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"The same year that I filed bankruptcy, I was inducted into the Hall of Fame." Jess Pettitt On Inauguration Day, my friend Jess Pettitt lost her largest contract. Not because of anything she did. The entire office she worked with was closed 21 minutes after the inauguration, and the people she'd been working with called her from the sidewalk, holding boxes of everything that had been on their desks. Then the state contracts went. Then the retainers. Twenty years of building a business, flipped in a minute. Bankruptcy. Depression. And in the middle of all of it, a call from the National Speakers Association: you're being inducted into the Hall of Fame. This is not a highlight reel, and neither is her new book, Doing Good Better: Using Dysfunction as a Catalyst for Change. In this episode, I sit down with Jess to talk about what really happens when everything falls apart at once, and why so many leaders end up burnt out and alone in it, convinced nobody can help them. We get into her five-stage climb for organizations in crisis, why most companies run on a story that's "reported up instead of verified across," the difference between planting a flag and hanging up decoration, and why the mess you're afraid of is already there. If you lead people, this is burnout prevention at the system level, not a pedicure. Key Topics Covered: What it's like to lose your largest contract 21 minutes into a new administration, and the wave of losses that followedFiling bankruptcy and being inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame in the same year, and holding joy and tragedy at onceWhy your identity being tied to your work makes a professional crisis a personal oneThe leaders who believe "no one can help me," why they feel so alone, and why that loneliness is disempoweringInternal pressure vs. external pressure, and learning to function inside the pressure without doing it aloneWhy so many leadership books ignore the fact that leaders are humanThe climb: know your numbers, hold the line, earn the room, plant the flag, outlast the cycleHow organizations evolve into "a story that is reported up instead of verified across," and why no one is reading the quarterly reportThe CEO of 80,000 employees still running his company like it had four peopleCooperatition: why cooperating with your competition is how you actually earn the roomPlanting a flag vs. decoration: what Anthropic and Costco got right, and why a statement for your website isn't a valueWhy the mess is already there, and why recognizing it is the hardest (and most important) stepQuotes: "The same year that I filed bankruptcy, I was inducted into the Hall of Fame as a lifetime achievement for the 20 years of work." (13:42 | Jess Pettitt) "Loneliness is disempowering." (20:19 | Jess Pettitt) "Not to relieve the pressure, but to function inside the pressure, not alone. Now we can get somewhere." (22:28 | Jess Pettitt) "So many leadership books are written in a way that ignores the fact that leaders are human." (22:50 | Cait Donovan) "No one is reading that report. But above that, no one read it. No one knows anything because no one read it." (35:50 | Jess Pettitt) "That's not planting a flag. That's decoration. I don't do decorations." (52:58 | Jess Pettitt) "You are in a mess that you either do or don't acknowledge. You're not searching for a mess. It's already there." (55:56 | Jess Pettitt) In this episode, we mentioned... Doing Good Better: Using Dysfunction as a Catalyst for Change, by Jessica Pettitt Good Enough Now, by Jessica Pettitt Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations, by Cait Donovan (out October 27, 2026) The National Speakers Association and the Speaker Hall of Fame Maslow's hierarchy of needs How a Leader's Ego Can Burn Out Their Team with Ewa Błaszczak (FRIED #362): https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/b700a7df-0551-43c9-a090-8dbf1c7d235f Your Team Already Knows You're Burnt Out: Leadership, Capacity and the Busy Badge, with Anton Gunn (FRIED #366): https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/bf0988c2-d195-4618-8bd0-3b0f86c956fb Daisy Auger-Dominguez: Burnt Out Leaders Lead Burnt Out Teams (FRIED, Sep 2024): https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/ffa7b9d6-0632-4b0f-bb12-0960a7c04459 #straightfromcait: How to Ask for Help (FRIED #10): https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/6a6bd8f1-6666-4018-97d5-a73c4545a75d Connect with Jess Pettitt Jess Pettitt, CSP, CPAE, is a leadership and crisis communications keynote speaker and advisor. She started out as a university administrator by day and a stand-up comic by night in New York City's comedy clubs, and spent 20+ years doing diversity, equity and inclusion work with more than 1,400 organizations and half a million audience members. In 2026 she was inducted into the National Speakers Association's Speaker Hall of Fame. Her newest book, Doing Good Better, is a no-fluff guide for leaders who sense a crisis, are in one, or might be the crisis. Take the 6-question advisory survey: https://jesspettitt.com/advisory-survey Website: https://jesspettitt.com Book: Doing Good Better: Using Dysfunction as a Catalyst for Change Connect with Cait Book Cait to speak: https://bit.ly/bookcait Watch the 3-min sizzle reel: https://bit.ly/caitdreel2025 Order Mismatch for your team (bulk copies): [email protected] LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/caitdonovanspeaks Instagram: https://instagram.com/caitdonovanspeaks If you work in HR, People and Culture, or you book speakers for leaders who are carrying more than anyone can see, this is for you. About the Host Cait Donovan is a burnout expert, keynote speaker, and host of FRIED. The Burnout Podcast, a top 1% global show with over 1 million downloads and 360+ episodes, ending burnout culture since 2019. With a background in biobehavioral sciences and Traditional Chinese Medicine, she helps organizations find the mismatch behind burnout instead of blaming the people inside it. She is the author of The Bouncebackability Factor and Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations.

Preorder Mismatch (out October 27, 2026): https://caitdonovan.com/mismatch "I just, for the first time, realized that I'm not actually in a toxic workplace. I'm just in a bad match." From an email a coaching client sent me. For almost three years, a woman in one of our UNFRIED coaching cohorts kept calling her workplace toxic. Then she listened to my episode on what "toxic" actually means according to the research, and she sent me that email. Nothing about her job changed that weekend. What changed was the story. The blame and the finger pointing dropped, and a much more useful question showed up: where's the mismatch? That question is the whole book. Burnout isn't a personal failure, and it isn't always a bad company. It's a symptom of a mismatch between a person and the place they work, and it's not the only symptom. My new book, Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations, comes out October 27, 2026, and this week my friend Jess Pettitt, Hall of Fame speaker and author of Doing Good Better, turns the mic around and interviews me about it. We talk about how a book about burnout stopped being about burnout, the cold email that turned into a book deal, why somebody could have built me a utopian workplace and I still would have burnt out, and the Mismatch Index I built so organizations can find the gap without ever weaponizing the results. We also get into why there are zero books on how to be a better employee, why leaders are being told to act like therapists, what it would look like to stop top-downing and start middling out, and why the one page I'd keep from the whole book is about interoception. (Yes, pee when you need to pee.) Key Topics Covered: How a book about burnout became a book about mismatch, and why mismatch underlies all of our people problemsThe cold email that turned into a book deal, after I'd self-published my first bookBurnout as a party of one: when you're the solopreneur and also the boss you should be blamingWhy a utopian workplace wouldn't have saved me, and how the coping mechanisms that made me successful (hello, hyper-independence) turned on meBurnout, attrition, disengagement and quiet quitting as symptoms of the same mismatchThe Mismatch Index: an assessment that shows which part of the gap is systemic, which part is leadership, and which part is you, and why companies only ever see aggregate resultsWhy we default to blame, and why every book on the shelf is about being a better leader and none are about being a better employeeWhat the fraud triangle and whistleblowers taught me about why good people go against the grainLeaders are being told to be therapists, and the case for middling out instead of top-downingThe four behaviors that make a workplace actually toxic (ostracism, bullying, harassment and incivility), and why you should get out if you're being harmedHow to hire without building mismatch into your team, starting with your own leadership training and a real fit tool instead of your gutThe paper plate exercise, interoception, and the story behind the matches on the coverQuotes: "I'm the boss that I should be blaming." (07:36 | Cait Donovan) "Somebody could have created a utopian workplace for me and I would have burnt out anyway." (08:51 | Cait Donovan) "I started this book about burnout and now it's not about burnout anymore. It's about mismatch, and mismatch underlies all of our people problems." (13:43 | Cait Donovan) "The company will never get the individual results. They only get aggregate results, because I will not allow this tool to be weaponized in any way, shape or form." (15:28 | Cait Donovan) "You're decorating it, not fixing it." (17:30 | Jess Pettitt) "Every single book I came across was how to make a better leader. There were zero books, not one book on how to be a better employee." (19:59 | Cait Donovan) "Why are we always top-downing? Why can't we middle out?" (27:16 | Cait Donovan) In this episode, we mentioned... Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations, by Cait Donovan (out October 27, 2026): https://caitdonovan.com/mismatch The Bouncebackability Factor, by Cait Donovan Doing Good Better: Using Dysfunction as a Catalyst for Change, by Jessica Pettitt Christina Maslach, Wilmar Schaufeli and Michael Leiter's research on burnout and the six areas of mismatch Justin Patton, the trust guy The Predictive Index The fraud triangle The 4 Behaviors of A Toxic Workplace, a #straightfromcait episode Toxic or Just a Bad Fit? How to Tell the Difference at Work, with Leanne Elliott Burnout Is Not Your Fault, It's a Mismatch: An Early Look at My New Book (FRIED #365) Can You Burn Out in a Good Workplace? (FRIED #363) #straightfromcait: Coping Mechanisms and Burnout: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (FRIED #2) Connect with Jess Pettitt Jess Pettitt, CSP, CPAE, is a leadership and crisis communications keynote speaker and advisor. She started out as a university administrator by day and a stand-up comic by night in New York City's comedy clubs, and has spent 20+ years working with more than 1,400 organizations and half a million audience members. In 2026 she was inducted into the National Speakers Association's Speaker Hall of Fame. Her newest book is Doing Good Better: Using Dysfunction as a Catalyst for Change. Website: https://jesspettitt.com Take the 6-question advisory survey: https://jesspettitt.com/advisory-survey Book: Doing Good Better: Using Dysfunction as a Catalyst for Change Connect with Cait Preorder Mismatch (out October 27, 2026): https://caitdonovan.com/mismatch Order Mismatch for your team (bulk copies): [email protected] Book Cait to speak: https://bit.ly/bookcait Watch the 3-min sizzle reel: https://bit.ly/caitdreel2025 LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/caitdonovanspeaks Instagram: https://instagram.com/caitdonovanspeaks If you work in HR, People and Culture, or you lead a team that looks great on paper and is still burning out, this is for you. About the Host Cait Donovan is a burnout expert, keynote speaker, and host of FRIED. The Burnout Podcast, a top 1% global show with over 1 million downloads and 360+ episodes, ending burnout culture since 2019. With a background in biobehavioral sciences and Traditional Chinese Medicine, she helps organizations find the mismatch behind burnout instead of blaming the people inside it. She is the author of The Bouncebackability Factor and Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations. Podcast production and show notes by Starlin Media: https://starlinmedia.com

Your team already knows you're burnt out. Anton Gunn said it out loud on one of his leadership lives, and I almost drove off the road: "Leaders, your team knows you're burnt out, so here's what we're going to do about it." In this episode, I sit down with Anton Gunn, a leadership and workplace culture expert, former senior advisor to President Barack Obama, and one of the less than 1% of speakers in the Speaker Hall of Fame, to dig into why burnout is not a personal failure but an organizational capacity problem, and why the person at the top is usually the last to see it. We get into the reframe that stopped me in my tracks, "burnout is a signal, it's data that something is wrong in the organization," and then I push back with the biology, because your wiring matters too. High achievers, people pleasers and perfectionists do not slow down just because the culture is healthy. Then Anton takes it somewhere I did not expect. The leaders who say "don't bring me your problems" are usually the ones already burning out. Busyness becomes a badge ("I ain't got time to bleed"). A single unilateral decision, made by a leader too busy to investigate, spirals into a 63% turnover rate over four years. And the fix is almost insultingly simple and almost nobody does it: three 30 minute one-on-ones a week. As Anton puts it, if you can't find 90 minutes in a five day week for your people, you don't deserve to lead. This one is for the leader who feels the exhaustion and keeps performing through it, and for the HR and People and Culture teams watching it ripple across the org. You can't fix what you can't see. So let's look. Key Topics CoveredWhy burnout is an organizational capacity problem, not a personal willpower problem, and what "capacity" actually meansThe reframe that reset the conversation: burnout is a signal, it's data that something is wrong in the systemCait's pushback: the biology of burnout, and why high achievers, perfectionists and hyper-independent people burn out regardless of the cultureWhat a leader's job actually is (get the boulders out of the way so your people can do their best work)Why "don't bring me your problems" is a burnout tell, and how it quietly shuts your whole team downThe busy badge: how "I ain't got time to bleed" becomes the most expensive line in the buildingThe meeting after the meeting, and what it signals about a leader who is too busy for their peopleA real story: one unilateral decision that triggered a 63% turnover rate over four yearsThe one-on-one rule: three 30 minute conversations a week, and why skipping them means you don't deserve to leadGiving your people (and your assistant) veto power over your calendar and permission to tell you your stuff stinksThe neuroscience of a burnt out brain, and why a checked-out leader is not a bad person, they are running offlineThe three C's of 21st century leadership: commitment, competency and capacityQuotes"Burnout is a signal, it's data that something's wrong in the organization." (6:58 | Cait Donovan) "The people who say don't bring me your problems are the people who probably already burned out." (24:17 | Anton Gunn) "You can't fix what you can't see." (25:15 | Anton Gunn) "Busyness demonstrates effectiveness, busyness demonstrates productivity. Busyness is a justification for our title and our role." (32:16 | Anton Gunn) "That's what a lot of executives do. I ain't got time to listen to you, I ain't got time to hear what you're saying, because I'm so busy." (33:00 | Anton Gunn) "If you can't find 90 minutes in a five day week to do three 30 minute one-on-ones, you don't deserve to lead." (36:44 | Anton Gunn) "You've got to let people tell you that your stuff stinks." (37:50 | Anton Gunn) "You've got to have commitment, competency and capacity. If you don't have all three, you're going to be ineffective as a leader." (46:00 | Anton Gunn) > Times reflect the published YouTube cut (cold open + intro + interview). Verify against the final audio upload if the audio master is trimmed differently. In this episode, we mentioned...Kathleen Sebelius, former Governor of Kansas and Anton's boss in the Obama administration, and her rule: "if you bring me a problem, I'm going to solve it."Predator (the 1987 film with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura), source of the "I ain't got time to bleed" line.Chantal Lowe, the Olympian Cait sat next to at the National Speakers Association breakfast where she first met Anton.Anton's three C's of 21st century leadership: commitment, competency, capacity.Related FRIED episodes to binge next: How a Leader's Ego Can Burn Out Their Team, with Ewa Błaszczak (FRIED #362) https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/b700a7df-0551-43c9-a090-8dbf1c7d235fWhy Your Culture Initiatives Keep Failing, And What Actually Works, with Chris Pineda (FRIED, 2026-04) https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/754b7335-ef6c-4973-88eb-c1e1abfd7f9fWe're Expecting the Wrong Things From Leaders, a #straightfromcait episode (FRIED, 2026-05) https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/09a4ac57-ae4f-4a74-be47-d00a4a14e930Mattering at Work, with Zach Mercurio (FRIED, 2026-02) https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/732dd931-b516-49a4-9547-3d388199a98aConnect with Anton GunnAnton J. Gunn is a leadership and workplace culture expert with over 25 years of impact across healthcare, public service and corporate leadership. He is a former senior advisor to President Barack Obama and a former C-level executive at a multi-billion dollar health system. In 2026 he was inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame, an honor held by less than 1% of speakers globally. A graduate of the University of South Carolina, where he played SEC football and earned a master's degree in social work, and a former resident fellow at Harvard University, Anton is the author of three leadership books and has been featured in Time, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and on Good Morning America. Website: https://antongunn.comFree Leadership Diagnostic Assessment: https://antongunn.com/diagnosticConnect with CaitBook Cait to speak: https://bit.ly/bookcaitSpeaking: https://caitdonovan.com/speakingWatch the 3 minute sizzle reel: https://bit.ly/caitdreel2025Order Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations (Oct 2026), bulk copies via [email protected]: https://instagram.com/caitdonovanspeaksLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/caitdonovanspeaksAbout the HostCait Donovan is a keynote speaker and the host of FRIED. The Burnout Podcast, a top 1% global show with more than 1 million downloads that has been ending burnout culture since 2019. With a background in biobehavioral sciences and Traditional Chinese Medicine, Cait brings a science plus somatics lens to burnout, resentment and boundaries, and helps organizations treat burnout as a signal to fix the system, not a personal failure to fix the person. Her second book, Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations, arrives October 2026.

FRIED Fam, One month before Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations lands, I got the email I was most nervous to open. A beta reader who has read a mountain of burnout books, and admits her honest reaction to most of them is "meh," told me this one was the exact opposite. So this week I am doing something a little different. I am reading her review on the show and walking you through what she noticed, because what she picked up on is the whole point of the book. Here is the reframe I have been saying since 2019 and built this entire book around: burnout is not your fault. It is also not simply your organization's fault. It is a series of compounding mismatches between you and your work, your values, your capacity, and your life. There is always a straw that broke the camel's back, but there were a thousand things before it. If we only look at the last straw, we never actually recover, and we carry the same mismatches into the next job, the next team, the next business. I get into the part of Mismatch that early readers keep flagging: the blamelessness, why I never demonize a coping mechanism like perfectionism or people pleasing, and the line I felt in my soul when I wrote it, there is not a lot of sympathy for the mismatched success story. If you have the golden handcuffs, a successful life that is not a matched life, you still deserve support and a way to get closer to a match, no matter how good your bank account looks. Whether you feel burnt out in a job everyone says you should be grateful for, or you lead a team and keep wondering why good people keep leaving, this one names what is actually going on and gives you somewhere to start. Key Topics CoveredWhy burnout is not a personal failure, and not only a broken workplace, but a pile-up of compounding mismatchesThe "meh" problem with most burnout books, and what makes a burnout book actually usefulBlamelessness: removing shame, blame, guilt, and judgment from the burnout story on both sidesThe straw that broke the camel's back vs the thousand mismatches that came before itWhy Mismatch is written for every human, not just leaders, and where a leader's responsibility actually endsNever demonizing a coping mechanism: perfectionism, people pleasing, and hyper-independence as data, not defectsThe line in the sand: when a coping mechanism makes you self-abandon and self-neglect, it has become the problemThe mismatched success story: how you can be successful and burnt out at the same time, and why nobody has sympathy for itThe golden handcuffs, and why you deserve a match even when your life looks great on paperThe "make it obvious" rule: stop dropping hints, name what you need, and treat the response as dataWhy match is not a destination, it is an ongoing adjustment for the rest of your lifeQuotes"Burnout is not your fault." (03:56 | Cait Donovan) "Burnout happens because of a series of compounding mismatches from all different places in life." (04:20 | Cait Donovan) "There is a straw that broke the camel's back, but there were a thousand things that happened before then." (04:32 | Cait Donovan) "We never demonize a coping mechanism." (08:16 | Cait Donovan) "When your coping mechanism requires you to self-abandon and self-neglect in order to be used, it has become problematic and needs some unwinding." (09:08 | Cait Donovan) "There is not a lot of sympathy for the mismatched success story." (11:00 | Cait Donovan) "You still deserve to get support and get closer to a match, no matter how good your bank account looks." (11:19 | Cait Donovan) "Match is not a destination. It is an ongoing adjustment." (12:58 | Cait Donovan) (Timestamps assume the built cold open plus intro at the top; confirm against the final export.) In this episode, I mentionedCan You Burn Out in a Good Workplace? a #straightfromcait episode (FRIED #363) - https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/f389bde0-aa95-4454-96c2-0e12362b046aCEO Burnout: Why a Great Leader Was Burning Out in a Healthy Organization, a #straightfromcait episode (FRIED #360) - https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/aa58b8b5-b42a-497a-b63a-7a3333551176Coping Mechanisms and Burnout: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, a #straightfromcait episode (FRIED #2) - https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/cf9afbb2-0177-4150-9a31-53bff170220bShelley Paxton: Shifting From Success-EMPTY to Success-FULL (FRIED #27) - https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/8be93e19-20ce-48f6-bac5-3c327fedc612Links and CTAsPre-order Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations (out October 27, 2026). Kindle: bit.ly/mismatchkindle Order Mismatch for your team or bulk copies: [email protected] Book Cait to speak on burnout: bit.ly/bookcait · caitdonovan.com/speaking Sizzle reel: bit.ly/caitdreel2025 Connect with Cait: LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/caitdonovanspeaks · Instagram instagram.com/caitdonovanspeaks About the HostCait Donovan is one of the leading voices on burnout, a keynote speaker, and the host of FRIED. The Burnout Podcast, a top 1% global show with more than 1 million downloads that has been ending burnout culture since 2019. With a background in biobehavioral sciences and Traditional Chinese Medicine, she brings a science-and-somatics lens to burnout that is direct, funny, and refreshingly free of toxic positivity. Her new book, Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations, releases October 27, 2026.

FRIED Fam, Your company cares about mental health. There is a flyer in the break room, a pizza party in September, and an EAP number nobody calls. And people are still quietly drowning at their desks. This week I sit down with Jessi Beyer, MHP, a crisis mental health professional and former SWAT negotiator, to draw a hard line between crisis awareness (the flyer and the pizza party) and crisis readiness (actual skills that change what happens when a human being is struggling in front of you). Jessi has talked people off ledges for a living. Now she teaches workforces to handle the moment someone finally says "I can't do this anymore." If you are a leader who thinks this is a non-issue because nobody has died on your watch, this one is for you. If you are the high achiever hiding your burnout behind your work and holding it together nine to five while falling apart at home, this one is also for you. Burnout is not a people problem. It is a readiness problem, and readiness is a skill you can build in fifteen minutes. What we get intoWhy the skeptical executive thinks workplace mental health is a non-issue, and the case that changes their mind Crisis awareness versus crisis readiness (why the pizza party does nothing) The LIFE model, and why "just listen" is harder and more useful than it sounds Why Jessi is at war with EAPs, and the gap between someone struggling and someone actually calling for help What actually counts as a crisis (hint: it is not only suicide) Why your best people are the last ones to show they are burning out The de-escalation skills that keep YOU safe in a toxic workplace, straight from hostage negotiation What it does to your body to stay in a toxic environment Why 15 minutes is the real ask, and what it means if your company cannot find it Who decided you had to be the one to save the world Moments worth the replay"Crisis awareness is a flyer and a pizza party. It does not actually provide any skills that can impact the lives of the people who are struggling." — Jessi Beyer "I am in a war against EAPs. Keep the EAP. But that is the end of the sequence. It is not the beginning, and it is not the whole thing." — Jessi Beyer "Most people who burn out are high achievers, and they know how to hide behind their work. Work is the last place they show it." — Cait Donovan "You can use these skills to keep yourself safe and survive whatever situation you are in. And that includes toxic workplaces." — Jessi Beyer "If you cannot set aside fifteen minutes to have this conversation, that is a symptom of a much bigger problem." — Jessi Beyer "Who decided that you had to be the one to save the world?" — Jessi Beyer Mentioned in this episodeThe LIFE model (Jessi's crisis-response framework) Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) and the readiness gap around them Jessi's free suicide-risk readiness diagnostic for teams of 100+ More FRIED on thisWhy Companies Are Afraid to Talk About Workplace Wellness (And What That Silence Is Costing Them) — #straightfromcait: https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/178d7007-e654-46eb-8af7-9815228feb31 The Workplace is a Trauma Recycling Center — #straightfromcait (FRIED #15): https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/d20e94d2-7f75-40ee-bb1c-ccc7efd26193 Zenica Chatman: How to Recover From Workplace Bullying that Leads to Burnout (FRIED #5): https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/5c792a89-b22e-48a7-8d3e-56f6022ca88d Newton Cheng: I Burned Out in Corporate and Stayed, This Is How (FRIED #1): https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/024e0985-6cdc-4b1d-80b4-28d853339dba About the guestJessi Beyer, MHP, is a crisis mental health professional, suicide-prevention and de-escalation speaker, #1 bestselling author, and former SWAT negotiator. A TEDx speaker featured in more than 200 media outlets, she holds master's degrees in critical psychology and military psychology and leads Crisis Readiness Group, which trains workforces to actually respond when someone is struggling. Website: crisisreadinessgroup.com Instagram: @itsjessibeyer About meI'm Cait Donovan: keynote speaker, one of the top global burnout experts, and your host here at FRIED. The Burnout Podcast. My book, Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations, is out October 2026. Book me to speak: https://bit.ly/bookcait Speaking: caitdonovan.com/speaking Watch the 3-minute sizzle reel: https://bit.ly/caitdreel2025 XOXO, C #friedfam #endburnoutculture

Burnout does not require a toxic workplace. For years, the burnout conversation has had a tendency to point fingers in one of two directions. Organizations tell employees they need to become more resilient. Burnt-out employees point back at leadership and say the system needs to change. But what if both sides are only partially right? In this episode of FRIED. The Burnout Podcast, I’m exploring why good people can burn out inside good organizations, why individual responsibility is not the same thing as individual blame, and why fixing burnout requires us to stop looking for a villain and start looking for the mismatch. Even in an organization with supportive leadership, reasonable expectations, and good intentions, mismatches can happen. A leader might offer tons of autonomy because they’re trying not to micromanage, while an employee actually needs more support. Neither person is necessarily doing anything wrong. Their needs and approaches simply don't match. And those small mismatches are happening in workplaces all the time. In this episode, I cover:Why burnout doesn't require a bad or toxic workplaceThe false choice between blaming employees and blaming organizationsWhy “burnout isn't your fault” doesn't mean there's no individual work to doHow perfectionism, hyper-independence, and other learned patterns can contribute to burnoutWhy even great leadership can't protect us from every internal burnout driverHow good intentions on both sides can still create workplace mismatchesThe difference between a toxic workplace and a workplace that simply isn't a good matchWhy sustainable work doesn't require perfect alignmentHow organizations and individuals can move toward a “good enough” match togetherThe question I want us to start askingInstead of: Whose fault is this? Try: Is this a match or a mismatch? And if there's a mismatch: What can each of us realistically change to move closer to a match? The goal isn't a workplace perfectly customized to every individual. And it isn't asking individuals to contort themselves to fit environments that don't work for them. It's finding enough alignment that people can feel safe, supported, and comfortable enough to make work sustainable. If you've experienced a workplace mismatch and found a way to address it, I'd love to hear your story. About the HostCait Donovan is a globally recognized keynote speaker, one of the world’s leading burnout experts, and host of FRIED. The Burnout Podcast, a top 1% podcast with more than 1 million downloads. With a background in biobehavioral health and Chinese medicine, Cait takes a systems-based approach to burnout, helping organizations, leaders, and individuals understand burnout not as a personal failure, but as a mismatch between people and the environments in which they work. Cait is the author of The Bouncebackability Factor and the forthcoming Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations. Her work has been featured in Forbes, NPR, The New York Post, and other major media outlets. Bring Cait to your organization: Learn more about Cait’s keynotes and workplace burnout programs at CaitDonovan.com.

What happens when a leader's ego is running the show without them even realizing it? In this episode of FRIED. The Burnout Podcast, I'm joined by my longtime friend, leadership expert, and author Ewa Błaszczak to talk about her new book, The Leader and the Ego: The Path to Conscious Leadership. Ewa argues that we don't need to get rid of our egos. We need to become conscious of them, understand what they're trying to protect, and notice when they're making decisions for us. We talk about the connection between leadership ego and employee burnout, why self-awareness becomes increasingly important as leaders gain power, and how unconscious patterns can show up as competition, scarcity, control, rescuing, victimhood, and plenty of unnecessary workplace drama. And yes, Ewa gives us a remarkably simple place to start: notice your thoughts and ask who's listening. In other words, metacognition. The practice is simple. Doing it consistently is another story. In this episode, we cover: What ego actually means and why Ewa doesn't believe we should try to eliminate itHow unconscious ego can affect leadership, team performance, and burnoutWhy thinking you're self-aware and actually being self-aware aren't necessarily the same thingInternal vs. external self-awarenessHow fear, scarcity, competition, comparison, and control can quietly drive leadership behaviorWhy managing your own ego is part of the responsibility of leadershipHow gaining power can make honest feedback harder to getWhy leaders sometimes create problems by constantly stepping in to solve themHow hyper-independence and other patterns can shape what irritates us about other peopleHow to recognize when your own ego has entered the conversationWhy Ewa's ultimate goal for workplaces is surprisingly simple: less drama One of my favorite ideas from this conversation is that self-awareness isn't about identifying everything that's wrong with you. It's about becoming aware enough of what's happening internally that you have more choices about what happens next. As Ewa explains, we aren't trying to destroy the ego. We're trying to notice when it's driving. Because an unconscious ego can spend an enormous amount of energy thinking, protecting, analyzing, preparing, fighting, accumulating, planning, and comparing. For leaders, that internal work doesn't stay internal. Your behavior affects the people around you. And when no one feels safe enough to tell you that you have metaphorical spinach in your teeth, an outside perspective can become especially valuable. The goal isn't an ego-free leader. It's a leader who can notice their ego, get curious about what it's doing, and make a more intentional choice. Quotes "Make the unconscious conscious, because otherwise your ego will literally kill you, your productivity, your teams, and it will make you waste your life." (5:48 | Ewa Błaszczak) "It turns out only 10% of us are conscious. It does not mean we have it all figured out, but we know what is going on." (7:58 | Ewa Błaszczak) "If you want to get rid of your ego, it means you want to die. You do not want to die. You want to get to know it, like a scared inner child." (11:00 | Ewa Błaszczak) "Ninety five percent of the things that ego is afraid of will never happen. So we lose our lives like that." (14:39 | Ewa Błaszczak) "I asked my husband, why am I even writing this book? He said, because unhealthy ego hurts people." (24:16 | Ewa Błaszczak) "The higher you get in the corporate ladder, the less the leaders are conscious, and the more the ego is playing the power game." (31:40 | Ewa Błaszczak) "Nobody is going to tell the leader they have spinach in their teeth. But somebody has to." (33:12 | Cait Donovan) Also mentioned in this episode Owen Fitzpatrick and his book Inner Propaganda, on belief leadership and the stories we tell ourselves. Belief Leadership Starts with Knowing Inner Propaganda with Owen Fitzpatrick (FRIED #357): https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/c0af2f66-c0b1-4ca7-91df-33dc20627f75Tasha Eurich, organizational psychologist, on internal versus external self-awarenessCarl Jung, on the shadowStephen Karpman, on the drama triangle (victim, persecutor, rescuer)Kristen Holmes, head researcher at WHOOP, on sleep and psychological safetyRobin Hatcher, former soap opera writer turned communications expert ("I used to write the drama in, now I write the drama out")L. David Marquet, author of Turn the Ship Around!, who wrote the book's foreword Related FRIED episodes to binge next: The Leadership Skill Nobody Taught You (That Predicts Everything) (FRIED, Apr 2026): https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/73db4267-603c-4161-8164-e315f30b26efWe're Expecting the Wrong Things From Leaders And It's Causing Leadership Burnout, a #straightfromcait episode (FRIED, May 2026): https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/09a4ac57-ae4f-4a74-be47-d00a4a14e930Mita Mallick: Could Your Boss Be the Real Reason You're Burnt Out? (FRIED, Sep 2025): https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/b988ee19-3b8c-43c7-98a3-3b22646c5b10 About Ewa Błaszczak Ewa Błaszczak (https://www.ewablaszczak.com/en) is a leadership expert and author of The Leader and the Ego: The Path to Conscious Leadership. With more than 25 years of experience, she works with leaders and teams around the world to drive performance, lead transformation, and build cultures of responsibility. Her work explores the leader's ego as an often-overlooked barrier to effectiveness, combining neuroscience, psychology, and real-world business practice to help leaders deliver results without losing themselves or their people. Ewa's previous episode on FRIED about Toxic Communication: https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/ep/66b2189c-5b9b-4f5a-a1e3-c9cd0d35c874 About the HostCait Donovan is a globally recognized keynote speaker, one of the world's leading burnout experts, and host of FRIED. The Burnout Podcast, a top 1% podcast with more than 1 million downloads. With a background in biobehavioral health and Chinese medicine, Cait takes a systems-based approach to burnout, helping organizations, leaders, and individuals understand burnout not as a personal failure, but as a mismatch between people and the environments in which they work. Cait is the author of The Bouncebackability Factor and the forthcoming Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations. Her work has been featured in Forbes, NPR, The New York Post, and other major media outlets. Bring Cait to your organization: Learn more about Cait's keynotes and workplace burnout programs at https://caitdonovan.com/

Employee engagement surveys give us a lot of data. But what does that data actually tell us? In this first Survey Says episode, I’m looking at two questions from the 2024 U.S. Office of Personnel Management Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey through the burnout and mismatch lens. When only 48% of employees respond positively to whether management involves them in decisions that affect their work, it’s tempting to conclude that employees need more autonomy. But another question in the same survey complicates that assumption. The bigger lesson? A survey result is a signal, not a diagnosis. In this episode, I explore why the same survey score can reflect very different employee experiences, why more autonomy and involvement aren't automatically better, and what questions we can ask to understand what's actually happening underneath the numbers. In this episode, I cover:Why employee engagement survey results are a starting point, not a diagnosisThe difference between employee involvement and satisfaction with that involvementWhy a low autonomy score doesn't automatically mean employees need more autonomyHow different workplace conditions can produce the same survey resultThe mismatch between where decision-making authority lives and where knowledge about the work livesWhy the right amount of autonomy depends on the person and the workQuestions we can ask to uncover what's happening underneath an engagement survey scoreWhy getting curious is more useful than jumping straight from data to solutions Questions I’d ask nextIf employees report low involvement in decisions that affect their work, I want more information before deciding what needs to change. Which decisions do employees actually want more involvement in?Which recent decisions have positively or negatively affected their ability to do their jobs?What decisions are being made without information from the people closest to the work?When employees give input, do they know what happens to it?What would employees happily never be consulted about again?Employee engagement surveys aren't the end of the exploration. They're the beginning of it. The question isn't simply, “How do we give people more autonomy?” It’s: Do people have the appropriate amount of influence over the decisions that affect their ability to do their work? About the HostCait Donovan is a globally recognized keynote speaker, one of the world’s leading burnout experts, and host of FRIED. The Burnout Podcast, a top 1% podcast with more than 1 million downloads. With a background in biobehavioral health and Chinese medicine, Cait takes a systems-based approach to burnout, helping organizations, leaders, and individuals understand burnout not as a personal failure, but as a mismatch between people and the environments in which they work. Cait is the author of The Bouncebackability Factor and the forthcoming Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations. Her work has been featured in Forbes, NPR, The New York Post, and other major media outlets. Bring Cait to your organization: Learn more about Cait’s keynotes and workplace burnout programs at https://caitdonovan.com

I worked with a CEO who was burning out, but here's what made the situation interesting: they were really good at their job. They had a supportive board. They had a supportive staff. The rest of the organization wasn't burning out. So what the hell was going on? When we started looking for the mismatch, one word kept coming up: urgency. This CEO was moving faster than everyone around them. They were answering emails before the person responsible for them had a chance to respond. They were going to meetings they didn't need to be in. They'd set a deadline for Friday, finish their part by Wednesday, and then get frustrated that everyone else wasn't moving at the same pace. The CEO thought they were helping. Their staff experienced it differently. In this #straightfromcait episode of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast, I'm breaking down how we identified this pace mismatch, what the CEO's urgency was communicating to the rest of the team, and what had to happen to change it. I also talk about why "slow down" can mean very different things depending on the mismatch you're actually trying to solve. This is also a little preview of the idea at the center of my upcoming book, Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations. Sometimes good people burn out in organizations that are mostly doing things right. The question isn't always, "What's broken here?" Sometimes the better question is: Where's the mismatch? Key Topics CoveredA real example of a CEO burning out inside a healthy, supportive organizationThe behaviors that helped us identify the mismatch: answering other people's emails, going to meetings unnecessarily, and racing ahead of their own deadlinesHow one leader's internal sense of urgency created a pace mismatch with the rest of the organizationWhy doing things for your staff isn't necessarily helpful, especially when it starts communicating that you don't trust themThe difference between the major slowdown that can be necessary during burnout recovery and dialing your pace down a couple of notchesWhy naming the mismatch made it much easier to figure out what needed to changeWhat the CEO had to do to understand the fear underneath their urgencyWhy fixing a mismatch requires participation from both the person and the organizationA first look at my upcoming book, Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations About Your HostCait Donovan is a keynote speaker, globally recognized burnout expert, and host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast, a top 1% show with over one million downloads. She's the author of The Bouncebackability Factor and is currently writing her second book, Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations, releasing October 2026. With more than 3,700 five-star keynote reviews and a 99% approval rating, Cait helps leaders and organizations fix burnout without blame, using science, humor, and a refusal to settle for wellness-seminar band-aids. Book Cait to Speak: https://www.caitdonovan.com/ Connect with CaitLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caitdonovanspeaks Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/caitdonovanspeaks

This episode is a reminder that there are people fighting for human leadership, inclusivity, responsible AI and more as we move into the future of work. FRIED Fam, In June of this year, I got to work with one of my very favorite clients again (repeat business is so fun when it's people you truly enjoy), the National Council of Nonprofits. I had sessions in the afternoon, so I went to the conference in the morning to listen to Diane Yentel speak. It was the most inspiring thing I had heard in months. She brought the power of everything each state had accomplished over the past year. Saving nonprofits from losing tax exempt status, protecting people from ICE, keeping libraries afloat when funding was cut - the list was LONG and it took a long time to go through it. When she was wrapping up, I was full of inspiration and positivity and had two thoughts. I should pitch the NCN to host a podcast for them so that more people get this information and we can boost advocacy and morale at the same timeI should have more people that are doing the damn thing on the podcast to remind my listeners that there are leaders and people in power that care That brings me to this week's guest, Bhushan Sethi, a PwC partner and a man committed to speaking out about inclusion, helping his clients do AI right, and encouraging leaders to center their own self care so they can model well being for others. In this episode of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast, Cait Donovan talks with Bhushan Sethi, a partner at PwC US Consulting with 25 years in workforce strategy and AI led transformation, about why the business case for preventing burnout keeps failing to land. Bhushan co-authored a G20 T20 policy brief linking workforce wellbeing to GDP growth, and he and Cait unpack a startling number from that report, employee burnout is costing the global economy an estimated 322 billion dollars a year in turnover and lost productivity, with chronic stress pushing that figure toward a trillion. They talk about why transformation projects really fail, why organizations still lack a common framework for measuring wellbeing, and why every leader now needs an actual narrative for AI, not just a tool rollout. Bhushan also opens up about growing up with racism in the UK and how a British accent changed the way the world treated him in the US, and Cait connects that to the biology of microaggressions and inflammation. If you work in HR, People and Culture, or you book consultants and speakers on burnout and AI, this conversation is for you. Key Topics CoveredWhy a 322 billion dollar global price tag on burnout still is not enough to move most organizations to actThe real reason workplace transformations fail (hint: it was never the technology)Why we still do not have a common framework or shared metrics for measuring workplace wellbeingFinancial wellbeing and sticky inflation as the overlooked piece of the burnout conversationA simple three part framework for leading through AI: think like an economist, a scientist, and a humanistWhy AI anxiety is really a narrative problem, not a tools problemThe biology of microaggressions: how racism and exclusion show up as measurable inflammation in the bodyGrowing up with racism in the UK, and how a British accent changed the way Bhushan was treated in the USWhy publicly disclosing workplace wellbeing data might be the push organizations actually needThe coming leadership handoff as boomers and Gen X retire, and why most managers were never trained to lead people In this episode, we mentioned the following amazing people Owen Fitzpatrick and his new book, Inner Propaganda. (LINK TO BOOK) Kristin Scroggin and her work at GenWHY Communications (LINK TO FRIED EPISODE) Diane Yentel (LINK TO LI PROFILE) Dr. Natalie Nixon and her Move. Think. Rest book and method (LINK TO FRIED EPISODE) Suzy Welch and her Becoming You Methodology (LINK TO FRIED EPISODE) Guest InfoBhushan Sethi is a partner at PwC US Consulting with over 25 years of experience in workforce strategy and AI led transformation, focused on financial services. He is a World Economic Forum contributor and a G20 T20 task force member, and was honored among the Outstanding 50 Asian Americans in Business in 2025. His insights on the future of work and AI have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Bloomberg, and CNBC. He teaches strategy consulting at NYU Stern and has run 17 marathons. https://www.youtube.com/@bhushansethi1 https://www.instagram.com/bhushansethi1 https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhushansethi substack.com/@bhushansethi Host InfoCait Donovan is the host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast and a keynote speaker who has spent the past several years helping organizations understand burnout not as a personal failing, but as a symptom of mismatch between good people and the systems they work inside. Before this work, she spent 15 years as a licensed acupuncturist, working one-on-one with patients to understand how stress, exhaustion, and chronic overwhelm show up in the body long before they show up on a performance review. That clinical background is what shapes her signature approach, the Blameless Burnout™ Middle Out method, which she brings to leadership teams, HR and People functions, and conference stages through her keynote, Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations. Her new book, also titled Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations, expands on this work, offering what became, in her own words, a full systems-level diagnostic for stress reduction inside organizations that already have good intentions and are still doing the right things, and are still watching their people burn out anyway. Book Cait to Speak Order Mismatch for Your Team Bulk copies of Mismatch are available for teams, leadership offsites, HR departments, and conference attendees who want to bring this conversation back to their own organizations. Contact: [email protected] Connect with Cait https://instagram.com/caitdonovanspeaks https://linkedin.com/caitdonovanspeaks

What is emotional intelligence? Cait breaks down what emotional intelligence actually means, tracing the term back to its 1990 origins and Daniel Goleman's four domain model: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. She digs into Dr. Tasha Eurich's research showing that while 95% of us believe we are self-aware, only 10 to 15% of us actually are, and shares a simple language shift from Dr Eurich that helps close that gap. Key Topics CoveredWhere emotional intelligence came from and how it evolvedThe four core domains of emotional intelligence and how they build on each otherWhy emotional intelligence is a set of learnable skills, not a personality traitThe surprising gap between perceived and actual self-awarenessInternal vs. external self-awareness, and why both matterHow asking "what?" instead of "why?" builds genuine self-awarenessSelf-management as the pause between emotion and reactionSocial awareness as reading people, context, and organizational dynamicsRelationship management as creating connection through nervous system co-regulation About Your HostCait Donovan is a keynote speaker, globally recognized burnout expert, and host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast, a top 1% show with over a million downloads. She's the author of The Bouncebackability Factor and is currently writing her second book, Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations (releases Oct 2026). With 3,700+ five-star keynote reviews and a 99% approval rating, Cait helps leaders and organizations fix burnout without blame — using science, humor, and a refusal to settle for wellness-seminar band-aids. Book Cait to speak: caitdonovan.com Follow: LinkedIn | Instagram

What if the exhausting voice in your head isn't your inner critic but something closer to an inner dictator, running a full scale propaganda campaign to keep you safe instead of happy? Repeat guest Owen Fitzpatrick, social psychologist and author of the new book Inner Propaganda, joins Cait to unpack how our brains build the beliefs that quietly drive burnout, perfectionism, and people pleasing. It gets personal fast, including a story about something six year old Cait believed about her father's addiction that shaped three decades of hyperindependence. Key Topics Covered•      What inner propaganda actually means, and why the brain builds it for survival, not happiness •      The difference between an inner critic and an inner dictator •      How childhood beliefs form before we have the words to question them •      Cait's story about the deal she made with God at age six, and how it built her perfectionism •      Why fierce independence can actually be one of the most selfish things a person does •      The three conditions a belief needs before it can change: it has to feel right, fit who you are, and only then make sense •      Belief leadership, and why data alone never gets a team to buy in •      The anti-fragile identity Owen uses to turn a rough keynote into fuel instead of a spiral •      Why you should never evaluate your own performance in the adrenaline crash right after doing something hard •      What studying propaganda in North Korea and Rwanda taught Owen about the propaganda running inside every one of us In this episode of FRIED, Cait Donovan welcomes back social psychologist and keynote speaker Owen Fitzpatrick to talk about his new book, Inner Propaganda, and what it reveals about burnout, perfectionism, and leadership. Owen explains why the voice most people call their inner critic is actually closer to an inner dictator, a propaganda machine the brain builds to keep us safe rather than happy. Cait shares a deeply personal story from childhood that explains decades of perfectionism and hyperindependence, and the two dig into why asking for help is generosity, not weakness. The conversation moves through belief leadership, the real reason logical arguments fail to change minds, and the specific conditions a belief needs before someone can actually shift it. Owen also shares how he handles the post keynote spiral every speaker knows, and why waiting to evaluate performance until the adrenaline clears changes everything. This is a conversation for burned out leaders, high achievers, and anyone who has ever wondered why they cannot just think their way out of a feeling. Owen's book Inner Propaganda releases August 4, 2026. Guest BioOwen Fitzpatrick is a social psychologist, keynote speaker, and author of Inner Propaganda, his tenth book. For over two decades he has studied how beliefs form and change in boardrooms and in conflict zones including North Korea and Rwanda. He has delivered keynotes for Google, LinkedIn, Pfizer, and Coca-Cola, was rated the most engaging speaker by 10,000 attendees across two consecutive Forum One events, has spoken in 33 countries, and his books have been translated into 21 languages. Learn more at innerpropaganda.com. About Your HostCait Donovan is a keynote speaker, globally recognized burnout expert, and host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast, a top 1% show with over a million downloads. She's the author of The Bouncebackability Factor and is currently writing her second book, Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations (releases Oct 2026). With 3,700+ five-star keynote reviews and a 99% approval rating, Cait helps leaders and organizations fix burnout without blame — using science, humor, and a refusal to settle for wellness-seminar band-aids. Book Cait to speak: caitdonovan.com Follow: LinkedIn | Instagram

Creativity expert Dr. Natalie Nixon has spent 25 years studying what activities happen right before your best ideas, and they aren't what you think. They include: staring out a window, folding laundry, taking a walk, admiring a flower. In this episode, she and host Cait Donovan dig into why rigor curdles into rigidity, why that's the exact moment burnout takes hold, and why doing less better might be the most radical productivity advice either of them has ever given. Plus: the neuroscience of daydreaming, the business case for collaboration you actually hate, and the real reason Cait almost didn't take a week off from this podcast. Key Topics Covered●     Why staring out the window might be Natalie Nixon's most important work ●     The difference between rigor and rigidity, and why rigidity is where burnout lives ●     MTR (Move Think Rest): Natalie's operating system for sustainable productivity ●     The business case for creativity: collaboration, creative abrasion, and inventive thinking ●     Why fiction reading and 90-second daydream breaks activate the brain's default mode network ●     Interoception, the vagus nerve, and why burned out people miss their own warning signs ●     The generosity-resentment continuum and how rigidity turns commitment into martyrdom ●     Cultivation as a model for work: what farming and hibernating bears teach us about rest ●     Why doing less better is the goal, not doing more, faster, with AI What if the thing standing between you and your best ideas isn't a lack of discipline, but too much of it? In this episode of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast, Cait Donovan talks with Dr. Natalie Nixon, creativity expert, keynote speaker, and author of Move Think Rest, about the moment rigor turns into rigidity, and why that's exactly where burnout lives. Natalie explains her MTR operating system, the neuroscience of daydreaming and the default mode network, and why staring out a window counts as real work. Cait and Natalie make the business case for creativity, from collaboration and creative abrasion to interoception and the vagus nerve, and unpack why so many high performers can't feel their own burnout warning signs until it's too late. Cait also shares a personal story about almost forcing herself through a holiday weekend podcast episode, and what happened in her body the moment she gave herself permission not to. If you have ever confused being rigid with being committed, or wondered why your best ideas show up in the shower and never at your desk, this conversation will change how you think about rest, creativity, and burnout recovery. Keywords: burnout and creativity, rigor vs rigidity, burnout recovery, default mode network, MTR move think rest, burnout signs, creativity ROI. Guest InfoDr. Natalie Nixon is the creativity whisperer to the C-suite, a global keynote speaker, and CEO of Figure Eight Thinking. She is the author of Move Think Rest: Redefining Productivity and Our Relationship with Time and The Creativity Leap, and the creator of the Wonder Rigger method, which helps leaders unlock creativity's ROI. Her work draws on more than 25 years across fashion, design, academia, and anthropology. Learn more at figure8thinking.com. About Your HostCait Donovan is a keynote speaker, globally recognized burnout expert, and host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast, a top 1% show with over a million downloads. She's the author of The Bouncebackability Factor and is currently writing her second book, Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations (releases Oct 2026). With 3,700+ five-star keynote reviews and a 99% approval rating, Cait helps leaders and organizations fix burnout without blame — using science, humor, and a refusal to settle for wellness-seminar band-aids. Book Cait to speak: caitdonovan.com Follow: LinkedIn | Instagram

Cait opens with something rare: a public correction. She has been telling audiences for years that the hippocampus shrinks during burnout. New research says it doesn't. And that changes a lot. In this solo episode, Cait walks through a landmark August 2025 review of 17 MRI studies to give you the most current picture of what burnout actually does to your brain. The result is not what you might expect. It's more specific, more vindicating, and more hopeful. Key Topics Covered•      How burnout is neurologically distinct from depression and PTSD •      What actually happens to the amygdala during burnout (it grows, and women are hit harder) •      The prefrontal cortex thinning and what researchers call 'neuroflexibility failure' •      The brain's effort/reward calculation system and why everything feels too expensive to do •      Rich club networks, real-time communication breakdown, and the sinkhole analogy •      The insula and the 'emotional dissonance paradox' around empathy in burned out nurses •      The hippocampus correction: why the memory problems in burnout are functional, not structural •      What the research says actually heals the burned out brain Cait Donovan has been telling audiences for years that the hippocampus shrinks during burnout. New research says that's wrong, and in this episode she corrects the record publicly. An August 2025 review of 17 MRI studies and over 1,300 participants found that the burned out brain is neurologically distinct from brains experiencing depression or PTSD. The hippocampus stays mostly intact. What does shrink: the prefrontal cortex (your decision-making and emotional regulation center), the caudate and putamen (your brain's effort-reward system), and the insula (your body's internal translator). What grows: the amygdala (your threat detector), especially in women. Cait breaks down each finding in plain language and what it means for recovery. If you have ever felt like you got dumb during burnout, like everything is too expensive to do, like you should care more than you do, this episode explains the neuroscience behind all of it. And it ends with the most important finding of all: the burned out brain can fully rebuild. Keywords: burnout neuroscience, hippocampus burnout, burned out brain MRI, amygdala burnout, burnout recovery brain, burnout vs depression, burnout science 2025. Guest InfoSolo episode hosted by Cait Donovan, burnout expert, speaker, and host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast. Cait references research from Dr. Nina (The Anti-Burnout Doctor on Instagram) and an August 2025 peer-reviewed MRI review study. ------- About Your HostCait Donovan is a keynote speaker, globally recognized burnout expert, and host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast, a top 1% show with over a million downloads. She's the author of The Bouncebackability Factor and is currently writing her second book, Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations (releases Oct 2026). With 3,700+ five-star keynote reviews and a 99% approval rating, Cait helps leaders and organizations fix burnout without blame — using science, humor, and a refusal to settle for wellness-seminar band-aids. Book Cait to speak: caitdonovan.com Follow: LinkedIn | Instagram

Dr. Zarya Rubin spent twelve years as a neurologist before realizing the career she'd sacrificed everything for no longer matched who she'd become. What she figured out on the way out is exactly what most corporate and nonprofit leaders are missing right now. In this episode, Cait and Dr. Zarya break down three concepts every HR and people leader needs in their vocabulary: Moral injury — the gap between what someone signed up to do and what the system actually lets them do. Healthcare workers have a name for it. Your top performers are living it without one. Compassion fatigue — what happens when over-giving curdles into resentment and gallows humor. Not a healthcare-only problem anyone in a "caring" role at home or work is at risk. "Compassion fatigue is when over-giving and over-caring stops making you more empathic it starts making you resentful toward the people you're supposed to care for most." Dr. Zarya Rubin The sunk cost fallacy — why "I've invested too much to leave" keeps your best people stuck instead of either re-engaging or exiting cleanly. This isn't a healthcare episode wearing a corporate costume. It's a leadership episode that happens to use healthcare as the clearest case study because when the stakes are literally life and death, the mismatch shows up faster and louder. The pattern underneath is the same one sitting in your org chart right now. Topics Covered What is moral injury at work, and how is it different from burnout?Why your wellness program can't fix a values mismatch (and what actually can)The sunk cost fallacy: why top performers stay in roles that are breaking themSigns of compassion fatigue in employees who aren't in "caring professions" and why they're at risk tooWhy women leaders burn out at higher rates, get penalized for slower response times, and are paid less anywayHow childhood patterns shape adult burnout risk (and why that matters for managers, not just therapists)What leaders can actually do about systemic moral injury beyond another wellness seminar "There's no amount of meditating or yoga or wellness seminars that you can deliver in a workplace that's going to fix moral injury. That is a systemic problem." Dr. Zarya Rubin Check Out Dr. Zarya Rubin's Outsmart Burnout Podcast Loved this episode?Share it with the leader on your team who's been "fine" for a little too long. Then leave a review that's what gets this show in front of more execs and HR leaders who need it. ------- About Your HostCait Donovan is a keynote speaker, globally recognized burnout expert, and host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast, a top 1% show with over a million downloads. She's the author of The Bouncebackability Factor and is currently writing her second book, Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations. With 3,700+ five-star keynote reviews and a 99% approval rating, Cait helps leaders and organizations fix burnout without blame — using science, humor, and a refusal to settle for wellness-seminar band-aids. Book Cait to speak: caitdonovan.com Follow: LinkedIn | Instagram