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Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Yes, welcome to the best communication Show. I’m your host Bill Lampton, discussing communication tips and strategies that will boost your business. And I know they will boost mine as well. Thanks for being with us either on video, our podcast. Great to have you here for this discussion. And our guest today is one that I’ve hosted numerous times on the biz communication show she’s a valuable resource. Her name is Dawn Echols. Dawn is a licensed professional counselor, based in the Greater Atlanta area, and Gainesville, Georgia where my operation is based. She’s a counselor and life coach who has been a guest on this program frequently as I mentioned, and I’m delighted to welcome her again. For 10 years she has headed her own firm, Dawning Phoexnix, She’s the owner and Executive Director, Dawn helps clients cope with life’s daily issues and challenges. I have to put in here that her background shows what a versatile person she is. She’s taught classical music. She’s broken sales records in the insurance industry, taught psychology at a university, worked in customer service sales and as a marketing consultant. So when she counsels people, she comes to them with many experiences of her own. And so join me please in welcoming Dawn
Dawn Echols
Hello, Dr. Bill, it’s so great to be with you again today.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
It’s great to be with you. And we’re going to discuss some issues which are vital for business professionals to consider. And to begin with Dawn, one of the points that I want us to explore is the bit of people who, in the business and professional world feel that they simply must work 70 hours a week or more, if they’re going to be a success. Some complain about it say I’m sorry, that’s just what I have to do others boast about it that this is a point of pride. So as a professional counselor who deals with people, so often, my question to you to begin with is what impact does it have on a person long range, if they consistently without much exception, put in 70 hours plus weeks in their job?
Dawn Echols
It can for depending on the person, I think it’s important to first qualify that some people really enjoy energized they have, they love their work, there’s not a day, you know that that famous saying, If you love what you do you want to work a day in your life. There’s the other piece of that, though, that also says that if a person especially in a corporate job, and this is true for self employed people, but because they feel they have a certain level of control over what they’re doing, you hear it less often from self employed people, their stress is a little bit different times, but a corporate or an employed person on salary or hourly, if you push them and and they’re feeling that they can’t or their perception is that they can’t limit and take breaks, they are going to burn out the or they will be exhausted or they’re productive, productivity will be reduced. And it can take a long term physical health till it shows up first, most often in rare usually mental health. And that’s true more that’s a Western kind of culture rise to answer. Some people will experience it more physically, especially if they don’t think of themselves or their belief system doesn’t allow them to meaning all of us have beliefs. And they may say well, it’s not okay for me to complain or not be mentally well, and so then it’ll pop up as sleep problems, headaches, gastro intestinal distress, other things which can have biological perk points to it. But usually, you know, in this case, when we look at stress on the job, stress is a powerful indicator on our physical health, not just our mental health, and it can take a toll and that kind of work schedule without any unplugged time or without a break or without recreation can then lead to stress and illness.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
And one thing about it done that stress which develops almost inevitably is not Stress that that individual alone feels everybody around them is going to feel it. I had a boss one time for five years, who had absolutely no hobby, no time away from his work note diversion. And I can well remember one time, we were all sitting around chatting, the the, I guess we’d call it the cabinet of this, this college, the chief administrators. And in our discussion we started talking about, well, what do you do in your spare time? And when it got to him, he said, Well, I go into the office, and I catch up on the mail that I haven’t gotten to for that week. And I can tell you the stress level that this college president felt was not refined, confined to himself, it’s automatically going to impact the team as well, don’t you think?
Dawn Echols
Oh, it’s gonna roll downhill then. And that’s poor modeling on the job as a leader, you know, leadership skills are so critical, because they are involved with people and people. You know, I saw something the other day, people, not profits. And I thought, well, you know, a corporate organization has an obligation to its stakeholders to make a profit. And that includes employees, because without a profit, there lose their job. But the other piece of that is maybe people then profits I thought would make a great tagline. Because if you can focus on the people, and you can help grow them, develop them, support them, and let them know that they’re valuable. And that can be a challenge for leaders. It’s not because leaders are bad when that’s happening. But in the case you’re talking about, that’s a leader who’s missing a life balance. And I have a you reminded me when you were talking, I thought of another classmate and colleague of mine, who’s been a practice owner now for a number of years as well. And she went on and got her doctorate. And she authored a theory called individualized balanced awareness during her doctoral program doing research name is Dr. Barnes, and she’s in Woodstock. And she talks about that you create this wheel. And this was evidence base where she was able to show this, that you’ve worked with each client and counseling on what does their wheel of balance look like? But it still has those domains in it, the personal domain, recreation and fun. For some people, that’s a spiritual and really, it’s for everyone I love and one of the professional associations I’m a member of, they now said, you know, hey, we’re forgetting to include atheism in spirituality. That is a belief system that people hold and you don’t want them to feel like you don’t understand or can’t consider that, like we, we used to think of, oh, well, if they’re not religious in this traditional way, or whatever, then okay, we don’t have to worry about spirituality. And some people have been doing some trainings that said, hey, spirituality is a constellation of beliefs. Dr. Barnes says that in her book she authored about everyday man daily meds, I think I forget the title, I have it. And I think it’s on my website. And so it’s this idea that we’ve got to find the balance for ourselves, that works for us. And it reminds me of Mary Kay Sales Director. Years ago, I heard my mother was a Mary Kay sales director, and I would go to Sales trainings with her, I learned tremendous amount of information, and got great skills doing that. And this, she talked about thinking, she talked about the domains of your life as the four wheels of your car. And she said, if one of your wheels is flat, your car is going to be going bump, bump, bump. And she said, You have to have air in every area of your life and keep that balance. So everything runs smoothly. And it’s different for each person, but they need to, it’s it’s, it’s not they need, it’s good for them to know, what is what works for them. And then if their employer can respect that and try to figure out and that’s the challenge of leaders today, in in jobs, where they’ve got people is, each person is a little bit different. And the leader is charged with trying to implement procedures in order for things to get done. And sometimes we also have to balance that to in addition to this idea that we’re talking about, we need to be conned ourselves, we need to be compassionate. We need to understand when you’d have awareness, that’s a very kind of Western influence sort of idea in some ways. And it’s but there’s also this idea that sometimes we’ve got to figure out how to meet reasonable expectations on the job that we may not like and that’s where the concept of radical acceptance comes in that, Hey, I can’t change this, but I can change how I respond or react to it.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
One thought that I came up with just just happened to within the past year. When we think about how many hours people work. One thought I came up with Dawn is this. It’s not how many hours we put into our work. It’s how much work we put into our hours. Yes, so what what do you really measure on an employee’s effectiveness effectiveness? How long there there are, what did they accomplish?
Dawn Echols
It seems to always work better depends on the industry. I know because sometimes it is, you know, like in manufacturing, they’ve got shifts and things like that. But even in that, if you’ve got an alert person on a manufacturing line, they are going to get more units out. If they’re refreshed, and energized, then if they’ve been on too many shifts without a break 1330 days with no days off because of pressures. And that’s the end, your question is very relevant, Dr. Bill, because there’s a lot of conversation right now around the labor crisis. And there’s pressure on these great employees that produce can do more and more and more because they’ve lost other qualified people. And what you got to understand is, if we can’t figure out as leaders in those roles, what to do, how to model it ourselves, as well as do it for people that work for us, how do we help them? Or how do we support them? And how do we understand while still expecting them to meet certain standards, I mean, that’s the job. But if you’ve got somebody that’s been working, and I’ve had a client who reported working, I think I’m trying to remember if it was more than 21 days without a shift off, and, and feeling like you couldn’t ask, and when that happens, you’re talking about someone who’s going to become fatigued if they’re not already. And that leads to errors. So productivity is about the level of energy and focus you can bring to the job, how much how rested, how how much your brain is firing, you know, how not being distracted from the task at hand, and things like that. And that, and that’s what some, some employers are saying, they’ve now gone to a mixed model with the work from home versus coming in. Because there are some employees that did better at home in productivity markers and quality. Because for them, it just works for their life at this time. And other employees will say that is not working, I need to come back, what have we got to do? And they come back in because they thrive on the face to face interaction, teamwork come up camaraderie that happens in the break room or over the water fountain type thing. And so I think your your question is very well targeted for today. And if you we can do so much more if we come well rested? And in that question, it reminded me that when I was studying classical music at Georgia State University, I would be you’d want to be in the practice room and classical pianists practice for long hours. So to jazz pianist and others band, you’ll hear, you know, very successful band people. Now they love it, and they’ll get in a jam session. It’s called flow. And they can play for hours, because it’s so they love it so much. They’re not the least bit tired. It’s one of the things that performers have to work on at night, is if they have a concert, they they’re so charged up from the performance, it takes a while to shift down so they can go to bed and sleep. And so it’s this idea that when we’re in flow, we get so much done and that and that’s a great place to be our brain is operating all have neurons are firing, and everything is kind of coming together very well. We can always have that the more often we’re in that the better off we are.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Thank you. And we’ll pursue that in just a minute after this word about business communication. Do you wish you felt confident about giving speeches? Do you Well, that didn’t show this time. Okay, we’ll pursue our conversation down what I wanted to check with you on next and very much related to this and you pretty well alluded to it is the matter of how much sleep we get. I know Ariana Huffington who’s who’s very well known to business leaders, because of the Huffington Post, and she’s been a in the limelight of the professional world for a long time. Ariana Huffington, at least over the past couple of years, I’ve been reading her comments that if you want to be highly productive, if you want to excel, if you want to move up in your career, then the best way to do that is to get eight hours of sleep a night.
Dawn Echols
And there’s definitely there’s a there’s some differing things that are happening in sleep study research. They’re different people do have different requirements for sleep, but the body still needs rest, including the complete rest that comes with sleep because the brain is still working while the body is asleep. So there are there’s not not everyone needs to sleep the exact amount of time and some people require more in order to feel energized. You’ll find that if you’ve if you interview like going all the way back to thinking go rich, grow rich and some of the high producers and movers and shakers in business that have all looked at these things he talked about you’ll find that people who are in that kind of a You’re studying and improving themselves and want to constantly increase their productivity. And they’ll work, you know, 60 hours and never report being tired. Not that’s not true for everybody. But they’ll talk about that they might take power naps, and that. So some sleep studies show that we don’t have to sleep all the way through the night, eight hours straight without ever breaking up. But that tends to be what we look for first, and then you and then if you look at some of the other studies, they say, Well, if a person sleeps in their sleeping well, for three hours, they wake up and go back to sleep. And they sleep at least another three hours very well, as long as it’s not disrupted, and the person feels rested. There’s some stuff that said in agrarian societies, people, you know, work following nature. And they slept following nature. So their sleep schedule actually suited more, not just daylight, but the seasons. But yes, there is definitely we, you know, less than six hours for anyone is really, I’ve not ever read a study that says that less than six hours can be sustained.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Well, I’m one of the things, of course, that all of us are familiar with, not just because of movies, but because of what we hear on the news. Many times, if you deprive someone of sleep long enough, say, person who’s in jail or in prison, and you’re trying to get them to confess, they’ll say anything. Yeah, just just to get some sleep. Depriving somebody of sleep is is one of the worst bits of torture that you can possibly think of. Now, what we’re really looking at here in the overview is how business leaders Don can look at certain life patterns that they have, and by possibly shifting them maybe become more productive. And this brings me to the final question. And that is talking about sabbaticals. I know the minister of the church I belong to recently got back from a three month sabbatical. And that church, if you have served for seven years, and the other had been ministers position, you are entitled to a three month sabbatical. And I know you’ve talked to me about sabbaticals. I suppose some people say, Oh, I could never get away, my business would would, would fail. I would I would feel too anxious all the time. Talk to us a couple of minutes about why we would take a sabbatical and what the value could be.
Dawn Echols
And yes, thank you. I think that’s a good question. And some of the things I’ve experienced in considering a sabbatical and planning to take one because it was there. In my case, as in healthcare, it became the right thing to do to try to continue to serve at a at a high level to provide quality services, and keep a balance in my life. And in the things that you think about when you go through that. Of course, there’s the first thing is, I can’t afford it. That’s the first thought anyone’s generally going to have, if you work for someone, oh, they’re not going to be at my job won’t be there, they’re not going to let me do it. Because we’re talking about a leave that is not a one week vacation, or even a two week vacation. It’s it’s a different concept. It’s this idea of you unplugging on unplugging, not just from devices, like we talked about, but people in your normal routine, and taking a true and genuine deep rest. And so that in in serving industries, like your pastor, that’s more common. And that’s it’s interesting, because that may be dated all the way back to some ancient wisdom, just like we hear monks talk about quiet time and meditation and things like that. So your first thought is, I can’t afford it. Your second thought is, you know, my business can’t sustain. Then there’s the guilt that says, What’s wrong with me that I have to do this? You know, other people aren’t doing this, you know, and it’s not about other people. You know, I’m trying to think of the way I want to put that it’s, it’s not about whether they should either, because their life balance is different. I have friends who are counselors who may want a sabbatical, and can’t take one legitimately because of their job or their finances. There are others who may not need one at the same time. And that’s where the guilt I’m talking about. You might look at your co workers and say, well, if they don’t need one, and they work hard, What’s my problem? Why do I need one? And it’s really more about understanding ourselves. And if we can take one, you kind of have to break down. How if I were to do this, how can I do it? How can we make this work? If you’re a leader, how can you plan to allow your people can you give them if you no longer than two or three weeks off, quote is not working because a lot of professors and stuff will sometimes take sabbaticals or they’ll take it Research breaks, they’ll go somewhere they’ll do off site at another college, they’ll get away from meetings, they’ll get really involved in a topic of passion for them. And they come back energized as a professor when they do that. So sabbaticals is kind of used to be anyway, a little more common in universities. I’ve talked to professors here at some of the Gainesville universities that have done that, and they come back better prepared and more energized to teach. And they’re more involved with their students, because they’ve had that chance to not be interrupted to be out of their daily routine, and, and kind of focus on something very specific. So if we’re leading people, and they need that, we’ve got to figure out maybe, how can we provide that? And if that’s not realistic, given the challenges in front of us for a multitude of reasons? And that’s after you really think through? Is it just that I believe it’s not possible? Or is it really not practical, because there’s the reality that for some people, that’s just not going to be doable, if we can find ways to pay as, as organizations, that’s great, but that I can tell you as a small business, that’s not always sustainable either. So maybe many breaks, even in the daytime, you know, at work if that, like there’s a concept now in the schools that provide a quiet room, sometimes they call it the engine room for kids to go to when they’re feeling overloaded. And they get to go to this quiet room that doesn’t, it’s got the lights are down, and it has different things they can do. Whether it’s smooshy cushions or quiet tan, or a dark, dark tent, and the lights are down or something that clay they can work with something that provides their senses with something other than what the classroom is, and they get to rebalance their engine is what the schools will call that. So if we can provide that as leaders and kind of give them a say, go take 10 minutes or go check 30 minutes, you’re you have to leave. And that’s probably why a lot of doctors, as annoying as it might be to US patients. That’s why they close for an hour.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Done, I think all of this has been so fascinating to me, it boils down to, to this and I hadn’t even thought about this. It’s our theme, but it sort of pulls together this way. If you can’t, if you don’t take care of yourself, there’s no way you can take care of other people, your business, your employees, your clients, your potential clients, your groups that you belong to you first, and I would imagine this as a part of your counseling, you first quit trying to take care of everybody else, you got to first take care of yourself, right?
Dawn Echols
Just like they say on the airplane, put the mask on so that you can still breathe to put it on your child
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
will get an allergy. Done. As always, it’s a pleasure and a privilege to have you on both the video portion and the podcast. I know there are those who will want to get in touch with you. So please give us your contact information.
Dawn Echols
Thank you so much. My company is Dawning Phoenix. It’s based out of Gainesville, Georgia, we offer in person and virtual sessions. And my telephone number is 678-802-9591. And our website is dawningphoenix.com. We have a blog called therapists corner there as well as a number of different things about services. So that’s my contact info.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Thank you, Dawn. And since you’ve given yours, I’m very happy to give mine I first of all would invite our viewers and listeners to go to my YouTube channel. And when you go to YouTube, look at the search area and type in my YouTube name Bill Lampton PhD, go to my channel, and I strongly encourage you to hit the subscribe button, because you will have an opportunity to look at all of the interviews I’ve hosted with these business professional experts. And also say some instructional videos of my own. And as a subscriber, you will see have access to future presentations as well. And then too, of course, I suggest that you look at my website. Biz, since I’m the best communication guy is biz communication guy.com. And there you will find out my services to corporations and leaders. And then after you’ve done that, and you can see where there’s a fit, give me a phone call 678-316-4300. And when you do that, at no cost on an initial introductory call, I’ll be happy to hear about your communication challenges and problems and how I can assist you with them. I want to thank Don again for being with us. Dawn would you sum it up within a word or two and in closing thought,
Dawn Echols
thank you so much. I would encourage each listener to do determine what the balance is for you, and to work to achieve that and then set an example for the others in your life on how they try to inspire and encourage them to do the same.
Bill Lampton Ph.D.
Excellent. Thank you again and thanks to those of you who are with us. Be with us for the next edition of the biz communication show.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
