Daisy Auger-Domínguez: Author of Burnt Out To Lit Up
Episode 631
In this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, we sit down with the inspiring Daisy Auger-Domínguez, Chief People Officer, visionary author, and renowned speaker. Daisy’s latest book, Burnt Out to Lit Up, delves into one of the most pressing issues in workplaces today—burnout—and provides actionable insights to help individuals and leaders move from exhaustion to empowerment.
Daisy shares her personal journey of overcoming burnout, shaped by her experiences as a Latina leader in high-pressure environments. We discuss the myths surrounding burnout, how to identify its early warning signs, and practical strategies for creating energized, inclusive, and balanced workplaces. Daisy also highlights the transformative power of recognition, the importance of boundaries, and how leaders can foster cultures of trust and safety in today’s hybrid and remote work settings.
Whether you’re a manager, a team member, or someone feeling stuck in a burnout cycle, Daisy offers advice and tools to reignite your spark and transform your work and life. Don’t miss it! Tune in now on The Kara Goldin Show!
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Transcript
Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. So excited to have our next incredible, inspiring guest. We have Daisy Auger-Dominguez, who is her day job, or, I should say, day career, has been leader, Chief People Officer, engaging speaker. But today we are going to talk about her visionary authorship. I should say if that’s if that’s a term, but her latest book burnt out to lit up, which is such an amazing book, so needed in this time for so many people. Definitely, I really, really loved it. Offer so many terrific insights, and I can’t wait for her to share a lot more about, sort of, the backstory, what made her decide to write it, and kind of what she really learned about herself, about others, more than anything, how she can help inspire us to really transform how we think about work includes inclusion and personal resilience. So without further ado, welcome Daisy. How are you?
Daisy Auger-Dominguez 1:52
Oh, I’m doing great. Kara, thank you so much for having me. Totally
Kara Goldin 1:57
I’m so excited to have you here, and your book is absolutely terrific. So congratulations, Daisy and I know each other. So if you feel this familiar tone going back and forth, that’s that is where that’s coming from. We’re both a part of something called the list, but also our friends through multiple people and just actually went on a trip together. So it’s been a lot of fun to be able to have her here and see her as well. But so Daisy, can you kick things off by giving us the back story on what drove you to write burnt out to lit up?
Daisy Auger-Dominguez 2:36
Oh goodness. Well, you know, I always tell folks that I wasn’t just burnt out. I was burnt crispy. I mean, I had reached a point in not necessarily my career, but just it was a point in my life where I felt like I just, I was so depleted. There was, there was there was nothing I could give but I, but I will say that, because most people tell me it’s like, when did you know? And I knew at many different points. But I waited and waited and I saw the signals right? I saw the early signals of getting sick a lot I was I was getting I was getting more and more cold than off than I usually would. I went through a period where I had allergic reactions. Kara, from the top of my head to my to my feet, I would just be constantly scratching. My daughter would yell at me Stop scratching. And I was like, I can’t. I can’t. I was like, I was burning out from the inside out I had I went through a period of getting severe bloating and and I just kept on Ask going to different doctors. And all the doctors were right, as they do within their space, within what they saw, they would tell me one thing. So my pneumologist would say, well, you’re over 50, so every time you get a cold now because you have asthma, it’s going to turn into pneumonia. So basically, he said, Just deal with it, right? And I was like, this is not satisfying, but okay. Then I started going to an acupuncturist and and she was very kindly addressing my stress points, but which were kind of like all over my body. And every time she would see me, she would tell me, like, you know, I think you need some rest. I was like, Okay, thank you. Just fix, Patch me up for today. And, you know, and let’s go. And it wasn’t until I saw a nutritionist. And I went to the nutritionist with a with, quite frankly, a very vain need, right? I was like, I need to lose weight. I just, I wasn’t thinking of my bloating as a condition. I was just thinking of it. I was like, I’m gaining weight, and I need to fix this. And the nutritionist took my blood samples. She said, Let’s just, let’s just get a sense of what your hormonal levels are. And I was like, Oh, no one’s asked me for that yet. So okay, and so she took, she took the they took the blood test, and it came back. And she was showing me the results. And Kara, she. Basically all of my numbers were at the bottom of the page. And, and I was like, Well, what does that mean? She said, well, for your age, you should be here in the midline, and you are all the way down here. I was like, Well, what does that mean? She’s like, you’re absolutely depleted your hormone levels. We need, we need to figure out, how do we how do we rebalance that? And then, and then I asked the second question, which most of us, who are curious, and you know, and think of ourselves as somewhat educated. I was like, well, could you explain to me why that is, what’s the root cause of all of this? And she just looked at me and said, sustained stress. And, and I’m sure you, you, you had this experience. It’s like we deal with stress all the time, right? We think of it as just a normal factor in our lives. But I had never heard sustained and stress together, right? I had never thought of it as this continual right, that I had, I had, I had been under such severe stress for so long, god knows how long, and I had never really taken the time to repair myself. And so then my next, my next question was, what? Well, how do I fix it? Like, what do I do? And she just looked at me dead pan and said, fix your life. Literally, she just, she, you know, I was waiting for her to tell me meds, right? Waiting for her to tell me, like she’s like, literally, and then she laughed and she said, but I’m not kidding, like you need to change your life, because I can give you all sorts of medications, but until you change the fundamentals of your life that are causing you to live in the sustained stress, taking away all that you need to live a full life. I can’t I can’t really help you. And so that was the beginning of me understanding, and I didn’t call it. I wasn’t thinking about it as burnout at that point, but I was just thinking about it as like the sustained exhaustion. And then over the next couple of months, I had been leading a global HR function for a youth media company for for three years. Over three years during the pandemic, I was leading a global team. We had we had team. We had offices in over 20 countries all over the world. I didn’t even share daylight hours with many of my team members on any given day. Like many of us during those years, we were solving for things we had never experienced in our lives, without without any guide book, most of the days I would, you know, I would be, I would be answering questions that I would basically just say, Hold on. Let me check what the CDC just said in your part of the world and and then let’s change that policy. Right? I was returning employees back to workplaces with people terrified, worried. We were dealing with debts, we were dealing with injuries, we were dealing with exhaustion that was collective, right across the board. And as I was trying to decide my exit plan and realizing that I couldn’t live like that any longer, and I had to figure out what I needed to do next. I worked with my executive coach, and one day I went to her. I’ll never forget it. I had every time I would meet with her, was about twice a month I would break down. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience, but it was like I was holding it together for everybody, and then I had someone that was there for me, and the minute, and it was like this on a screen, I’m looking I’m looking at her, and the minute I would sit down, I would just start bawling and just start shedding all the things that were happening. And that day, she looked at me and she said, Daisy, I think you know what you need to do. We’ve been we’ve been toying around with this idea for a long time. But what? What is it that you need to do to make, to make your life what you want it to be? And I said, I have to leave. And she said, Okay, well, then let’s, let’s figure it out, and let’s answer some basic questions. What needs to be met? What are your needs that need to be met before you leave? Right, financially, right, making sure that my mortgage was paid, all of all of the things that would ensure my family would be stable. What would you want this exit to look like? What do you want it to be, and what do you want to do when you’re when you leave? And so I said, I think I need to get a sabbatical, and he’s take a break. And she said, Okay, well, I have a client. He just took a two year break, and he called it a radical sabbatical. I was like, what I was like that sounds awesome, tell me more. And from there, we started shaping what became my radical sabbatical. And in that shaping, Kara part of what I what I surfaced in my conversations with RA goddess, was my my executive coach, what I surfaced was that I wanted to create something and I wanted to create something that would be helpful to others. And so I started talking about, well, what do you do? You know? What do you want to write about? I was like, Well, I want to write about how hard leadership is. I want to write about how hard it is to lead people. Right? And I want to write about how we can go from depletion to actually being the people we want to be. And in that process, I also engaged a book coach, so I’m giving you all of my like. I have a lot of helping me here and and in that conversation with my book coach, when I started talking to her about, what could this What could this book be that I can, that I can write about is when, when she said, was like, What do you feel? And that’s when the word burnout. That was the first time that I said burnout. I was like, I just feel so burnt out, and everyone around me does. And you know what? I am really saddened by seeing my colleagues, the people who walk with a pep in their step all the time, the ones you know, the ones that always raise their hand to be of help, the ones that are always there first, you know, first thing in the morning, you know, eager to start their days. I have seen the light leave them. I have seen them become apathetic zombies. I have seen them become versions of themselves that they would not even recognize if they saw and you know what? That’s also happened to me, and I, I want to talk about burnout, and I want to talk about what happens next.
Kara Goldin 11:10
Okay, I want to jump in and just ask so the word burnout to so many people, I think, feels like, especially when you’re speaking about it, you know, to yourself, it’s like one of the last things you want to admit, right? Because you just were told, and I think that I don’t know, maybe this is definitely true for women leaders. Couple that with being a parent, you know, having COVID jump in there too, and depending on what your your role was, but almost any role, I think it, it created a lot of stress, but it’s like, it’s almost like a fear of failure sits in front of, you know, people to not admit that they are burnt out, right? You know, you just, you know, I’ve heard, for example, the hustle culture is, is, you know, gone. But I think it, it just goes back to this concept of, you know, actually admitting that you’re burnt out. It just takes a lot of courage in in many ways. But how do you what would you say to
Daisy Auger-Dominguez 12:20
that? Oh my gosh, Kara, you’re spot on. You know, I spent a lot of time defining burnout as I’ve been talking about the book, because I think for and I write about this in the book, it’s not, it’s not a shameful admission. It is not. It is also not a checklist of everything that’s wrong with you, right? Like, sort of, like, let me add this too, because what, what do we tend to do when we feel that we are not whole, or that we don’t meet a moment or, you know, or an identity that we that we want to shape, right? We go into self doubt, right? We go into deep recesses that only we can see that are the hardest and most painful parts of us, and that also causes burnout, right? So burnout is not just feeling tired, it is and it has been defined. And I should say that, you know, the World Health Organization diagnosed burnout as a workplace disease in 2019 so this is pre pandemic that we’ve been that people have been addressing and dealing with this. But burnout is defined as, actually, Kate Donovan defines burnout as the slow decline of normal functioning in every aspect of your life due to chronic stress. And that is, that is, by far, my, my, my favorite, as painful as it is, definition of of burnout, but it is also a it has been diagnosed across three dimensions, right? It’s the first is that exhaustion that we all feel, that that energy depletion, if you will. The second is a sense of cynicism. And by cynicism, you know, it’s sort of like, you know, when you’re in a room and you’re just like, I’ve seen this movie play out before. I don’t need to engage, I don’t need to do anything else. I don’t need to write. I don’t need to do more, do less or anything. Everything Sucks around me. The world is Doom, and therefore, you know, I am done, and the third dimension of it is a loss of professional efficacy, right, that sense that nothing I can do is right, right? And how many days, how many days and times have I, you know, I woke up during the pandemic and just sort of like, looked at myself and said I was just like, I just, I just, you know, I’m gonna try and be the best I can today, but I’m gonna fail at like 20 things, because I do not know these things. But how often do we give ourselves grace for not knowing what we’re not supposed to know? Right? No, we actually beat ourselves up for not showing up in the moment the way that we believe we have to. And it is that combination that sucks so much out of us, and then you add which is. Kara, what I think you’re going to is, is these identity dimensions, right, as women, for me, as a woman of color, right as an immigrant, as the first as you know, I mean, you running, you know, a massive company, right? We put so much pressure on ourselves to be all of these things to everybody, that when we feel that our cup is not full, we don’t, instead of replenishing it, we just keep on going until the cup is absolutely empty, until there is not right an ounce of you in there anymore. And we do it, I believe, out of a sense of shame and out of a sense of holding on to stories that do not serve us about how we should show up. And I say I say that in the book, and I say this a lot in my talks. I have learned to reshape these narratives, and I’ve had to create mantras for myself. And one of my mantras is that I do not have to overwork to be respected. I do not have to control everything to be loved. I’ve had to, I have to say that to myself, because even though I could mentally sort of assume like, oh, that’s, that’s not me, I was like, Oh, it was very much me. And it’s what drove so many of my decisions, and it’s what drove me to burnout, yeah, no,
Kara Goldin 16:20
it’s, I love the stories that you share in the book for just around this. Because I think when anyone’s thinking about this, it’s definitely, like I mentioned earlier, it definitely takes a lot of courage to own it, but you can’t get to the other side until you sort of own it, right that this is the state that you’re in, and you do such a great job of laying that out. So when you think about like the first step of jumping in to being able to get on the other side, can you talk about maybe the first step? And I want everybody to jump into the book and read it, so we don’t want to give everything away. But I do really, really believe that, you know, there are steps, and you talk about this, and definitely the mantras are amazing. But what is that first step beyond okay? I think I am. I think I I’m channeling Daisy here and and owning it. And maybe I need to see somebody to, you know, be sure about this, but definitely what can be done at this point.
Daisy Auger-Dominguez 17:28
Yeah, it’s, it’s a very inward process. Kara, and it starts, everything starts from within, right? And I talk about it and frame it from a place of self reflection. We have to spend. We have to ask ourselves and listen to ourselves, right? We have to ask ourselves the questions that that we that are kind of usually like in, you know, in the periphery of our brains, but that we just keep on pushing aside. And there are questions like, what truly lights me up, right? Like, why do I work, where I work. Why do I do what I do? I talk to so many people that are on the verge of quitting, and after answering some of these questions, they’re like, oh, no, I love where I work. It’s not that. What I hate is this. And I’m like, okay, then that’s what needs to be fixed. You don’t because, because, guess what? You leave that company and you’re gonna go to that company with the exact same baggage that you have, and you’re gonna, you’re gonna get to the same place again and again. So what you need to, what you need to really do is get a sense of what are my derailers, right? What are the, what are the stories that I tell myself that take me to a place, take me to that unhappy place. Take me to that really sad place. For example, um, you know when your boss gives you criticism or feedback, right? If they’re giving you feedback, you see it as criticism, because in a previous job, you had a terribly toxic boss, and every time that they said something to you, it was belittling, it was damaging, it was horrible. You’re in a new place, and this manager is actually coming to you from a good place, trying to give you constructive feedback, but you don’t hear it as constructive feedback. You hear it as I am, I am unworthy, I am awful. I you know, he does not like me, and I’m gonna get fired, right? And so it is in those moments where we have to, and it is hard, right? Because we’re like, we go so deep, but it is in those moments where we need, where we can pause and actually reset, reset, and ask yourself, Is this really what is happening now? Is this a story I’m telling myself, or is this person coming from a good place? Another one is often, right? Your colleague snapped at you, or your colleague interrupted you, and you’re just like, that fit. They do not respect me. They did not value me. This is not a place for me to be. Or could it be that your your colleague, was just having a bad day? Could it be that, right, they just came from a very bad meeting? I don’t know about you, but I used to have a boss that everybody would gage the decisions that we would. Ask our boss to make based on the last meeting that they had, right? I was like, if she had a bad meeting, we’re like, do not ask her. She is not in a good place. She will not answer because we knew that she would be going running, running, running, and not taking moments to actually kind of just reset and be there for us. But what if we do that for ourselves? What if we do that take those moments of resetting and really getting a sense of what is happening, what, you know, what? What is it? How? What was it like when I first got this job? How happy was I? Full of promise, full of joy, full of excitement. I was like, what’s happened since there? And what do I have control over? There’s some things that we don’t have control over, right? Sometimes we don’t have control over our workloads, although I would argue that we could, because we can have very different conversations, and I offer a lot of scripts in the book for that. I was like, but what are the things that we have control over, and what then, are the conversations that we need to have with ourselves and with others to create the conditions for a better work environment, right? And and to create the conditions to be able to be honest and say, You know what, I can’t take on that project right now, because I am, I am burnt out. I need a week. I need a couple of days. I need something, whatever that is for you, right? And it is different for everybody. I need this so that I can come back and show up as my best self, because if I go into that project right now, I am not going to deliver to the best of my the best of my capacity, and I’m going to be frustrated. You’re going to be frustrated, and it’s just going to lead to, guess what, not just my own burnout, but the burnout of others, the exhaustion and depletion of others. So when we take care of ourselves, we tend to think as leaders that right, like we’ve got to be the ones that take up, take on all the weight, all of the responsibilities, right? We have to do all of it. But guess what? When we do that and we burn out and we and we become exhausted and we become cranky and we become lesser versions of ourselves, we’re not we’re not leading well. We’re not solving well. And so it is big. It is about those asking yourself those tough questions about, who am I, who do, who do I want to be in the book I talk about it from the concept of ikigai. There’s a Japanese concept of right that you know, why do I exist? Why am I in this world? Right? And the questions that you ask yourself is, what am I really good at? Right? Like, what am I really good at? Was, like, what does the world need that only I can provide? Right, that I can deliver? And then the last question is, like, how do I get paid for it? Right? Like, I don’t. How can I get compensated for that? And asking yourself those questions allows us to then realize it was like, I’m in the right place doing sometimes it happened to me when I asked myself those questions, I was like, Oh, I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. I just need to take a break and come back to it, because I can’t keep on doing all of this non stop, because I cannot keep on giving to people without giving to myself.
Kara Goldin 22:59
So you talk about teams as well, and certainly in leading my team at hint after the pandemic, it was I definitely use the term burnout to describe many of the people on the team because they were really working through COVID As you know, making sure that the shelves were stocked in stores when many people were working from home, they were not. I mean, it was, it was a crazy, crazy time. But how do you what do you do for if you see that your team is, you know, really burned out. And what do you do as a leader to kind of reset that?
Daisy Auger-Dominguez 23:44
Yeah, well, it begins with and I know that this is how you lead as well. You don’t wait till people are burnt out to have the conversation, right? You have to, you have to build the relationships with your team that allows both you to be able to have a trusting conversation with them, and for them to be able to feel that they can, that they can be honest with you, right? Because if they feel they need to perform around you, that’s all it is. Everyone’s performing. Everyone’s telling you everything’s okay when then the minute you turn your back, everyone’s just like losing their minds, right and getting totally fried. So it begins before that happens. And it is, it is a matter of leading, and I think, and I think that for a lot of us, it’s this, this, this moment of leading post the pandemic. A lot of a lot of folks, feel like I just don’t know how to lead anymore, because the workforce has changed so much, because the demands from workers have, you know, I’ve become louder, right? And much more acute. And so for a lot of folks, it’s like, well, I just don’t know, you know, I was like, I want to take care. This is the struggle of most managers and leaders. I want to take care of the well being of my team, but I also still need to deliver on, you know, on our, you know, productivity, right? I still need to, I need, I still need to get product out. I still need to get. At our PNL to be healthy. So how do I balance the two? And I believe that balancing the two is about clarity as a leader, right? It’s about setting the real clear expectations with your team so everybody knows what is happening. And it’s also about creating spaces that are safe and healthy for dialog, right? And what I mean by that is that not everyone’s going to get every going to get everything that they want, but people can stop and say, Hey, Kara, I know that you want us to deliver those. You know that million shipment, whatever that is tomorrow, but, and it’s going to be impossible, but I’m going to tell you why it’s going to be impossible at this at this point, because I want to come up with a solution. Here’s what I see as the stop gap, right? And it’s a conversation where you where someone who is actually in the day to day, right on the ground doing this work, can give you the information that for even the most connected leader, most of us don’t know what it’s like to be doing that every single day, because that’s not our job. Our job is to direct our teams to get that work done, but when you’re able to create spaces of conversation where people can actually tell you, here’s the two to three challenges that I see, it’s like, okay, and I am open to discussing, how do we solve for that? Because I want to be able to achieve what you want to us to achieve, but I need to tell you what can come in the way. And that used to happen to me so often during the pandemic, and I was, I would love to take credit for it. I think I happen to have leaders that were really good at expressing what they needed. They were all women, by the way, so I don’t know if that’s the case. They didn’t feel like they needed. I know that they felt like they needed to sort of perform for me, but they were, they would be the ones that would tell me I had one team member. She was, she was actually my muse for the book. Megan, would sort of tell me, she’s like, she would come and she goes, Okay, I’ve got three fires to put out, and you just asked me to put out two more. Which one’s the most important fire for you, right? And and that was, that was I actually appreciated that. Every once in a while I’d be like, oh gosh, really. But I I learned to appreciate that, because that was a conversation where we would sit down and go, Okay, let’s restructure these priorities, because you can’t handle all those five things at once, but I need you to, let’s move this one, and let’s move that one, and let’s hold off on this one and see if you can push on this one right. And that gave her agency right? Gave her agency over what she was working on. It wasn’t just taking mandates from me. It allowed us to truly reduce workload as much as we could. And it wasn’t always possible, because, again, it was, it was constant firefighting all of the time, and it allowed us to have the relationship where she could tell me she’s like, Daisy, it’s not just that this is hard. It’s just like, I’m just really tired and and I remember she told me she was a, she was my, my most technical leader on my team. She’d be like, I know I’m gonna mess that up, because I’m like, my like, I just can’t look at any more numbers today. And that would allow me to just say, You know what? Stop this. Can Wait tomorrow. Go and take a walk. Go and write. Like, figure out what those little I call them micro recoveries. What’s the micro recovery that you need to go through right now so that you can then show up as your best self? But you need to have that level of trust. And there’s such a lack of trust right now in workplaces, people just don’t want to speak each other’s truth, or they’re speaking each other’s truths without really being willing to listen to the other side and and when that happens, what happens is that in if you don’t listen to people before crisis, when crisis happens, no one’s going to listen to anybody. So it has to start before, and you have to stay attuned, and you have to normalize having these conversations, another question that I get often from leaders and managers like, well, Daisy, I’m not a psychiatrist, right? I’m not therapist. I can’t, I can’t be diagnosing people. I was like, no one’s asking you to diagnose anybody. Yeah, but you should be able to have enough of an honest conversations with someone to be able to say, You know what, this is beyond my scope of what I can help you with. But here are the resources that I can direct you to, and I need you to know that there’s no shame in going to these resources, that all of us need them at one point or another, and that I will not devalue you as my colleague, as my co worker, as my team member, if you, if you do that, because that’s that’s actually helping you, and this is my job is to create the conditions for you to do your best work, and for you to do your best work you need to be healthy, right? It is being able to de stigmatize these conversations that I’m sure you and I never had when we started our careers, we weren’t allowed to these things. Yeah. When did Jeff think about this? And this is very random, but it’s like, did you ever tell someone you had cramps where you were at work, right? Did you ever tell someone I was like, You know what? Today’s not a Today. Today. I should go a little lighter, because my body is just crippling with crippling pain right now, and I just took four Advils and I’ll be okay in another hour or so. No, we just put on our emotional armor and went in there fighting every. Go pain in our bodies, feeling the shame of being women, right? So many of and that’s a small that’s a small piece so many of us carry so much more. Definitely,
Kara Goldin 30:09
well, Daisy, thank you so much for sharing your incredible insights. Burnt out to lit up is awesome. Such a great, great book for teams as well as individuals, and we’ll have all the info in the show notes, but thank you so much for joining us here today, Daisy. And thanks everyone for listening. Have a great rest of the day. Thank you, Kara. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast, just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now. Bye.
