#17: The Head vs. The Heart: Why Organizations Burn Out Their People

I burned out inside an organization that slowly lost its soul. What started as a magnetic culture with incredible energy became a soulless machine where people felt like robots. In this episode, I share the inside story of how it happened—and why the same invisible forces killing organizations are the same ones burning you out individually.

What you'll learn:

• The "Reactive Pendulum" cycle that turns thriving companies into hollow shells
• The six invisible forces producing burnout at every organizational level (and in your personal life)
• Why wellness programs, leadership workshops, and engagement surveys consistently fail
• The difference between head problems (systems, processes) and heart problems (culture, trust, belonging)
• What actually creates lasting change in organizations (hint: it takes 6-12 months, not a one-day event)

If you've ever felt invisible at work, watched a place you loved become unrecognizable, or wondered why "doing everything right" still leads to burnout, this episode will give you language for what you've been feeling and a framework for what needs to change.

Listen now, and if this one hits home, share it with someone who needs to hear it. 

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Transcript

Burnout And Culture Loss Setup

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I burned out inside of an organization on an individual level, and I also watched the organization completely lose the culture and the energy and the soul that it once had. And I didn't fully understand what happened until now. So today I'm going to share my perspective on what happened to the company that I worked for, why I burned out, and in general, hopefully provide some guidance on what's going on if you're experiencing people issues or problems within your business. And um, I'm gonna start with my journey with this company. So it was 2017, and I just joined the Ring Corps Reserves, and I remember walking into the store because I wanted to gain weight and I wanted to build some muscle. And I just remember being completely blown away with the customer service, the energy, and the vibes. And I knew in my heart that I wanted to work there. And it just so happened at the end of the interaction, they let me know that they were hiring. And so I applied right away. And then pretty immediately I heard from the job. And so what happened was I started working for this organization, and I really loved it at first. They were really um, they were really focused on developing the people. They had really great training, they had a tight-knit culture. They had people that believed in the mission. It had more energy and more buy-in than any place I'd ever experienced before. Granted, uh, I was a part of the Marine Corps, which that was pretty close. Kind of similar principles there. I worked for Arby's, I think, and Hardy's and Walmart. So I kind of worked at jobs I knew weren't going to be mine long term before this. So this was the first time I really felt in my soul this could be a place I would stay a while. And for me, it was kind of intimidating at first because I was brand new to sales. And for me, I had a lot of social anxiety as well. And I felt that start coming into play as I started to train within this organization. And it got to the point where a couple weeks into it, I didn't really know if I was going to make it through training. And neither did my manager. And I actually got made fun of a little bit by the staff there and by the manager. You could tell that they viewed me a little bit as an underdog. And I was pretty close to throwing in the towel just because I didn't feel like I belonged there. I had had a lot of imposter syndrome going on. And what changed the trajectory of my life was when I had essentially I was tasked with closing the store with a district manager that only came into town every so often. And he saw things in me that I couldn't see in myself. He spoke life into me. He believed in me. And he was a witness to my first big sale ever in the organization. And at that point, he's the one who determined that I was trained and the company. And he kind of went against what the manager wanted and the other people in the store

Joining A People First Company

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wanted. So above their heads, he was like, hey, that's it, you're trained. And that's when I really started to build confidence in myself. And that was when I first saw the power of leadership and what a strong, what I call heart produces within an organization. And I think a really good organization leaves people better off than when they found it. And that was my first glimpse of that. And that's when I became bought in. And so what I've learned about organizations in general, and from a lot of experiences that I've had that I'll get into, is there's a difference between a head and the heart of an organization. So the head is what I call the container of the organization, the vessel. And its focus is strategy, systems, processes, organizational structure, revenue models, KPIs, technology, policies, financial management. So these are the things that make the business functional and scalable. And this answers the question: can this organization operate? And then we got the heart. So the heart is the soul of the organization. It's the meaning of the organization. It's the thing that powers the organization. And so that are things like leadership capacity, emotional intelligence, culture, psychological safety, purpose, trust, belonging, self-awareness, emotional regulation, values, alignment, human capacity, and sustainability. So this is what makes the business energizing, livable, and it gives it life. It's the breath within the organization. And this answers a different question. Do the people inside this organization have what they need to thrive? Are we improving people's lives within the organization and outside of the organization with the mission? When both are strong, you get a place that performs and sustains. You get a place that makes money and leaves people better off than when you found them. And what happens is the people will grow. And yeah, people will do more than what you asked of them. And a good example was the district manager. He uh essentially influenced me because of his belief in myself. And that wasn't within necessarily his job description. He gave me life. And the bet that balance, I feel, is like what made the place great. So what happened to that balance is what makes the rest of this story make a lot of sense. And so I want to talk about now. If you guys can't tell, I'm definitely reading off of an iPad, by the way, because there's a lot of information in this episode. I want to talk about how I feel organizations, organizations, I want to talk about how organizations lose their heart. Okay, so I'm gonna start with a story. So I saw the company start scaling really fast. So there was a time in this organization where they were gonna open up 12 new stores all at once in a market they've never tested before. And what started to happen was there was a lot of revenue pressure that hit. They weren't making as much money as they would hope to make. And how leadership responded was with more process, structure, tighter controls, and new campaigns. And here's the thing: all of those things I believe were reasonable responses to real problems that were popping up, but they went too far with it. The emphasis shifted from people to process, from heart to head, from culture to compliance. And the energy just started to change. The way I describe

Head And Heart Of An Organization

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how this energy changed, it's like the difference between when you walk into a McDonald's versus a Chick-fil-A. You can kind of tell the people at McDonald's, no offense, McDonald's, just don't really want to be there. They're there for the paycheck, and you just kind of want to get in and get out. I've yet to see a McDonald's loaded with people eating there. Maybe it started that way, but it's not that way right now, in my experience. And then the Chick-fil-A, when you walk in, you get greeted, you get energy, you stay there for the experience itself. And I remember seeing this company go from a Chick-fil-A to a McDonald's. And yeah, it was magnetic and it started feeling mechanical. And the soul was starting to be suffocated by the structure in a way. And the people who felt it first were the people that were actually in the trenches. So a lot of it was the middle managers, the entry-level managers, and the frontline employees. And I was one of those people. And what happened to that organization, I feel has a specific name. And I call it the reactive pendulum. Okay. And almost every organization that starts with a strong heart goes through this cycle. So stage one is when the heart outgrows the head of the organization. So that's where I started in the organization. So that's where you have a strong culture, a magnetic mission, and a people-first environment, but there's not enough infrastructure to support that growth. There's no clear processes in place, no accountability structures, decisions made on instinct. So there's no decision matrix and a place where people love that slowly falls apart around them. So a lot of small businesses start out this way. I would say most businesses probably start out this way where the heart is super strong, the energy is high, the motivation is high, but there's no infrastructure to carry that energy out. And then stage two, what I've seen is leadership sees the head problem and overcorrects. So now we're talking about middle market companies, mid-size, anywhere from 50 plus employees. So they start to bring in systems and processes and structure and oversight, which are all reasonable, but they don't just add the structure, they replace culture with structure. So the strategy and the structure and the stuff they're bringing in that represent the head of the business, it starts to replace the heart of the business. So they don't just add accountability, they replace trust with compliance. And the head starts to consume the heart in a way. When you think about this from a spiritual perspective, because that's me sometimes, is the ego starts to take over the soul. And that's exactly what happens in organizations too. And then stage three is nobody notices because the visible problem is getting solved. So the numbers stabilize and leadership declares victory because maybe temporarily revenue bumps up, the KPIs start looking better. So the perspective of leadership is hey, we're winning now, even though numbers are a byproduct of behaviors. And by the time numbers accumulate, the behaviors that have been causing those numbers to accumulate have been going on for months. And so by default, that creates this definition of success within an organization solely from head-based things, not heart-based things, which is crazy because the reason why the head-based things happen is because of the heart of the organization. So it would make sense, logically describing it that way, to address the heart of the problem, not just the head of the problem. But that's not what a lot of organizations do. And so stage four is the invisible problems start to surface throughout the organization. And by the time they're surface, it's too late. Very similar to when you get diagnosed with a physical illness. By the time you get diagnosed with an illness, a lot of the things that you could have done to prevent it, you can no longer do. So the invisible problems that start to surface are burnout spreads through the organization, engagements start to collapse. So people start to leave, turnover starts to happen, leadership reaches for more head solutions, temporary solutions, and then that accelerates the heart deterioration even further. And this pendulum just keeps going back and forth, back and forth. And that's why there's a lot of people that have turntable cultures. I see this especially to be true in service-based industries, people where there's a lot of sales staff or where there's a lot of customer interaction or high pressure industries. I see this a lot. Organizations are wired to respond to visible problems and ignore invisible

Scaling Fast And The Reactive Pendulum

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ones. So heart deterioration doesn't really have a KPI to it, right? So what happens is it's hard to track unless you're really tuning into the people of the organization. And then what happens when numbers start to dip in results? Fear enters the leadership conversation. And then what starts to happen is fear-based decision making. And that always produces over-correction. I've talked about this before in the podcast. I call this microwave energy. So you start making decisions out of scarcity and dysregulation, not actual alignment and intention. And so leadership starts making fear-based decisions, whether that's laying people off or over-correcting in a way or adding this new marketing campaign because they're freaking out because the revenue's dropping. And they start to reach for control because control feels like safety. They start to control the things that are most controllable. For a lot of companies, it's payroll. People cutting their payback, whatever. So they start to minimize heart problems, but they it's not actually minimizing heart problems. They think they're solving the problem, but they're actually just suppressing the problem. It's like having a migraine and just taking an ibuprofen and then it coming back six hours later. It's not actually addressing the root of the migraine. Maybe it's because you're not getting enough sleep or you're not drinking enough water. So that's the same thing that organizations do. It's a band-aid solution. And then the people who feel that first typically are the people closest to the customer. And then what happens is if there's not a good culture in the organization, the people on the front line aren't going to communicate accurately to what's going on to the people up the chain of command. And so now there's a completely different perspective from leadership and the front line as far as what the actual problems are. And then the swing keeps going. And then each time it swings back and forth, typically the organization gets more and more and more soulless. And so this is the pattern that produces organizational burnout. And the pendulum doesn't just swing on its own. There are specific invisible forces making the pendulum go back and forth. And they live inside every tier of the organization. Okay, so let's talk about the invisible forces. And before I do, I'm gonna talk more about my experience within the organization I worked for. So I was promoted to a general manager from a sales associate after five months. I had no formal leadership trading, just a title. They're like, hey, move to Missouri, open up your own store. Literally had no leadership experience. They promoted me because I was a great doer and I was great at sales. And I just didn't have a framework for leading people. And it's it took a year of a ton of trial and error for me to actually start figuring out how to be a leader and I had no balance at all. I mean, I started out working out there by myself, and then I had to learn to train a team. And a lot of people left the organization because I didn't know how to train anybody and I didn't know how to stick, I didn't know how to provide a container and environment for people to want to stay, had no leadership skills. And then eventually, after a year of trial and error, working seven days a week for I think probably at least three months straight, I started to figure out certain skills. And then the district manager I mentioned, when I first originally started with the company, went on a side quest to come help me because he really cared about me and my development. And so, yeah, I mean, and the company culture was very much so hustle and grind base. So it was very much so romanticized, working all the time, not having any balance. So I was being reinforced for this behavior. And so what happened is I got rewarded for becoming a leader by being promoted again. This time I went from general manager to district manager. So I went from overseeing one location, entry-level management, to five locations, mid-level management. And this happened when I was 21 years old. And um, yeah, I mean, just to keep going down the chain of events, eventually I moved into like a road warrior role where I would spend weeks away from home and coordinate new store openings and train new store teams. And when I got into this position, kind of skipping some steps here, but that's okay. When I got into this position, the leader above me was taking credit for everything that I was building. So I was figuring out how to really, these new store positions, new store team lead was the name. They had never created this position at all in the company before. And so I was kind of pioneering it and I was figuring out what worked and what didn't. And what was happening was the leader above me took credit for the things that I figured out and painted a picture that I wasn't a very good team member to the decision makers of the organization, which was the president and the vice president, etc. And I was underpaid for the role, I was unrecognized, and then I felt less and less valuable and invisible within the organization. And at the same time, my personal life was falling apart. I lost my stepmom, my relationships were breaking down. I was addicted to stimulants at this point. And this isn't to blame the organization for these things. It's just walking you through the story of stress stacking on top of stress in my life. So you can probably imagine why at some point I hit burnout and my life collapsed onto itself. And yeah, I was using work to cope with everything, collapsing. And for me, my default to deal with anything going on at work was to work harder. Like they have to recognize me if I push more, if I drive more results. And I got to this point where I was driving consistent record-breaking openings, and they still refused to give me credit for it, and they still refused to see why, and they refused to hear me out. And that meeting that I talked about initially in the beginning was literally them just like not. Oh, I guess I haven't talked about the meeting yet. My fault. So, what this led up to kind of my breaking point was I went to a meeting, a strategy meeting, after I had these record-breaking openings, finally earned my place at the table, right? With the president, the vice president, all the directors of operations, and then the new store director. And I remember before we went to that meeting, my boss told me to keep my mouth shut and to not actually say my opinion. And I told him, no, I've earned my spot at this table. I'm gonna tell them what I think. And granted, I

Hustle Promotions And The Breaking Meeting

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kind of probably came off a little bit hostile because I had been suppressing a lot of things. So, um, but yeah, I told them my perspective on what was going on with the culture and why there was turnover issues and why sales were down and everything. And I remember one person resonated and I could tell, but everybody else just completely dismissed me. And I had spent so much time, so much energy sacrificing for this company. And I just remember thinking at that moment, I have to get out of here. I remember feeling so defeated and just so worthless in that moment. That's when I started to quietly quit within my organization. And I actually didn't truly quit for six months after that, but I was definitely on my way out of the door. And so, yeah, I mean, for me, the invisible forces that happened was these are forces running every organization that don't show up in any report. They live inside the individuals, inside the leadership, and inside the culture itself. And they operate on autopilot, shaping outcomes nobody consciously chose. And they are the actual cause of burnout at every tier, the ones that were running me and the organization simultaneously. So let's talk about the invisible force number one that causes burnout. It's called identity fusion with performance. So this comes from an unconscious belief in the individual that says my worth is determined by my output. And what happens when performance is strong, when they're doing well, this person feels really valuable within the organization. But when the performance dips, it gets stolen or goes unrecognized, the person starts to collapse. This is what happened to me. Because I tied my self-worth to my accomplishments, I got reinforced for that. Whenever I had a bad sales month, I would really be affected by it. And uh, yeah, there's no internal foundation that exists independent of results. And um, when my leader took credit for my work, it didn't just cost me my recognition, it cost me my sense of self. That's how it felt. And again, I'm not blaming my leader, but that's the impact it had on me. And then force two is what I call the hustle identity. So this comes from a belief that rest is a threat and busyness equals purpose. So motion is mistaken for progress when you're living out this identity. Productivity used as a coping mechanism for deeper discomfort. It feels like ambition and what it really functions as is self-destruction. So for me, I would figure out different things I could always do because I was so uncomfortable with being alone with myself that I would create any excuse possible to keep working. And of course, the company took advantage of that because we had a hustle and grind culture. So they would just keep giving me more shit to do. I remember when I was traveling for this new store team lead role, I would go and visit markets in the middle of my task with that role just to figure out how to fill my time. I would go out and essentially like work for free for other stores because that's all I knew how to do was perform. It was terrible. And um, yeah, I mean, it re organizations reinforced reinforce this. And um force three is what I call fear-based leadership. Okay, so the leader whose primary emotional driver is fear. So this is a power over leader. So when they're driven by fear of failure, fear of losing control, fear of being exposed, by the way, this was all me. That fear is dressed up as high standards, urgency, and accountability, and a lot of micromanaging. Um, it produces credit stealing, voice suppression, and punitive cultures. And then teams under fear-based leaders learn that honesty is dangerous. So it completely gets rid of what I call psychological safety. It's not my term, but what we call psychological safety, which is do my people feel safe telling me the truth? And then what happens is now the leader loses access to reality because people are just shutting up and they don't feel like they can be heard in the organization. So they're not getting feedback that's gonna drive better decision making. And there's statistics to back this up. A third of all managers operate primarily from fear, costing organizations $36 billion annually. That's the average. And uh, for me, this was the force operating directly above me in my road warrior role is I didn't feel like I could speak up because I didn't feel like my leadership was advocating for me. And so his unprocessed fear became my daily reality. Because the only reason why you would ever take somebody else's credit is because you're deeply insecure. And that's exactly what happened. Force four is the culture of silence. So the unspoken rule that honesty is dangerous. So nobody says don't speak up, but everyone knows it. I'm sure you guys have heard this or been a part of this. Produced by years of watching people who did speak up get dismissed, sidelined, or punished. So, what I learned when I went into that room and I poured my heart out and I got no feedback was that my voice didn't matter. So all of a sudden, I was the cog and the machine of the culture of silence. And when you do this at scale in an organization, you don't have psychological safety. You have the culture of silence. The organization loses its self correction mechanism entirely. And yeah, it was terrible. I'll keep saying that. Force five. I call this the purpose erosion. The gradual disconnection between daily work and any meaningful reason for doing it. So people stop believing in why they're doing what they're doing. I saw this happen a ton with the sales process. We were just told to do things from a checklist, but the emphasis of why was not explained. We didn't really allow people to buy into it and believe in it. And this is also similar to if you're trying to pitch something to an organization and the owner's not bought in, which I've had that scenario happen. You can go and implement the solution. You can maybe get the other people in the organization may be able to talk the owner into doing it, but if the owner's not bought in, nothing actually changes. So yeah, it happens when scaling priorities replace human priorities, when process replaces culture, when output replaces meaning. And then people stop believing what they're doing. I already said that. Only 15% of frontline workers say they're living their purpose at work versus 85% of

Six Invisible Forces Behind Burnout

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executives. So that's an eight times gap. So on the frontline level, this is a huge issue. And then on the executive level, it's still an issue, but not as much. And yeah, this is the force that turns the company I work for from a magnetic organization into a hollow one. And uh, it was crazy because towards the end of my time with this organization, I had actually ended up at the store that I started at. So I started at a store where I was a sales associate, and then I ended at the store where I was a district manager, and it was a crazy full circle moment. The energy of that organization and that store compared to when I first started was non-existent. It felt like everybody was just like walking around as robots. And uh that was very shortly before I burned out and lost everything. And it's uh yeah, Purpose Erosion did that. Force six, this is the last one, is the succession of avoidance. So this comes from the accumulated weight of every difficult conversation that never happened, every performance issue that went unaddressed, every cultural problem that got papered over with a new initiative, every omise moment that got swallowed by politics, and this force compounds over time. So each avoided conversation makes the next one harder. So you build up your relationship debt, your avoidance debt, every single time you do not confront a hard conversation. And then eventually the organization boats an entire identity around not facing what's really going on, which is exactly what happened to the organization I worked for. They were putting shit, basically, they were trying to sprinkle sugar on top of piss, thinking that that would fix the organization. Instead of pouring the piss out of the cup, they tried to pour sugar on top of it. That's what this looks like. And uh yeah, by the time the damage is visible, it has been accumulating for years and it's nearly irreversible. And what I learned from that, whether it's individually or organizationally, what you avoid controls you. So because the leadership of this organization was not willing to confront the role that they were playing in contributing to the loss of culture, even though they preached an ownership mindset, they weren't willing to look at that part of themselves. It controlled the entire organization. The things that were avoided were the things that were killing the organization slowly from the inside out. And it felt like it. Felt like the organization was dying. That's how the energy was. And yeah, it was true for me personally as well. And uh yeah, these forces don't stay in one place either. They cascade. So what lives at the top flows to the middle. What lives in the middle flows to the front line. And the front line is where the customer feels everything, which is why it results in a loss of money and a loss of impact. So I want to talk about essentially

Why Quick Fix Programs Fail

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what some of the things that companies try to do to address these problems that don't work. So when organizations eventually see the symptoms of burnout and disengagement and they reach for solutions, typically their solutions are wellness apps, one-day leadership workshops, engagement surveys, team building days, recognition programs, and new company values. And here's the thing: it has been researched that none of this shit works. Oxford studied 90 workshop wellness or workplace wellness programs. Participants were no better off than those who received nothing. That was literally what the results showed is that participants were no better off than those who received nothing. And then McKenzie also did a study. And uh it was a study, I think, based around improving every organizational factor except toxic interpersonal behavior, and it produced no meaningful change in burnout rates. And roughly 10% produces measurable behavior change. That means 10% of leadership development solutions actually produces measurable behavior change. That's crazy. And uh yeah, that engagement data has barely moved in 24 years. And here's my perspective of why all of that shit fails. Okay, so one is they touch the head while leaving the heart alone. They treat the symptoms while the invisible forces keep running underneath. The root cause is not addressed, right? They individualize what is fundamentally a relational and cultural problem. So for me, I was always told you're not working hard enough, you're too lazy, you need to fix this, as opposed to the light being shined on the leaders of the organization, because an organization has the personality of the leaders within it. So if you have a bunch of people who are hustle and grind bros who are not willing to confront reality, that's gonna be the reality of the organization. And yeah, um, they feel like action and production. Yeah, basically there's no lasting change. My perspective on the only thing that's gonna really close the gap is naming the invisible forces. So making what's unconscious

What It Takes To Rebuild Culture

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conscious and visible so it can be addressed. It's developing people beyond their title, so helping them not only with how to get tactically better at their job, but also helping them with their sense of self and helping them gain self-awareness and helping them with emotional regulation and values alignment. There's a huge soft skills deficit right now. There's a huge EQ deficit right now, especially newer people coming into the workforce. People don't know how to interact with people anymore. In the world of AI and things getting digitized and technology advancing, what's needed now more than ever is the heart of people to be reinforced on a personal level and a professional level. And uh yeah, developing people below the surface, starting at the top, because everything at the senior level travels downwards, sustaining the work over time. So that means one-time events, one time keynote speakers, one time anything is not going to provide temp like permanent change. I think it it's like I think with head changes, the average is like 90 days. So it's a little bit easier and quicker to change a system or to change a metric or something. But actual person change and behavioral change takes anywhere from six months to a year. And that's why a lot of people don't do it because it's perceiving a lot harder than just like throwing sugar on top of piss, right? And yeah, culture is an ongoing investment, and I feel like we need to start treating culture as such. And so, with all this being said, the invisible forces that produce burnout in our personal lives produce burnout in our organizations for the same reason. We built those organizations as human beings, understanding that the problems that exist within our organization is coming from us. So thinking that we can just fix it by business-based stuff instead of human-based stuff is preposterous because we as humans are the reason why these issues are going on to begin with. So every culture, every norm, every unspoken standard is a product of the human who has created the organization. And their unexamined beliefs and their and their unexamined behavior, their development and their gaps, their courage and their avoidance, and then what they've avoided became what the organization avoided. What the organization avoided became the invisible forces running everything. And if you develop the humans within the organization and you focus on that, you can change the invisible forces. You can make sure that those forces are not controlling you in the organization. And that's literally why my company exists, builds your power, because I know what it costs when people avoid shit within organizations. I know what happens whenever the heart of the organization is ignored and the head becomes too strong and too big. And we are in desperate need right now of authenticity, of human connection, of human development. And we're in this paradigm shift of business right now where it's not just about how much money we're making, how much profit we have, it's also about does this shit matter? Do people enjoy coming to work? Are people being developed properly? Do people find fulfillment in it? And I feel like the more we focus on the people, the less burnouts that's gonna happen, and the better society we're gonna have. And so my vision for my company is helping people develop beyond their titles. And uh, easier said than done, but we're gonna keep sticking with it. And I hope this was valuable to you. If this episode hit close to home, may have seemed kind of blotchy and choppy, which is okay. I was just reading from an iPad because I really wanted to organize, organize my thoughts for this one. Uh, please write a review, please subscribe to the channel, share it with somebody who needs to hear it. And hopefully, if you're somebody who's burning out inside an organization right now, this gave you some hope that it can get better. And if you're an executive or somebody who is a decision maker to be able to change these things in your organization, I pray that you have the courage to make changes. Thank you guys.