impressive women. I loved it. My morale is high. I was energized. It is why I do what I do, to serve these amazing women. And at both events, women spoke about burnout, about not enjoying the success that they have so richly earned over years and decades of hard work. And so I want us to talk about it. A lot of us, particularly those of us of a certain age, we entered leadership believing that hard work, that our expertise, right, that our being really good at what we do and our good intentions, our desire, our heart to serve, would be enough to create a successful and enjoyable career. And those things matter. I don't wanna dissuade anyone from showing up with a full heart to do good in this world, and I don't wanna dissuade anyone from cultivating their expertise 'cause, yeah, you need it. Those things matter And also leadership is a marathon, not a sprint. And the leaders who thrive over decades are the ones who understand that, one, challenges are not signs of failure, right? They have a growth mindset, and so they embrace those challenges, and they embrace failure for the opportunity to learn from them. The ones who succeed for the long haul are the ones who acknowledge, don't have to like it, but acknowledge that politics exists within every organization, and that energy is a resource that you are responsible for managing. And so the goal, if you want to avoid burnout, if you want to enjoy success and enjoy your life as a leader for decades, the goal is not to avoid these realities. That resistance only makes it harder. The goal is to navigate them skillfully while staying true to who you are, while remaining authentic. And so that's what we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna talk about leading for the long haul by building your resilience, by cultivating your influence, and by weaving sustainability into every step of your journey. And so let's start by W- with our mindset. Mm, I, I don't love using the word mindset because people tend to use it in a way of we're just gonna, like, positive think, like, wishful thinking our way out of our reality, and I do not mean it that way. What I mean here is that many of us have a short-term mindset, right? We have a short-term planning horizon payoff timeline as opposed to a more long-term timeline, and so that's what I'm talking about. And our lives in, as leaders tend to reinforce this. Many of us are rewarded early in our careers for being dependable, for being responsive, for being willing to do more than most of our counterparts, and so we get that positive reinforcement of showing up and hustling and being diligent and always being available and always being on and having no boundaries. And all of that feeds into our success at the junior levels. However, and you know this intellectually, but it's knowing it, like, in your body, that as your responsibilities increase, as you grow more senior, those same habits limit you. This is a core part of what I work on with my clients inside the Women's Executive Leadership Lab, is that it's so trite, but it is so true. What got you here, what got you to be a director, what got you to be a VP, what got you to the C-suite is not what is gonna take you to that next level. And so in terms of your professional growth, it's not effective to stay stuck in the patterns that worked for you in your 20s and 30s. But for your own quality of life, it doesn't work for you to stay stuck in those patterns either because that's what leads to your burnout. My point is this: there is a difference between being successful today and being successful over the next 20 years. There's a difference between what you need to do to be successful today and what you have done to be successful over the past 20 years Sustainability. If you wanna, if, if, if you wanna retire early, hey look, then make your money and punch out and you don't have to listen to a thing I'm saying. Live your life. Good for you. Yay. Rock on. I'm a big fan of women earning enough to retire early. I'm here for it, and send me DMs and tell me your stories, and I wanna rejoice and celebrate with you. But if that's not your life, if you are intending to stay in the workforce until your mid to late 60s, then what you're doing has to be sustainable. Or you can probably keep the pace up, you can probably keep muscling through because you're freaking awesome and because you're capable, highly capable, probably more capable than a lot of people, but, ya girl, you're gonna be miserable, and I don't want that for you, and you shouldn't want that for yourself. So sustainability matters more than intensity. Working in a way that sets you up for long-term success is far more valuable to you and will have a greater payoff for you than doing something today that's gonna have the immediate impact and the immediate success. This means taking a far more strategic approach to how you pursue your own career and how you pursue the work that you're doing at your current stage, wherever you are right now, being far more strategic about your focus and your time and your energy and the relationships that you're cultivating and the work that you're doing than if you're just looking for that near term, "Atta girl, you did a great job, I knew I could rely on you." Like, that quick dopamine hit hurts you over the long haul. So that is what I wanna say first, is the first step to overcoming burnout, the first step to handling those setbacks effectively when they come, because they come for everybody, the first step to dealing with pushback when people and office politics gets in your way, the first step is to adopt a long-term mindset And so a question that I would ask you to think about is what would you need to change if you want your career to be thriving 10 years from now? I think maybe a first question is, what does a thriving career look like for you 10 years from now, right? So what do you want your career to look like? And then what needs to change? Maybe what's holding you back now, what patterns, what habits aren't working for you. And then as we continue to talk, I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask you to think what is something actively that you can do differently to get a different result going forward? Okay, so that is step number one, is to take that long-term mindset. Step number two is politics is everywhere, y'all. And so a lot of my clients, women that I talk to, part of what is frustrating to them and what makes leadership less enjoyable or makes their roles less enjoyable the more senior they get, is the politics in the office. And so I can't change that. Politics are present in every office. Not partisan politics, although maybe that too, depending on where you work, but just the political dynamics within an office, and who's got power and influence, and who is trying to take power and influence or hold onto it, all of that petty nonsense. Politics on a basic level is simply how decisions, relationships, and influence operate inside organizations. You can't avoid politics. One, I mean, you can try, but avoiding politics doesn't protect your career because you can just be on the receiving end of politics if you're not, um, conscious of how it's affecting the work that you're doing and your priorities and your mission and your role inside the organization. Understanding politics is what keeps you safe and what helps you to move forward. And a lot of women have this negative reaction to the word politics because it feels, um, one, it can feel a little threatening or a little dangerous. Two, we have this association with, like, mean girls in politics, right? That politics is a negative thing, and it's there to tear people down as opposed to it's just one of the natural dynamics of people living in community. Of when resources are shared and finite, politics is just a natural result. And I think there's also sometimes this allergic reaction to politics because we can associate influence, which is positive and a key to your long-term success, a key to your being able to advance the mission of your organization or your, smaller mission within the broader organization. People can sometimes conflate or confuse influence with manipulation And they are different things,. When you influence, you are bringing your expertise, your perspective, and the strength of the relationships that you have cultivated with people over time to bring about a positive result for the organization. Your influence in this context of what we're talking about today, you're using your influence not to purely benefit yourself. You're using your influence to advance a greater good, and you're doing so with honesty, integrity, and transparency. Maybe not full transparency. Remember, discretion always important, particularly the more senior you grow. But influence is aligned with honesty and integrity. Manipulation is the opposite. When you try to manipulate circumstances or people, you are withholding honesty. You are acting outside of integrity in order to get something that benefits you more than the benefit to other people. So there's both the dishonest element of manipulation and there is the self-serving element of manipulation that is not present if you're talking about influence. And so when you talk about office politics, look, 100%, eyes wide open, other people might be manipulating, and you don't control them, and so you just... you gotta be smart, see it, and walk away, right? But you get to show up and influence in ways that improve the organization or your part of the organization. That is one of your leadership responsibilities. Why? Because you have the expertise, you have the experience, you have the maturity and the wisdom and the insight that is necessary to inform sound decisions. And to not use those things to bring about a good decision Is negligent. Oh, sorry it sounds so judgy, but it's not cool. And so how do you succeed in office politics when you don't want to participate in office politics? I would say don't make it about politics, make it about relationships. Politics, again, is this idea of finite resources and you're fighting over I'm gonna win, so you have to lose, right? We see it as a zero sum. Relationships are positive sum, and in the strongest possible terms, the more you can build up and grow and cultivate relationships, the better your leadership experience will be. One, because people are generally good, and creating relationship, cultivating relationship with them is nurturing to you. So for all the stress you might feel as a leader in your different roles, having sincere personal relationships with your colleagues, being in relationship with them and seeing their needs and their aspirations and their goals and their priorities, and helping them achieve them, and allowing them to help you achieve your goals and priorities, that builds you up. That nurtures you and sustains you on a human level, which helps you avoid burnout. It feeds into the sustainability of leadership. And then when the finite resources come into play and there are decisions that have to be made, well, now you have all of that goodwill that you have cultivated over time for the sincere pleasure of being in relationship with people, and that will come back to help you. So you don't go about it being manipulative, and you- or insincere or, um, in a, like, a, you know, like, twirling your mustache kind of a way. You go about it just because human beings are cool, and getting to know them is fun, and being in relationship is rewarding and supportive, and we help each other out, and that's the only way we get through life. And then it, it will pay off. It just will So if you still feel like, "Oh, I don't know what to do with it. What do I do? I don't know how to be political." Again, just start building relationships. Take somebody out for coffee or just go have a chat with them, and then, you know, a couple weeks later ask a follow-up question. Just be a human being. That's step one. But a fundamental question is to ask yourself, do the people making decisions that affect my work, do they know my work? Do they know my value? Do they know my vision? What I do, my value, my vision. And if the answer is no, well then okay. Start having those conversations. Work with your mentor if you've got one about a specific strategy that you can use to help cultivate those relationships and nurture those relationships over time. And of course, hello, executive coach, this is what I do for a living. If you would like to book a gifted coaching call with me, we can spend 60 minutes and map out a strategy for you Okay. Long term time horizon. Politics is inevitable, and so let's find a way of engaging that feels good to you. I'm gonna recommend you ground that in relationships. It's influence, not manipulation. Okay, great. Still, there's way too much on my plate, and I'm fried every single day of my life. Let's talk about burnout prevention. Absolutely essential for sustainable leadership. You cannot lead effectively for decades if you operate as though every single week is an emergency. And I know we have had at this point about six years of dumpster fire after dumpster fire, so I know we are wired at this point for emergency. However, you recognize how drained you are and how frazzled you are and how anxious you are and how you have lost the joy for the work that you do, and you deserve better than that. So what does burnout look like? And here's... This is interesting because I figured everybody kind of knew what burnout was and, and they would know what the signs were, and what I have found is there are so many women who are, no joke, burned the freak out who do not self-identify as burned out. It's crazy to me. And so let me, let me give just a couple of symptoms of burnout so that if you recognize that you're burned out, great, then we can deal with that. But even if you don't recognize you're burned out, maybe you'll start to identify with some of these symptoms. And so a couple of indicators of burnout is, one, there is no joy. You can still operate at a high level. You can be burned out and still functioning. You can. You... It's not burnout if you're paralyzed on the sofa or s- in the hospital for adrenal failure. Those, those things can happen for sure, but you, you're burned out well before your body gets to that point. So there's no joy. You show up and you do what you have to do. You're functioning, you're getting the work done, but it either feels like you're going through the motions your brain has checked out, your body has checked out, and you're just functioning, you're not living. Or you're doing it because, uh, because you have... you feel you have to do it, but you're exhausted and you recognize the exhaustion, but tell yourself this is just the cost of operating at this level. This is just what it means, right? I'm going through perimenopause, so you blame all sorts of other things for, for the symptoms But a loss of joy, of feeling that kind of detachment from your work. It could show up You might be burned out because of work, but the symptoms might be showing up in your personal life, and that could be irritability, an inability to be present with your family. If you've got kids, being short-tempered with your kids. If you have a spouse, being short-tempered with your spouse. Just not wanting to do things socially because your bo- when you get stuck in fight or flight for so long and your body is overwhelmed, it, like, goes into bat down the hatches mode. And so your friend wants to go get a drink or wants to go to the museum or a play and, and you can't because um, you just do not have the gas in the tank for any unnecessary social or human interaction. Burnout can feel like the opposite. It can feel like I'm running at 100 miles an hour, and I can't slow down. And so maybe you do cram your calendar with social events and, and work events, and you're constantly going and the idea that you could just sit and spend an evening on the sofa relaxing or take a nap over the weekend, your body physically rejects that idea. You're so caught in that fight or flight that your body can't shift out of it into a regulated state. All of these are signs of burnout So what do you do? How do you avoid burnout? And then if you are burned out, how do you heal from burnout? Well, slowly is what I would say. You always, if you are dealing with anything like that, your nervous system being stuck in fight or flight, or really entrenched patterns and habits, you wanna move slow. I say this constantly. Your brain's number one job is to keep you alive. Well, right now, miserable as you are, you are alive. And so if you make big changes, your brain is gonna self-sabotage 'cause it wants to bring you back to a place where it knows that you are breathing, your heart's pumping. Miserable, but you are alive. And so I would say start looking for opportunities to delegate. I've got a strategic leaders audit that you can download. It's a free resource on the website, womenleadwell.net /free-resources. And you can get that, and it will walk you through an assessment of everything that's on your calendar, everything on your to-do list right now to prioritize what is the most important work that only I can do, what's important work but that somebody else could do that you can delegate, what's important work that only I can do but I don't have to do it today. And so then you put it on the calendar for a future date, and you get it off your mental load, and, and it gives you a little bit of free space. And then what's the stuff that I'm doing that doesn't have real value to my mission, doesn't align with my values, I ain't even gonna delegate it 'cause it's just not important, and then you ditch that. So it's the ditch, delegate, delay, do method. Strategic leaders audit. And I would start there because that gives you back hours on your calendar the day you do it. You get hours back that same week. And with that time, you do not fill that time with more work You take a walk, or you go to bed 15 minutes earlier. Again, no big changes. You use that time to do some of the deep thinking that you need to do to be effective in your position that you just don't have time to do in your schedule. And so I would start there. Start by clearing out the work that you're doing that's not productive and delegating where appropriate. Uh, and if you need help with that, inside the Women's Executive Leadership Lab I've got a whole module on effective delegation and how to do it in a way that improves team performance and grows team members so that they become more effective. I'm pretty proud of it. I think it's pretty good. Or you can always reach out, and we can have a coaching call and talk through your options for how to bring things off your calendar. But critical also, and you know, is setting boundaries. I've got some episodes on boundary setting and how to do that effectively that you can check out if you are interested, but the whole point is slowly, summer months are great for this, you've got roughly 90 days until Labor Day, and so start to just recalibrate where you put your time and your energy. And by doing that, you start to give your body little moments where it feels regulated and safe at the same time 'cause when you spend so much of your time dysregulated, when you regulate at the beginning, it feels unsafe 'cause your body's not used to it, right? So slow moments of safety, and then you just grow the moment. It goes from 60 seconds, to 90 seconds, to three minutes, to five minutes, to 20 minutes, right? And you've got the summer to work on that. And a fundamental question to ask yourself is this: Are you building a team that depends on you or a team that succeeds because of you? You don't wanna be building a team that relies on you. That's... You're not setting them up for success, and you are absolutely not setting yourself up for success. You do want to build a team that succeeds because of you, because you equip them, you empower them, you train them, you build them up, and then allow them to do work. And when you have that team, when you have that dynamic in place, the team doesn't depend on you, but the team succeeds because of you. Once you've built that up, you are much more effective at dealing with burnout, or even if you're not burned out, you are much more effective at leading sustainably for decades at a time. Okay, so if you wanna be an effective leader for the long haul while enjoying your leadership experience, right? The tagline for Women Lead Well, joyful, sustainable, authentic leadership. If you want that, it takes more than just talent and hard work. It takes the perspective, it takes taking that long-term view of your career and where you're putting your time and energy. It takes understanding the political landscape without compromising your values, being human about it, and it takes protecting your energy so your success is sustainable. A successful career is not built in a year. It's not built in five years. It's built over thousands of decisions that you make. It's built over thousands of days when you add them up over time, and the leaders who thrive, they are the ones who learn, who adapt, who continue showing up with purpose and confidence and intention thousands of days in a row. And so I'm gonna leave you with this question. I want you to ask yourself, if you continue leading exactly as you are today, where are you gonna be in five years' time? Is it where you wanna be? And then what is one change that you could make today that would help you create an even stronger future? And if you would like someone to have that conversation with, please reach out to me. I'm at womenleadwell across all social platforms, and I would love to chat with you. Now, if this episode spoke to you, I would love for you to share it with a friend. We need more women leading from alignment, not adrenaline. And if you haven't already, please make sure to like and subscribe so you don't miss next week's drop. Remember, joyful, sustainable, and authentic leadership is possible, and you deserve to enjoy every minute of it. Until next time, I'm Becky Hamm, and this is Joyfully Unstoppable.