The People Who Care the Most Burn Out the Fastest with Ashley Gibson

[0:00] from Hamilton to therapist: how a career pivot started

Ashley Gibson: I'm good, how are you?

Dan Korus: doing well. I'm doing really well. How are you? Thanks for joining me. We're both real people.

Ashley Gibson: You're a real person. Yay. You know, it's with the AI generation stuff, it's good to check. It's ridiculous.

Dan Korus: Yeah, yeah. Well we're here. I was just on your website. I love it. the video of you talking about burnout is outstanding. Yeah. How are you today?

Ashley Gibson: Awesome. Yeah. Thanks. I'm glad. I I you know, I'm alive. It's seven o'clock here, so I saw eight clients today. So if I'm a little like, woo-hoo, hello, we're doing it.

Dan Korus: Cool. So do I get tired Ashley or unhinged Ashley? Okay, cool. Great.

Ashley Gibson: Both. You get both. A hundred percent. Yeah. Which are like the best flavors of Ashley. So we're gonna have a great time. Yeah. No, that's good stuff. Can you hear me okay? 'Cause I did not bring my good microphone home today. Okay, cool. Sorry I cut you off.

Dan Korus: Boller. Alright, sweet. my wife's Yeah, I can hear you just fine. I'm probably coming through a little crisp. That's because I'm in my home office. But your audio's gonna be great, so it'll be okay. Yeah, I can already tell. It'll be fine. Yeah. Sweet. Nah, she's out for the week and so I'm solo daddy for the dogs. so if you hear in the background, I'm sorry.

Ashley Gibson: Love this for you. Cool. Awesome. Sorry, I cut you off. You're way flat. It is fine because I was gonna say we have a new kitten, so if you hear him in the background, I am so sorry. There's a lot of like climbing the curtains happening. It's great.

Dan Korus: Alright, good. Good, good, good. Like the sound of like pause and then like chaos.

Ashley Gibson: It's like he gets all the way up and then he just hangs and then all the way down. It's great. We love it.

Dan Korus: Awesome. Sounds like standard kitten behavior.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah, it's definitely not driving me nuts at all. very happy about it. Yeah. A hundred percent. Let's see here. Make it size to you and not me.

Dan Korus: Really? You se you seem very happy about it all. Okay. Good. So I think like we've got some really good topics to go through. and I think like we could probably start with kind of who you are, what your background is, and then we can just go into we can just talk about burnout and why work is bad for high performers and

Ashley Gibson: Yeah.

Dan Korus: Just all the good things. How does that sound?

Ashley Gibson: All the things. That sounds great. I'm very down to riff. Tell me.

Dan Korus: Is there anything that you don't want to talk about, or I can't bring up?

Ashley Gibson: No, I always tell folks like I obviously can't talk about like individual clinical cases, but I can talk about patterns. So you know, I would love to I I'm sure you want me to unpack my eight trauma cases today, but we won't do that. You know, it it's I have been thinking to myself, like, I should get somebody who's willing to do like on air therapy. Let me just go for it. I bet it'd be a fun

Dan Korus: Okay. We could we could unpack my trauma.

Ashley Gibson: Well, I do EMDR too. So like you wanna tap, you wanna do eyes, you wanna do buzzers, what do you wanna do? But yeah.

Dan Korus: Damn. yeah, fuck, if you want to try I'll do it. Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: Dude. It's I I'm sure, give me a few months and I'll start a podcast, I'm sure.

Dan Korus: Okay. Yeah, I'll go on the Ashley Therapy podcast.

Ashley Gibson: Incredible. It'll be for high achievers who need a space to just decompress. I love this press. Hmm, three, four months maybe. Well, that's a lie. I've been writing for two-ish months now, maybe. I've been reading for two years, three years, whenever Substack was like first a thing. So

Dan Korus: Perfect. Perfect. So how long how long have you been on Substack?

Ashley Gibson: There are some folks, like people who seem to be in your orbit who I'm newer to, but then there's folks who have like quite a massed following that I feel like I've followed for a few years, but I didn't get my own act together and start my stuff until recently.

Dan Korus: Yeah, but that's great. I mean like and how new is your entrepreneurship work, with the well it doesn't look new. I mean, judging based off the website, it looks very established. Like how new is that?

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. I started building that out last fall and then I left my marketing job in Broadway Worlds last year. No, this year. March, but I was r doing both at the same time for quite a while and I was doing my clinical work for the last three years alongside also doing my executive job. So I've been holding a lot and I was my re own case study in Burnout. Yeah.

Dan Korus: Whoa, okay, so back up. So okay, hang on. So looking at your looking at your background, you have a you have a an educational background and as a therapist, right? Okay, cool. And then and then tell us about Hamilton. What's the connection to Hamilton?

Ashley Gibson: Mm-hmm. Yep. Yes. So my first master's degree is in arts management. I got a business degree, went straight out of undergrad, went and Did my residency at the public theater just like happened to be there at the right time, but it was before we even knew what it was. So I remember interviewing and they were like, Yeah, we're working on this thing, you know, it's the guy who wrote like in the heights, something about Alexander Hamilton mixtape. It's probably gonna be pretty weird. And I remember being like, This is strange, but okay. And that was the launch of my marketing career. So that was really the start of my 13 years in executive leader. leadership. Yeah, it was I joke with people. Like I peaked very early.

Dan Korus: I mean like right place, right time, right? Is that the is that the kitten? Cool. No, no no no. I l we're this is very animal friendly house over here. So I'm I'm for it. I love the animal ambiance. I think it's good. If people don't have animals in their life, they should. so I I mean like right right place, right t rhyme right place, right time, sure, but also, you know, what was it like

Ashley Gibson: Yeah, rumor it happened. I get that joke a lot. That is the kitten, so sorry if you can hear him. Very serious.

Dan Korus: having you know so you had your masters in arts management. right, masters in arts management. Okay, cool. So and then you land yourself on the Hamilton team.

Ashley Gibson: Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and again, like we didn't know what we had. So as cool as it was to be in that room and know that I was working for like I was a theater kid, like the organization that did like hair and chorus line and I'm working with these big names, like Lynn Manuel was sitting in those rooms. So I knew it was important. But it's one of those things you don't know you're in a cultural moment until the moment has cascaded and passed, right? Like I remember us sitting there and being excited that we hit $100,000 in ticket sales. Like a hundred thousand dollars. So it looking back now, I can certainly see it for what it was. But in the moment I had no idea that I right place, right time, and it actually wasn't where I wanted to do my residency. I wanted to be at Disney Theatricals. It just didn't work out. So

Dan Korus: Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and you know, what's what's it like riding the wave not knowing how big the wave you're on is? Like it sounds it sounds kinda surreal. It sounds like you know, looking looking back, you're like, Okay, we don't really know how big this thing is, but we're in it and it obviously it's big kudos to you for sticking on it, you know, for however many years.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. I mean, I can't take all the credit. I was a graduate resident, so I wasn't making decisions, but I got to be there seeing the decisions be made. And like I feel like that was where I was forged in the fire a little bit. You know, there was sales went well, obviously, and a lot of the conversations we had about marketing and positioning happened after the show had started. Like that's the cool thing about doing off Broadway and before moving making that move is we were still getting to reiterate positioning all the time. So like I wrote a few weeks ago about the photos, right? We started with this set of photos that felt very stoic and we loved them, but they weren't reflective. We love animals. We they weren't reflective of what the show actually was. And it was the first time I felt like I could name there's this gap between if we sell you one thing, even if the show is fantastic, we sell you one thing and you experience Another right, there's this gap between what we intend and what the impact is, and that is a betrayal of trust for audiences. Same thing with clients or employees. So a lot of things got seeded very early on. I think the first time I realized, like, this is a big deal, was either the day I had to tell Tom Hanks' assistant no, they couldn't have more tickets, he was bartering. for tickets. He ended up actually like recording our first few radio spots because he desperately wanted more tickets in a small 500 seat off Broadway house. There's not many. Or it was the day that I was sitting and in front of me was Christine Baransky and behind me were the Cheneys. And I thought, well, at least I'm better than Dick Cheney. Because I saw the show like six times while we still had it in the public. So it were those moments where I was like, something's happening here. But it it really doesn't compound until later.

[7:41] the identity work of leaving a career

Dan Korus: Yeah, I I I don't even think being in the moment I'd probably realize a lot of, you know, what's going on and the significance until, you know, you say that and you're like, Yeah. Right.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. Like, I'm better than the Chinese. Well, and it was really cool, cause like, you know, not every off-Broadway show is gonna go to Broadway. So I'm sure your listeners love the intricacies of like Broadway theater, but the point being why would you not? the idea here, right, that

Dan Korus: I do. Spill the tea.

Ashley Gibson: there is a certain season by which you may or may not move a show from off Broadway to Broadway, depending on whether or not you want to tee yourself up to win Tonys. And if you move too early, you don't have enough momentum, blah blah blah. All of this to say there was a real push to actually close at the public earlier than we had intended and to move to Broadway. And it was going to be a whole debacle because we'd have to like honor ticket holders and refund people. And this was, you know, over a decade ago now. Technology was not as advanced. At the same time, it was that conversation of like, well, we have the momentum. You know, now is the time. I think anybody who's like trying to ship something knows that feeling of like we have to move while Strike by the Iron is hot. So we ended up holding this big press conference, and we like brought all of the leadership in. We had Lynn Manuel. I have like this visual of him standing up on the bar. The public has like a bar right in the lobby. And truly, up until that moment, like I think only four or five. People knew it was gonna happen. Like I'm sure my boss knew whether or not they were making the move, but the other 20 of us in the marketing department didn't know. So not again, it's those moments where you're thinking to yourself, like this is a bigger thing, and it could go either way, and I'm just happy to be here and see what happens.

Dan Korus: I mean it's a it's a it's a lesson in strategy, right? And there are people who go work at startups and the startup goes big and it becomes a unicorn and it does really well and through that people learn what success looks like and then they end up leaving and going about their merry way and usually doing something else and translating that success elsewhere and so we're seeing you know, we're seeing that in in a way that's we're not you know, that I think most people wouldn't normally look at and be like, the cast of you know, the people who looked at who r made Hamilton Hamilton. but that's a unicorn startup of its own, right? I mean that's what I'm learning. Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. Yeah. Yep. A hundred percent. Well and the The fact too that like they had the wherewithal to bet on themselves in that moment because to have made the move early would essentially be saying like, hey, we need the momentum to get the wins and the tonies and this and that that we think we're gonna do. But to bet on yourself and say, No, I believe that we have enough here to ride this out, to make a transfer, like they moved to Broadway in August, which is the deadest time of the year to open a Broadway show. I think it instilled in me very early too. They were also tending to their customers. Because as marketers, we were thinking a lot about if we have to cancel all of these tickets for the off-Broadway run and try to move people, what is that gonna do to customer relationships? We at the public were a nonprofit. So that got instilled in me very early. And when I made the move to corporate theater later, which is a different animal, it was hard for me to separate the idea of but what's best for the end. product what's best for the consumer.

Dan Korus: I love that. Okay, so tell us about that transition. When you went, when we got corporate ashley in when we got corporate ash yeah, corporate Broadway Ashley. what was that transition like? What motivated it? Was it was it a slow and kind of smooth buildup? Was there you know, was there a fiery moment?

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. Corporate Broadway, actually. Yeah. all of the above. I'm sure that my friends and family and therapists were all very tired of hearing me talk about it because like I said I juggled both for a really long time. I went back to school for my second master's to become a therapist during COVID and I didn't even know if I was going to like do the due diligence to not just get the degree but get the license right because it's a whole process. So It was a long time before I made a decision, but it was one of those things where when I stepped back I was like, the decisions the choice points I'm making are clearly showing that I am moving in a certain direction, whether or not I want to label that as I have put my stake in the ground and made a decision about making this change. but I went back to school during COVID because I didn't know what the future of the arts would look like and I always thought I'd be a good therapist and I thought it would be a nice way to Take my interest in understanding how behavior change is made and apply it to individual interactions. So wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with it. Discovered I really loved it. Juggled both for a while and thought, I'm seeing the same thing during the day when I'm triaging these budgets and you know trying to decide if we're selling enough tickets fast enough and da-da-da. As when I sit in the therapist chair later that evening, because I was pulling. all nighters for clients that would see a 6 p.m. a 7 p.m. an 8 p.m. client across from somebody who is equally a high achiever and go they're experiencing this thing that I already know in my nervous system and now I have clinical language to put to it and so at that point it's almost like you can't unlearn what you know and I couldn't keep doing both because I have a toddler and I care about my health And I had to make the call, but the point of doing the work I'm doing around diagnosing structural burnout is still getting to have a foot in both worlds.

Dan Korus: Okay, first of all, damn, I respect the hustle. yeah, doing a full job and then coming home and having to be like or going to another office and having to be emotionally available for people. What's that like? That sounds tough.

Ashley Gibson: Thanks. do you want the polished answer? The real answer. well the real answer is I was also getting a divorce in the middle of all of it while parenting like a very tiny human. So it was not great. Yep.

Dan Korus: No, give it give it to us real. Okay. Let's just let's just let's zoom out. Let's zoom out. Let's let's look at this process. Because this is obviously a defining moment in who you became, right? You you started business, arts

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Korus: You still love the arts and then we're finding that you really love, you know, being there for people in different ways. There's a ton of similarities between the two, and then we get to where you are now, which is probably like the latter half of the episode. But I won't let's go back to that like messy, like was it a two year stretch, one year stretch? I know. I wanna talk I think it's interesting. I really think it's cool. If you're cool with it, can we talk about it? Okay, cool.

Ashley Gibson: You want it. Yeah. It was about it was interesting. I'm so here for it. it was okay, so I started seeing clients I think it was about two years that I was juggling both. yeah, because I was raising a young child and going through a hard life transition at the same time. I just knew that I felt like I didn't have another choice because I was a single-income household at that moment, and you can't just leave a job in the middle of that because it looks a certain way and means a certain thing. I genuinely cared about the work I was doing and I still do in that Bradway capacity because I started up in New York, I made my way to DC, I was a VP of marketing there, eventually moved down to Richmond by having pitched the company, the Niederlanders, which are the producing organization, hey, I know you've got tours coming in and out of this area. I want to move to this area and I want to be your marketing person on the ground for these markets. So I had built this job and they had actually then based the way they modeled the rest of the department. On this regional model, and so I felt like a real level of personal investment because it wasn't just this happens to be I live in the market that I'm working for, like, no, no, I had asked for this and I had iterated over and over again within this company and built up to this point. so as much as it was a logistical challenge of how am I going to pay for things and put food on the table because like Like spoiler alert, being a therapist does not make it rain. I mean it could, it does in some scenarios, but in general it's not super great. we can talk about the inequities there later if you'd like. But all of this to say that It was really for me more about the identity transition. And so to be in that space of feeling so deeply burned out, because burnout is a relational process and it really was a relational result from the way the systems had been built. And this is no fault of like the organization I was with. It's just the way the industry was and then internal expectations. They cascade down, they become introject. And because I could name it as a clinician, can't unsee it. you hit this crucible of like I know this is about identity work and more than that I know this is like trauma work. I'm a trauma therapist and whether or not we would label something a capital T trauma, the brain receives it in a traumatic manner. It's storing it in the nervous system like that. So I found it so activating to think about even divesting myself from that identity. That's a very windy ADHD seven pm answer, but there's some good stuff in there.

[15:23] what therapists see that managers do not

Dan Korus: No, no, this story rocks, dude. I mean, I think what I'm I think it's it's very cool that you're working in burnout now because I think you of all people really understand what burnout is. Right? And I think I think you've lived it. And you know it also is very apparent that you're on a mission to help show people that there's a better way and that you're a builder, right? And that you like to build things that last and then you feel attached to them and you're like, I don't No, don't take it. You know, this is this is mine. you know, i I think it's really great. And so, you know, what are some of the things that you love about the about being a therapist? Because it's it's not about the money, but it's something that like, you know, you've you've stumbled upon. And I think, you know, earlier you

Ashley Gibson: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Mm.

Dan Korus: you said, well I went back to school to COVID dur during during COVID times, to because the the future of the arts wasn't certain and then you were like, okay, I've got an inkling. Was it really that you just thought that you might be good at it or was there something more there that was driving it?

Ashley Gibson: No, it really was. Like quite honestly, I I ad taken A Psych and I had always been really interested in how does the mind work and why we make the decisions we do. That's what I liked about marketing. I never liked the I have to try to figure out how to sell you something. It felt icky, but if I could frame it as a how do I get inside somebody else's brain and understand what's gonna make them move down that funnel right from like awareness to consideration to conversion, we do the same thing with behavior change. It was just seeing it from the other side. And some Selfishly the part of me that went, I'm doing something I love, it's mission driven, and I want to be even more impactful. Because the cool thing, that's what I love. I love that I can leave a day like today feeling like I'm on a high because I had clients who we got their suds scores, their significant unit for units of distress, down from a 10 to a zero today, right? Like that traumatic memory is no longer pinging the way it did when they walked in the door. That's not me, that's a process I was able to help facilitate. But I love that it feels meaningful to me with this bigger ripple effect that maybe a way that like putting butts in seats is what we used to call it. Does not

Dan Korus: Super badass. I love it. so what for you now, you know, obviously the work that you're doing as a as a clinician is is clinician the right word? Okay, cool. The work that you're 'cause it sounds cool. yeah. Right.

Ashley Gibson: Good try. Yes. I feel cool when I'm like and I write up my notes to clinician intervention. No. Yeah. I I it was cool.

Dan Korus: Yeah, okay. So yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah. Just a little cool check there. Alright. Yeah. so what's like the hard part about this for you now? I mean obviously there's this there's this sense of I get to be there for people and I get to have this change. And that's extremely impactful. You go home and you feel like, okay, I I helped I helped this person, which is extremely important. What what's the hard part for you now?

Ashley Gibson: We did it. Mm. Yeah. twofold. One, I think I really underestimated how much of my own relational bandwidth it would take. Because you said it right earlier, like you have to show up and be emotionally available. Like my job is to hold the frame, right? I tell people I am there to hold a mirror up and reflect back and it means that I have to be constantly attuned to your nervous system. And if I find myself wandering, I have to come back. And then I do that for up to eight hours a day. A lot of therapists will tap themselves out after like four or five clients a day. I have a variety of reasons for why my schedule gets compacted, but I basically see like three full days of clients. So today I saw eight clients because that's the way the schedule worked. And it's trauma. So ADHD brain out of sight, out of mind helps. I don't bring it as much home in the forefront. but it's living in my nervous system and it makes me less apt to wanna hang out after work with a friend. It's made like dating again pretty hard. It's made it's actually one of the reasons I organized my schedule the way I did, because I didn't want to see clients on the days I have my daughter after school or in the evenings because then I wouldn't be emotionally present and available for her. So it has a ripple effect on my own well-being. And then the other thing that comes to mind is the adage of you can't don't work harder than the client. you really as the therapist want the best for your client. And I think as a organizational advisor or strategist or consultant or whomever, it's the same thing. But they have to be willing to show up and do their part of the work because in a therapy room I see you for one hour a week. Maybe two. I see some people two two times a week. but you're living all this life in between and you've actually gotta like Do and practice the behavior change that we're just talking about. Because otherwise you're coming in and it's just talk. So monitoring for myself, I'm emotionally invested and emotionally present, but the success of whether or not somebody is seeing progress is not actually saying anything about me or my ability. because I can't make them change. I'm holding the frame, I'm holding the space, holding up the mirror to reflect.

Dan Korus: The the classic curse that effort yields efficacy. Darn. I know. I think so along this, you started your venture back in February, you said. So we're closing in on a year r you know more rapidly than any of us want to admit. tell us what sparked you starting that?

Ashley Gibson: if only. I know. Yeah, I had started ideating on it again, like while I was still juggling all the things because part of I don't want Yeah, then you get I too much too too many things all the time. and it's funny, like I like did some AI prompt the other day. I like, what else can I do with my interactive, you know, in intersection of skill sets? And it gave me like a hundred ideas and I went, you know what? I can't I keep some of them were

Dan Korus: sensing a pattern here. Don't kidna Were any of them good?

Ashley Gibson: terrible. It's like I can't read this right now because I'm gonna think that twelve of them are great and I have to do them tomorrow. So to the

Dan Korus: Yeah. Totally. It isn't it funny though that when we're at the end of our rope and we're at capacity, we hit these breakthroughs of my god, I'm not supposed to be doing this, I'm supposed to be over here doing this. You know, or this is what's important to me.

Ashley Gibson: The weeks where you see me write on Stubsta Substack more or like comment more, you know I'm actively avoiding writing my clinical notes. Like you can tell how I'm avoiding doing other work. Clients get seen, but do the notes get written? Maybe. But to your point, like it was actually while I was doing the juggling of both that I said I have to do something

Dan Korus: Ha ha ha ha. Yeah. Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: not just being a therapist. Not that not just being a therapist is great, but I have this really interesting intersection to offer and I just sat on boards. I taught nonprofit management for years. I love what I know about working in organizational spaces and bringing that systems and patterns view. And so to me it was a really natural next step of I want to see clients. I could see twenty, thirty, forty clients a week and feel awful, or I could have a more sustainable caseload and get to build something that's really exciting for me on the other side. And from there it kind of very naturally became how do I take my clinical diagnostic lens and apply it to this topic that as you say I have lived and know so well. So it happened organically but for a reason in that I was trying to fill a specific hole in my life and by that asking what is my unique intersection of skills going to afford me to be able to do and I'm still figuring it out every day.

Dan Korus: Yeah. I mean looking at the website, like I said earlier, it looks established. It's going well, you know, and so is it is that is that true that it's going well? it's it looks like it looks like it's going well. and I think it's gonna be critical and I think that as we'll get into a bit sorry, bubblywater. like I'm really big on spindrift. Are you a bubblywater person?

[23:04] is burnout a personal failure or a system problem?

Ashley Gibson: Thanks. We're trying. Mm, a hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I I do like bubbly water. I feel like this is a a a sales pitch for spidrift, so I'm not spindrifting today, but I do like spindrift. I mean we can be spindrift, reach out, pay Dan thousands of dollars right now

Dan Korus: yeah. Yeah. We're not we're not sponsored, but Right. Come on. Come on, Spindrift. Yeah. Emotional intelligence. Leadership. It's definitely brand right for you.

Ashley Gibson: We could probably make a pitch. I could figure something out.

Dan Korus: Yeah. EQ. It's it's worth the squeeze.

Ashley Gibson: Ooh, I like it. You sure you got a marker?

Dan Korus: So no I'm the worst marketer. I'm so bad. yeah, no, not at all. I I wanna know where I was going with that question is I wanna what's the dream? Like what's the dream what's your dream with this?

Ashley Gibson: Mm. my dream is to Build this framework, the series that I have been publishing very slowly on Substack is delving into what I call the maladaptive organizational copy process. but really it's taking a clinical framework that's based in relational neuroscience and applying it to we know burnout is a systems issue. No one's really yet sat down and mapped, okay, but how is that relational dynamic? Because it is relational, it's in the definition. How is that relational dynamic? actually perpetuating and so I reached out to the gentleman who now like fosters this lens comes to a place called structural analysis of social behavior and said I want to use it in a corporate setting he said that's incredible that sounds like a great application nobody's doing that yet this is really ripe and I went ooh this is my lane so I'm writing a white paper I'm hoping it'll be done in the next month but who really knows. Because again, toddler. The dream is for that to have legs in a whole bunch of different directions. So I would like for there to be to be used in an evidence-based way, right? I'm hoping to get some of his grad students on board or get other people to help me figure out how we can best take this diagnostic framework and understand how we then apply it in an intervention way. Because my whole positioning is we have to have accurate diagnosis before we can then intervene at the proper level. So I would like for the research itself to have legs and for it there to be like a level of academic contribution to the space, but I also want it to be actually usable in an organizational space because it's really easy for me to throw around clinical terms and for people's like eyes to glaze over. So I see myself as the translator. And I want to be bringing that to leadership teams. And my hope is that I'm getting to a point where I'm, you know, people are paying me the big bucks to come and give the the the speaking engagements on it. But I also want to sit in a room and go, okay, let's actually map what is the relational dynamic happening. It's not group theory therapy for your organization, but it is taking that pattern recognition skill of my job is to sit here and put all of it together and then actually facilitate that happening in real time in an ongoing way.

Dan Korus: Okay, so if I'm understanding it right, In order to fix the right problem, okay, we know burnout's a system issue, burnout affects the people, but we the lanes between them and the interconnections are not well known. And so how and so we need to map we need to map those better. And then if we do a proper diagnosis of the organization, then we can start to fix the burnout at the personal level. Okay, sweet.

Ashley Gibson: Yep. Yep. Ha yeah. Yes. Yep, exactly. Cause right now the problem that's happening is the cis the we are intervening at a symptom level. So when we are saying like, hey, we need to foster more EQ, right? Or and which again, like I'm not saying these are not good things to have. I no I don't want anybody to be like, Ashley says there shouldn't be wellness programming. Like no

Dan Korus: Yeah, I just did you just say we're not supposed to have an EQ in the workplace? Hold up. Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: no, you didn't let me finish my sentence. So what the problem is is we're treating that like the only answer, right? It is right now functioning as a band-aid because we are trying to solve a systemic issue with individual challenges. EQ applied at a systems level is essentially what I'm asking for. If we are able to diagnose, okay, the way that this dynamic of we intend to reward this behavior, but we're actually able to map it all the way down to we're really rewarding this behavior. If we go back and figure out where that started, then we know we can intervene at the top before it cascades. And it's often not like it didn't start with one bad leader, right? It is something that builds up over time. So my plan and my hope is to build this out in a way. where part of what I'm mapping is how entire organizations and industries are relating to each other. I think about the charitable sector has introjected this belief about self that we're scrappy. We should be able to get by. And I think different versions of maladaptive lines of positioning about the sector perpetuate in those ways because again it says something about us and then we build systems and policies that align with that that then eventually cascade towards the individual.

Dan Korus: And then we end up with everybody in the charitable sector burnt out.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah, because we just gotta try harder. Because if you care, you're really gonna try.

Dan Korus: Yeah, admission can only carry you so far.

Ashley Gibson: It's true. And

Dan Korus: Okay, so I think that's a great dream, by the way. I think that's a really cool dream. Yeah, that's really awesome. I want yeah, I think this should grow and I would definitely love to learn more about this because I think in my own rudimentary, you know, wormholes of burnout, it does I think we all land you know, if we go if we go deep enough down we're like, it's a systems problem.

Ashley Gibson: Give me thanks. Good try. For getting. Yeah.

Dan Korus: Right. And then we start thinking about, okay, but what systems are we actually changing and how does that help the behavior besides just taking sweeping changes across the systems and then hoping that we'll get the end result that we want. You know, and it's like, okay, well if we keep fixing it good enough then we're we're done and it'll solve the problem if we try and fix everything versus a more targeted approach. Yeah, no, this is yeah, this is really great. Yeah, this is cool.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. Yeah. I I hope so because the diagnosis is gonna be different for every organization, right? What's perpetuating in one place is not what's perpetuating in another. And thirty different organizations all saying, we're a family here it that shows up in thirty different ways, right? In terms of how the employees feel it or how they synthesize it. But you're nodding and laughing because it's a pattern we all can relate to. Like there's enough similarities that we can do something like diagnosis. Yeah.

Dan Korus: Hell yeah. We are one, we're a family and a pizza party away from not having burnt out employees. No.

Ashley Gibson: God, it's just the worst. And I and I think I come back to like, you know, it's funny, my mom has been my really early reader on stuff because a lovely woman who has spent a lot of her life in corporate spaces and does a really good job of like talking the talk and masking and so she can in a way that, you know, I try to look at it through this lens of how is this actually going to land with like corporate leadership or gonna go, Okay, this is bullshit, right? Like I'm sure you feel that in the EQ space too sometimes. I remember her being like, you cannot villainize the organization or they will not bite on this at all. It's like, my intention is never to villainize the organization because 99% of the time this is not intentional. Like it's not that you're intending to have the best culture ever, but it's not intentional when there's this byproduct and often the byproduct is the burnout.

Dan Korus: Yeah, a weird song in dance we play and I don't know how much, you know, you tap dance around your your marketing, but I you know, I made the decision early on and I was like I can't put empathy on the homepage. You know, it's like I like I'm not putting empathy as a keyword on the homepage, even though that's exactly what I want people to learn how to do.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Korus: particularly people with technical backgrounds who are in high consequence industries, like it's all about teaching them empathy. But if I lead with empathy, they're gonna be like, Well what are you ac what hard skill are you teaching us during this training? You know I'm like, What do you mean what hard skill? Yeah. That like that is the hard skill. That's why none of us are done learning it yet.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right, right. You're like, actually this is the hardest skill you can learn, but yeah. It's literally where the ROI is, but okay, go off. You have to be I know. How do you position this? I how do you position this in a way that feels palatable? And I'm like really sensitive to the fact that this can come across as like super naive, right? Like

[30:46] why do my highest-performing people burn out first?

Dan Korus: Yeah, I know. Totally. I don't know. Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: what a pipe dream. Ashley thinks we can all just get along and then there won't be a burnout, right? But I would actually like argue that that comes from a place of assuming that we can't change systems. Like if we come at it from a place of like, well nothing's ever gonna change, that's just the way it works. I love the cattail happening by the way. I'm very here for it.

Dan Korus: Right. Yeah, I get it. This is yeah, this is Fox. This is this is my cat. This is my co host, co-host Fox.

Ashley Gibson: Hi. Love it. Leo is down here and he will not let me pick him up, but he is a lot in the room. The kitten is not. Hi, Fox. So yeah, I don't know. The point being, like, yes, it is a song and dance, and the people who are going to

Dan Korus: That's okay.

Ashley Gibson: get it are gonna get it immediately, right? Like I was so super chuffed to get on Substack and be like, people here get it. This is awesome. And we can all iterate this together. And if it's not for you it's probably because the system has like deeply introjected into you that things can't change or you can't make change or you have to live with things a certain way they are. I wanna also be very like respectful of the context, like we cannot I'm a privileged white lady. Like there are lives and contexts of which I know nothing about and people many of my clients and others like live in context that I can't we have to hold for like sometimes shit just sucks, right? what can you control? What is your level of personal agency in any given interaction? Whether that's I'm an individual employee or I'm all the way up at the top or I'm designing a system that might perpetuate overtime.

Dan Korus: Yeah. I just I think a period on that one from me. and I think I wanna talk a little bit about burnout. I know we've been basically we've this entire episode has almost been about burnout. If we zoom out, if we squint, it's all burnout. but I you know, I think earlier and this is th I I pulled a couple of the philosophies that I could find on top of on your sub stack. And in one of you talked about,

Ashley Gibson: It's all the same.

Dan Korus: People who care the most burn out the fastest. Unpack that for us. What do you mean?

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. I mean speaks for itself, Dan. I have nothing else to say on the matter. No, it's done. I mean it makes sense though, right? Like and I see it sitting in the therapist chair because people genuinely care. And that's why I go back to like the organization's not a villain. You don't have to be in the charitable sector.

Dan Korus: Yeah, I'm just gonna add a period on that, Dan. Okay, fair. Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: Pardon me, or like a mission driven organization. I actually have like recently been like, I gotta call this high stakes work as opposed to mission driven. Cause like again, back to positioning, people aren't gonna see themselves in it. If you care about what you're doing, you are more apt to run yourself ragged trying to do it, which means you are more susceptible to introjecting learned behaviors. So when I talk about introjection,

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: Relational behaviors can get copied and they can get copy-pasted like one-to-one, like I saw you doing a certain thing, and so I'm showing up in the exact same way. They can get recapitulated like I used to respond to a significant other like this, so now with any other significance in my life, I respond like this, or I took the way somebody treated me and turned it inside and now I treat myself that way. And my argument is that eventually, no matter how many times these patterns cascade, it's going to end up an A interject and an employee. I'm not saying this is the way all burnout shows up, but it is the way much of what we see traditionally as burnout has perpetuated in traditional workspaces. And they take advantage of folks who are more apt to make that internal point back itself move.

Dan Korus: Yeah. So based off of how other people have have have treated us or the behaviors that we've learned over time, what we're what we're saying is that all of this kind of mal experience leads back to our self identity, which then becomes someone's employee experience working with or under us.

Ashley Gibson: Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes. You're doing a better job of explaining it than I am. So you can come right to me. You are. And that is where I'm hoping to go with all this, right? Is like how do we get it to a point where you can't refute the logic of it.

Dan Korus: No, I'm just trying to put it in caveman terms. Yeah. Makes perfect sense to me and I think like what's your plan for breaking the cycle? You know, like how do we do that? Because that's something that I wonder about too, right? You find the people who are like, hey, empathy's not a hard skill. You know, you find the people who are, maybe thinking the burnout is their employees problem, you know, and they just need like a some unlimited yoga memberships for the team and then like what do you you know, like how do we and a pizza party, like how do we break the cycle?

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean think for the people who it's harder to sell to, right, you're gonna have to show the real ROI. So like did that pizza party actually move the needle? Like for every pizza party you held this year, did your turnover reduce? You know like I think there will become a point where we have to start actually running the metrics on whether or not these individual interventions, right, are able to move the needle on the grand scale of things year to year, season to season. I think that's part of it. Measurement and then having the understanding that like Cultural shifts are happening as generations age out of the workplace will be part of it. I think a lot about my grandfather was a career military man and then in the NSA for 30 years and like super cool dude, very smart, was always on the cutting edge of technology. He would have loved AI. like not in a weird way, but in a like he bought a 3D TV before everybody else did because he thought it was gonna be cool, and like he was just he launched no. the next thing was right. So there are people who are willing to do it, but he was also extremely entrenched in what the cultural norm was at the time and for his generation of you pick one career and you stick to it. And you have a system and you honor the system and you stay this way. And that's not because of anything wrong that he did or didn't know. I'm not saying he was wrong and I'm right, but like Things were entrenched and things are moving faster now. And some things that were entrenched are going to naturally kind of cycle out of the cultural conversation. I think that'll be the other part of how we actually make this change.

Dan Korus: Do you think he would have used like Claude, Chat GPT, or was he like a Gemini guy? Okay.

Ashley Gibson: I think probably Gemini because it was a Microsoft guy, but I I think Claude would have felt a little too artsy for him. Like he would have seen like the spinning animals and been mm-hmm this isn't for me. He would have bought something like to the point. My guess would be Gemini. Yeah, it's important.

Dan Korus: Okay. Okay. good. I'm glad we established that. I think Yeah, g gener generational shifts it is is something that's really interesting because the younger generations really seem to be a lot more in tune, right? And to seem to understand the concepts and benefits of of therapy and also emotional intelligence in ways that I think a lot of us have had to learn. and have it have it be a learned behavior. So I am excited for that in the workplace. And they're definitely not the buy and hold type for a career. you know, they def right, like I think we're seeing a lot more emotional.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. I don't think they can be at this point. Yeah. Like I truly don't think that's where we're headed as a society. So it doesn't but yes, to your point, like we've also normalized therapy and mental health. And that's going to play a role in what people expect. You know, I was watching some I don't do TikTok, but some TikTok that ended up on LinkedIn, I think, of like

Dan Korus: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: a Gen Zer who was like, your salary is ninety thousand. Actually my requirements for this role are two hundred thousand and like not batting an eye about it again if we go back to like what's what's normative because if we're working at a systems level we're really asking what's normative we're gonna have the potential to change some of these norms but just by showing up again and again and saying like that's not acceptable, right? Like ninety thousand for this role is not acceptable.

Dan Korus: Yeah. which is bold. And if you asked people from, you know, different different industries or different generations what they would think about that advice, they'd be Yeah, don't ever say that. You're gonna lose the job. Right? But it like but it it but it somehow works these days. which is outstanding because I I think it's it's great that you know, we're we're like you said, normalizing new behaviors and in particular

[38:27] how do leaders learn to co-regulate a stressed team?

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Korus: self value, which is good. So I want to ask you. sorry. Go for it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're the guest.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. I no, give her, no, no, no. It's the ADHD of my brain going like and this thing, Dan, there's another thing too. We're gonna be here all day. pull up a chair. We have lots of So here for it. It's it's great when we're like, the Substack rapport. Like, okay, good. It tracks in real life. So

Dan Korus: Yeah, hell yeah. We're we're we're gonna be here forever. And I and I'm and I and I'm here for it. I love it.

Ashley Gibson: It makes me think about this idea and I must have encountered this like in the arts field, I don't know, fifteen years ago now, of we're moving into a place across all industries where you either are be to become the behemoth or you were going to be super niched down and responsive and able to write the ship in real time. And there's really not gonna be a lot of room for this in between. Like the organizations, the people who find themselves in this kind of middle gray space are going to naturally Have to go one way or the other. Like it's that K-shaped economy of it all. And I think that's happening here too. Like, people are going to either go with empathy and bringing a more diagnostic framework to burn out to the workplace, or they're not. And we can't be speaking to everybody, but the people we are speaking to are gonna be the other end of that K-shape, yeah.

Dan Korus: Yeah, a hundred percent. so K shaped, not cake shaped. I know.

Ashley Gibson: That'd be cool. I would love for it to be cake shaped. And also like I I hate like the K shape thing trying to advance. 'Cause like it it anticipates like part of us are going down. But like let's let's decide that you and I are on the up part of the K. Yeah.

Dan Korus: Yeah, it's like a Yeah. It's like a Roman numeral five but without the hat.

Ashley Gibson: Yes. There you go. Beautiful. You are a marketer.

Dan Korus: but a fancy Roman numeral five, not just a V, like a ser like a serif.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. Is it bad to say that after about like twenty I can't read Roman numerals much at that point? Like I I have to Google every year like what year Super Bowl are we in? 'Cause like I don't know. I it doesn't it also like doesn't matter to me. So

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that that's pretty funny. Dude, that would be really funny to like look at that Google trend throughout the year. that'd be like some fun search search data. Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah, ooh, I would want to know that for sure. Hundred percent. Ugh. Do it.

Dan Korus: Okay, here's a question. So, as a as a therapist, clinician, and someone who's been you know, a high level executive leader, you know better than better than most what it looks like to like co regulate a stressed out team during crisis and like how to lead all that, right?

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. Yeah. The hope.

Dan Korus: Okay, so two parts to this question. First part, what did what I just said mean to every mean like mean in different terms? And and two and two. well, 'cause I I kinda know, but like I don't I don't think I really know and maybe someone listening to this doesn't have the the jargon for it, which, you know, I g I don't want to gatekeep. And second of all, like, how would we learn how to do this skill for people who don't have a clin like a you know, a a therapy background?

Ashley Gibson: Mm. You did it perfectly. Yep. Okay, so when we're saying co-regulate, what we really mean is you are a body and I'm a body. We are two primates in relation to one another. And when bodies come into relation with another God, that sounds like really sexual. Sorry. I'm gonna start over. Two two monkeys walk into a room two monkeys walk into a room and they're really asking, like

Dan Korus: No no no. No, keep going. This is good. You're getting to the best part.

Ashley Gibson: Who is this interaction about? Is it about you, me, or my relationship with myself? Is this a hostile or a friendly interaction? And are we together or apart? Are we on the same team? And with that information, we assess it very quickly. We assess it with our nervous systems because all of the research shows body language reaches our brains and our bodies way before what we say does. So when we're talking about co-regulation, we are asking about how we're showing up in relationship to another person or to a system or a process or an organization and understanding does that make me feel safe as an animal creature that you know started from bottom up processing, right? In my nervous system, do I feel like I am in fight or flight mode? Do I feel like I'm in freeze or fawn mode? Or do I feel within a window of tolerance where I could respond kind of in my as my best possible self. So I'm hopeful that that's enough of translating because your language is perfect. How would a leader co-regulate for their team or understand that the way you show up and model is the way your team is going to respond. I always use the example of if I walked into this podcast and I was like and like more amped up than I already am, right? My energy is going to affect your energy and you'd be able to get me down by bring your energy down. Same in both contexts. So hopefully that's enough of the primer or something in my eye. My other part is how do we teach people? The first thing that came to my mind was being honest. So as a clinician, we are taught to use our own nervous systems as a diagnostic tool and to co-regulate for others to model and hold the space appropriately. So for example, when I'm doing trauma work with somebody and they're in the middle of reprocessing and we're doing MBR and they're doing their eyes. I'm in my nervous system going, do I feel activated right now? And if I feel a shift in the tension, I can generally sense, that probably came because the client experienced a shift in their safety. So I'm reading my own nervous system to read theirs. and being honest comes from that place of like I just said, hold on, there's something in my eye, and took a minute, right? Still kind of there. As opposed to pretending I'm fine and also doing this the whole time. Like being honest is label it what you will. Some people are gonna call it intuitive, but that word gets a bad rap. You know when you're nervous as to whether or not something makes you feel safe. So model that behavior and create a space where others are going to feel that way too. this is the like one one of parenting of I have to regulate myself and sit in the space of you know she's having a hard time she's not giving me a hard time when my three-year-old is like throwing stuff which is hella hard to do because it's dysregulating to be around but also to frame it as this is my job and this is the way I want not only how I want to model with her but how I best want to show up Back to EQ is the skill. It is the hard skill, right? Like it is the hardest thing to do to regulate yourself, to make sure you regulate yourself first so others can regulate off of you. I don't know if any of that is useful, but that's what comes to mind. Tell people there's something in your eye and go from there.

Dan Korus: Totally useful. Extremely useful. Yeah. Well, I think like I think we have this vision in our head of when there's an emergency and then there's the stone cold leader who just like has has the right answer. You know, and then we put pressure on ourselves to be that person even though it's it it's not training. They got there by being able to self regulate, by being able to slow down and be calm. And becoming the calming presence isn't experience or I guess it could be experience, but in most cases it's probably not experience. It's actually being a skilled regulator.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. A hundred percent. And I think too, like we I remember when I first started seeing clients being really in my head about like I don't have the correct calm therapist persona. Like I am not a Zen, like and having a few different supervisors be like, No, actually that's the gift. Like the the role is to show up as you are. You know, Freud believes in blank slate and psychoanalysis believes in blank slate. Relational science tells us it's useful to an extent, but we are relational creatures whose brains are literally being developed because of interactions we're having with others. So your brain and body register inauthenticity, and so a leader doing their best work is not just going to always be calm. Sometimes they're going to be able to say to the room, Yeah, this is really kind of scary. Like, I don't know what's gonna happen, and normalize that because that's what the room needs to hear in that moment as opposed to like it's all gonna be fine. Yeah?

Dan Korus: Yeah. Totally. And I think I didn't really realize how much therapists use their own nervous system as like a ruler and diagnostic tool for other people's nervous system. And that seems like really trippy because if someone else is like feeling excredibly anxious and then your body's picking up on their anxiety and then you're starting to feel anxious, you have to be like, I'm not anxious. I'm just feeling anxious 'cause I'm sitting I'm listening to an anxious person and that's making me anxious, so that's how they're feeling.

[46:09] can AI replace a therapist, and when does it make things worse?

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. Yep. Yes. It is. And you have to do the double work of like, is this making me anxious because of the content or because of the process? So like the process would be because they're anxious and I'm picking up on their anxiety. The content could be, am I anxious because they're talking about a topic that one time I had a bad interaction with somebody that felt the same way and now I'm thinking about that, which is what we would call counter-transference.

Dan Korus: That's wild.

Ashley Gibson: So you have to do the double diagnosis of like, is this about me or is this about the way my nervous system's showing up? Like it gets real meta, real trippy.

Dan Korus: How do you do that while still like them feeling like you're listening and having like a follow-up question?

Ashley Gibson: I believe that ADHD is my superpower because I can have twenty different things happening. Like I never feel more on in an H ADHD capacity than when I'm like working with a client because I'm specifically being asked to attend to 20 different things. I'm attending to what they're saying. I'm thinking about what they said last session and the session before and the overall pattern and what kind of intervention are we going to go next. And if we go that way is it going to go like this or this? And also I can hear the fan in the background. I have to tune that out. I'm noticing my own countertransference. I'm noticing my nervous system. And I'm doing all of that at the same time, which I'm sure feels wild to neurotypical brains. but for me that's like a Tuesday. So that's how I don't I don't know what else to tell you. It's

Dan Korus: No, yeah. I mean, I think like I think being neurodivergent is such a gift and what a gift to be able to like do multi to to feel stimulated doing multiple things at once. You know, for it to feel right. You know, one of the reasons why I love audiobooks and I love audible, is that I can do that yeah. Audible, emotion come on, emotional intelligence. Yeah. spin drift.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. Sponsored by Audible. Reach out. Ugh, you know Bezos needs it. Herefore.

Dan Korus: Come on. Yeah. Ba come Bezos. Anyways. when Yeah, what a gift, first of all. Second of all, good thing or bad thing that people can get pseudotherapy from AI. What's your hot what's your hot take on this?

Ashley Gibson: Okay, so my hot take is It's never going maybe this is like me being full of myself. It's never going to replace me. because it it can't, at least now the way we know it and see it, hold that nervous system regulation, right? It could probably do the pattern recognition and say the right thing and assess a pattern that you brought up eight sessions ago, maybe even better than I could. But it can't sit in a body that feels God, I'm back to like this weird

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Ashley Gibson: The bodies feeling the bodies. it feels the energy in a room, for lack of a better word, right? so I have clients use it, I've used it for

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: Like right now I'm using it to assess my own mood tracking patterns because I don't like any of the mood tracking apps that are out there and I want to know if I have PMDD or not. And and is that affecting how my vibe works? So it's interesting to have something in a more neutral capacity reflect back to you what it's actually hearing you say and patterns and recall. That's the job of a attuned therapist. I don't think there is A problem with people using it for it, my problem becomes when people are using it to such an extent that it is feeding their own anxiety or behavior loops, right? Like for my clients, I work with a lot of folks with OCD because OCD and trauma overlap quite a bit. it's probably not a great tool for them because it's perpetuating some of those I need to scratch the itch intellectually, I need to get reassurance, I get reassurance and it perpetuates. it's really hard

Dan Korus: Us through an example of what that would look like, like with AI, for someone who, you know, is maybe using it and they're stuck in just a general loop.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. Yeah. Like think about like relationship patterns, right? So if you are anxiously attached and you need to know constantly if you're anxiously attached, you're asking, am I okay? Are we okay? I can't be okay unless you're okay, right? So you might turn to ChatGPT and say, here is a screenshot of a text message I had with my partner. You know, what do you think of the tone? The way you might with a friend, right? Or you might unpack exchange that happened. AI is going to hopefully reflect back to you at least accurate more accurately what the dynamic is. But it's less about, they told you that you were right, and more about they scratch the itch of I just need someone to talk to me about this thing. Like that's the loop of I'm anxious about this thing, I need some level of reassurance that I'm doing it right or showing up right or I read this right. And so regardless of what AI's feedback was. The fact that somebody can always give you feedback immediately is more of the problem than anything.

Dan Korus: Dang. Yeah, 'cause I guess okay, so it doesn't even it doesn't even matter what ChatGPT would say on the text, you know, it's just like it just matters that I have that instantly available in my pocket to go do that. wow. Okay, well now I'm thinking of all the times that I've done that. no.

Ashley Gibson: Right. Right. Yeah, yeah. And I I do it too. And again, like I don't think it's I think where it becomes a problem, right, is like we all have to kind of self-regulate our own behavior and like it's really big to ask somebody to notice, especially someone who finds themselves in certain looping behaviors. Like, is this perpetuating a pattern that I actually would

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: at its core rather maybe not rather have it be perpetuated, but it wouldn't be better for me to for this pattern to perpetuate.

Dan Korus: Yeah, yeah, I get it. okay, that's a r that's a pretty good take. I didn't I didn't know any of that, so that's awesome. okay, so I've got just a couple more questions for you. if you were if if I sent you someone and I was like, Ashley, this is a leader who needs to learn how to emotionally intelligent.

Ashley Gibson: Hehehehehe. Do it.

Dan Korus: And the and you were gonna train this person, like what would be your training regiment for them? What would you have them do? What would you have read? How would you get to like teach emotional intelli to be able to to do emotional intelligence in the workplace.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. I love this. I'm gonna go somewhere you're either gonna love or hate. You're probably gonna love it. I would start with existentialism. So I really believe the guy who brought existentialism to the field of therapy is my crush. The man is like ninety-four years old. I'm obsessed with him. his name is Urv Yaoim. And Slay, Erv, you're the best. I named my fish after him. Erf the Beta. He I

Dan Korus: Play. Ex excellent.

Ashley Gibson: he's great. I can tell you a million RV stories. anyway, all of this to say, he really believes that like existential existentialism is a lens as opposed to it is a kind of therapy I do. Like, no, no, it is the way through which we interact with humans through the world because there are these givens. We are all creatures with the ability and the

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: the impetus to make meaning, right? Where there is no meaning, the inevitability of death, the real lived reality of isolation, we can never fully experience another's unique intersection of perspectives. and then the freedom and the terror of the freedom that comes with that, the onus. So if we hold all of those as givens I think there's real power in naming that whether or not we as leaders, as people in the world, recognize we are being driven by these factors. They're there whether we like it or not. So I educate a lot of my clients in our early days, and I would do the same in a leadership capacity, that these are constantly programs running in the background of your animal brain, whether or not they're running in your conscious prefrontal cortex. Whether or not someone is able to perform empathy on command, their body and their brain are still holding it from like it's in there somewhere, right? So I tend to start a lot of my work from the I'm going to tell you the neuroscience of the thing because you can't argue with neuroscience of the thing. And that's probably where I'd start from the leadership capacity. And I have a feeling you would as well. which is why again I go to like Hey, here's how patterns generally show up, and here's like the irrefutable, these are universal dynamics across all human systems and interactions. And if you know all of these things are true, let's talk about times, go solution focused, where If you felt you had a positive interaction, okay. How exactly did you do that? What worked about it? What might you learn from that next time? What might get in the way of you doing that next time? Right? Where is some potential friction? How do we account for that before we get there? How do we kind of prime the pump so that your brain is more apt to take the route we want it to take when you get there? I just covered like 12 different therapeutic modalities in 30 seconds. I am so sorry.

[53:50] what does leadership homework actually look like?

Dan Korus: No, I think it's great. I think it's a good training plan. and then my follow up question to that would be like you know, what does the homework look like? What are you asking them to go do with people? Like when, you know, manager person goes to work and they're like, Okay, I know about existentialism and I know about you know, no, this is good. I think it's great. I think it's really great. Well just saying that, I mean like I think on a slide it looks different than how we, you know, tell people it looks. You know, so like it looks different. It looks a lot more fun on a on a on a in a slot in a PowerPoint slide deck.

Ashley Gibson: This sounds like terrible curriculum. I'm so sorry. That is correct, yes. Yes. Let's all think about death. Like

Dan Korus: Looks different in a spreadsheet. I think like I think that's I think it's a it's something that I think about a lot. Like how would I actually have someone go train? You know, and I think of what what we do as kind of like, okay, we're showing someone the gym, we're showing them the weights, we're showing them what good form looks like. We're saying, Hey, you know, don't lift with your back on a deadlift or something. But like they still have to go do it. You know, like they still have to go do it. and it this is true for any skill, right? so what what do the reps look like?

Ashley Gibson: Mm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. I think the overarching homework is get out of your head and into your body, reps or otherwise. Because if you're in your brain, you're constantly trying to analyze the interaction or the relational patterns or the emotion as opposed to feeling it. And so I actually had a client last week, she's like, How do I sit with a feeling? Because therapists say sit with a feeling a lot. Like, what does that even mean? I'm gonna write a Substack article about it. the the homework would be to constantly ask yourself at any given moment like how in my body am I? Am I cognitively thinking about the fact that I feel angry or am I allowing myself to feel the anger? Most folks are in the first category and not the second category because it doesn't feel safe to let yourself feel the feeling because you don't know how to regulate it. No one's ever taught you how to do it and never taught you how to ride the wave. So for me I think the homework would be a combination of teaching people the tools and skills and the beats of actually like feeling a feeling and riding the wave, the coping that comes around that. I would want them to build their co-regulation skills and I would want them to do That in ways like, can you, as a senior leader, go shadow your front desk person for a day? And your job is to say nothing the whole day, or your job is to only ask questions of how does this get done? Right? Like again, shadowing is not a new concept, but any exercise that's going to build perspective taking, not just cognitive empathy, but actually I've walked in those shoes or I've felt it is going to help.

Dan Korus: Okay, that's epic advice. This is really good. Okay. Final three questions, are you ready? Okay. Nice. Don't don't tempt me.

Ashley Gibson: Go for it. I love this. Do this all night. I'm here I mean like again, like it's like late at night and my hair's falling out, but like here we are. Let's go. I'm taking the hair down, so it's getting serious now. All right. Yeah.

Dan Korus: Okay, last these are these are the last three questions. This is good. I got a I got a dog I've got a very important dog walk after this.

Ashley Gibson: I get it. I have a kitten who is screaming at me from the other side of the door, in case you can't tell.

Dan Korus: Yeah. What's the kitten's name again?

Ashley Gibson: Sebastian, he's the worst. He's also the best. He lets my toddler man handle him. His other name he his name might have been Flounder if I had let her have her dreathers, but Sebastian.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Both are good names. I like Sebastian. Sebastian's a good name. and gentle with toddlers. That's great. That's like a particularly wise for a kitten.

Ashley Gibson: It's wild. I'm i i hi he's earning his keep around here because otherwise the climbing of the curtains and the eating of all my plants is not doing it. But the gentle, sweet, eight-year-old gray boy here is allowed to be here. So anyway, I digress. Cats, everybody wants to hear about cats.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Nice. Okay, good. I love cats are good. so and I think I think my animals help me ride the emotional wave, you know? Absolut totally. Like if I'm about to go feel some feelings, I'm gonna be on the couch, you know, dog on either side of me, cat behind, like we're we're in this together.

Ashley Gibson: A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. They are the masters of co regulating. They're not thinking about anything other than what's happening right now and they're just sitting with it.

Dan Korus: Yeah, you know how like they always like are are like, Well, if your dog's anxious, that's 'cause you're anxious. You know? And I'm always like, No, that can't that can't be But like their nervous systems do the same things with us Or do you think Okay

Ashley Gibson: I think they can have their own Yeah, but also like I I don't think like they're they're not just responsive creatures. Like they could be anxious for their own issues, right? Like we had a massive thunderstorm here last night, and every client who walked into my office today was like, let me tell you about how my dog handled it. So it's yeah. Maybe it's about you, Dan. Only sometimes though.

Dan Korus: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. yeah. I it's all about me. Everything always about me. yeah, not everything's about you and your anxiety, Dan. I think like half of my Substack posts probably talk and mention my anxiety at least once or twice.

Ashley Gibson: How could it not be? You know who are you if you're not being yourself? Like

Dan Korus: This is this is what authenticity looks like. Take notes, leaders.

Ashley Gibson: Yes, a hundred percent. Let's do it, guys.

Dan Korus: Yeah, I actually really hate authenticity as like a a verb that like leaders are supposed to aspire to. Like I'm totally on the same page that like people can pick up on authenticity and that by learning to be authentic you can also build trust and that by being yourself, you know, people can you can you can be a better co regulator. but I also think that like it's a total just like dumbass card that we hand people and we're like, Yeah, show up to work and just be like a privileged douchebag. But if you call it authenticity, it's cool. You know, like this is your br Brad's being himself. You know, like this is Brad's being authentic. Yeah. Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: Yes, yes. No, no. Brad's being a dick. And like it is, you're you're totally right. I'm really glad you're like pushing back on that. Because it is it gets used as an excuse to just like say whatever the hell you want, and that's not what it is. Like it is naming that internal voice in the back of your head that's like

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: If you're Brad and you're being a dick, it's probably because there's this tiny voice in the back of your head that's like, Brad, like your dick is too small, or Brad, like, you know, your mother never loved you. And so I'm not saying you have to walk into the room and lead with those topics, but Brad would do well to come in and like hold and show the humility that he already feels as opposed to pretending he's bigger than that. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, the guy. Yeah, I get it. Yeah, we get it. Big dick Brad's here. That's okay. Yeah. That's alright. the beauty about podcasts is that we can edit we could edit some port parts out. Maybe we won't. Fuck it.

Ashley Gibson: I'm so sorry that this conversation went very you asked you were getting wild chaos actually and it's because it's eight o'clock at night here. You know what? It's great.

Dan Korus: I mean I think I th I just I we can't have enough dialogue on authenticity and what it means and the narratives that we're telling people. Because I think people out there believe that, leadership is masking my fear, you know, in an uncomfortable situation instead of learning how to live with it and be authentically afraid in front of other people and still be like, Hey, I'm freaking out too, but it's gonna be all right. That's a totally different response than masking it all and which people are totally gonna see through that and feel right through that, right? So

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. And they're not gonna trust you because how could you ever be okay with that, right? Like even if somehow you were able to get your nervous system to like read for other people, like I'm totally cool with this, right? Like you're probably like way dissociating. And if you're not picking up on the vibes the rest of us are and that like everything is burning, then I can't trust you because you're clearly not with it, you know? Like it goes in so many different ways.

[61:32] authenticity is a privilege, not a leadership slogan

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah. yeah. Yep. And yeah, so I just I will always not like the word authenticity.

Ashley Gibson: It's a good we should come up with a better Yeah. I don't know. It and we have to

Dan Korus: Yeah. Be a like like on my real G shit or something like on you know, like that would

Ashley Gibson: I'm I'm I'm doing doing me. I think that like two, this goes back to we have to create spaces where people feel like they can be authentic. Like I think you did a post recently about like authenticity is a privilege, for lack of better word. Like it's

Dan Korus: Yeah, yeah.

Ashley Gibson: it is often not safe to show up as yourself and like the way I'm even showing up with you here or how I am with my clients is not how I showed up in a corporate workspace for most of my career because it wouldn't fly. And that was exhausting for me. And so If we want to address burnout, we have to like make spaces safe enough for people to have needs to have those needs be met and then for leaders to do the same thing.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Okay, so I have I have four questions left. The first is yeah. I added one. I added one. I added a question. No, that's okay. I I added one. Is that cool? I added one.

Ashley Gibson: it. I think we went from having three questions left to having four questions. I'm so I'm gonna I'm here for I'm gonna close my curtain so people don't like stare at me from outside. All right. Let's do this. That I again I have nowhere to be. You're good. My daughter's at her dad's house tonight. We could do this all night.

Dan Korus: Alright, sweet. I think well I think it's a good question. the question is, and this is the one I just added, is for employees out there who are starting to feel burnt out or they're in burnout, what what what do they do? What should they do like right now?

Ashley Gibson: What do help? I think it is a case of managing your own expectations for yourself. So back to our conversation about like the people who care the most are the most likely to burn out. If you care quite a bit, most people are not realizing that's the route they're headed until they're kind of actively in it, right? So understanding that it is not a function of your willpower or I did not try hard enough and that thus the answer is not and I should keep trying harder, right? Is the first thing that I want people to know. I have a lot of therapy clients who walk into the room and they're like, well my goal is to never be anxious or my goal is to never be uncomfortable with emotions. I'm like, those are great goals. They're also not realistic because being a human means sometimes your brain is gonna serve up anxiety or it's going to be uncomfortable saying uncomfortable things. Likewise, your goal can't be I'm going to outperform burnout. Like you can't do it. So manage for yourself, okay, if I recalibrate my expectations for myself, what agency do I have? Personal agency, locus of control, in this setting. If you are employee who feels like you can't make much change, okay, maybe you can't literally change the systems you're in, but maybe you can start to show up just a tad bit differently and see like if I give 98% as opposed to 100%, what happens? Does it really fall apart the way I think it's going to fall apart? And like gently figuring out where you can show up with like most viable product, right? As opposed to or minimum I should say minimum viable product as opposed to most viable product. And it's that question of like, is this where you want to sink all of your energy into? So People who are feeling burned out, the solution is often like, I need to stop feeling burned out. I need to perform my way out of this or find another situation or figure it out. And doing things, the additive is not the answer. The answer is going to be actually like letting yourself recalibrate and come back and building identity outside of work. Because if it's an introject process, then really like it has impacted your identity.

Dan Korus: What's like what's like the last thing people normally give up that should usually be like the first thing? You know? Do you do you have tabs on this?

Ashley Gibson: Ooh. I mean, do I live it? Yes. I think like I don't know, I think a lot, especially lately, about like

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: I think people need to give up on things they can't just give up on the things you can't control. but like truly I think we assume it's not so much like I assume I can make you do a certain thing, it's that a part of my brain believes that if I show up a certain way, that's going to influence the income or the outcome, right? Like so being really authentic with yourself or honest with yourself, I should say, about like how little control I actually have.

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: Gives me some freedom. You asked for homework earlier. I thought about the book 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman. And he talks a lot about like, you know, the way we vote with our time. Like audit your calendar. What should people give up? Well, your calendar is actually gonna tell you, is it aligned with the kind of person you really want to be? Like every decision you make, every action, every behavior, every the way you're internally positioning yourself and choosing to relate to something is a choice and it's either a vote for the kind of person you want to be or the opposite direction. And sometimes they're both towards moves. It's just one that more is towards than the other.

Dan Korus: Yeah. I'll ditch all meetings that don't have agendas. I'll tell you right now. Like if your if your name isn't in the agenda block, don't go. that's my anyways.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. I yeah, yeah. I it's so interesting you say that because I think I even saw the like on your notes earlier and I went, I could never because the it immediately and my nervous system registers as like I'm gonna get yelled at, right? And if I really sat and like dug at it, I could probably tell you the six times that was true, or times in childhood that I dropped the ball or somebody else dropped the ball and I saw them drop the ball. Like it's hard to know where the line is, hence the need for diagnosis, but don't go to meetings with their names on the agenda. Like you know what actually

Dan Korus: I d and and when they ask and they're like, Hey, where where were you, Dan? I'm like, your meeting didn't have an agenda, so I didn't go, sorry.

Ashley Gibson: That don't go to meetings that don't have an agenda, period. It's wild to me how many meetings don't have an agenda. Or I'll ask like, hey, what's the agenda for this meeting? And they'll be like, I don't know. then I'm not we're not having a meeting. Like if you don't know what we're talking we're not having a meeting.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it. okay. First time employee. Their first day of work ever is tomorrow. this this is like their yeah, I know. It's it's like exciting but also heartbreaking. in an exciting it is definitely exciting come join us. We promise it's not that bad kind of way. the first day of work's tomorrow. What's your advice for them?

Ashley Gibson: poor guy. Ha ha ha. I used to say first day is the hardest because like I would get really nervous for my first days and after the first day like at least you know where the bathroom is and like you have a general sense of like the office vibes. Talk less, listen more, really. Like, just you can be a sponge. You don't have to make a big change in the first twenty minutes. Like, your job on that first day is to calibrate and to understand and to read the nervous system of the organization. Your job is not to come in and like make a name for yourself. And I don't mean that in a shitty like you can't show up and be yourself and be authentic kind of way, but more in like a if you are truly trying to join with a team. I was talking to a client this morning who's like a sp sports person, 'cause I'm not a sports person, but was talk about the importance of like teams feeling like there are emotional stakes together, emotional togetherness. Like I think a way to do that is to listen and to ask really good questions.

Dan Korus: yeah. Listen, ask good questions. That's solid advice. find find the bathroom. also also a hidden also a hidden golden nugget. Yeah. What a Yeah. Dude, one of life's greatest pleasures is working at a place big enough that there's like some hidden bathrooms, you know, and like having like a coup like a good like hidden bathroom. I know. Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: Figure out like do people eat lunch at their desk, do they leave? It used to stress me out so much. Or like a solo stall or like we didn't even talk about the job I had where the bathroom was over top of my office and then flooded onto my desk. So talk about a recipe for burnout, but there's a metaphor in there somewhere. Just gonna drop that one and be like, okay, bye.

Dan Korus: Well well well Yeah period. I was kidding. Yeah. Yeah. I think I think all the listeners need to know that that happened. and we are authentically making space in a in a co regulating kind of way for you. You know?

[69:13] advice for new hires, middle managers, and the C-suite

Ashley Gibson: That's I just I need you to know that. I needed you to know that. Yeah, I It was traumatic, I say, as a trauma therapist. And it also gave me excuse to be like, I do not need to work until 10 PM every night for a job that does not care that there is sewage on my desk. Like I Yeah, actually I was not there, thankfully. Like somebody came in the next morning and like don't because our we we had basement offices. There's no windows. It felt like being in jail. But

Dan Korus: Yeah. so it happened after hours. Okay. Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: You know, back to like my favorite line ever. You knew what you signed up for when you worked at a historic theater. Da da da da da. Yeah.

Dan Korus: Yeah, it it it's not it's not a disgusting biosafety issue. Yeah, it's it's his it's historical. Yeah. Yeah, it's That's right. That's right. We're preserving history. You get to work in this building.

Ashley Gibson: It's that sewage on my desk, let me tell you. It is. And and you knew it going into it. So really you should just be grateful that we're even paying you a paycheck to be here. You are bringing the arts to a lot of people. You care a lot.

Dan Korus: There's there's something about a dungeon office though that I really love. because not having windows, having just like a little like even if it's not that comfortable, just having a spot and sometimes I work with like like chainsaw earmuffs on, like shooting at earmuffs. Yeah, I know neurodivergence.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. Nice

Dan Korus: But I've had some of like my best what I would call my best right, maybe it's not my best, but I don't know. It's just like the focus, you know, like the lack of the lack of distraction. Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: Do you love it? Yes. you're in your space. But my favorite thing about that office was that like because we were underground when they would like blast something at the quarry a few miles away, we would like feel it reverberate all the way through the sheet rack. You'd be like trying to do something at your desk, like it's like, it's happening again. But but to your point, like I

Dan Korus: Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: I cared about that job so much and I loved that job so much. It was like my first real leadership role. And like running a home marketing department, like I would go in on weekends or after hours or get there early and have that whole little basement cave to myself and feel so focused. And then I would emerge into the light like hours later and be like, what day is it?

Dan Korus: Yeah. Right. Yeah, exactly. Like not n going going outside and not knowing what the weather is. not like knowing what to anticipate. That's kind of a disorienting feeling. So two more tomorrow we got yeah, I know, we got two questions. We're getting there. Okay, for middle managers.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. Hundred percent. And there's four questions left. Yeah.

Dan Korus: People who are solidly in the middle. And I I always think of these people like they could be individual contributors too, I suppose, but like people with with people above them and below them. What's your advice for them?

Ashley Gibson: influence both up and down as much as you can. So you'll probably feel like you have more influence down and you're probably right about that, right? What you can model and what you can expectations you can set for your team. and allow your team to lean on you and Without sacrificing yourself at the altar, you can be kind of like the filter through which you decide can I tend to this without making it upper management's problem or needing to be an upper management problem. Like you have some agency there to be a system and a force of change. And then you have the obligation to manage up and advocate for your team and their needs from an emotionally intelligent place. And your job is not to absorb all of the crap literal sewage or otherwise. Your job is to be the the the save sev, I never know how you say it like I think it's sev. I don't fucking know. by which information is going up or down, right? And like don't let yourself be the bottleneck by virtue of it's easier for me to hold all of the trauma. It's easier for my nervous system to do the regulation that the system the system is not prepared to absorb. Because then you're part of the problem.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Yeah. And I think in middle management you get you know, you you obviously get hit from both ends and it's a recipe for burnout because then you're regulating down and you're regulating up. managing up is particularly difficult. You got any tips on managing up?

Ashley Gibson: Yeah, it's a good question. I mean like like when have I successfully managed up? I I think it is the times in which I was able to be myself and be a person. Like the person who you are managing up to is a person too and they have theoretically like people that they love and things that they care about and not in a like bullshit, let's shoot the shit kind of way, but like authentically connecting like I am a human and I see you're a human. being able to own your own humanity as a model for managing up gives them space and permission to be human too. Yeah.

Dan Korus: I love that. That's good. That's good. Yeah. Okay. We made it. Last question. I know. Dude, I know.

Ashley Gibson: We're here. It better be the best question. Love it. They're great.

Dan Korus: Yeah, well it's a continuation of the other three. so I don't I don't know if it's the best. It also statistically applies to the least amount of people. but it's kind of a fun one to think about. So for C suite, exec, VPs, owners, founders, people at the top, what's your advice for them?

Ashley Gibson: Yeah, Be willing to hear feedback about the gap between what you intend and what your impact actually is. Because you again, back to org is not the villain. Like you probably have really great intentions and you're juggling a shit ton. And like look, I've had to sit in that chair where I've had to make decisions that are gonna help the ROI here but aren't gonna feel good for the consumer here and are gonna feel like this internally. Like I know you're balancing all of the things. Own what your intent is in all of that. Like I had to balance these things and in doing so the balance I'm trying to achieve is this and then be willing to hear and receive feedback of whether or not it's literally cat hair just falling over. Whether or not I intended it, how was it actually received? Was how was it how did employees synthesize it? Just because I say the decision feels like this or is meant to balance these things, is that actually how it ends up feeling to the people on the receiving end of it? And that could be your customers, it could be your employees, it could be even yourself, right? I intend to create a culture of this, that and the other. But are you experiencing that culture? Are you experiencing a culture where it feels okay to voice these things? Or are you internalizing it? So like really being willing to take a good hard look at your own gaps.

Dan Korus: Favorite road trips tonight?

Ashley Gibson: combos, like the pretzels with the cheese on the inside. Yeah. Yeah, they are good. And I only ever I mean it's musical theater. It's musical theater. Like how could it not be? I'm a Sondheim girly, so like Stephen Sondheim is

Dan Korus: Dope. It's a good pick. Favorite road trip music? sorry. Yeah. What's like your go to? Like what's like your go to? Okay.

Ashley Gibson: the best, which again is I'm so sorry that we're going down this theater nerd road. But also like I now my three year old purple rain is her new favorite song. So like I do listen to other things. Like Prince is your other option. Prince and combos, yeah.

Dan Korus: Nice. No, I guess cool. Yeah. Nice. That's great. Yeah. Okay, cool. That's good. Go to karaoke song?

Ashley Gibson: me and Bobby McGee. Yeah. What's your go-to, karaoke song? Yeah. You can't I I I get to ask a question.

Dan Korus: Nice. Okay. If me? I've never been asked that question before.

Ashley Gibson: Find out next when Ashley hosts her podcast.

Dan Korus: I think Okay, so I've got I've got two songs on deck. one I think is ZZ Top. Sharp ZZ Top? Sharp Dressed Man? I don't know. Yes. And then I've got a scene a Selene Dion song prep too. Yeah. Yeah. I I think it it's one of the ones from the Titanic.

Ashley Gibson: Mm-hmm. Mm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes. What Celine Dion song. I love Celine Dion. well she only sings one song from Titanic, so it must be my heart to go on. I I hope you know that there is a parody Titanic musical starring Celine Dion as a character called Titanic. And I am this is sponsored by Titanic on Broadway now. Yes? I'm not joking.

Dan Korus: That that one. Yeah, it's that one. Yeah. My heart will go on. Yeah. Really? Titanic? dude, that's outstanding. Okay, I'm gonna go I'm gonna go I'm gonna go if the dogs will let me I'm gonna pull up some YouTube on the walk. Okay. So before we go, we've talked about a lot of really good stuff. Where can people find you? website, substack, all that stuff.

Ashley Gibson: It's hysterical. Yeah, it's very funny. Like mmhm. All the things. meaning in practice dot com. So that's where you can find out about

Dan Korus: Okay.

Ashley Gibson: That's where I'll be releasing the white paper. That's where you find out about like taking me and bringing me in to do keynoting. that is where the link to my intent impact diagnostic lives, which is a free 10 question tool that if you want to know if your organization is structurally producing burnout or the conditions for burnout, it'll give you a pretty quick answer and I think whether or not you're leading a team that's useful. they can also find me at Substack, imagine that. me and my handful of

[76:55] where to find Ashley and what makes a kestrel

Dan Korus: Mm-hmm.

Ashley Gibson: lovely lovely followers I'm posting roughly weekly and then I am like occasionally on LinkedIn but I really hate it so just ignore that part

Dan Korus: If someone wanted to like you know, hit you up, where would where would where's the best spot? Website, substack, LinkedIn? I'll have okay, cool. Sweet. All right, that sounds perfect.

Ashley Gibson: website, contact form, email. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But also like as you've seen, I am can maybe sometimes be fast on a subtack DM where it can take me six days. So Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Dude, your substack's awesome. I really like your writing. Your notes are good. Your comments are very great. and if your subscriber list, I like I like peek through there and I was like, Okay, who's who's reading Ashley? dude, you've got like a really lot of like awesome, really like great people in your sub like you're you're well read, you know, and yeah.

Ashley Gibson: Think so. Thanks. Yeah. I'm I'm happy with it, thank you. And you are too. Like when did you start on Substack?

Dan Korus: I started shit posting in February. Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: Okay, so yeah, you're a few months ahead of me. I I feel like my first post was it's wild. I've been leaving Substack for so long, but I didn't start posting until yeah, like a month or two ago.

Dan Korus: How does it feel now? Does it feel different now? 'Cause I've only experienced going to the app as like a as a person with stuff, you know, to put on there.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's weird like the Aldi algorithm just wants to give me like only burnout content because that's what I'm interacting with. So I miss reading my other stuff and I have to go like find my people. But like I was a Tumblr girly. I was a Twitter girl before Twitter went gross. Like so I'm not on any other social like I don't do TikTok or Instagram or Facebook because like mental health. But it feels like a nice like return to like, we can all like shit post with each other and like share memes and like

Dan Korus: Nice. Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: you know, I can feel really sad that Dan's not interviewing Pikachu. Like it's a bummer. So Well, and my other comment was gonna be like I I too am having I'm gonna and I'm gonna make you do it too. I'm gonna start doing a collaborative series and Jen is gonna be one of my first people. So like are gonna like go head to head on whether your questions or my questions are better. Like

Dan Korus: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yours, definitely. yours are yours are gonna be better. a hundred percent, I'll tell you right now. I concede.

Ashley Gibson: You're asking about road trip snacks, so really you're the winner here.

Dan Korus: I don't like, do you really know someone if like you don't know if they're gonna go like sweet or salty, you know, or savory on like a road trip? Yeah.

Ashley Gibson: It's a good question. Yeah. Are like are you sweet or salty then? That's the other question.

Dan Korus: I think I'm a combination of both. So one time it kind of depends on the road trip. So if it's a fun road well, one time me and my wife crushed a five-pound bag of Warthers together while road tripping north. we were dude, I know. I know. We were like and we were like sh yeah, dude, cares sick. yeah. And then I think like other times we like I love it when we bring the cooler.

Ashley Gibson: One more. Worthers out of all the things you can think. That's wild. Your wife sounds dope.

Dan Korus: in the truck which is like and we have like a perfectly good hybrid that we could road trip in but when we're in the truck it's fun because like we're in the truck and the truck doesn't have like a Bluetooth speaker so I bring my own so it's just like and the other car has like really nice stuff and navigation leather seats but I'm like no let's take let's take the truck babe like yeah this is like would you we're gonna I like I always like to be like I think it might snow like we might need the truck you know and like you know when people were like sending fake COVID tests to their boss to get like

Ashley Gibson: Of course. Yes, yes. This is a road trip, like Like so rugged.

Dan Korus: I've sent fake weather reports to my wife so we could take the truck. And she still loves me. Yeah. yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I know, I know, I know, I know.

Ashley Gibson: They have to take the truck. I love it. I loved I were you posting about like she still loves you. Look at you. You're doing something right. I think you posted something about like using Claude or something to like has never proven you correct in your arguments. Were you saying that? It's I think a lot about how like sorry, keep going. Yeah, yeah.

Dan Korus: No, I've always been wrong. Dude, every time. Yeah. Well, like yeah. No, no, no, no. I like sandwiches. So we bring we bring we do the truck and I like to have sandwiches. So I like to stop and I l wanna like make like a good sandwich and if I'm extra hungry I'll make two and have one in the car. You know.

Ashley Gibson: The sandwiches are good. Uh-huh. I feel like eating a sandwich while driving though. Like so you're stop the car, pull over and eat as opposed to like, 'cause I'm just gonna eat while I'm driving. Like I'm just shoveling that shit in my face while I'm like that's rough, man. Mmm Okay.

Dan Korus: Yeah. I I love like a good like two day road trip with like a camping trip in the middle and then like, you know, eating out of like one cooler for like a couple days. It's just like really nice quality time 'cause like your your per you know, like the dogs are like right there and then like it's just like we're trapped in a small little bubble together and it's just like I think it's it' kinda fun. Yeah, I don't know. yeah, we so what were we gonna say? Okay.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah, that sounds fun. Yeah. Yeah. It is. Yeah, yeah. I do not remember because ADHD. But I love this for you. And your wife sounds dope and tell her aye. Ugh. Yeah.

Dan Korus: Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. fuck yeah. I will. Hey, one last question. Okay, I promise is the last one. maybe we just need a return podcast. Okay, cool. Wait, do you have any questions for me? I've been so rude. You don't have to.

Ashley Gibson: And then there's one more. I move for it. Mm, that's so kind of you to ask. I mean, I'm a therapist, so I have lots of questions. I'm really I know you wrote a whole post about it, but I need you to explain the kestrel to me.

Dan Korus: yeah. It hovers. It's one of the smallest falcons in North America. And it's able like due to its size, it's able to like hover while it hunts. So you can like look this up. This is like a thing. you can look at like Kestrel hovering. They're Yeah, duh, totally. Please please do. Please do. Well they their their wings are stationary, and so they're able to hold their head remarkably still while they're hunting to go for like small game and small prey. so they can their eyes can see into the UV, so they can see

Ashley Gibson: Smallest wait, like okay, cool. Yeah. You can fact check me. They're like a hummingbird. Cool. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Korus: like UV fluorescence of like rodent urine tracks so they can you know they can hover and then like see rat piss and like you know go like get stuff. And so I thought I thought the hover was really cool and it kind of reminded me of like the like the six second pause, you know, for emotional regulation. And so I was like, this is this is like a neat little neat little connection. So I wanted to name it after a bird.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. Cool. that's dope. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. I like that.

Dan Korus: So yeah, it just became Kestrel. And Kestrel like actually a super used LLC name. So we added the edge and then and then we misspelled it with a Y so that way I could have it across all the domains.

Ashley Gibson: Yeah. Is it really? That is so smart and the marketer in me loves that for you because you have to have your own unique value prop. My ma maiden name is Bird Cell and so I always used to joke that I am a pet store owner and I sell birds, but Kestrel is a new one to me, I gotta say.

Dan Korus: Thanks. That's awesome. Wait, your maiden name is Bert Allen?

Ashley Gibson: Bird sell like S-E-L-L like bird salad would be even funnier. I'm not that's awesome. That's awesome. I love it. It doesn't matter. But I should have a better answer to this one.

Dan Korus: Bird cell. Okay. I have to edit that out. I think I'm so sorry I misheard that. Bird cell. Okay, cool. Yeah. Favorite bird?

Ashley Gibson: like a blue jay even though they're dicks. Like they're so pretty. And they like I don't know. Probably probably You're gonna have to edit that part out too, because that's wild. Again, like you're getting unfiltered me. But sorry blue jays y'all are dicks. No, it's true. We do what we can man. Go, take the dogs. This was so much fun. Thank you so much for having me. This is much fun.

Dan Korus: Okay. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. They're not dicks, they're authentic. Sorry, Blue Jays. Big root mask off, mask off moment for the Blue Jays. Okay, if I don't go now, I'm not going for the rest of the night. This was a really good podcast. Okay, if you want more, Ashley, go look in the Substack links. and we'll talk again soon. Okay, bye. You too.

Ashley Gibson: Do the thing. See you so soon. Bye down, have fun.