In this Voices of Leadership episode of The Connected Leadership podcast, Dave speaks with author, coach, and creator of The Burnout Ladder, Alan Muskett.

Alan shares a deeply personal and honest account of his leadership journey, from early responsibility in a transport company at 21 through to senior leadership roles in a global organisation. Along the way, he describes how ambition, responsibility, and a drive to prove himself gradually pulled him onto what he now calls the “burnout ladder.”

This is not a story of sudden collapse. It’s a story of gradual drift.

Alan explores how burnout builds quietly over time, often disguised as success, growth, and opportunity. He reflects on the internal pressures’ leaders place on themselves, the role of people-pleasing and identity, and the cultural signals that make it difficult to speak up.

The conversation also introduces the origins of the Burnout Ladder model and how Alan began to recognise patterns in his own experience. This conversation focuses on recognising the early signs, reclaiming control, and why success can quietly lead you towards burnout before you have recognised the warning signs.

This first part of a two-part conversation focuses on awareness: how burnout begins, why it’s so hard to spot early, and what starts to shift when leaders begin to step back and look at their experience differently.

Key Talking Points

• Why burnout is becoming one of the biggest risks to leadership effectiveness
• Alan’s early leadership experience & the impact of responsibility at a young age
• The hidden pressure of “proving yourself” and how it shapes behaviour over time
• Imposter syndrome, confidence, and the long road to self-trust
• The cultural barriers that stop leaders from asking for help
• Early warning signs of burnout: decision paralysis, irritability, and loss of perspective
• How mindfulness shifted Alan’s thinking and helped him regain clarity
• Why burnout often feels like success in its early stages
• The origins of The Burnout Ladder and why burnout is a gradual climb, not a sudden fall

Welcome to the Connected Leadership Podcast by Zentano for forward thinking leaders who want to lead with confidence, clarity and impact. We bring you grounded wisdom, real stories from real leaders, conversations that leave you thinking differently, feeling inspired and ready to act.

Let's dive in. Hi, this is Dave from the Connected Leadership Podcast by Zintano.

You're about to listen to a Voices of Leadership episode with our guest Alan Muskett on the topic of burnout.

Now, Alan has recently published a wonderfully written book called the Burnout Ladder, based on his own personal experience on the road to burnout and his subsequent research into just how prevalent this issue is. The conversation is wide ranging with lots of real world insights and learning points, and I feel deserves to be heard in full.

So for that reason, we're going to release this conversation over two episodes, one this week and one next.

In today's episode, Alan discusses his own career and how he found himself on the burnout ladder and more importantly, how he managed to get himself off. He also discusses how he turned this into a book and a practical model to help other people.

In episode two, next week, we'll dive deeper into the rungs of the burnout ladder and discuss how to spot where you are.

Alan will also talk about tools to provide practical help and will restore your physical and mental energy through a little equation called e equals m c squared. But more of that next week. I hope you enjoy listening as much to this conversation as I did creating it with Alan.

Okay, welcome once again to the Connected Leadership Podcast by Zentano. My name is Dave Morris, and today I've got a very, very special guest with me who I will introduce in a minute.

And today we're tackling a subject that so many people qu struggle with, and that's burnout. Now, I'm going to give some stats here. Leadership today, we know it's demanding. It's been more demanding probably than it's ever been.

That creates ripples across culture, across performance, across strategy. In other words, burnout isn't just a personal challenge for leaders. It's becoming one of the most significant risks to organizational performance.

So today I'm joined by author, coach, hypnotherapist, mindfulness Teacher and creator of the Burnout Ladder, Alan Muskett. Alan, welcome to the podcast.

Well, thank you, Dave. Nice to be here. And that's quite a long list of credits there, isn't it?

What a talented man you are.

Well, yeah, I'd like to think so.

So before we get into how talented you are, I'd like to go back to the early life of Alan and just find out for anybody who's listening to this who doesn't know who Alan Musket is. Yeah, there might be one or two. There might be one or two.

Just tell me a little bit about young Alan, you know, where you grew up, what your influences were and kind of what shaped you to the man you are today. There's a question for you.

That's a very good question. So, okay, as brief as possible then. I guess so.

I grew up in the northwest of England, so in St. Helens, which is rugby league country for those who don't know it. It's not far from Liverpool, it's not far from Manchester.

I had a fairly normal, average upbringing, very happy childhood, very into sport, played rugby, football, cricket, golf. Yeah, very into sport. Academically did okay.

Decided not to go to university, which is really interesting and something that I have thought a lot about in the years since that's happened through my work and actually how I've analyzed my work as I come towards the end of that career. Yeah. But eventually I bumbled around doing a few jobs. I started out working for a bank. I was, I like to call it talent.

Spotted by one of the customers of the bank who was a self made millionaire, had his own haulage company, road haulage company. And he came to me one day and said, do you fancy coming working for me? And I was 21 or something like that. And he said, I said, what's the job?

And he said, well, it's assistant manager of his company. And that was a huge leap. Cause I was this little squirt, this little bank clerk working on the counter as a cashier.

And then this guy asked me to come and run his company because he spent most of his time in Florida or the Alabama or wherever it was. He had another house, you see. So I was. When I was 21, I was for large parts of the year running this transport company.

So all these drivers and office staff. And so that was a huge kind of learning curve for me.

Wow. Yeah.

And I probably stayed there a little bit too long. I was there about five years and I wanted to go and get my degree, so I went to Liverpool University, actually.

And then from there I eventually got a job with Craft foods in Cheltenham and I actually got to know them through that road haulage company because they used to work for them and carry food products for them.

What was your key learning from that? That initial experience, which sounds, at 21, like you say, you don't really know a lot about a lot because you're relatively young still.

What did you learn from that early, you know, experience where you're putting quite a. Quite a responsible and challenging situation? Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

What were your key insights?

Looking back now, I was very young. I was perhaps too young to take on the responsibility.

And when you're being hauled out of bed at 4 o' clock in the morning because the alarm's going off and then you have to go to a, you know, very dark industrial estate to deal with a false alarm and meet the police, it's not fun. But I think, you know, from actually work and learning. Perspective. Perspective. I just learned about life quite quickly.

It felt like all the problems were very real.

You know, we had, you know, whether it was a trailer full of glass that we used to carry for Pilkington's glass or it was a container full of coffee to take for craft foods if a driver didn't turn in. You know, it was a big problem, you know, service levels and all that. And I finally had.

I learned how to respect people because I realized that these drivers, I mean, I didn't come from a driving background, so I'm dealing with these guys who've been doing it for 20, 30, 40 years, and they know all the tricks and they know what they can and can't do.

But I was giving them their jobs to do and all that, and I had to sort of learn how to work with them and get the best out of them, but by showing them some respect, but having that balance of, you know, I need to push you to do this because if we're going to make money, I need you to do that extra collection for us, you know, or whatever it is, and not have the wool pulled over your eyes. But that was my biggest learning. I think it was just learning how to get on with people. And I think I've got a style which is friendly.

I'm probably by nature a bit of a people pleaser.

Right, okay.

Which is probably what gets me on the burnout ladder and gets a lot of us on the burnout ladder because, yeah, you sometimes just push too far for other people and compromise your own values, which is something I talk about a lot in the book.

Yeah, and we'll come to them. It's interesting, though, what you say about. I was put in this position, no formal training, and I still think that happens a lot these days.

People get into leadership roles, management roles, and really haven't got that much formal training of how to do that. And as you well know, managing people isn't the easiest job in the world, is it? And it requires quite a sophisticated skill set.

Actually, it was huge.

And there was quite a variation because you had basically an RTICK driver, or it was somebody in the office who was an accountant. So you got a very different kind of demographic of people, different skill level of people, different functional levels.

And yeah, it was tough, but it was really, when I look back, a really enjoyable experience.

Was it enjoyable for what reason?

Well, I just felt like at the end of the day, when you looked at.

There was like a board behind the transport desk and it was all the drivers names on pegs, and if they all had work given to them, you know, they all had allocations, you felt like you'd just taken this.

All the work that came in from the clients who would phone in and say, well, I've got this to go to Exeter, this to go to London, this to go to Scotland, whatever. And if you distributed all the jobs out for tomorrow, you could walk away and say, I've done my job. And then at the end of the month.

Cause I would do the invoicing at the end of the month and I'd tell my boss, like, how much, you know, how much money we'd made while he was sat in Florida, phoning in every now and again, saying, how's it going, Al? I said, yeah, it's great. I'm knackered, but it's going really well. But it was so satisfying.

You alluded to the fact that you talk about your core values at this time. Had you worked out what the core values were or did that come later on?

It came later on. I think I was too young, blissfully unaware. Yes, absolutely.

Taking everything a day at a time and just going by instinct, as you said, very little training other than the boss man who'd made his way through and just saying, this is what I do, this is how I suggest you follow. But I would find my own way of doing it. We were different characters.

And I think that's important that you do find your own way to do it, otherwise you're not authentic.

Yeah, well, I think that's really important, isn't it? For whatever we do for a living, is to Try and be an authentic version of ourself.

I fear too many people these days are influenced by other things and other people and are not being authentic. And I think that can cause all sorts of problems, burnout being one of them.

I agree. I mean, I think you go through life, don't you? And you take a little bit of different people, so you kind of. You become this.

Almost like this patchwork quilt of. Of different skills or styles that you picked up off people.

And I picked something up off him, but there's a lot of stuff I wouldn't want to pick up off him. No, no, because that's not. It's not me.

It's not you.

Yeah, yeah. So I think that's important.

So you landed at craft foods. Yeah, yeah. So you were how old by this time?

About 24, 25.

So three or four years after you'd started.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So let's tell me about Kraft Foods. And that was the next big step in your journey?

Well, that was another interesting learning because I hadn't come through as a traditional graduate through a graduate program. I'd never worked for a big organization before, although I'd worked for a bank, but only ever in a small branch.

It's like working for a small company. So this big organization and things done very differently. Things rather properly done.

Whereas I was used to, you know, wing and a prayer, you know, and being sworn at, you know, down the phone by drivers and swearing back, you know, it was. It was very differently done. And I had to learn to adapt. And I did find, you know, my learning from that is how adaptable I was.

Okay.

Because I thought I've come from this, you know, kind of rough environment, if you think about it, to a, you know, in Cheltenham as well, which is a very, you know, prim and proper place.

Yeah.

With a lot of educated people, intelligent, talented people. And I think I had to fight a little bit, you know, to make myself known. And by that, that's that point I was making earlier about.

Well, I never got my. I hadn't had my degree at that point, and in fact, I never finished my degree.

So I always had that as a bit of a. I'm not going to say a chip on my shoulder, but like a little bit of a worry that I was an imposter and I'd be found out.

Well, it's interesting you say that.

I was going to ask you exactly that question, Rich, and I, as you may or may not be aware on the podcast at the moment, are going through a series of episodes on confidence, because we've just literally today launched our online confidence program because there's a massive issue in leadership with confidence, and things like imposter syndrome are a big part of that. So I guess from listening to you talk there, at this point, you did have some confidence issues. You weren't really fully sure who you were.

There wasn't enough self awareness there. There wasn't the ability to self manage some of that stuff that was going on for you. Yeah. So therefore confidence ebbed and flowed.

Oh, very much so. And I would say it's probably taken 20 years, maybe even 30 years after that to be fully confident now.

Okay.

Which is a bit of a shame when you look back, But I think if I knew then what I know now, which of course we all say, it would be different because I realized that I was just like everybody else. And whether you had a degree or not, you know, lots of people just have fear and, you know, am I keeping up? Am I staying with the pack?

Am I gonna make it? Do I know enough? Am I respected all this kind of stuff? Well, I was just thinking the same thing.

I just assumed they were much more confident than I was. So that's my learning is actually. But it didn't hold me back because I actually think it pushed me.

Yeah, well, everyone responds differently to this kind of stuff, don't they?

I mean.

I mean, I like you. I didn't go to university. I didn't want to actually go to university.

I don't think I had the comparison thing where I thought, well, I'm not as clever as them. I just didn't want to go. I wanted to go and earn some money. And I've never really regretted that decision at all.

I don't look at people who might be academically more gifted than me. You know, some people are, that's absolutely fine. But I don't think that I've missed out or they're any better than me.

But you're right, I think that looking back, the thing I didn't have at that age and the thing that you're referring to is that degree of self awareness to manage some of those narratives and stories. Because I had the same thing. I experienced imposter syndrome more than one time in my career.

And that is a difficult thing to go through at the time, isn't it? Because you don't really understand why you're telling yourself these stories. You're not really sure how to get out of that.

There's nothing wrong with being chucked in the deep End. But you need to give somebody a little bit of help when you do that. And I think self awareness is the gift actually to give people.

Well, you're absolutely right. And I've had some leaders that were probably ill equipped to give me to help me with that confidence.

Okay.

Simply because they either were too overbearing.

Yeah.

And they weren't trusting enough.

Right.

Or they would just throw me in at the deep end without any. Without any help or real guidance, like real leadership. But that's it. You know, there's a lot of that about. Unfortunately.

There is even today. Yeah.

But when I look back, I think if I could do any of it again, I would just trust myself more that I did not.

I didn't need to push so hard because I look back to those early Cheltenham days, you know, and I was in the office till 10, 11 at night when nobody else was.

Yeah. Just to prove yourself and just to.

Feel like I was staying up with the pace actually at first.

Right.

And also I think what it was, it wasn't were they cleverer than me.

I just felt like they knew how to navigate the system better than me because they'd grown up in this kind of big organization and that's the way things are done. I come from a very small company where you can just get things done like that, you know.

Yeah.

So I had to get used to that and that's where I felt I was at a disadvantage. I didn't have that big company kind of ethos and expectations of how things get done.

And was this the beginning of you starting to experience what you call burnout or did that come a bit later on?

It came later.

Okay, so tell us about the next step in that journey.

I will, I will. So after craft in the UK and we're fast forwarding now about 15 years.

Right.

I went to Canada.

Okay.

So I got. I got a promotion to go to Canada with the company.

Yeah.

It was a great opportunity. It wasn't one of those expat deals where you go and they'll give you a two year deal and then they fetch you home. No, it was like if you go, you.

You've got to stay there.

Okay.

So I was basically emigrating. So there's a whole load of pressure around that. That's a long story. But yeah, so. So that was a lot of pressure. Long way from home.

Yeah.

And I was promoted into a role and I. Which, which it was fine at the time. I really enjoyed it. And then so we had. The company was splitting into.

Okay.

So. And I was put in charge of the supply chain part of that project. Huge responsibility went fantastically well.

I am not big headed enough to say that was all because of me, but I played my part.

Yeah.

And I was well rewarded for it.

And it's really quite interesting this when I look back because I got a personalized letter from the CEO of the company, personally signed and only about 10 people in the company did, to say thank you for what you did.

Yeah.

Which was incredible. But then after that I got, I got, wasn't promoted. I got put into a role where I was the customer service director of the new company.

Yeah.

That had been created.

Okay.

And as soon as I got that director in my title, it was a real. Oh my, oh my God, I'm a director now.

And I just felt, it really felt like, oh, this is me, you know, this is this little squirt that's come from this bank clerk and you know, transport, transportation clerk that's come from these back streets of the northwest.

Yeah.

It's not quite that bad. But you know, and then all of a sudden I'm this director of this big company and it just felt, it just felt a bit much.

And the company got off to a difficult start. Supply problems, meaning I was flying all over Canada apologizing to customers and being beaten up. And it just felt a bit much at the time.

So I got in this tangle of just having to work harder and harder to keep up.

Right.

But by this time, you know, I'd probably been doing that 15 years earlier, but I was young then.

Yeah.

I could cope with it then.

Right.

And by now I'm in my early sort of mid-40s by this time.

Right.

That I just think this is, this is really starting to get to me.

Yeah.

And I think you get that fear of, well, if this goes wrong, what happens to me? What happens to us? What happens to me and my wife, you know.

Yeah.

Like it's. And we're so far away from home, it just all felt a bit scary.

Whereas when you're younger then you just, you know, you just think, well, if this goes wrong, I'll go and get another job.

What were those early signs then? This is you on the road to almost becoming burnt out. What did it feel like day to day?

What were the sort of things that you can now look back and think, yeah, I should have seen some of the warning signs here.

A lot of it was paralysis of decision making.

Right.

Sort of cognitively I wasn't quite as sharp as I could have been. A lot of irritability as well.

Right.

And starting to resent what I was doing.

Right.

Okay. Because I'd put in a lot of hours. Some of it, you know, really benefited me. Benefited, you know, the company. Some of it.

I look in by think, why did I do that? But I just. Just felt I was kind of losing myself in it and I was losing my confidence and I just felt overwhelmed.

And I thought, if I'll just keep trying and keep trying, I'll never get out of this. So I have to change my approach.

So at some point, you realize this is not an isolated incident. This is ongoing. It's becoming quite regular.

Yeah, it's a good question because, you know, I think we all have good days and bad days.

Yeah, of course, you know, you're going on a Monday sometimes and it feels like the world's against you, and then by Friday afternoon you're feeling okay again, or even Monday afternoon you're feeling okay again.

Yeah.

But I really felt like it was just consistent and I just wasn't enjoying my life. And I just thought, well, you know, I'm losing it here, so I need to do something about it.

You.

I think when I spoke to you before, you said you're not sure you actually got to full burnout, but you realize that you were on a very, you know, negative track and, and not going in the right direction.

Quite right. So. So, because I think when you get to full burnout, that it's, it's, It's a quite a good description. There's nothing left.

You know, there's no, there's, you know, it's like ashes, isn't it?

Like a shell.

Yeah, exactly. And I didn't quite get there because I still had some kind of get up and go to say, what can I do about this?

So what was that moment then? What pinged you into life? To think, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna carry on like this.

I think I just sat there one night watching the tv.

Yeah.

And I can't remember exactly what it was, but just something. Something triggered me to say, you know, I'm dreading going in tomorrow.

I wish tonight would not end because I just want to stay here in this comfortable. My comfortable apartment and not go anywhere. And then I just thought, well, this can't keep going. This is no way to live my life.

And I realized at that point that I've been thinking that way for a long time. And so I needed to do something about it. So I got onto Google. Yeah, what can I do about how this way I'm feeling.

Yeah.

And it came up with mindfulness actually. So this is how I got into mindfulness because it was basically saying this can help you manage your stress.

And it said something like it can help you make you feel younger or something. And I just thought, well, yeah, because I want to feel younger again. I felt old, prematurely old before my.

Time, you know, old as in just like knackered, basically.

Tired out, you know, he looked in the mirror and you just think, well, I look exhausted, I look terrible. You know, I'm 45 or whatever it was. But I felt I look 55.

Yeah.

And I'm just fed up. And it was talking about how you can de. Stress, you can sort of de. Age in a sense.

Because what happens when we have too much stress is that, you know, the chromosomes in our cells, they start to degrade and that's what ages us.

Yeah.

You know, and makes us more likely to be ill and all that cortisol which stops your immune system working. So I realized I just. So that kind of scared me into action as well when I was reading what this could do to me.

So I said, I'm just going to do something.

And then I found a course to go on which was just basically an online course teaching you how to meditate and what mindfulness was, which is not just meditation. No, but. And I did it and I found a lot of benefits. Really. Quite quickly.

Were you or are you the sort of person that's quite open minded? Because a lot of people would think, well, mindfulness, that's that sort of new age, soft and fluffy nonsense.

Yeah.

I'm not gonna go anywhere near that now. I don't agree with that and I know I've practiced meditation in some form or other. Yeah. On a fairly regular basis. And I find it really beneficial.

Yeah. And I just do it because it makes me feel nice, it makes me feel good and it calms me down.

But I do understand for a lot of people who don't understand it because there's a lot of confusing information out there as well. Yeah. Was it you were. I found it out of desperation or was it. No, I'm quite open minded.

I just need to understand what's going on and find a way through.

For me, I think initially when I saw that, a sort of bit of an eye roll, you know, it's like, oh God, this is that mumbo jumbo stuff. Like a lot of people. Well, still think.

Actually a lot fewer people probably think like that now, but because it's more Open, you know, but there is that, there is that still that stigma attached to it. But no, I was open minded in the sense that I need help.

Yeah.

And I didn't, I didn't go to the doctor.

Right.

I didn't really tell anybody about it at all. Certainly not at work.

Okay.

Because I thought that if I tell my boss, if I tell anybody around me at work, they're gonna mark me down as weak.

Yeah.

They're gonna mark me down as can't heck it. There was a bit of a macho culture. I wouldn't say toxic, that's not fair. But a bit of a macho culture.

I remember one night leaving the office at something like half past six or something and my boss and she was kind of joking, but maybe she wasn't, just said, oh, it's banker's hours, is it?

Okay?

And I thought, okay, so I've been here since 7 o' clock this morning and you know, and I knew she'd be there, probably be there for another couple of hours. But you know, that wasn't for me. I didn't want to live my life like that. I didn't go all the way to Canada to spend my entire life in the office.

So I think I was open minded. I needed help and I wanted to self help.

Do you think if you had been forthcoming with the people around you and work that it would have been career limiting for you?

Was it that kind of culture where it would have cause I think that stops a lot of people that fear of if I come clean with this, it could harm my career or it could limit my opportunities.

Yeah, I think it probably could have done.

Yeah.

Because, you know, when things are going against you, I've had situations where I've been really under pressure and had too much on my plate and the boss comes to you and quite reasonably says, well, I'll take that off you, we'll give that to somebody else to manage. And it feels like a failure.

And I think it's human nature, to be fair to the manager, to say, you know, have some, have some sense of, what's the word I'm looking for? Have an awareness perhaps that that person can't handle too much more.

Yeah, yeah.

Now that's not to say they should just leave it there because the first conversation should be, you know, why can't you handle it? Or how can I help you handle it?

Is the stuff you're doing that you shouldn't be doing or is the stuff you're worrying about you shouldn't be worrying about, because, you know. Do you know what I mean by that? I think it's a natural thing.

I think for me also, what I've experienced over the years, and I still think this is relevant today, is if you have leaders who are managing teams like that, or maybe aren't as software as they could be, they see the world very clearly from their own perspective, but they don't understand it from other people's perspective almost. You don't know what you don't know. So you're leading in what you think is the best way possible.

But it's not a one size fits all approach, managing people, is it? Everybody needs something different.

You and I, whilst we might have similarities, are growing up in completely different worlds with different inputs and different influences. So we're not the same. So would you manage Alan the same way as you manage Dave? No, you probably wouldn't because we're two separate people.

But I think there's too much of that, actually. I've got a way of managing and leading. I'm just going to do that.

And not thinking, actually is what's right for Alan, what's right for Dave or anybody else that might be in my team. I still think that's an issue, if I'm honest with you.

Oh, I absolutely agree. And when I said it's natural to have behaved like that, to say, well, you know, I'm just gonna almost let you think you failed. Yeah, it's not.

Not a good thing. But it's.

It's understandable because the manager's got to get the work done and at the end of the day, they also, you know, I took it also as a sign of, we don't want you to burn out, you know, that those words weren't used. Yeah, it was, you need help.

Right.

And that could be the right answer, but it might not be the right answer. But I, I think there is a gap and it was the wrong approach because the approach should have been, how can we.

How can we in this, in your play, in your sandbox, how can we make it so that you can deliver.

Yeah.

And that you can deliver healthily.

Healthily. Yeah.

The. The first step of I'm just going to take something off. You didn't help me in the long run.

It might have helped me in the short run, but that didn't help me develop at all, did it? And actually dented my confidence.

So you.

But it's a. I think it's a natural thing for a manager to do.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's a short Term solution.

And it's probably meant as well. Yeah, yeah. Well intentioned.

Yeah. I didn't take it in a bad way.

So you'd discovered through your own curiosity that meditation, mindfulness, was actually really beneficial. What sort of benefits was it giving you when you started to do that?

Well, it just a calmness of mind and a clarity.

Right.

I started to relax more, I started to sleep better. But, you know, the neuroscience shows that.

And what happens in reality and practice is that you feel like you've got the same problems in front of you.

Right.

Just your perception of them is different, Different. And you feel like, I can handle this.

Okay.

Rather than get tangled up in the anxiety of I'm failing, and if I fail at this, then this will happen. Then you go on and catastrophize, you know, and how the mind gets caught up in this tangle of thought.

What mindfulness and meditation does allows you to step back from that and see it for what it is.

You know, it's a bit like if you've got, like, you know, we've all got electrical cables and chargers and all these things, and if you get them all in a tangle, the worst thing you can do is just pull harder at each end because you'll just tighten the knots and make it worse. And I think that's the way we think. You know, we're trying to think our way out of problems.

The way to do it is just step back, say, okay, you know, look at it as a whole and say, you know, what's the. The most sensible way of untangling those cables? It's the similar thing, really.

And you start to be able to look at it for what it is, a reality of a problem rather than the perception that you built up.

Yeah. And you can change the narrative in your head then, can't you?

Yeah.

So. So there you were. You started to. To help yourself by doing this. How much longer did you stay in that environment with craft, or did you.

At what point did you think, actually, I'm going to go and do something completely different? Because obviously what I want to get onto is this whole concept of the burnout ladder that you've created. But let's take the journey there?

Yeah. Well, I mean, I ended up in a job that I didn't think was suited to me.

I was grateful to get the job, but I knew it was probably the last one that I would have.

Okay.

I'd already made up my mind because I think the key thing is throughout my career, and I think I learned this way back When I was at that small road haulage company was that I got most joy out of seeing people achieve and seeing people develop.

Okay.

So I come from a teaching background. My dad was a lecturer at university. My mum was a teacher. My brother's been a teacher. You know, there's a. My grandfather was.

You know, there's a teaching background.

And I feel I have this kind of inner desire in a need, if you like, to pass on knowledge or skills or whatever, whatever it might be, I like to do that. So I like to see other people develop.

And what I found was that once I'd started to calm myself, I was in the office environment, I started to look around me and look out rather than look in.

Okay.

Because you know what it's like when you're really under stress. All you can see are your own problems.

I started to have the ability to look out and see others and go and think, oh, my God, they're suffering exactly the same way as I did. So I started. I said, I'm doing this mindfulness thing, you know, and it's great, you know? So I started to run little classes and sessions.

Okay.

Relaxation, you know, and it felt a bit weird at first, and I think they felt it was a bit weird at first, but it was entirely voluntary and people started to really enjoy it. I thought, oh, this could be a career for me.

Okay.

I didn't know exactly what it was going to look like.

No.

But I thought, I want to help people with mental health problems because I'm having them myself and I know what it's like to be in it.

Yeah.

And I also know how joyful it can be to come out of that. So I'd like to help other people on that same path.

Right. And that was the beginning of you going off and doing your own thing.

Yeah.

Was it?

So when I was leaving the company, I trained to be a mindfulness teacher. Trained to be a hypnotherapist, which is, you know, just down the road, up the road in Birmingham.

Yeah.

And I thought that's what it is. And I want to be a. Whatever we call it, therapist.

Coach.

Practitioner. Trainer. You know, all those. All those things you mentioned, right to the start, I'M trying to be all of them.

Yeah. So where did the concept of the burnout ladder? Because I'm. You've written this book.

You've written this book now, which I have to say, Alan, is I have. I got to confess, I haven't read the whole thing yet because I haven't.

Had to get through it.

But what I have read of it, it's wonderfully written. It's very, very grounded and real and honest. It uses some wonderful analogies to make the points.

It's not overly technical, you know, so it's very accessible as a reader.

Well, I'm not overly technical, so I.

Think you're putting across something which is really, really important and affects so many people, but in a very accessible way. So how did this concept of the Burnett ladder come about and what made you want to write a book about it? Tell me about that.

Well, I suppose one of the things I haven't mentioned yet is I'd always wanted to write a book and I've had a few attempts to write something and it was just never really worked out. I've had attempts at non fiction attempts at fiction that haven't really gone anywhere.

So anyway, this, I suppose the book came about a client that I was working with. So I had set up on my own. My own business.

Yeah.

But I also had a joint business with an old colleague.

Yeah.

And we were going in and talking to employees like ourselves who'd had problems that we'd had. And one client said to me one day, have you got anything specifically on burnout?

Because burnout just seems to be very prevalent here and it's a word that people are using a lot for this particular customer. And I said, well, yeah, of course. And I hadn't really. Other than my experience.

Yeah.

So I did some research on it and I went on to LinkedIn and I saw, I saw one day that somebody posted this 15 stage process of burnout.

Okay.

This is how you. This is how burnout happens in stages.

Right.

And I thought A. Well, 15 is quite a lot to remember. I don't think I can remember 15 things.

No, not me.

But I learned from that and thought about my own experience and how burnout builds from like a kind of an unknowing state. You're unconsciously incompetent. Almost it's happening to you, but you don't know it's happening to you.

Because the early stages of burnout are very kind of enticing and seducing because somebody's asked you to do something and it might be a covering for Matlieb, or you do it, you've got a promotion, you've stepped up. And to do that, you have to increase your personal resources to meet the challenge. When you do that, there's all kinds of things that go with that.

There's dopamine hits in sense of I'm achieving here. You kind of get the endorphins of achievement and reward. People are telling you, oh, great job. I love the way you've stepped up. Great.

So especially for a people pleaser like you, that's a little like a drug, isn't it?

It's a pat on the head.

Yeah.

You know, and I'm like a dog going, you know, give me, give me another treat.

Yeah.

And yeah, I think that's, that's what I think. That's why we get stuck in it. Because it's very hard to know where the line is at that time, where are the boundaries at that point.

Because, you know, somebody says, well, do you want to do this project or not? Anything? Well, if I turn it down, I won't look very good. And if I turn it down, then so and so over there will get it.

And that means they'll, they'll be above me in the pecking order in future. You know, all these things. Because we're tribal people, aren't we are. And we compete and we can't get away from that. This is basic human behavior.

The way, you know, it's, it's hardwired in us, and I think we're wired to do this. So. Which is why we end up getting, getting stuck. Because we then progress along this path.

And after a while you realize, well, to keep up this pace, I need to neglect things, I need to neglect myself. I might need to, you know, not spend as much time with my friends, family, whatever it is.

And then, and then after that, you kind of start to become resentful of it. And then after that you just think, oh, God, I really, I realize what's happening to me now.

And then you end up in the latter stages of the ladder, which, which is where you really are starting to get depressed and you're really starting to think about, I am burnt out. I've got nothing left to give. So the customer asked me, have you got anything? I said, I can come up with this concept for you.

And I just, I narrowed 15 stages down to six based on my own experience and what I could see. And I also came up with. You talked about analogies. I think people respond to analogies and Metaphors.

They do. Yeah.

It's how people learn, isn't it? Yeah. So I came up with the ladder idea, which was originally I talked about going down a ladder.

Yeah, yeah.

But actually, we go up ladders, don't we?

We do.

We go. We have property ladders.

Yeah.

We have career ladders. We're social climbers. We always say, oh, you're going up in the world. So I thought it was. It was a kind of a concept that people could resonate with.

Yeah.

But on this particular ladder, you don't want to be on it, because as you're climbing this ladder, it's starting to burn from under you. And that's the imagery I'm trying to create without being too dramatic and frightening about it. Because on the early designs.

On the early designs of my book cover, there's a ladder and it's clearly burning, but it was very, like, in your face, burning. And I had some feedback from friends and other people I'd asked for feedback, for feedback on it. They say, God, it makes me feel.

It makes me feel, like, shocked inside, you know, the thought of all that fire, you know? So I thought, well, I better tone it down a bit. But I do like the concept. I do like the concept of going up this ladder, but don't be on this ladder.

But I think sometimes we also have to be realistic here. Cause as you said, this kind of thing creeps up on us. Initially. It's going on very subconsciously. We don't even see what's happening.

So the fire's already burning under our feet and we don't even know it's there.

No, we don't.

So I think sometimes you have to be a little bit out there with this kind of stuff, because people just don't realize.

And I think what you're saying is, by the time they realize, it can often be too late, or you're a long way down the track where you don't want to be.

Yeah, correct. And I think people don't see it. And I'm seeing this. And I know at some point we'll go into the detail of what the different rungs mean.

But people tend to come to. If we think of the ladder, there's six rungs of the ladder. And if we think that it's split into three stages, early, middle and late.

People come in middle stage of their journey up the ladder. Because in the early stages, life's just too exciting at that point.

Right.

And they're probably too early in it and think, well, yeah, well, this is Just the way it's going and in another month everything will be okay and I'll be over this little hump and you know, I'll be able to enjoy my life again.

So they kind of just keep going and at the end of the ladder when they're getting into kind of it's called embers stage, they're just too depressed and burnt out to ask for help. In the middle, in the middle stage they realize, oh, this isn't going very well at all. And this isn't just a one off.

This is something that's happening to me every day and it's ruining my whole life. That's when they come to me and when I have this questionnaire in the book. It's a 60 question survey.

You can get it on the website as well, but I'd rather you buy the book. And they send it into me and they submit. The survey takes 10, 15 minutes, which I did. You've done it.

Yeah, I have.

You've absolutely done it.

I found the questions really interesting, Alan, actually. Yeah. Quite thought provoking at times.

In a good way?

Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean I'm always interested in this type of thing now. I don't think I'm anywhere near burnout now in my career.

I can think back to times when maybe I would have been higher up that ladder with it burning underneath me. And I didn't realize that was what was going on. Yeah. And of course it happens in. It also happens outside of our work life. I mean there was a.

Three years ago my father in law sadly died. My wife at the same time was quite seriously ill which could have been life threatening if we hadn't got it sorted straight away.

And then she had a really bad reaction to all of that happening in the same week. And then she was quite poorly with her own mental health for a while.

And I remember six months down the line with a widow to look after a family with young kids whose mum wasn't quite where she needed to be. And I use the phrase, I think halfway throughout the year to rich.

I'm feeling a little bit burnt out because it's been so difficult and our business was booming. There was all that to contend with as well. So I think it sometimes isn't just our work life. It can be all these other things that feed in.

Luckily I recognize that this is not good if I carry on like this. This is leading nowhere good for me, for my family. But we don't always realize that soon enough, do we? And that's the Problem.

So that analogy of you going up a ladder, which on one thing is I'm going up in the road, but actually it's burning underneath me, as soon as I'm fall, I'm going to fall quite badly and hurt myself.

That's right.

I like that analogy. I really do like that analogy.

Yeah. And I'm glad you do. And the other part of it is the higher we go sometimes the scarier it gets to, you know, because then you're suddenly.

You're a long way from the ground.

Absolutely.

So there's that analogy and metaphor to take in as well. So, yeah, they come to me in those middle stages.

Yeah.

Because they've still got some get up and go, you know, hang on, you know, I've got something about I'm stressed but I've got energy still, I need to do something, what do I do? And so that's tend to be when they come for help.

So you road tested the idea and we'll get into the ladder, as you say, in the various rungs in a minute. So you road tested this idea with your client. At what point did you think, I need to turn this into a book?

Oh yeah, good question.

Because I know you've been trying to write a book for a long time.

Yeah, we ran it, we ran a little course, just a little pilot thing. And then I think one day I decided that I was starting to get upset because the. Yeah, I was upset the market, if you like.

So dealing with companies and you know what it's like.

Yeah.

You are very much dependent on budgets.

Right.

And you're dependent on one person saying yes or no. Yeah. And I used to get frankly a bit annoyed when you'd have a conversation with a customer and say, this is a great idea, but I can't do it.

So I thought, well, why don't I skip the middleman and go straight to the end user. So I thought, I've got all these decide this concept and these tools, so why don't I just write a book?

And I thought not only from the sense of, well, it's good to get to an individual person who would pay £10.99 rather than maybe thousands of pounds for a course or something they can get to it, but also as a lead magnet too. So my big hope is that one day a CEO of a big organization will get hold of this book and I often leave copies on a train or in a hotel.

So they'll pick it up and go, well, this is. You're enjoying it. Maybe they Will, too. And they'll say, I need this for my people.

And so, you know, I can start to build relationships that way again with customers.

How easy was it to write? Because you mean you're diving into your own personal history and your own personal, you know, dark thoughts, I guess from,.

You know, previous dark thoughts are in there.

No, not all of them.

I've held some back for the second.

One, but it must have. Was it an easy thing to do to write book? Was it. Was it quite hard to write the book?

It was actually really easy to write.

Was it?

Yeah. And. And I say that not glibly or, you know, it was. It was hard in the sense that some days, I mean, I got into a writing habit.

Okay.

So in the summer, it was the summer before last, and I was just getting up at 6 o' clock every morning and it was light outside, and I go and sit in the garden and just, just, you know, type out a thousand words a day. And I wouldn't worry too much about, are these the right words? Because I can sort that out later.

I just had to get out of my head what I wanted to say.

Right.

And because of the structure of the ladder. So basically I just talk about what is burnout? Why do we as humans get burnout? What can companies do about it?

But then after that, it's simply about, these are the stages, and at stage ignition, here are the things you can do about it. And Every. So there's six rungs of the ladder and there's 18 tools in total. So three per rung.

Yeah.

And I found it sort of wrote itself okay. Because the structure was easy, you know, but the hard bit was, was editing it.

Right.

And I set myself a deadline to get the book out by a certain point in. In early December. And I just made it a rigid thing that I was going to do this. And I was naive to the process. I self published.

I did have a self publishing coach who gave me some inadequate advice.

Okay.

And my manuscript was too rough to go off to the editor, meaning when it came back to me, I spent two weeks working 12, 14 hours a day, just accepting or rejecting the changes she'd made.

Right.

We're talking little bits of grammar or style or whatever it was. And that nearly killed me.

So. Hi, it's Dave again. That's the end of episode one of this conversation with Alan Muskett. We'll be back next week with part two.

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