Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Align to lead. I'm Dr. Megan Parks, and today we're talking about real solutions for women's health, healing, and balance.
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Welcome to Align to lead. I'm Dr. Megan Parks, and today we're talking about something that too many leaders ignore until it starts costing them things such as clarity, momentum, and health, which is energy. It's not motivation. It's not image.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: It's not.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: It's real capacity. Because if I'm trying to lead well while running on depletion, eventually that deficit shows up in my decisions, my communication, and the way I build my business.
Joining me today is Jen Godet, who helps entrepreneurs and leaders build businesses that perform without burning them to the ground. Her work sits at the intersection of business strategy, human performance, leadership, and and practical AI. She helps clients protect cognitive bandwidth, improve decision making, build smarter systems, and create growth that is profitable, sustainable, and aligned with the life they actually want.
Her core message is clear. Burnout is not a leadership strategy. Chaos is not proof of importance. And smart leaders protect energy, fix root issues, and use systems and AI to reduce the noise and improve performance.
Jen, I am so glad you're here.
[00:01:25] Speaker B: Excited to be here.
[00:01:26] Speaker C: Thanks for having me.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely.
So I want to open up by reframing the way high performers think about energy.
A lot of leaders still treat exhaustion like collateral damage, as if fatigue proves commitment. But in reality, depleted leadership is expensive. It slows thinking, it shortens patience, it increases reactivity, and. And it makes even stronger businesses more fragile. This segment lets me introduce Jen's core lens. Energy is not a wellness bonus. It is a leading input.
So before we get started with strategy, Jen, I'd love to start with you personally. What first drew you to the intersection of human performance, leadership, and business in the first place?
[00:02:09] Speaker B: Well, I started my career in sports, medicine and human performance, and I worked with athletes where results mattered and excuses absolutely didn't. And what I saw over time was this. Performance is never just physical. It's mental, it's emotional, it's strategic and environmental.
And as I moved deeper into and shifted into business and leadership, I realized the exact same thing was true there. Companies don't outperform the capacity of the people who are leading them for very long.
So for me, that intersection was pretty obvious. If you want better business outcomes, you cannot ignore the human beings driving the machine.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Perfect. Well said. And that is so true. It's not one person, it's everybody around. It takes a system, and if you don't have that, you're in for trouble.
So you've worked from a performance lens for years, and now you help entrepreneurs protect cognitive bandwidth and build smarter systems.
What did you see in leaders that made you realize that burnout was not just personal, but it was operational?
[00:03:15] Speaker B: That's an excellent question. I saw the meta theme. Really? They were smart, capable leaders, and they were becoming the bottlenecks in their businesses, not because they were lazy, but because they were overloaded, they were fragmented, they were running without enough recovery time and without the right structure.
So many times they had mindset challenges around trust and letting go, which resulted in ineffective or improper delegation with micromanagement. And burnout just kept showing up. And what I was seeing was decision overload or analysis paralysis, failure to make decisions, poor decisions, and then really reactive communication and inconsistent follow through.
So what I was seeing is that was breaking down. And then their teams seemed to be waiting on a leader who had too much on their plate, too much in their head, and couldn't really articulate clearly the direction of. Of the business. And so that's not just personal burnout. What it created was operational drag. So when your leaders are fried, the business starts paying for it in speed and clarity and trust and profitability.
And it occurred to me that this is a systems problem. It's not just a burnout problem, but it's truly a systems problem, and there is a solution.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: So very true. In your opinion, why do so many entrepreneurs still wear exhaustion like it's a badge of honor instead of treating it like an early warning sign?
[00:04:49] Speaker B: A badge of honor. Listen, hustle culture has been glamorized and recovery is treated like a weakness or like a reward. After the, after you win the marathon and you exit your business, folks, like, I'm a human performance expert. Recovery has to be built in. Because if we don't build in recovery, everything that we are doing is for naught.
So many entrepreneurs were taught that if you're tired, if you're slammed, if you're carrying all the things that must mean you're important and committed. But the reality is exhaustion is not a status symbol. And it's usually just a sign that something in the system's off. A lot of times it's lack of boundaries, poor boundaries. It's poor design, poor delegation, too much noise. And the problem is, most successful entrepreneurs, we are high performers, and we don't slow down until our body or business or our relationships force the issue. And that's a really expensive way to learn.
[00:05:48] Speaker A: Absolutely. You have said so many nuggets that this audience Definitely needs to hear, I know myself, I need to hear that. But it's so true.
In your world, what is the difference between being busy, being stretched and actually being effective?
[00:06:03] Speaker B: Yeah, so busy is just doing things. It means you're in motion.
Stretched means demand is high, but your capacity is being tested. What I mean by that is you have a lot on your plate and you feel stretched when your capacity just isn't there or your team's capacity is at max.
But being effective, actually being effective with what you're doing means that your effort is producing the result that matters. And so a lot of leaders confuse activity with value and effectiveness. But what they're doing is they're answering, reacting, fixing, attending, chasing, calling it productivity.
And that's not what effectiveness. Effectiveness is crystal clear priorities and taking the aligned actions to get the results. It's doing what matters the most in a way that moves your business forward.
Busy is just burning time, effective use of time, doing the right things in order of priority and being focused builds momentum. If you're always putting out fires, folks, it means you need a sprinkler system.
[00:07:12] Speaker C: You know, let's put that into our business.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: If we feel like we have a fire every single day, that's a clue that there's a breakdown in the systems. And if we are the ones doing that, it's keeping us from actually growing, creating sustainable momentum.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: So true and so good. So when a leader's energy is low, where does that usually start showing up first? Do you feel it's in their decision fatigue, communication, drift, execution, or even just something else?
[00:07:41] Speaker B: So when it's, when it's the high performing entrepreneur or executive, it's typically decision making and communication that go first. The leader gets slower, they're less clear, they're more reactive or the other side of it. And we see this a lot in high performers. They become really strangely avoidant of issues. It's like they want to sweep things under the rug. I'll get to it later.
And so the result is they tend to overthink the simple decisions that really don't matter much. And then they rush the big decisions, often making the wrong choice because they're just overwhelmed. And as a result of that indecision or that decision fatigue, communication becomes less clear because they're no longer clear.
So expectations get muddy and the execution then starts to sleep. So slip. I think it's like the decision making and the communication causes the execution slippage because now the team's operating off of mixed signals. What is your priority? I don't know, focus on spoken us on that. Decisions have changed, so you'll see decreased productivity. But the real leak to me, it's clarity. And when clarity drops everything downstream, it becomes more expensive, the mistakes that you make.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: So for those people who don't want to go into that trap, what do you find are the earliest signs that tell you that someone's no longer leading from purpose and capacity, but unfortunately from depletion and just pure survival?
[00:09:09] Speaker B: Yeah. So what it feels like if you're a leader in this situation, it feels like you have a lack of choices. It feels like your world is closing down on you and that you're losing control.
What does it look like to the outsider or to me who comes in and tries to help them through this process? They're reactive, they're controlling, they're less strategic, and they're spending too much time putting out fires. Instead of really being strategic and thinking ahead, what our teams see is a loss of patience, a loss of perspective. And then what these leaders tend to do is chase relief instead of building momentum. So that's where the inconsistency comes in. One minute, they're all in. They're all excited and nest. They're just completely mentally checked out. That's a really big tell. If you're really excited and motivated and you get off the call and three minutes later, you're like, wa, wa wa, and you've fallen off the bandwagon, and you just can't get off the couch to do the thing that you were excited about. You are in overwhelming burnout. And so when. But. But the other side of that is when you're very clear and your priorities are aligned and you're leading from purpose, there's steadiness. You have a compass, a north star.
And whenever there is a decision to be made, a choice to be made, whether it's time, resources, et cetera, you. You operate from that standpoint, and you're able to create momentum.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: As leaders, I find we're really good about stats. But what happens when a leader shifts and they start protecting their energy the way they would revenue, top talent, or margin? What's the first change that they're going to see?
[00:10:40] Speaker B: So, like to risk sounding cliche, I would say it's clarity. And what clarity looks like is better decisions, better boundaries, better use of time. And the real thing is they exercise their no. They stop saying yes to everything and stop tolerating unnecessary noise, and they start designing the business with more intentionality instead of just sort of absorbing the pressure of the day. To day. Once that clarity improves, everything improves. It's easier to communicate. This is our number one top priority. This is what each member on the team needs to do to make that happen. Delegation improves. We're not trying to micromanage because now we're very clear in our communication so our teams know what's expected and are able to deliver. And so we're not feeling like we
[00:11:22] Speaker C: need to jump back in and do something.
[00:11:24] Speaker B: So it's sort of cascades. It's clarity, communication. Then delegation improves, execution improve, improves, and culture improves. Because now the business isn't being led
[00:11:33] Speaker C: by someone in constant, like, cognitive depth.
Their shift is powerful and everyone in
[00:11:39] Speaker B: the organization feels it.
[00:11:41] Speaker C: It shows up pretty fast.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: Thank you so much for that, Jen. That's really insightful. Coming up next, I want to widen the lens from personal energy to organizational impact, because that's happening. What's happening on the inside. A leader rarely stays there.
We'll be right back with more practical tools to help you feel healthier, stronger, and more aligned. Stay tuned.
And we're back. I'm Dr. Megan Parks, and this is aligned a lead on Now Media Television.
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Welcome back to Align to Lead. I'm here with Jen Godet, and I've been talking about energy as a leadership asset.
Now, I want to take that one step further, because a leader's internal state doesn't stay private for long. It moves into meetings, into expectations, into tone, and even into culture. And if I'm dysregulated at the top, there's a good chance my business starts reflecting it.
So this segment brings the conversation from personal performance into leadership. Influence burnout is not only something a founder feels, it becomes something a team absorbs. Fatigue at the top can normalize urgency, inconsistency, emotional unpredictability, and poor communication.
I want this part of the episode to show that the inner alignment is not soft work. It directly affects trust, morale, retention, and performance.
So, Jen, how does an overwhelmed leader unintentionally transfer stress into their culture of the business, even when they think that they're hiding it well?
[00:13:42] Speaker B: I mean, let's face it, we all put the smile on and pretend like everything's okay, but we're still people and things may be happening off scene in our personal lives or whatever. And We've been taught to just, like, put the mask on and keep going. But the reality is leaders leak. You might think you're masking it, but your team feels it. They feel it in your tone, in your pace, in your inconsistency. You may have a shorter fuse. You're shifting priorities. And the way you make people sort of like, brace before they bring you a problem, like, you can see it kind of visceral. They have this, like, reaction. And so stress at the top becomes stress system wide. So if you're carrying yourself tense and you're like, got all the things that you're juggling, your team is going to immediately feel that anxiety, that stress, and then they're going to start overthinking, they're going to hesitate, they're going to be on the defensive, and they're going to be managing your mood as a leader instead of managing the outcomes.
So that's kind of how an overwhelmed leader sort of trains an entire company to operate from tension instead of trust.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Going a little bit further into that, what happens to the team when the person at the top just continues on operating from fatigue, frustration, or chronic mental noise and they haven't addressed that themselves or they're not even aware of how they're affecting their team?
[00:15:03] Speaker B: Yeah. So think about this. Think about, you're walking into your boss. There's a problem that occurred. It was no fault of yours, but something happened and you're the one who has to bring it in. But last week you got your head bit off or you got the aggressive tone in another situation that occurred. So over time, you're now less clear, you're a little less brave going in and breaking the problem. And so you're going to be less effective. So when your leader's always running on fumes, the team starts spending energy trying to assess, well, is this the right time to go in and ask a question? Is this the right time? I'm not sure how to do this action that I'm responsible for. Is it the right time to ask them? And so they start to second guess their decisions and they wait too long, which means that there's bottlenecks happening with whatever their workflow is because they're afraid to come in and bring it to you. Because their perception is, I don't want to interrupt you. I know you've got so much on your plate. And so they start avoiding hard conversations and they lose ownership over time. What happens is the entire organization becomes reactive, not because the people are weak, but because the leadership environment is A little bit unstable. Teams don't rise above the emotional pattern of leadership for very long. They adapt to it. And so it just sort of bleeds into everyone else now.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: And as a leader, how sad is that? Like then that is the reality too. They can't.
They're creating this, this what they actually don't want to. And it's just a vicious cycle. So can you tell me what is the difference between a high standard culture and a pressure saturated culture that just honestly is quietly draining the people inside the organization?
[00:16:47] Speaker B: Yeah. So a high standard culture is very clear. They're very disciplined and they're self accountable.
A pressure saturated culture shows up with anxiety, ambiguity, they're tired, they're exhausted. There's not a high energy feel.
And when we have high standards and standards to which we hold ourselves as leaders. I need to say this because a lot of leaders, when I go in, they have a standard, but they are not living by the standard and leading by example. We can't just have a standard. We have to lead by example according to our standards. And we have to hold, hold people accountable to those. But those high standards challenge people to rise up when we're saturated in pressure. People feel like nothing is ever enough.
And you get that I'm not good enough, nothing I do is enough. And you get that sort of like I don't even know where my worth is sensation in your employees. But in a healthy culture, expectations are crystal clear, support is present and, and you don't have that constant urgency, muddy communication situation. So if you're watching this and you're a leader, a lot of leaders, they do think they're building performance when actually they're building more tension.
High performance is not high tension. There is a distinction. You can be high performing with a very calm, cool, collected, standardized, methodical operation
[00:18:19] Speaker A: that is perfectly said. I kind of want to dive a little bit more deep into that though too.
How does that leader avoid that situation? Because obviously none of us as leaders want to create a culture that's not going to make us rise. And we're really trying to help our team, but we're getting into that constant feedback loop, that constant.
I just can't break this cycle.
How can they protect themselves to avoid that or know that they're in the trap in the first place?
[00:18:51] Speaker B: Yeah. So I mean, the easy answer is if you feel like you're completely overwhelmed, that you're just one, like you're juggling all the balls and like you can't possibly take one more into your juggling, like That's a clear indication. If you feel like you're always putting out fires and you're always stressed and you can't seem to get past that, that's another indication that you're operating from this lower place, this tense, anxiety, stress
[00:19:23] Speaker C: and pressure saturated place.
[00:19:25] Speaker B: So the first thing you can do is stop.
Like stop and take a breath. And no, no leader wants to hear this. When I work with them, the first thing I do is I say, okay, you've got to take time off. I don't care if it's four hours or a day, but you need time off.
[00:19:39] Speaker C: You have to be able to distance yourself from the situation and take a breath.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: Because we're in it as leaders. We're in it and we're feeling it
[00:19:49] Speaker C: and that's where we are. And we can't actually get that objective standpoint.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: So pause, take some time off, and
[00:19:58] Speaker C: get ruthless about reducing the noise.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: No, that's what you have as priorities.
[00:20:04] Speaker B: To pick one, one top priority, no more than three business initiatives, and put
[00:20:10] Speaker C: a boundary around it and then come back to the business and articulate. What is that top priority?
[00:20:16] Speaker B: What are the three key initiatives and
[00:20:19] Speaker C: how does that look for each team member? And stop with the sloppiness, with your boundaries.
Regulate yourself, communicate very clearly, Pause, exhale, and then lead from that intention. So once you're back, it's up for us, up to us as leaders to show up, set your intention, dial in. What is that priority? What am I going to do towards that priority today? And yet get it systemized in your schedule.
Because when we are focused on that, it may mean we have to say no to some of the things that are on our calendar. Get rid of anything that's not aligned with that so that you can downregulate. And that way your team sees you leading from that. Hey, this is the priority. This is what the initiative is. Look what, what? Look what she's doing. I'm going to do that too. It becomes really kind of streamlined because intention, clear priorities, equals better communication. And then when you're taking the recovery time, it signals that your team can have permission to do the same. Because if you've been operating this way, people will stop taking their breaks. And so they're elevated too. And so if you're modeling this and you vulnerably share, hey, look, this is what I'm doing.
It gives your team the tools to do the same.
[00:21:38] Speaker A: No, that's so true. And now I'm going to hit more on a personal.
So what? Personal shifts can Help a leader create more calm, more clarity, steadiness and consistency for everyone around them.
What steps can they take?
[00:21:53] Speaker B: Yeah, so I'm a big fan. I marry the human to the business.
It starts with us in getting our recovery end. So I'm going to say something that's kind of unpopular sometimes, and that's, you have to sleep.
You have to sleep. So it starts by backing it up and asking yourself, how can I add more sleep and more recovery time so that I can actually process what's happening and wake up recovered and rejuvenated. If you're waking up every morning and you feel like you haven't slept at all, you're not getting good quality or good quantity sleep. And I would start there.
And that might mean unplugging an hour early or starting a routine that helps you relax into this. And it's not going to happen overnight, folks. And I get it like I brain dump into a journal because my brain doesn't shut off. But you have to start somewhere. So I would start with sleep. And then when you wake up, this is my morning routine. This is one of the things that I've talked about so many times, but I always wake up, I set my intention. What is my purpose for being here? What is the one thing I want to achieve today in my life? And I do the same at the start of business. What is the one thing that is the top priority in business? And what are the actions that I'm going to take today that are going to be aligned with that? When you start with intention, it helps you to sort of filter through some of the things that come up through the day. So I would start there personally and then I would ask, where are the fires or the breakdowns happening in the business? And on the business side, what is the one system that if I were to put this in today, it would alleviate all of these fires that keep happening? And just one, you focus on just one. Overwhelm is simply attempting to try to solve too many problems at the same time. If you pick one and you focus on it and you fix the one problem, yes, there's others, but you can actually drive yourself to completion and help your team to drive to completion, and they will see the results and we'll just stack that, we'll go to the next and the next, and it becomes a systematic improvement over time.
[00:23:49] Speaker A: That's such good advice because honestly, if you're not setting your intention, that intention gets set for you whether you like it or not.
Up next, I want to go deeper because Sustainable change usually begins when I stop managing symptoms and start confronting what is actually driving the problem.
We'll be right back with more practical tools to help you feel healthier, stronger, and more aligned. Stay tuned.
And we're back. I'm Dr. Megan Parks, and this is Align to Lead on Now Media Television.
Welcome back. I'm continuing this conversation with Jen Godet, and this is where I think so. So many leaders get stuck. They know something is off, so they try to fix the visible symptoms. Better scheduling, another app, a productivity hack, one more push. But if the real issue is deeper depletion, misalignment, unclear boundaries, or a broken operating pattern, the fix never really holds.
This is the depth segment. I want to position Jen as not as someone offering surface level optimization, but but as someone who helps leaders identify root causes. A lot of high performers are not failing because they lack discipline. They are stuck because they're solving the wrong problems. This part of the conversation should help the audience distinguish between the coping mechanisms and the actual transformation.
Jen, what would you say are the most common symptoms entrepreneurs try to manage? Overwork, procrastination, inconsistency, decision fatigue, disengagement, without actually addressing the deeper cause.
[00:25:33] Speaker B: You didn't give me like, e all of the above selection, but I would say all of the above overwork is a big one. Scattered focus and decision fatigue. Do you want me to do it again really big as well?
All of these are symptoms underneath.
We've talked about this earlier in the show.
Often it's unclear priorities, poor boundaries, nervous system overload, lack of recovery, founder dependence, and a business model or leadership pattern that no longer fits this stage of growth.
So a lot of people start a business and they do the things to get to a level of success.
And what they think that what got them to that level of initial success is only going to result in burnout and depletion if they just try to keep doing more and more and more of that.
We have to change our strategy. We have to evolve our systems as our businesses grow. And so a lot of smart people have gotten to the stage and they
[00:26:38] Speaker C: just keep trying to double down.
[00:26:39] Speaker B: Because we hear that, right? We hear double down, do more of
[00:26:42] Speaker C: the same, but we don't know what to double down on or what's working in this next phase.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: So what you really need is a
[00:26:50] Speaker C: systems upgrade and you need to be
[00:26:52] Speaker B: very crystal clear about where are we
[00:26:53] Speaker C: going, what are the biggest problems in our business, and how do I unblock those stuck points, Those. Those.
Those areas where we're sort of Blocked with a system that's going to allow myself and my team to continue us
[00:27:08] Speaker A: in the growth pattern that is so good. Why do you feel so many productivity fixes fail when the real issue is internal depletion, misalignment, or honestly, a leadership identity that no longer fits into the business?
[00:27:23] Speaker B: Yeah, we're seeing that a lot right now with AI, people are trying to lead the way they did five, 10 years ago. That kind of leadership is dead, folks. Like now. Leadership requires us to be innovative. It requires us to foster a psychological safe space so that teams can fail forward. Like, the reality is anybody who says they're an expert in this space right now is lying to you because business and leadership have evolved so much and now we're dealing with AI employees, if you will. So it's a virtual team, it's not just another spreadsheet. So the reality is, to get back to your question, why don't the productivity fixes work? It's because you can't out hack a system that's fundamentally not working for your business anymore. So if you're depleted, if you're disconnected from what matters, or you're still operating like the business in its earlier stages, no app or color coded calendar and people can hate on me for this is going to save you.
Like no hack will save you. Productivity tools only help when the foundation is sound. They don't fix your identity issues, your boundary, product problems, the leadership habits that are breaking your business.
So you may be becoming a little more organized, but you're not solving the right problem. It's time to take a brutally honest look at yourself, your priorities, and understand where, where there is a misalignment in your business.
[00:28:44] Speaker A: No, I love that. And with that, it makes me curious in the leaders that you work with, what root issues keep showing up underneath the visible chaos.
[00:28:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, we've sort of beaten this into it, into submission, but they're not clear what their priorities are. It's poor boundaries, it's lack of recovery, it's poor delegation. One of the biggest things I see is founder dependence and it's baked into the business model. What does that mean, Jen? That means that me as the founder, as the entrepreneur, every decision has to come past me. Everything that that happens, I need to have my stamp of approval on. That is killing your business.
We have to evolve our mindset and trust that we have hired people smarter than us to carry that torch and do things. And actually, I just talked about this with a client this morning.
Letting go is one of the hardest Things that we can do as an entrepreneur because our blood and sweat and tears have buil this business and no one, literally no one we hire will ever do things exactly as we do, with the same fire as us.
So it's time for us to manage our expectations.
And I think the easy thing to do is look at your week and pay attention to what you're spending time on. Write it down. How much time are you spending on all the things what tasks are repeatable, predictable and happen regularly. Because if it's predictable, it's repeatable, it happens regularly in your day. That's something that can either be automated and or delegated.
So that's a really good thing for you. If you're in this kind of overwhelm, look at that and, and write down the things that you need to stop doing. A stop doing list is so powerful because as a leader and an entrepreneur in a growing company, if I'm doing all the admin tasks I'm doing, I'm not, I'm not utilizing my best use. My best use is how do I grow the business?
Period. End of story. If I'm doing the day to day, I need to remove myself. So that's really what founder dependence baked in is. We have to empower the people we surround ourselves with to make some of those decisions so they don't have to come through us every step of the way. We don't have to carry everything because that just creates chaos and bottlenecks.
So I guess I would say what keeps showing up is not a capability issue, it's their operating system has to
[00:31:07] Speaker C: evolve with the business.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: Both their personal human operating system and the systems that they need to scale.
[00:31:13] Speaker A: Guys, everybody should be taking notes on that. That is perfect. She gave us so many different ways to avoid different things that different chaotic things. But she also gave us ways to really find the problem, really get it, and to help our team.
I'm going to shift now into the AI space since you've hit it. We can't practice the same way that we practiced five years ago.
So where can practical AI and smarter systems generally help reduce the noise? And where do leaders misuse the tools because they're still avoiding the root issues?
[00:31:50] Speaker B: Yeah. So I use AI full disclosure all day long in all of my businesses. I have AI businesses. I am a partner in an AI agency where we provide tools that help entrepreneurs in this way.
And so I would say that AI is really great for reducing mental clutter. It's even better at helping us speed up analysis.
It improves our Decision support. AI brings so much information and puts it into a way that we can look at it and have more data in front of us to make a better, more informed decision. So it kind of improves our decision support. We can also leverage AI to tighten our workflows and to help our teams move faster with more consistency.
So, absolutely. Does it and can it reduce noise? Yes, but it gets misused a lot when leaders try to automate what they're doing, but they're confused, they're not clear, they don't have a very clear understanding of the extent of the process that they're trying to automate. And so what happens is you have a broken process or you're missing steps, your priorities are unclear, or the team doesn't know how to execute. And all that AI does when you're in that scenario is help you make a mess faster.
So tools are really powerful. They are not therapy, they are not leadership. They work best when we know exactly every step in a process. It's a repeatable process with a predictable outcome.
And the most important part is we know when not to use them. And AI should never replace our strategic decision making, because that truly should remain with the humans.
So it's kind of an interesting time that we're in, but it's forcing us to look at what we're doing in our systems because we can't automate, we can't delegate, we can't get things off our plate. If we can't hand a book over to a human and them know exactly step by step without coming to us every step of the process, then that AI isn't going to do what you
[00:33:50] Speaker C: want it to do.
[00:33:51] Speaker A: Such a good point. That is a really good point.
[00:33:54] Speaker C: That's trust.
[00:33:55] Speaker A: Mm. And honestly, I feel like that stems from real transformation and going into real transformation. What does real transformation require that quick fixes just truly never can get?
[00:34:08] Speaker B: Now you're in my superpower. Brutal honesty.
I love that brutal honesty about who you are, how you're operating your business, what's right, wrong, and what needs to be up leveled.
Real transformation is about pattern recognition and the willingness to change how you as a leader operate, not just what app you use.
Because I'll tell you that 99% of the time, the real source of friction is being unwilling to let go of habits that worked before but are now costing you. Quick fixes sound nice? Everybody wants AI to be a magic bullet. And they're appealing because they don't mean anything. Everybody wants a magic pill to fix everything.
Transformation requires you to Actually shift your behavior to hold to what your priorities are and set boundaries to uplevel your systems. And sometimes we even have to uplevel our identity and our personal operating system, because if we don't, we just stay stuck in who we are or who we are to get to where we are. And that's why we can't get to that next level.
[00:35:16] Speaker A: And it's so much easier to just create the systems and have everybody else follow us. But leading our own self is the really big issue. And really taking off those blinders and saying maybe I'm a little bit of the problem too.
In our final segment, I want to leave people with something practical and hopeful.
How to rebuild motivation and momentum without falling right back into the habits that cause caused the burnout in the first place.
We'll be right back with more practical tools to help you feel healthier, stronger and more aligned. Stay tuned.
And we're back. I'm Dr. Megan Parks and this is Aligned A Lead on Now Media Television.
If you want more episodes like this, you can watch NOW Media TV live or on demand, download the app on Roku or iOS, and catch the podcast at NowMedia TV.
Welcome back to our final segment of Align to Lead. I'm here with Jen Gode and we've talked about energy, culture and root cause transformation.
Now, I want to finish with the question a lot of leaders basically quietly carry. Once my spark is gone, how do I get it back without going right back into overdrive?
So I want to start this last segment and I wanted to feel practical, grounded and hopeful.
Motivation does matter, but not in the performative way people talk about it online.
Real motivation is easier to stain. When my life, my business, and my leadership patterns are no longer working against me, this is where the audience gets a healthier model for rebuilding momentum.
Jen, when an entrepreneur loses their spark, what is the most common mistake that they make when trying to get it back?
[00:37:06] Speaker B: They try to force it.
They pile on more goals, more pressure, more hustle, and a little bit of caffeine. Because isn't that why they invented coffee,
[00:37:15] Speaker C: so that we could do more?
[00:37:16] Speaker B: And then they call out motivation. But the reality is the spark went out because the system was draining them. Pushing harder only throws more fuel on that fire, and that's a problem. So motivation isn't recovered by adding more intensity, folks. Yes, for the people in the bat, motivation is not recovered by adding more intensity. It's recovered by removing what's creating friction and, and that allows you to react, reconnect to your clarity, your Clarity, your purpose, your passion.
So most people do the opposite. Today's the day that you know that if that's what you've been doing, stop, press, pause, and reconnect with what is getting in the way, what is. What is causing the friction, and remove that.
[00:38:00] Speaker A: Great point. And I feel like many times as leaders, we just constantly want to just keep pushing. We just need to do more. You know, obviously it wasn't working. I just need to work harder. However, with that being said, why does pushing harder usually make burnout worse instead of solving it?
[00:38:16] Speaker B: Well, burnout's not a sign you need to squeeze more juice out of that lemon. It's kind of a sign that something's broken in the way that you're operating. When people are pushing harder from depletion, all you're doing is, is you're feeling resentment about it, you're increasing your stress, and as a result, your thinking narrows. And what happens then is you make worse decisions, and then you drain the little capacity that you had left, and you're reacting all the time instead of improving your performance.
So the. The answer, it's not more effort.
It's a better design, a better recovery, and a smarter way of leading. So what do I need to do in my business? What operating system?
[00:38:57] Speaker C: What do I need to.
[00:38:59] Speaker B: To support where my business is today and then build some recovery time?
[00:39:04] Speaker C: I call it white space.
[00:39:05] Speaker B: I am a huge fan of building white space into your calendar. And we talk about this. You should always have. As an entrepreneur, and I understand if you're a solopreneur and you wear all the hats. I get it, we've all been there.
[00:39:18] Speaker C: But you have to set aside, even if it's just 15 minutes a day in your workday for strategic thinking and
[00:39:25] Speaker B: solve one problem in your business.
[00:39:26] Speaker C: Because if you do that, or you brainstorm how to solve one problem and then the next day, you use that time to actually start to solve that problem. Maybe it's researching what is the system, whatever that looks like for you.
When you have that time set aside, you're able to focus on working on the business and actually get out of the rut that you're in. The other side of this is white space is there, so you can just have time for your brain to relax and rest and actually foster that recovery that you need. And sometimes when we step away, this is why when you go on vacation and you come back, all of a sudden, everything you see so much more clearly. It's because you let it go and you actually got the recovery you Need.
So try building in a little bit of recovery every hour and do something like a little movement snack. Maybe do some squats or walk to the water cooler or walk around the block. Like change your body movement a little bit every hour and build in that little bit of white space to give your brain a break so that you can come back with fresh eyes.
[00:40:27] Speaker A: I love that. That is such a great way to teach people how to reconnect with their drive in a way that's healthy and sustainable and it's not fueled by panic. So how would you say you help leaders rebuild momentum without recreating that same habits, the same expectations, the same operating patterns that drain them in the first place?
[00:40:48] Speaker B: Well, I'll tell you, it starts with being brutally honest about what's draining you because a lot of people will not see, say that up front or like, it's really hard to look in the mirror and say, hey, I'm the problem. But the reality is, is almost all the time, we are the problem in our business and the bottleneck. So it really is, it starts with looking at the whole operating system, everything that is our business, not just our to do list. Okay. And then setting very clear priorities. If we are bleeding money and we have tons of leads but we're not closing them, we need to have, we need to fix our sales process. How do we close more of the leads that are coming in?
If we're selling a $2 hamburger for $2, a hamburger for $2, but it cost us $2.50 to make that hamburger, we're always going to lose money. So we need to look at our operating expenses. What do we need to do? Do we need to raise our prices? Do we like, we have to solve the problems with prioritization.
[00:41:44] Speaker C: That makes sense.
[00:41:46] Speaker B: So look at the system, clean up your priorities. Remember one top priority, no more than three initiatives.
And then ask yourself, how do I reduce my business's dependence on me? This means delegating. This means trusting our people. This means simplifying our workflow. It means building better decision support. And yes, AI is a great tool to use for this, but it's all about looking at us and how we're leading ourselves because we keep the same habits of over commitment, of reactivity, of core boundaries. The burnout is just going to come back wearing a different coat.
Sustainable momentum really comes from clean systems, better leadership, and up leveling every step of the process.
[00:42:28] Speaker A: You've hit upon boundaries quite a few times and I love that. And so once that leader actually can get their motivation back how does boundaries help them succeed?
[00:42:41] Speaker B: Yeah. So boundaries protect your energy. We started on the energy conversation. Energy protects your motivation.
So boundaries are literally the fence around your. Your energy, if you will.
Imagine a fence in your house and you put your dog out and your dog is able to be in your yard, but he doesn't get out of your yard because you have that fence around it. But if you have like only the studs every seven feet instead of a clear fence, that's. That's keeping them in, he can get out and go elsewhere. The same thing happens with us. If we have leaky boundaries, then our
[00:43:20] Speaker C: energy is leaking out everywhere.
[00:43:22] Speaker B: So when, when we say when we set our priorities and everything that we
[00:43:26] Speaker C: say yes to aligns with our priorities, we are actually taking control. And operating from a place of intention and focus is about saying no. We have to say no in order to say yes to what matters most to us. So when we protect that, protecting our yes motivation is going to be there.
[00:43:47] Speaker B: We're going to be able to grow.
[00:43:49] Speaker C: And I mean, I wrote a book about this in 2019 because it was like literally a big challenge for me too. And I had a hard time saying no. So if that's for you, I'm going to give you the formula from that book. If I was to give you the super Cliff Notes.
Always when somebody comes to you, if it's not within your priorities, if there's a maybe it's a potential client, maybe it's a potential partnership or some sort of opportunity, but it doesn't align with your top priorities right now. You have to say no because that's going to deviate from where you're going.
And so, but you. But there's a way to do it without damaging that relationship. And it looks like this. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Validate what they want. I understand that you're looking for a consultant in your business to grow and then you insert the boundary. Unfortunately, right now my calendar is full.
But offer something of value to them. Here's a resource that you can use if you really are interested in working with me. But you need to wait until we have a spot or here is someone else. Here's a referral to somebody who can get you seen or get you in right now because they have the capacity and they really focus on working with businesses in your particular industry at your stage of growth. Right. Boundaries look like adding value and not just saying no so that you can continue to go in alignment with your path. Focus on your priorities, grow your business while also adding value to others and then who knows, maybe that opens up another door later on when you have the capacity for it.
[00:45:20] Speaker A: What if I'm sitting here and I'm watching this and I'm like, wow, she is speaking to me.
What daily or weekly practices can I start now so that I become less reactive to the stress around me so I don't make the same mistakes over and over again?
[00:45:36] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm a big fan of bookending your week with CEO time. I have CEO Mondays. It's actually a mastermind and we meet on Monday mornings and we start with setting our attention. What is it that, what is our top priority for the week? What are the three actions that have to occur this week and what does success look like? And then on Friday at end of day or Saturday in the morning, whatever your end of week is, these were my priorities. Did I do the actions?
[00:45:59] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:45:59] Speaker B: No. Did I achieve what I said?
[00:46:01] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:46:01] Speaker B: No. What went wrong? What do I need to set up for next week? So bookending that and then putting your daily white space in for thinking instead of just reacting. I think those clear blocks are very important. And then build your recovery into your schedule, even if it's five minutes every hour and use that as a part of your schedule and non negotiable. It's not a reward. It's literally there so that you can recover your brain and continue to operate through the rest of your day.
[00:46:27] Speaker A: Jen, this has been such a strong, amazing conversation. I feel like a session. So many people could get help and to be less reactive and have a better, stronger team.
Where can people follow your work or connect with you and learn more about the ways you support leaders who want high performance without that self destruction.
[00:46:47] Speaker B: Yeah. My favorite way for people to reach out to me is on LinkedIn. You can join me on LinkedIn. Send me a message, a DM.
Follow me. I share a lot of practical insights on leadership, business strategy, AI sustainable performance.
And then you can connect with me through my website. You can reach out directly.
I host Power, CEOs and Vital Signs here on Now Media. Those are all great opportunities for more value.
But I think the moral of the story is that listen folks, the habits that have you burning out, that's an expensive habit. Please do something today before your health or makes you or forces you to do something. Pick one thing from what we talked
[00:47:30] Speaker C: about this week where you can reduce
[00:47:32] Speaker B: that noise or that load and put it into action. Because if you listen for an hour, that's worthless.
Really. You have to take action in order to see positive momentum. So pick one thing, just one thing so that you're not in overwhelm and take action on it and just let
[00:47:46] Speaker C: your habits stack in that fashion.
[00:47:48] Speaker A: Jen, thank you so much for this conversation and what I truly appreciated about your message is that it doesn't romanticize burnout and and it doesn't reduce leadership to hustle. So today we talked about energy as a business asset the way a leader's internal state and shape culture.
It's everything around us why symptom management keeps people stuck and how to rebuild motivation without repeating the same destructive cycle that you're really trying to break.
And to everyone watching if your health, your focus and your peace are paying for your growth that is not sustainable leadership protecting your energy is not selfish. It is strategic. It is responsible and it may be one of the most important decisions you make for the future of your business and your life. I'm Dr. Megan Parks. Thank you for joining me on Align to Lead. I'll see you next time.
[00:48:51] Speaker B: Sam.
