68: Self-care in Support with Ryan Klausner

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode sixty-eight of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. The theme for this week is self-care in support, so stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I'd like to welcome to the podcast today, Ryan Klausner. Ryan, nice to have you back. The topic for this week is self-care and support, particularly the challenges that are involved in leading teams that work in a very stressful environment, deal with problems all day long, and it's just a never-ending hamsters wheel.

Ryan Klausner: 0:51

Mental health and self-care within support, of course, all of us and the majority of our teams are very empathy driven. They're taking in a lot of emotion from our customers, but often we don't check in with ourselves as much as we are checking in with our customers. How can we foster a dialogue with our teams is something that I am often thinking about to encourage mental health days to be taken proactively. We often will take off to go to the doctor in some form, you know. Oh, I have to be out this afternoon, I'm going to the doctor, or not feeling so well, I'm going to get some rest this morning and I'll check back in around lunchtime and see how I feel. That's what we do when our bodies not performing optimally, but we don't necessarily do the same thing. And often within corporations, we're concerned it's a sign of weakness if we don't just power through. So making sure to foster that dialogue internally is important. Yeah, so for instance, I'm taking a mental health day this week. I'm posting that in our daily stand-up on Slack that it's a mental health day. Um I'm communicating what it is to my team. Uh so encouraging this and leading by example, I think, is really important. And also encouraging it as an actual opportunity to do a digital detox during that time as well.

Charlotte Ward: 2:10

Do you think that that we should, as leaders, encourage people to not communicate when they're off duty, as it were? Because I think one trap that a lot of leaders fall into is we quite often end up working in the evenings or over the weekends ourselves. And, you know, it's the typical behavior of many a busy leader, isn't it? That they just fire the emails off or the Slack messages off to get things out of their head and to on somebody else's computer. But that siren call of those notifications kind of leads to a culture of people feeling like they have to respond, doesn't it?

Ryan Klausner: 2:46

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I think there's that assumption that you're always on or you're always available. I really believe that we have to lead by example. We need to use the tools that are available to us as leaders. So for example, I have a rule. If it's not truly an emergency situation, I schedule emails. I'll might schedule an email to go out at 7:30 or 8 a.m., uh, but I'm not going to send an email out at 2 a.m. Even if I wrote it at 2 a.m. because I wanted to get it out of my head. Um, my need to get it out of my head is not an emergency for my team. For Slack, I often will draft messages and just leave it as a draft, and then I hit enter when I sign in in the morning. And signing off, if you're a nine to five organization, but you know a lot of folks, especially in executive capacity, or are staying up well beyond that and continuing to work, know to your team that you're signing off at a certain hour. And sure, there is going to be days in a support role, certainly within the startup environment where you are working longer days, but there's going to be plenty of opportunities not to work long days.

Charlotte Ward: 3:45

One thing that you spoke to at the start of this discussion was managing the burnout situation. And I wonder if you can just give us a few quick pointers on how we deal with that. Because AA spotting it is difficult, but I think we know that there are key indicators around performance and probably some other behaviors, right? Around uh around kind of attitude or emotional kind of fallout, right? But assuming that you have the skills to spot burnout, how do you how do you manage for it?

Ryan Klausner: 4:18

You know, that could be performance dipping and in folks that are in support uh in an email queue. They're cherry-picking. There also might be an initiative. You might have had a top performer who demonstrated great initiative and amazing ideas, and that level of initiative has just dropped off. Their level of engagement is no longer what it once was. Having candid conversations without necessarily acknowledging burnout, because it might not be burnout. People are facing all sorts of other things in their life as leaders trying to shape how we can best support them in that. What does that look like for them? Are they better off for the next while working a half day? Perhaps you want to offer that they utilize some sick time right now. But most importantly, they need to feel confidently supported by you as their manager, confident in their role, that they're allowed to step away temporarily if they have to deal with something. But also in this instances where they don't have to step away, how can that be managed? And often I find in situations people um can get tired of the monotony of being in a queue. Perhaps they can be moved into a different role, a new challenge for a period, and that can help um deal, especially with burnout relating to tickets and that feeling that you'll never get ahead. You know, you'll see the ticket volume go down, and just as you're about to celebrate the success the next day, it's it's back up. So your goal is never, I feel, as a support leader, to get out of that. You're always going to have new tickets.

Charlotte Ward: 5:42

So there's really a couple of parts to this, isn't there? There is the confidence to be able to step away and take the rest and the break that you need if you really need that rest and break. But but actually also recognizing that, and I think you made a really good point here, recognizing that burnout isn't just overwork. It can be uh the the brain dealing with a never-ending source of incoming, I mean, in our case it's tickets, but that constant low-level stress that tickets are. And actually you can alleviate that by providing different work that gives variety, interest, a sense of personal contribution and value to the team and organization, and gives someone the opportunity to take that space in a different way, right? A change is really as good as a rest, as much of a cliche as it is in some cases. That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash sixty-eight for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.