EP43 | Resilient Leadership: Navigating Burnout, Change, and High-Pressure Environments ft. Ensono

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Sharma. I'm the CEO of uh, decla. Uh, today we are going to talk about, uh, resilient leadership. And with me I have someone who has built, uh, a career using resilience, um, in our career path. Uh, she has, uh, under her belt, big wins, uh, she has always dreamt big and uh, fast forward, uh, juggled a lot of roles, uh, within the various enterprise she has, um, belonged to. Kelly is a, um, methodical strategist, um, always asking what really she can do for her team. And I feel that her experiences, uh, her battle scars, uh, scaling and growing organizations would help our audience today, um, and be inspired about the do's and the don'ts as you build your career, extend your career into leadership and many more. So join me in welcoming Kelly.

Speaker A: Thank you, Sanjay. What a very gracious introduction. And by the way, coming from you, who I respect so much as you know, means a lot to me, um, thinking about this conversation, you've always kind of been my professional Oprah, if you will, so you might get a few tears out of me. Who knows, we'll definitely have a few laughs, um, along the way. But, um, I've been thinking a lot about this conversation, especially this month and the topic for International Women's Day and the whole month. And it's kind of like that red car theory that once you start focusing on a topic or something, you recognize all the things that your peers and people you respect are saying on the topic. And so I'm really happy to be here today and just have a very open and frank dialogue. Right. And be vulnerable and hopefully in a way that resonates with the women of Declar and even the women at Insono. Right. Because I find myself in a very interesting time in my career being at Insono, working with probably the highest concentration of really women leaders that I have been involved with in several years. So you found me at a good spot for this topic, for sure.

Speaker B: Perfect. Um, as I was thinking through, um, uh, this conversation, um, what I wanted to achieve through this podcast was to really address, um, the challenges of, uh, three categories of women. One just graduated out of school, um, a lot of ambition, but really no playbook to build her career. Then you have people who are in mid management looking to force, um, themselves into leadership. And really there is no playbook on how to manage, um, professional and social aspects of their life. Then there are women who have been leaders and who want to go global, who want to expand their horizon, take, uh, on more responsibilities and be really very successful. Looking at these audiences and looking at your journey, uh, in the many years you've worked with, uh, companies like, uh, T Systems, um, you worked with ATOs, you worked with Ensenada, and now with Ensono. Um, can you share with us, um, what a day in Life of Kelly looks like when you started your career and now where you are?

Speaker A: Yeah. And really, I can remember all of these phases. I'm not that old yet, so it's pretty easy to tap into it. And I do see my career as being very seasonal. Um, meaning that you're in different seasons. Right? As a woman, as a person, as a human, as a mother, whatever category you're putting yourself in. And so you are during seasons. And I have always viewed my career more like climbing a mountain than climbing a corporate ladder, because I don't know about the rest of everybody out there, women, but it has never been a straight climb. Rung after rung after rung. It has always come with high highs, lower lows, um, questioning yourself, being able to sustain a pace. Right. That sometimes feels for the season that you're in. Undoable. Um, but that journey as climbing a mountain, you have to course. Correct. You have to take a different hold. Right. You have to. You talked to me back when I moved from being, uh, coming off the board and going into an individual contributor role. And you asked me to think about if I was making that decision for my next step based on the exact moment in time I was in, or if I was really prioritizing what was right for me and taking a step out of that type of leadership role. And what I found was that, yes, it was. It was very scary. I questioned myself a lot. I wondered, would I ever get a VP title again? Right. Or sit on another board? But what I found was it was the time in my life to go back and get closer to the client, to get back to what gave me fire every day. Which was what? Waking up, working with teams. Right. Helping, um, clients. So, um, as long as you stay curious, you lead with integrity, right? Always. And lead with your heart. When things get hard and you've got to plow through them, you'll be on the right course no matter what decision you make. Because it's important to understand that you choose. Nobody else around you makes that choice. It's. It's yours to make, and you need to feel good about it.

Speaker B: And for the many women in the audience, for those who are just starting out or grinding their first big role, um, to becoming season leaders, um, juggling between teams, big responsibilities, um, how do I Keep this up without burning out is a common question that comes up. Um, and I'm sure it has come for you as well. And when you step back and look at everything that you have done and avoided, to be sane, to have the same rigor, the same fire, uh, how would you bring some of those learnings back to the audience that we have today?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think, too, before I really get to the learnings, right. You gotta go through it. And, um, I kind of think of my career these days in 2026 as pre pandemic, post pandemic, uh, because I was kind of like consumer staples, right? Uh, the consumer staple segment of the market. I was last in, but I felt like I was last to come out. Sanjay. Like, truly my mental. Like, my thinking, because it was an embarrassment of riches, I would say. At the beginning of the pandemic, I was still go, go, go. In a typical day meant airports and rental cars and client dinners. And quite frankly, if I was busy, I almost wore it like a badge, right? Like movement and meant momentum, and me being busy meant doing it all. And that pace is not sustainable. Right. It comes with a lot of grit, but it also can come with burnout. And I honestly thought I was like this little energizer bunny that would never get burned out. And you remember another call I made to you where I said, I'm feeling. What am I feeling? And you said, you're feeling burnout and reprioritize. Right. And think about the choices that you're making. And that's what I did. I stopped viewing my calendar and a, uh, full suitcase and being gone all the time as my achievements. And I really started to be more intentional about it and how I spend my time. And, um, the time I spend talking to myself, I spent. I changed that narrative too, right? Because if you hang on to the narrative, like, gosh, I'm just feeling so down, and I'm not traveling anymore. And you kind of got to get out of your own narrative in your own thinking. But the real practical things I think you can do are especially for us in tech, right. Everything we do. My eyesight's gotten worse, Sanjay, as a matter of the amount of time I've spent, Right. Digital on digital things. So I say go analog, right? Like pick up a book. Yep. Hard paper copy. Not a digital. Um, cook a meal with a friend or a spouse. Um, do things that just really get you analog and get you back engaged in life and out of work so much. Because being remote now, I just never turn off. And it's important to find those times. Right. To step away and turn off from work.

Speaker B: That's great. Council. Uh, Kelly. And when you step back, I mean, I've been looking at. I read this book, uh, the world is flat, and now the world is truly flat because teams are distributed. They're all over the place. Um, ah, coming from very different cultures and backgrounds. And often, um, a lot of our international team members have to navigate these intense cultural expectations, uh, whether it's family or caregiving or long working hours, uh, juggling time zones, uh, with global teams. Can you share, um, some very tried and tested approaches and how you shifted your mindset to find that clarity?

Speaker A: Yeah. So I did realize I thought a lot about what resilience means, because everyone have always said, you got a lot of grit, Kelly. You'll grind it out. You're very resilient. Right. But it is a mindset, and it isn't about real resilience, isn't about being the toughest. I think it's about having flexibility and learning how to bend without breaking. Right. How to reset those boundaries without guilt, though. Because how we evolve without that guilt means everything about how we can do it differently without walking away. Right. Because you don't have to give it all up to do any of it. Right. And I've realized everyone talks about their love languages, right? I have a life language, and I hold myself very accountable to this life language. And it gets me in trouble. It sometimes is a fatal flaw, right. Because I also expect a whole lot from other people around me that meet that life language. And mine is loyalty, servant leadership, passion and perseverance. And I just feel like I need to give myself grace, give others grace around me. But to know that if I keep my life language as my North Star, right. No matter what season we're in, no matter what stage we're in, you know, when I was a mother, I had priorities at home with Owen, my son, when, now that I'm in my 50s, yeah, I can say that in my upper 50s, I have family. Right. Challenges and aging parents to think about and family across the country, not in same time zones. So I think you really do have to define your life language, and you have to make your career fit within that in your own way so that you can prioritize every day for the season that you're in without guilt, because it's okay to set those priorities. You can still be successful, by the way, setting priorities.

Speaker B: So interesting. Um, yeah, I think it resonates a lot with, you know, how we have Been brought up, right. Uh, from, ah, very humble backgrounds to being super ambitious and putting everything behind the goal and finally seeing it through. Um, and you've played similar roles that I played today. Um, reporting, uh, to the board, uh, management meetings, um, looking at, um, you know, the objectives and the goals, not only for the first year, but the second, third and the five year plan. And then when you shift gears from there to understanding how hard you are working beyond the coffee and the quick breaks and how do you spot early burnout signs before it hits hard?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And really a real recharge for me isn't just about coffee. Right. Or a quick break. Because I would work 24 hours a day. Right. Just taking those tiny little breaks with my personality type. It really is stepping away long enough to reset. And it's kind of resetting your, like, kind of your nervous system, if you will. Right. Because we get so anxious and we have a lot of high stress. So I've been doing a lot of things going back to that analog. Right. I've been doing a lot of tasks that have to do with building something or making something or painting something. Right. I've been kind of going to my own personal things that drive me to find the reset. I am a big believer, Sanjay, as you and I have talked about, in this concept of reset. Right. And really viewing my early burnout as being irritable or feeling like I was losing a lot of patience at home, um, or, you know, one other thing I really noticed I was doing, I was super hypercritical of other people. And the more time I spent, like, in my own head doing these things that I knew were kind of not really me, I noticed something's going on. And it came at a time, quite frankly, in the season of my career and my age, where I was going through some health things. Right. I was really dealing with real life menopause issues. Right. Real life fatigue and brain fog that came from it. So I was having a hard time distinguishing if it was, like, my health or if it was depression or something else that I had never had happen to me before. But I really did recognize it as burnout. And so I had to flip the script. I had to start thinking more about these clues to myself as not being failures but being signals. Right? Signals that I'm not doing something right. Right. It's not feeding the happier side of me. I'm not finding that joy in it. So it's not a feed failure. It's feedback. Right. And it's your cue to pause reset, set Some boundaries and reconnect with what's really important to you. Because when you do, that's what will fuel you, I think, beyond the burnout. Right. Just to reengage, um, and get back into the momentum and the movement of work activity.

Speaker B: Interesting. Um, as you mastered this art of identifying these signals, um, what's that one thing you wish you had known or done differently earlier in your career, uh, to navigate that, change the pressure, uh, more sustainably. Right.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I think if there is a golden nugget of advice coming from you to our audience, uh, that would be awesome.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think, too. I learned earlier on, and it doesn't. I still question it, but it's. Trust your intuition, right? Trust your gut. It's there for a reason. If something doesn't feel right, whether it's a business decision or a decision in your own life, it very. It usually isn't right. And ignoring that voice kind of only delays the lesson. Right. Because my younger self or anyone listening, I like to plow through kind of hard things, but I don't. I think you, as they say, you have to embrace the suck. Right. You have to know that it's just part of, um, everything that you do. And once you get to the other side of it. Right. It's. It's all going to be okay. Uh, take a breath, find that point of personal reset so that that next step does feel more like yourself. Right. It feels more right for you. Um, because that's the most important thing here, I would say to just keep reminding yourself of that. Trust your intuition. If it's not right for you, it likely isn't right. Excuse me. And, um, you learn over time. Right. And that's all based on the season and the perspective that you have in that moment. I haven't always gotten it right, but I just try not to regret it. Right. The decisions that I made.

Speaker B: And how did family respond to some of your signals or changes? Um, Accommodating yourself.

Speaker A: Yeah. So imagine you have a mother and a wife who's basically traveling from Sunday evening till Friday night, five days a week for many, many, many weeks out of the year. And then all of a sudden, especially during this last season of Change for me, she's back at home, never leaving. In fact, not only never leaving, but spending a lot of her time observing right. In between, in her free time, what they were doing, which, by the way, was living a very full life. Right. Without me, because I was just working. So we frequently judge, you know, or joke with each other that, hey, my they would say we don't work for you. And I would say that's right, you don't. So, uh, it is important to find those breaks. Right. And step away so that this whole thing doesn't glom together like you're your work in your life gloms together where it all feels like work. Right. Really what it should all feel like is life where, where your career fuels. Right. It gives you that passion in your personal life. And your personal life fuels the creativity and the problem solving and the things that you can do to sell. Right. In your work life.

Speaker B: Yeah. And there are many women in your position where they are very ambitious and they're on a path or already taken on the high stakes role. Um, and balancing family life. Um, any quick thoughts? Wins on how do they protect the space between family time or family commitments, family responsibilities against work. Um, uh, contributions.

Speaker A: Yeah. I don't think everything can be perfectly balanced all the time. Clearly I don't do a great job at it either. But I do think you can root fiercely for both teams. Right. And even if it doesn't mean equal time. So if you align your intention and you forgive yourself when you fall short. Right. Um, I think you're doing the best you can and you have to give yourself some grace. So how do I feel good about what I do every day in selling, Mark Cuban once said, uh, that sales is helping because my life language is being a servant, leader and being loyal. It is just naturally feels very good for me to want to help other people. So I just view work in the same way. Right. That I do my, the personal things that bring me satisfaction and I just put them all in activities that are true to my heart, true to my intention for life, and give myself some grace when I get it wrong. Because I do probably more frequently.

Speaker B: How do you take care of your health? I mean, uh, you know, from, uh, person who's been traveling to a person who's now at home and still delivering that. What does your workday look like? What are the do's and the don'ts of keeping health balanced and more agile?

Speaker A: Well, one big thing is I don't miss my doctor's appointments anymore. If I had 100 bucks for every time I canceled one of my own doctor's appointments over the last 20 years. Right. I probably would have a much larger investment pool than I do today. So I absolutely make sure that I make all my doctor's appointments that I'm getting, being hydrated. You know, the basic things that people who are really, really burnt you know, that go at 1,000 miles an hour, forget about. Right. I try to sleep more now. My old adage used to be, I'll sleep when I die, Sanjay. So now that I'm closer to death, um, that doesn't seem like such a wise motto to have anymore. Um, so I do try to just basically take better care of myself. Doctor's appointments, hydration, sleep, and honestly my mental health, protecting that. Not like I know that I don't like to say yes to things on Friday nights. Why do I say yes to things on Friday nights and then worry for three days in advance of needing to disappoint somebody that I'm going to have to say on that Friday night that I don't want, that I'm not going to go out. Those are simple adjustments you can make in your own head, in your own narrative to know that it's okay. Right. To set those boundaries, to not feel guilty about it and to do the best you can.

Speaker B: Yeah, I, I also see that um, there are opportunities. So at Declar we are now, this year we are going to start some health clubs, you know, for different age groups and various stages of life, whether it's just simple yoga to more uh, health engagements. We also got a uh, different kind of uh, medical insurance provider here, uh, who are focused more on preventions and more proactive healthy well being than more diagnostics. So uh, your feedback certainly resonates with some of the things that we are doing at Declar as well.

Speaker A: And even just the old Kelly used think that I had to get to the gym and I had to put in this hardcore workout, you know, and, and again it's about season. So I, a lot of women I work with walk, right? It's the way they get outside, it's the way they are moving. Everyone is about 10,000 steps, right. Or more like. I just think that getting back to overall movement and not just for the sake of keeping yourself busy, to avoid the difficult things in your life, but just getting out and keeping your body healthy is a, uh, much more sustainable approach than putting that pressure on yourself to I got to make it to the gym and, or you know, do it at your house or do it around or do an activity that builds it in. Right. I've just learned to kind of see a 24 hour period. Right. Including my health, my work, my family life, my pleasure, my sleep that goes right. All needing to be fit in in this 24 hour period.

Speaker B: Uh, changing subjects. Um, Kelly, you worked for many CEOs and leaders, uh, in Technology, sales. What is that one piece of advice, um, most people unconsciously overlook, uh, in the rush to succeed, um, if it keeps front and center, what help, um, you can create and truly thrive, um, in your space as a woman leader.

Speaker A: Yeah. And when I was thinking about this, and also just for the women of Declar, having you as their leader. Right. I've just kind of thought of this question in that respect. And I keep coming back to everyone sells every single day. Right. And we sell ideas, we sell solutions, we sell alignment, we sell ourselves. Right. Um, and it says a lot about how we show up, because it shows up in the way we show up. Right. And that's so important to the space. Someone like you, Sanjay, can provide for the women in your organization. Right. Real opportunities to sell themselves. Right. To believe in themselves, to know that they can quietly shape the things around them and that their voice is, um, important and heard and what you tell yourself in your own head. That narrative so affects, Right. How you live your life and everything that you do. And so it not being disrupted, their internal talk track with a leader that somehow makes them feel less than or question their abilities or capabilities. Right. Making that approach really systemic, not situational. Right. And I know you're that kind of leader because, you know, I had a leader years and years and years ago, and the joke in the company was that the carpet from his office to the bathroom, he didn't have a private bathroom at the time, Was worn out. Literally worn out. No other meaning to say that they don't think they ever engaged with that CEO, because if you didn't catch him from his office door to the bathroom, that was it. Right. Uh, be available. Give the space for people, for women especially. Right. To have that voice and to be accountable for shaping things. Because the ego is the worst thing. Right. Is the most terrible thing for all of us. And women have a very uncanny way of accepting responsibility for everything and credit for nothing. That's always been my motto. And I think that if you give them a space to thrive that allows them to be responsible for everything, they won't look for credit for anything. And the culture thrives. Teams thrive, your business thrives. Right. I think it's just so good for everybody.

Speaker B: Really good advice here. Uh, before I let you go, what's that one small thing, Maybe a habit, maybe a phrase, maybe your favorite music, um, that help you stay grounded through all these chaos and pressure?

Speaker A: Yeah. Gosh, it's hard to say one thing, but I think it's about your mindset. You've probably figured that out. What I've said, it's. I've always been a goal setter, right? I always have written it down, say it out loud, manifest it, pray about it, whatever you want to do, focus on it and do the work to achieve it. Because I know it seems really kind of cheesy to say, and kids nowadays will say it's delusional, right? But I do believe anything is possible if you're the one choosing it and if your mindset is right and it's focused on it. So get that internal theme track of your life going. I'm, um, a big music fan. I believe that music can be the great equalizer of all feelings, right? When you're sad, you can cry. And when you're happy, you can be excited. And when you need to be pumped up, right? Find that song. So find it. Put it in your head as your internal theme song, right? And just go out there and crush it.

Speaker B: You haven't changed a bit since the first time I met you. Uh, full of energy. Thank you so much for joining us on this podcast and hope, uh, your, uh, all the good nuggets of advice helps the women around us. Thank you again.

Speaker A: Thank you, Sanjay. It's very nice to be here.