Karma: What Broken Corporate Promises Cost the Organization

Most people think burnout is about workload. Work too much, rest too little, repeat until you collapse. But employment lawyer Natalie Holder has spent her career watching burnout unfold from a completely different angle — and what she sees is something most organizations refuse to name.

Burnout starts with a broken promise.

In this conversation, Natalie Holder and Natalie Luke go deep on the earliest signals that a workplace is breaking down, what happens legally and culturally when high performers absorb responsibility that was never assigned to them, and why the most capable people in any organization are often the last ones anyone thinks to protect.

This one is for the person who has given everything — and started to wonder why it was never enough.

Key Ideas From This Episode

Burnout is not about how much you're doing. It's about how much you're doing for an organization that stopped reciprocating.

When ownership is unclear and promises go unmet, high performers don't reject the gap — they absorb it. And they absorb the signal that something is wrong as personal failure, not systemic failure.

Organizations that rely on over-responsible employees to compensate for structural gaps pay for it. Harvard Business Review research found that employers with poor reputations pay an average of 10% more in compensation just to get people in the door.

Retaliation is where most legal claims actually stick. The initial complaint often doesn't survive. The behavior that follows it usually does.

My side bias isn't malicious. It's neurological. But its impact on who gets trusted, promoted, and overloaded is measurable — and the people on the wrong side of it are always watching.

A pivot doesn't always mean leaving. Sometimes it means changing your perspective of the organization and investing in your own external visibility while you're still inside it.

Workplace trauma is not stress. Stress is situational. Trauma changes how you see yourself in the environment. And if you don't name it correctly, you repeat it.

: natalieholderspeaks.com

Resources

Natalie Holder's free Pivot Assessment — a two-minute tool to assess where you are on the pivot continuum, with a personalized playbook: natalieholderspeaks.com

Exclusion: Strategies for Improving Diversity in Recruitment, Retention and Promotion by Natalie Holder

The Responsibility Reset Notebook — Natalie Luke's decision and boundary framework for high performers who can't turn their brain off: unceilingyou.com/RRNotebook

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Last week, Christine Hummel gave us something I want to name before we go any further. She talked about the moment she stopped being the system and started leading it. That shift from doing everything herself to building a team where ownership was actually clear, where she could step back and trust the work would hold, that's not a soft skill. That's a structural decision. And it's one of the hardest ones high performers ever make. Because here's what most people don't say out loud. The reason you become the system in the first place wasn't weakness, it was capacity. You could see what needed doing, you could hold it, so you did it. And nobody stopped you. Today we're gonna take a look at what happens when nobody stops you from the legal and organizational cultural side. Because what feels like dedication on the inside has a cost on the outside, a financial cost, a legal cost, a cultural cost that most organizations don't even see coming until it's too late. My guest today is Natalie Holder. She's an employment lawyer, a researcher, and the author of Exclusion. And she studies the moment the organization breaks its promise to the person who gave everything and what that actually means legally, culturally, and structurally. Here's what I want you to listen for today: the earliest signals. The ones that show up long before anyone calls it burnout. Because by the time someone uses that word, the fracture has been there for a while. Let's get into it. Natalie Holder, thank you so much for being here. Now, let me start with the fact that we've been told that burnout is about workload. People think of it as workload, but the research is showing something different. It's often about unclear roles, invisible responsibility, but you're coming at it from a different perspective. And I love the fact that you're here. So, from your perspective, working in high-stakes legal and compliance environments, what's the earliest signal that a workplace is breaking down even before people start to call it burnout?

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Thank you so much, Natalie, for having me on the show. And yes, please feel free to refer to me as Natalie Holder, just because you have so many Natalies on the show. It's my pleasure and congratulations on your podcast. I really do enjoy your content. Because once again, your content really resonates with me because it's about the breakdown of the workplace. As an employment lawyer, my goal and my vision is to always build up a workplace and to never see it disintegrate. And so topics like burnout actually make me sad because we didn't start out burned out. We started out with that bright flame. I mean, I think that's the reason why we had that metaphor of burnout, because we started out as stars when we interviewed with the role, when we entered the workplace, someone wanted us there. And then throughout the course of our engagement with maybe that employer or a series of employers, if we continue to follow the same patterns of going to a certain type of employer, we then start to feel as though we can no longer give anything to an organization because we have nothing left for ourselves. So what are some of the first signs? I'd like to say that there is like, you know, that there's that universal signal. But what I would say is there is this, and I really don't think that there is this universal signal. I think it's a matter of a number of different signals. And it's a question of how and when does the individual pick up on it. It's really oftentimes grounded in inequities. When do you notice that there are inequities in your workplace? When are you noticing that you're being treated differently than someone else? Like you said, my way of looking at or the angle from which I look at burnout, I work with individuals who experience burnout because they've given their all to an organization that didn't reciprocate. There were promises that were made to them about being able to get resources, being able to get promotions, being able to get the help that they needed. And those promises were broken, and thus the trust was broken. And so those are just some of the signals that people can pick up on. And when I mentioned, you know, people going into different environments and where they are following the same pattern. If we don't pick up on the signal, and if we're not honest about what that signal was that changed for us when we said something, something's not right anymore in this work environment. I'm no longer feeling that same sense of whether it's appreciation, respect, or collegiality, it's time for me to go. You will continue to follow that pattern and your story becomes, well, that's just the work, that's just the way the workplace is when it doesn't have to be.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

That is such a good point. And I think as much as I hate to say this, I can see myself in that for sure. But also um I see it in coworkers, where coworkers sort of I I hate this analogy, but I'm gonna use it anyway, sort of circling around the toilet in a sense. And they're going around and they're round and they're kind of flushing themselves out, and it feels like they're grabbing everyone and everything that they can to go down with. That's just the analogy that comes to my mind. And when I feel myself going there, it's like, hey man, I don't want to take anybody with me. I'm gonna make some decisions for myself. If I see somebody else going down, it's like I gotta stay away. But in general, that's how I see a signal, that's how I see a sign. I see the whole organization carrying a weight and all the people that want to participate with that person carrying the weight. Who do you see as carrying the weight when there is this breakdown?

SPEAKER_00 6:41

So taking this from the leader perspective, when there is that breakdown, when that leader is no longer truly being a leader, when that leader is really no longer creating the kind of environment in where people don't feel as though they're swirling. Because people oftentimes feel as though they're swirling because they don't have anything to anchor them. What anchors us in the workplace is that belief that someone is giving us feedback, is that belief that we're being treated fairly, is that belief that we're getting the kind of assignments that will set us up for future success.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

And then quite honestly, it's this is where I think leaders fundamentally misunderstand their role. They think their job is direction, goals, vision, strategy. But one of the most important and most overlooked leadership functions is this: defining where responsibility stops. Not just assigning work, defining the edges. Without that clarity, the most capable people on the team don't just work harder, they over-earn. They fill the gaps, they absorb what the leader didn't contain. And over time, that becomes the hidden tax of poor leadership.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Being anchored in the whole notion that someone understands what we want out of the workplace and that they're meeting us there. They're giving us the tools and the resources to be able to be that kind of employee that we want to be. Not everybody wants to be the CEO, and not everybody can be the CEO. However, it's that idea that someone at least knows where you are and what you want to do. That whole notion of, you know, a career ladder, we all know it's much more circuitous these days. No one really goes lockstep in order from one role to another to another. Sometimes we backtrack and we move around. And that's important for the people who are leading you to understand that there might be certain keys in the organization that you want to carry that somebody else might not. But it's when that leader checks out and isn't paying attention anymore, isn't even meeting with you. When you've noticed that people are spiraling, that people are swirling. I actually do like the metaphor. I actually use the toilet metaphor a little bit differently though. Whenever I think about reorganizations, I say that's a corporate flush. That is the way of the corporation basically flushing away that which it feels is waste, that which they feel, you know, they don't necessarily want. They may rehire for your role. However, the question is, did they really find value at that time that they that they were flushing? So that's that's my metaphor. So you're not the only one. Yay! Don't feel alone when you think about that metaphor. But when you've noticed that people were spiraling, the question is what was not tethered for them? Where where does the untethering take place? Because that's oftentimes a very clear signal as to when and where that person might want to pivot, when and where that person might need to move into a different department to be with a new leader, where you know that person might need to actually consider going to a different organization. Sometimes we outgrow the boxes that we're in.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Yeah. And it's kind of important for us to see that system. When you're thinking about a broken system, I don't know if you've seen this, but the most capable people, they tend to compensate for the broken system. Do you see a pattern where high performers start absorbing responsibility that was never assigned to them? And how does that show up legally or even culturally inside the organization?

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SPEAKER_00 10:31

Many times when individuals do feel that first signal in where something might be amiss in the organization, they miss the signal because if they're a high performer, they absorb it as an indication of something that they've done. They internalize it. They're thinking, no, this couldn't be happening to me. I have these degrees, I have this pedigree, I've done this work. So no, I I must be mistaking.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

I want to stop here because this is the exact moment burnout is actually created. Not when the workload increases, not when the deadline gets moved, but when ownership becomes ambiguous and you decide, I'll just take it. That decision feels like leadership, it feels like initiative, it feels like being the person who shows up. But in the precision responsibility system, I call that moment something else entirely. Responsibility leakage. You're not caring what's yours, you're carrying what defaulted to you. And your nervous system, it doesn't know the difference. It just keeps scanning, keeps holding, keeps working, even at two in the morning when the rest of the world is asleep.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

What's really happening? And so that's the absorption that I've seen. You know, when I when I was doing research for my book, Exclusion: Strategies for Improving Recruit Diversity in Recruitment, Retention, and Promotion, I started off with a very basic question to hundreds of people. And the question was, have you ever felt like an outsider? And over and over again, with the exception of one person, one person out of 200 people said, Yes, I have felt like an outsider in these different respects. Each person I interviewed, there was a certain threshold in where I interviewed people who were gainfully employed, people who had uh, you know, undergraduate degrees, people who had even advanced degrees. You know, so those were my threshold, you know, uh criteria for interviewing people. And I noticed that there was always this hesitation in the very beginning of their telling of the story. And even as they were telling the story, they would always go back and say, I'm really not sure, you know, what it was all about. I'm really not sure why this experience of being othered was happening to me. And those experiences, quite honestly, became, I would say, repeated in the stories that I was hearing. And I noticed that these experiences fell into 10 different buckets. And these 10 different different buckets became what I call the 10 indicators of our broken workplace culture. That if they're showing up in your organization, people are going to be checked out. People are going to flame out. People are going to believe, why should I be working so hard for an organization in where I'm like Sisyphus? I'm rolling that boulder up the hill. And they finally say, you know what? I'm not going to allow this boulder to roll back down. I'm not going to roll it back up. I'm just going to let it squash me. I'm just going to, you know, retire in place, is what I often, you know, call it sometimes. That's what burnout can look like when people do feel as though indicators like the lack of informal mentoring. Informal mentoring is so important in an organization because Natalie, think about when you had your first job. There were unwritten criteria in your role. And it took someone to actually identify and to shine a you know a flashlight on the shadow roles that you had in the organization. You might have been hired to be someone's, to be someone's hand holder. You might have been hired to be that person to calm down a client to, you know, soothe emotions. But that's not in your job description. It takes informal mentoring for someone to actually explain all of these to you. And here's the hard part. If you don't have someone giving you that insight, during performance evaluation period, you're told that you didn't meet expectations. And you're thinking, how and why did this happen?

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Yes. That's unspoken responsibility and action. In the precision responsibility system, that's one of the most dangerous categories because it's the one that can't be negotiated. You can't push back on what was never said. You can't succeed at expectations that were never made visible. So you do one of two things. You fail quietly and you don't even know why. Or you overextend, trying to anticipate and cover everything that might be expected. Neither of those are sustainable. And both of them feel like a personal failure when they're actually a system failure.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

That's oftentimes the breakdown in communication that stems from the lack of informal mentoring. And of course, there are nine other indicators, but I, you know, I'll stop there.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

I really encourage people to grab your book and find out what the other nine indicators are. It's very fascinating. And so I guess the question is when you have one of those indicators and you've decided to retire in place or to just let the boulder go and split, but I I want to talk about the people that are trying are staying in place. At what point does that shift from being a team player to something that actually creates risk for the individual company? At what place do you make that change?

SPEAKER_00 16:44

I say that anytime that a person feels as though they do not have equal access to opportunities, that's automatically a reputational risk and also a legal risk for the organization. Because as an organization, as a leader, you are required to provide equal terms and conditions to your employees, regardless of their protected categories. And oftentimes, when people do encounter these top 10 indicators of a broken workplace culture, it sometimes actually correlates to some level of difference that they're bringing to the workplace. They may be the first Asian person to be on a team. They may be the first woman to be in a certain department. And so that right there creates a very noisy situation for an employer in where to keep things quiet, I highly recommend you start investing the time in making sure that all of your employees have the same kind of resources that they each need in order to do a better job. And, you know, Natalie, it's difficult, right? Because you're busy trying to take care of your job. You're busy trying to block and tackle. And then to actually be being that person who's giving feedback to other people, it becomes difficult. But I always tell people don't move into a role of leadership if you're not ready to actually lead. Leaders who haven't led, like leaders who haven't created new leaders haven't led. I'm a big believer in that. That's a you know a saying from, you know, this wonderful uh guru, and I can't think of his name right now, but the whole idea that as a leader, if you haven't created a new leader, you really haven't led. And so that is like fundamental to me in terms of how you make sure that you have a workplace environment and where you're not polluting the air with unfairness, inequities, and any sort of indication that there isn't an opportunity to thrive in the organization. But then legally, absolutely, if you become that employer who's known as not being fair to your employees, as not providing equal opportunities, as not being that employer that people really feel as though there's a good work environment, i.e., it's gonna be interesting seeing when Oracle decides to do some recruiting in the next few years after they just laid off 30,000 people by way of an email. An email, Natalie, can you imagine? I can't getting an email. And so, you know, when you think about what that reputation, what's your reputation is, there's actually a tax on that. And it's, I can't remember the exact name for it, but it's it was in a Harvard Business Review article in where they found that employers who had poor reputations of being employers, they oftentimes had to pay an extra 10% to an employee when they were being onboarded. So employees, they knew the deal and they negotiated for at least 10% more in their salaries.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

And this is where responsibility misalignment stops being a personal wellness conversation and becomes a business liability conversation. Organizations that systemically rely on over-responsible employees to fill structural gaps are paying for it in attrition, in legal exposure, and the talent that quietly exits, not with a resignation letter, but with gradual withdrawal of their best thinking. The cost isn't just human, it's financial and it's preventable with the right structure in place.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

When they were working with organizations that weren't making the best places to work lists, that weren't seen as the leaders of, once again, good and healthy workplace cultures.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

Hmm. There you go. So a lot of leaders think culture problems are soft. And you just talked about something very hard, paying 10% more, and you've also seen lawsuits as well. What are one or two of the most overlooked culture behaviors that quietly escalate into legal exposure?

SPEAKER_00 20:55

Say that too that I'm seeing more frequently. Number one is bullying. Bullying does not necessarily mean that someone's asking for your lunch money. You know, we're talking about, you know, that person who might be sending the caustic emails at two o'clock in the morning. We're talking about the person who is calling you and using very, you know, unsavory language when they're addressing you and when they're giving you feedback and when they're even sometimes giving you assignments, bullying, you know, that um that kind of behavior that makes people feel insignificant. It's interesting. Oftentimes, what I've noticed is that the bullying is something that will, once again, trigger someone to feel as though I'm being mistreated in the workplace. I'm going to file a complaint of harassment or discrimination. That's so that's the legal term, right? That's the actual lawsuit that takes place. But the second indicator that I'm noticing, it's retaliation. Retaliation for years has been one of the number one, that's been like the highest number of complaints that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission receives. And I want to say that's at least, at least five years running. That's been the highest number or the number one area for charges for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. And it's the retaliation piece that oftentimes is the one that sticks. Because Natalie, it is so easy for the initial complaint to be dropped. Because let's look at the Blake Lively case. So Blake Lively has she's an actress. She filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against the producer of her movie and her fellow co-star. And her allegations, when I read them, I'll admit I didn't really feel as though they met the legal standard of. And there are a number of different elements to a sexual harassment complaint, but the severe and pervasive element, that's often where litigants have difficulty. And I'm not in any way minimizing what happened to her. I'm not minimizing the harm that occurred to her. But the legal standard is quite high. The behavior has to be, the behavior that is creating the sexual harassment has to be either pervasive, meaning that it happens repeatedly over and over again and it's polluting your workplace environment. You can't get away from it. Or it has to be severe. It's something that happened one time, but it was so graphic and just so obscene that it really could be seen as that kind of behavior that would alter someone's, would alter the reasonable person's work environment. Right. So you didn't see that in the Blake Lively case. But where her case has legs, it's the retaliation piece. So a judge already threw out the sexual harassment piece, but the judge is keeping the retaliation piece of the case. And that's how she's going to be able to go forward on it. Because when someone has complained about you, our natural instinct is, I don't want to talk to that person anymore. I don't want to be in that person's space. I don't want to work with them. You want to ice that person out. You may even start to engage in, you know, uh condescending behaviors toward that person, making slight comments or remarks, really trying to push that person out. But those comments, the behaviors that would make a person want to leave, that's retaliation. And that's oftentimes where people will find that they have a really good claim against their employer. And so I often tell, I often tell leaders, once you receive a complaint, you had better make sure that you're treating that person like you would your star employee. Continue giving that person resources, continue performance managing them if that's what's required. However, do not mistreat that person because all you're doing is adding evidence to their claim.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Yeah, good one. So before it gets to that level, what can a leader actually do differently in that moment to stop themselves from retaliating?

SPEAKER_00 24:46

It sounds very simple, but I'm a big believer in controlling your breath, right? Where I'll admit, I'm a big believer in like some of the yoga practices, and where it's a matter of creating the intentionality in the workplace. What's your intention with this employee? If your intention is to ensure that you are not found liable for retaliation, take a moment and really think about how are you going about engaging with this person? Are you canceling meetings on this person? Are you subjecting this person to adverse conditions? In other words, have you changed their work assignments? Have you changed the hours that they're working? Are you taking away what would be considered benefits to that person? If this person, let's say, is a single parent and this person works the shift from, you know, 6 to 10 p.m., but you've now made them work a shift that no longer enables them to pick up their kid from from school, that could be seen as retaliation. So it's so important to actually be intentional. And I'm a big believer in take a deep breath before you sometimes engage with that person. Right. And this is a tip I'll admit I I learned from another colleague, in where he says, listen to your breath. Because if you can actually hear your breath, it means that you're breathing and you're taking that moment. Right. And so it sounds very simple, but so many times we just barrel through. And that's where we fall into issues. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

So one of the things you also talk about is my side bias. And what's fascinating is it doesn't just affect perception, it affects who gets trusted, promoted, and who gets overloaded. How does bias influence who gets given more responsibility and who gets protected from it?

SPEAKER_00 26:35

I'm a believer in the neurological science that says that if you have a brain, you have biases. Our biases are nothing but shortcuts for us being able to identify threats, identify pleasure points, that's all our biases do. They are shortcuts for us being able to navigate this world. And so if someone reminds us of ourselves when we were young, if someone reminds us of our son or daughter, what do you think is going to happen with that relationship?

SPEAKER_01 27:01

You're going to love them as long as you love your son or daughter.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Right. But there's something that's going to actually ingratiate you toward that person, right? There's going to be something in where you feel that sense of commonality. And when you do engage in that my side bias, that whole idea of I actually, you know, I resonate with you, that can be a good thing for that employee. But understand that the people who don't remind you of your son, your daughter, they're watching. And they're watching how they're being treated and they're taking notes. And that impacts whether they're going to feel as though they really could and should be working late nights for you, whether they should be working on the weekends for you, whether they should be giving their all to the next project and making you look good for your boss, or if they're basically checked out and thinking about creating opportunities elsewhere.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

Yeah. Gotcha. Now, if someone realizes that they're caring more than they should um in the relationship or at the work and they're not getting reciprocated with really cool projects or even the attention or the mentorship they should get, what's the first move they can make without putting themselves at risk?

SPEAKER_00 28:19

You've got to read the room and understand what kind of environment you're in. But I'm always a big believer in you have to give the opportunity. You have to give that leader the opportunity to say no. So a lot of times people will say, I just know I'm not going to get support from that person. So I'm not going to ask for anything, or oh, I just know that it's a it's a lost case. I'll admit, I enjoy working with people who are done, disgusted over nonsense endured. Those are the people who say, I'm going to actually speak to this person and tell them what I'm interested in. This is the person who says, I'm not going to just resolve that all is lost. I'm going to make the effort and see if I can walk forward, if I can actually be the owner of my destiny and talk to my leader and express to them what I'm interested in. Maybe there might be some misunderstandings. Maybe my leader hasn't heard enough from me. And once you have that conversation, if you do find that your leader is checked out, that your leader is not responsive, and that your leader is not going to support you, that's when I highly encourage people to start creating their portfolio career. Your portfolio career is a career in where, yes, you're building visibility within your own organization, but it's also where you're developing skills and talents and credibility and credentials that give you external visibility as well. So it's where you start joining different associations and you start becoming known in those professional circles. That's where you might also look at different leadership opportunities with different associations and organizations where once again you can be seen as the kind of contributor that you want to be. And then that at least gives you some new leverage as to where else you could get the kind of fulfillment that you're not finding in your current environment.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

And yes, you're working harder, but you're working in a direction that fuels you. And so you'll get energy from that.

SPEAKER_00 30:16

Absolutely. I mean, I think that when we're working within our purpose, that's when we're actually much more energized. That's where we're able to actually say, okay, this is something where I can really see the return on my investment. And I think at the end of the day, that's really what most of us want to see. We want to see that what I'm putting into the organization is what I'm getting out. You know, Natalie, she was inherited by someone who was 11 years old when she was graduating college. He's now her boss. And he was very straight with her and said, I just don't see you as a fit for my team. You know, I'll keep you, but I just don't see you as a fit. And he has repeatedly given other people, you know, uh, stretch assignments, the high-profile assignments that get them the exposure to the board. Meanwhile, she's just doing the grunt work. And she has resolved that this is just the way it is. I don't play golf. I'm never going to be invited to the golf course with them. And, you know, I'm just biding my time and, you know, looking to go elsewhere. And I thought to myself, you're not owning, quite honestly. You're not harnessing your career. You're basically allowing this situation to happen. You're not holding the reins. And so for me, holding the reins would be for her, developing new relationships, maybe in a different department. Even though she might have one specialty, she has transferable skills that might be appreciated elsewhere within her own organization. It's that networking within your own organization sometimes, and where there just might be a different space that's welcoming, that's more welcoming to you. But it's also looking at where else might she be able to be a part of different programs and panels in where she would be able to develop their relationships with people who might be able to put in a good word for her with another organization.

SPEAKER_01 32:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

And it's that kind of ownership that once again I always encourage people to engage with when they're thinking about their portfolio career in moments where they notice that they're in a sisyphus moment and that Boulder just keeps on coming back and they're on the brink of flaming out.

SPEAKER_01 32:30

Yeah, so that's uh a really great story for sure, and shows the power of taking the reins when there's a misalignment misalignment. So you've helped people navigate that moment. How do you know whether to fix the environment that they're in in this particular situation versus pivot out?

SPEAKER_00 32:54

Unfortunately, most times as an employee, you're not going to be able to fix the situation. I have to admit, most times as the employee, you're most likely not going to have the kind of influence and impact to be able to truly change the organization. Organizations exist to reproduce themselves, and it's whatever culture that they have determined works well for them. Sadly, sometimes it does take, you know, something external like a lawsuit, a complaint, or, you know, a charge from a regulatory agency that will shake things up. However, it is very difficult. I'm not going to say that an employee can't do it, but I'm saying it's very difficult for an individual contributor to be able to create massive culture change. And we've seen this happen. Organizations will have, you know, culture climate surveys. The entire organization will spend their time filling out 20-minute surveys, and the data will be collected. Money has been spent on this initiative. There's a whole rollout. And what happens to the data? It's sitting on somebody's shelf. See my shelves in the back? It's sitting on a shelf like that, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:59

And so it really has to be a matter of there being some sort of real interest in the organization saying, we do need to change. We do need to do something with this. Because even when they have culture climate surveys, which are rich with data, some organizations don't do anything with the data. Right. However, you asked a great question that also looks at the employee perspective as the individual contributor, as the employee. If you do notice that, yes, this is an environment that's not serving me anymore. That's where I do believe that you have the ability to consider what would a pivot look like. What do I want in that next career? But it's also taking stock of what have I just experienced. Many times people will just say, this is just the way the organization is, this is just the way life is, and they're just resigned to it. However, it's important to actually call the moment what it is. And it's workplace trauma. You've had an event that has severely impacted your self-esteem and sense of self-worth. And it was a negative experience. And when you don't become honest about that, when you can't confront that, sadly, you will merely call it stress and move on to the next situation. And unfortunately, you just might move into a very similar situation because you haven't called out that which made you done, disgusted over nonsense, endured. You haven't approached the trauma. I remember I was coaching someone one time who was done. She was done. And she was reporting to a senior leader who couldn't make good decisions. Like he just couldn't even make the decision. So we're not even talking about, you know, grandiose decisions. We're talking about someone who just couldn't even decide things. And he made one of the things he did decide because he had he had insight from another leader. He decided to reorganize the department. And because he really had difficulty showing accountability to this woman, he reorganized her into a different department. But in doing that, he reorganized her into a department in where she was now reporting to her peer, her former peer. And so she really was just in arms about that because she felt like this was the ultimate disrespect. How dare you do that? Fast forward, she's now ready to pivot. She's done. She's ready to move and figure out her pivot out of the organization. And as she was looking at new and different places to go to, she was being recruited and courted by another organization. Now, as she was telling me about this organization that she was considering, I thought, oh my gosh, you're about to repeat the same pattern that you just left. Even though she was done, she really hadn't confronted the trauma of the situation. Right. She really hadn't sat with it and thought about what did it mean to her and what was the signal of the, you know, the trauma. How can she make sure that she's not going to fall into an environment in where that could and where she would have that happen again, most likely? You can't guard against it sometimes, but you can be perceptive about, hmm, am I walking in one situation that is very much a mirror of the situation I'm leaving? It's like leaving one bad boyfriend or one bad, you know, um, you know, romantic experience for someone that is like the other side of the same coin. So she was, you know, being recruited by an organization in where the person who she would be reporting to was a very busy person. When he interviewed her, he took less than 10 minutes to interview her. And while he was interviewing her, you know, he's looking at her resume. And basically she realized this is the first time that he was looking at her resume. Wow. Now, the noise that distracted her was that, oh, this is an organization that reached out to me and they flew me first class to interview with, you know, for this individual. And it would be leaving this environment where I got disrespected. As a coach, I can't tell you what to do because we only progress at the rate of our own self-interest. People can tell me all day how to lose weight, but until I'm really interested in losing weight, I'm never going to progress at it. So my job is as a coach to ask questions, to ask the questions that lead you to your own self-transformation. And in asking her questions, I immediately asked, what about this new situation is so different from your other situation? What are the similarities and what are the differences? And I started asking a you know a theme, a thematic stream of questions like that. And she didn't take the job and she wound up staying in the organization and getting the most she could get out of that organization. She started creating her own portfolio career in that organization because she had the tools, the resources, and the relationships. Right. But a pivot doesn't necessarily mean that you've left the organization. The pivot might also just be in your perspective of the organization. It just might mean, you know what? In addition to giving giving 100% to this organization, I'm also investing in myself. So her new projects all had some sort of external visibility to it.

SPEAKER_01 39:14

I think that's um that's a beautiful pivot in the sense because it goes back to the name of my podcast, Unsealing. It's like unsealing yourself, taking the ceiling off your top. Because a lot of the ceilings that we have is it's all about limiting beliefs. And so she likely encountered a limiting belief about herself, and she starts to remove it, but within her own environment. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

You know, the limiting beliefs sometimes it's a question of am I good enough? Am I talented enough? Am I worthy? Am I exactly? Those are some of the strongest limiting beliefs. And it's important to remind people of the power that they still have, though. Right. So often people don't remember and don't believe that they're still powerful in their environments. They're powerful even when they're being laid off. It is hard to believe. Counterintuitive, right? But you know, the person who has, you know, the person who has encountered workplace trauma, once they have actually owned it and said, yeah, this wasn't just stressful. This wasn't just, you know, some one-off. This really is something that is going to change some aspect of how I see myself in this environment. That's where the power begins. That's where that light that was flickering now starts to glow and starts to burn. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 40:37

I think that's a beautiful place for us to leave it. Is there anything you'd like to add?

SPEAKER_00 40:43

So, as we're talking about pivoting, I would welcome anyone who is interested in just assessing where they are on the pivot continuum. There's a pivot assessment that I have for individuals who are questioning whether or not this is the right environment for me, whether or not this is the right space for me. And it's a very quick assessment, two minutes. And it's on my website, which is NatalieholderSpeaks.com. And it comes with an analysis of where you are in the continuum. And it also comes with a playbook, in where once you complete the assessment, you'll get steps as to how and where you can start to develop your own portfolio career and start to plan and strategize your pivot.

SPEAKER_01 41:25

Fantastic. Thank you so much for that gift to the listeners. Thank you so much for being on Unsealing You. Really appreciate you being here. My pleasure, Natalie. Thank you. Here's what I want you to carry from this conversation. Burnout doesn't begin with overwork, it begins with a broken promise. From the organization to the person who showed up fully and gave everything they had. Natalie Holder showed us today that what looks like dedication on the outside, absorbing the gaps, carrying what was never assigned, stepping up before anyone asked, has real cost. A legal cost, a financial cost, a human cost. In that 10% reputation tax she mentioned, the unmeasurable part is the talent that quietly withdraws. The high performer who stops bringing their best thinking because the system took it without ever acknowledging it had been taken. Here's the one thing I want you to sit with this week. If you've been carrying something that was never yours, not because you agreed to it, but because you could, because no one else did, that's not a character flaw. That's a structural failure with your name on it. And you get to decide when that stops. The Responsibility Reset Notebook is linked in the show notes. It's a tool that helps you sort through what's actually yours, what belongs to the system, what's been quietly defaulting to you. Grab it at the Unsealing Zone slash R R Notebook. Now, next week we're gonna go somewhere different. And I think it's gonna hit harder than you expect. My guest next week built what most people would call the perfect life. She's in the C-suite, she has a great family, stability. By every external measure, she had it. And she'll tell you herself, she was performing success, not living it. What she describes is what happens when the responsibility you've been carrying isn't just professional, it's the identity you built around it. The version of yourself that you constructed to meet everyone else's definition of what your life should look like. We're gonna talk about the moment she realized the ceiling wasn't above her, it was inside of her, and what it actually took to remove it. That's next week. Make sure you sub hit subscribe off of this episode so you don't miss next week's episode.