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The Doing Business in Bentonville Podcast
To create an ecosystem that connects leaders of all kinds – industry, community, student, educational, civic, investment and entrepreneurial – to help overcome Omnichannel Retail barriers through exclusive, insight-rich content.
The Doing Business in Bentonville Podcast
Ep. 116 - Thriving Beyond Burnout in Leadership
What happens when high-achieving leaders neglect to lead themselves? In this eye-opening conversation, executive coach Irene Ortiz-Glass pulls back the curtain on the hidden struggles of top performers and reveals the profound connection between personal history and leadership effectiveness.
Irene shares her powerful personal journey from childhood trauma to corporate success to complete burnout, demonstrating how our origin stories shape our leadership approaches. "What got you here didn't start today—it started 10, 20 years ago," she explains, highlighting how early experiences create the mindsets we bring to our leadership roles.
The discussion explores our "maladaptive" modern work environment, where constant connectivity and back-to-back meetings trigger chronic stress responses that impair decision-making. Leaders who thrive have learned to be intentional about energy management, creating clear boundaries while maintaining high performance. Irene provides practical insights on creating psychological safety for teams, explaining how threat responses trigger the "amygdala hijack" that prevents authentic engagement and strategic thinking.
For listeners feeling overwhelmed, Irene offers a starting point: ask yourself what you truly want, examine your core values, and honestly assess whether your daily activities align with those values. "The happiness factor in life is feeling connected to what matters to you," she notes, challenging the notion that success requires sacrificing personal well-being.
Whether you're leading a team through organizational change or seeking greater balance in your own leadership journey, this conversation provides both the neuropsychological framework and practical tools to become more effective. Ready to transform your approach to leadership? Start by understanding your own story.
Well, hello everyone, welcome to Doing Business in Bentonville. I'm Deanna Baker and I'm your podcast host for the day, and I'm really excited about this episode because it's taking a different turn from other topics that I have covered up to this point, other topics that I have covered up to this point, and, you know, I think what I'm going to enjoy the most about it is it takes more of a personal turn and I hope, through this podcast today, you'll be prompted to look inwardly at your own personal career journey, as well as how in the world to really drive an effective team and facilitate their own growth, and to join me in this conversation today. I am thrilled to introduce you to Irene Ortiz-Glass. Irene Ortiz-Glass is the founder and CEO of Leadership Advisory Group LLC. Irene is an experienced executive coach with over 20 years of working as a global leader in talent development and as a general manager, designing organizational strategies and building teams. She has a passion for helping leaders to thrive in both life and work. Irene has created a unique approach to executive coaching that is holistic in nature and focuses on the human side of leadership and performance.
Speaker 1:Irene has over a decade of experience working, creating organizational strategy, building cohesive executive teams and providing one-on-one coaching and leadership development. That's not all. Prior to launching Leadership Advisory Group, irene worked for SAP, leading the cloud business. Prior to this role, she led global talent for the organization and North America sales, and before joining SAP, irene helped to launch and lead the Western region for Korn Ferry's leadership and talent practice and had oversight for the global technology practice. In this role, irene specialized in executive coaching and succession planning, working with C-suite and board level executives. Planning working with C-suite and board-level executives.
Speaker 1:Irene has a passion for working with type A executives. I might know a few who suffer from burnout and she helps to harness their energy for greater focus, performance and satisfaction. Helping executives to thrive in life and work is her driving force. Irene has a bachelor's degree in communications and a master's degree in organizational leadership. She is an author and a speaker on topics such as women's wellness, resilience, mental health and perfectionism. Irene has done extensive work in CPG, technology, advertising, retail entertainment, as well as working with venture capitalists. Retail entertainment as well as working with venture capitalists. So, irene, where do you find the passion and the time and the energy? You have had quite the career. I just want to say welcome to Doing Business in Bentonville.
Speaker 2:I am honored to be here. Thank you for having me today, deanna. This is just quite a treat. I listen to all of that and I'm a little bit tired, but it's been a journey and I think you know, every time I think about what got me here, I'm always sort of amazed because it wasn't a plan Like it wasn't a strategy. It just sort of unfolded as I grew and met people and developed in my own career.
Speaker 2:But I do remember thinking in the early days of starting in sales and moving into consulting that my job was to learn and it was to find people that I could learn from. And I think that's a big part of leadership. It's identifying those people in your circle or outside of your circle who can really make a difference. And I sought those people out and asked them to mentor me and to help me learn the business of consulting. And I had a mentor at Korn Ferry who was our CEO. His name is Gary Hauerhan. He has since passed and he was my mentor. He taught me pretty much everything I know today about really good consulting and coaching and assessment work. So very fortunate and blessed to have some really good people around me.
Speaker 1:Well, an amazing career you have had. I would love to start our conversation today on just getting a little bit more knowledge around how you came to be or what made you enter into this space in the first place. Just tell us a little bit about you and your background, if you would.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So really, I think when you look at anybody's career journey, you have to kind of start at the very beginning. I grew up in a home that was, you know, middle class. Basically, my mom had immigrated here from Mexico with her family. We were a small family. My mom remarried at a very young age after my dad had left me, and a lot of what we talk about in leadership is understanding self. What got you here is whatever you're dealing with didn't start today, it started 10 years ago. It started 20 years ago. So who you are now is just what's happened through a course of a journey, and so I think to understand me is to understand my story, and that's how I approach coaching, which is I want to know you. But to know you, I need to know your story, your origin story, the things that impacted you the most, and, as leaders, to really become good leaders, we have to start there.
Speaker 2:So, if I take my own advice, what I would say is very early days were very difficult. My mom was married, divorced. My father pretty much abandoned us by the age of I was about five, didn't come back to see me. Lots of rejection and pain there. I didn't really understand it because I was pretty young and my mom and I sort of just went out into the world together. I mean she used to tell me it's me and you against the world, kid. And then she remarried and when she remarried she remarried someone who was middle class, you know. He had a business, he was very entrepreneurial. We moved to a white neighborhood and I felt kind of like a duck out of water, basically, and he had a lot of stress because he was trying to build this business and with that stress came a lot of anger and we had a lot of anger in our home and a lot of strife in our home and a lot of yelling in our home. And there, you know, he was abusive to my brother and to myself and I suffered what's termed psychological sexual abuse and that you know. I bring that up to say. First of all, everybody has a story. Mine is not unlike many people out there, but the reason that matters is what happened after. That is what created a lot of beliefs and mindsets in me as a person that then I brought to work.
Speaker 2:So once I finally confronted my mother about what was going on, her response was not what I had hoped for it was. You know that just happens sometimes and you know that generation struggled with acceptance of hard things and things like abuse, and we, you know, stuck it under the rug. I mean it just wasn't talked about like it is today, thankfully, and I remember the moment that occurred, making this really serious agreement with myself, which was I will always be independent, I will never rely on anybody, because I can't, and it's my journey and I'm gonna hold on real tight and make sure it happens. So I moved out from the home and I was like 17 at the time and basically never looked back. I just drove and I drove, and what happens when people go through trauma is a threat response. You know you're in fear and so you're going to do whatever it takes to survive, and so the reason this matters and ties back is going forward from there as a leader.
Speaker 2:I was a driver, I was a perfectionist, I was in fight or flight all the time. I was more is better, faster is good. Slowing down is not going to. You know that will put you in a bad place, and so there was always this sort of self-protection and that drove my career. So, you know, I immediately got into consulting. I grew up and promoted quickly. I went to SAP. Same thing happened there.
Speaker 2:I mean, I had all of these trajectory experiences in my career, but what was happening on the inside was I was getting sicker, I was getting tired, I was getting anxious, I was starting to struggle with anxiety, I was getting tired, I was getting anxious, I was starting to struggle with anxiety, and I didn't know where that was coming from.
Speaker 2:And so, over the course of having some pretty difficult challenges with my health, I got to a point where I basically was exhausted, completely burned out. So we talk about burnout all the time. Burnout is an actual thing. It means the adrenal glands no longer produce enough cortisol to keep you, you know, alive and able to sustain, and so I stopped producing enough from the overload of stress I had put on myself, and you can die from that. So I started getting corticeroids, you know, injected to try to keep my stuff going, but at the same time started realizing like this is another bandaid, like I need to go back and do the work, and so I started therapy, and that was, I don't know, 20 years, it was a long time ago and I started to unpack. You know, like why am I like at the top of my career. I'm making money, I'm successful, but I'm not okay.
Speaker 1:Did anyone know that? At this point, Irene, had you trusted anyone a mentor, anyone to have some of these conversations, or were you just going it alone?
Speaker 2:Alone, and I have to tell you the more I mean. I coach hundreds of executives a year and I'll tell you that they have a very similar path. Most of the C-level and executive people that I work with have suffered something, are driving too hard, they have not shared, they're afraid and they're afraid that if they get off the hamster wheel they'll fail, because this push is why they're so successful and they're not wrong. It actually does promote adrenaline and focus. That's what all these chemicals do, these endorphins. But the body isn't created to actually cope with that. Over time it's very temporary and so as the body ages, it's not able to adapt to that and it starts to fail. So it doesn't last, but we want to believe it can, and then what happens is because we feel like the body's giving up, we start inducing alcohol or drugs or other things to stimulate it. We're looking for the hit, and today the world is constantly driving that it's asking for it.
Speaker 2:So I talk a lot in coaching about we live in a maladaptive environment. Everything around us was never intended to actually work with the human body. So we sit in these chairs all day, remotely, zoom to Zoom, we have multiple meetings, we're running, our cortisol is spiking, we grab something quick to eat like a protein shake. We've lost it, basically. So in coaching as leaders, right, we think that leading is just leading the business. If you don't lead yourself, you can never lead the business. That is basically the premise of our firm is understanding yourself and unpacking you and who you are and who you want to be, so you can then work with your team and work with your stakeholders and your boards and your enterprises to perform, and there's a direct correlation between those things.
Speaker 1:And you know I'm thinking about my own personal journey and peers and things that I've witnessed personal journey and peers and things that I've witnessed. Are we like perpetuating it as leaders, if we're not talking about our own struggles, to our team? Is there a way to do that where you still lead courageously and the team knows that you've got them, that you're supporting them, but that you aren't a machine yourself? Because I almost wonder now are we perpetuating that feeling in other people?
Speaker 2:I think we are, some of us. I think it's you know what I and I still struggle with the fact that I'm a very driven human. I mean, I run a firm, I have a lot of consultants, lots of clients. I have the same pressure. But what I tell people now it's intentionality, right. It's like how are you starting and finishing your day? How much time in between meetings? Like you have to be prescriptive about your life and your time now much more than before, because everybody's wanting more.
Speaker 2:So, as a leader, I think we have to decide first, what kind of leader do you want to be? What do you want people to say about you when you're not in the room, about your leadership? And then, who do you want to be in your life? What do you want your identity to be? What are you driving towards? You know those are the questions. And then, for sure, when you are working with your teams, I think it's critical to understand that, first, they're human. Second, most of them are tired. Third, they're all super different. They are not energized the same way you.
Speaker 2:I mean we have a whole influx of people coming into organizations that do not care about the drive the way we do, and we're struggling with that. I mean, I'm telling you we don't have a talent gap. We have a massive hole because senior people at our age 40s and 50s are basically running organizations because the next group of people many of them don't want to sacrifice everything the way we did. But where's the middle of that? And we have I mean you and I talked the other day, back in the day, we had programmatic leadership development. If you worked for Macy's, you went through a development program and you rotated right. Tell me, wasn't that like the best experience ever to start from zero to 100?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. You got to see the connectivity across an organization.
Speaker 2:Okay, sap, same thing. We had graduate programs, we had sales academies. I was there helping develop those things. We had graduate programs, we had sales academies, I was there helping develop those things. The companies then walked away from those things because they were very costly, but we're paying for it now because now people don't have those experiences, the mentorship, the progressive learning, and now we're trying to catch up. So it's an interesting time, but I think today, in the chaotic world and the maladaptive world, to lead looks dramatically different than it did before COVID, because what happened for me in coaching was the actual opportunity to finally do what I believe was always the right thing to do, which was help people see their humanness as part of their leadership, and that, to me, is where people really perform and grow and where they find happiness and thrive, which we know if you're happier, you're going to perform.
Speaker 1:I've been in different environments where it just hit different when I was in a particular group or meeting or in front of certain leaders where I knew my authentic self was more than great enough and not having to fit a mold or worry about saying something wrong or that wasn't, you know, popular, completely different energy to have a conversation there. So I do think, bringing yourself your authentic self and we, you know, I've heard it my whole career bring your authentic self to work. It's there's hearing it and then there's actually doing it courageously. And some people you know you may not be their cup of tea, but then that might. You might just be slowing down the process of you getting to where you actually need to be by kind of playing the role, and I do think that added stress when I look back on it, if I couldn't lead with my authentic self, you're not leading with full energy.
Speaker 2:That's right, and what you're describing is basically fundamentally like I do a lot of studying and certification and neuropsychology. Every time you're interacting with someone, you're either trusting them and creating endorphins and positive chemicals in your brain that do not put you under threat, that make you feel good about who you are authentically. If, however, you feel like you're not allowed to be yourself and you're under some sort of threat, the brain moves from its ability to be logical and strategic to the amygdala hijack, which is paranoid, scared, anxious and fearful, and we don't make good decisions when we're under the fear attack and, unfortunately, because of the pace in which we are running and the crisis management all the time, the body's always in some form of hijack. The brain is not as good at being logical because it's on all the time. It can't get off the hamster wheel.
Speaker 2:So leadership is about creating trust in an environment where people can be who they are, and also helping people to grow in areas where they can, but not putting them under a threat response, because in a threat response, we get the worst of people, not the best of people, and we use assessments to look at brain dominance and genetics and things like that because we want to help leaders understand their team so they can navigate different styles and keep that authenticity happening and flowing. So it is a real thing and you know you and I know the difference. We've worked with people who make us feel small and I've worked for people who've said you can go all the way.
Speaker 1:And in both scenarios I can say I was pushed hard to develop. But I knew instinctively the one who was pushing me hard that wanted, just for my good, to be better and that was a completely different energy and acceptance of me to rise to the challenge because they thought I could do it A completely different mindset than the other person pushing me where I didn't feel like I had their trust.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's that's a style thing, right, like you can be. It's like raising children, you know you can be firm and fair and loving at the same time. These are not mutually exclusive, you know. I mean people who are very empathic and social. You know they have a need to always make people feel good and make sure everyone's connecting and all of that, which is great. But if you do that without enough accountability, we have a different problem. So it's it's you know everything about leadership and I say this probably I don't know 20 times a week is energy and focus. Where are you putting your energy with individual people and where are you putting your energy in your day and where are you focusing? I mean the amount of conversation I have about strategic priorities and how we all are off those, because the chasing, the light that's blinking is more important than the priority. We've lost our way because we're reacting, constantly reacting, and that doesn't progress.
Speaker 2:Organizations If you look at the most successful organizations, they are looking. You know. If you look at retail most successful organizations they are looking. You know. If you look at retail, okay, as an example, when you're doing a line, what are you doing it for the future? Right, it's not today, so think about it. That takes an interpretation of what a year will look like, or two years the trends will look like, or what's shifting in the market. How are people buying? What do they want to buy? What do they need? What are their lifestyles right, so that innovation and strategic thinking takes this part of the brain which is not running at a clip of 100 miles an hour? So how are leaders stepping back to look and gain perspective, so so they're not unprepared for what's coming in two years? I mean, this thing is changing too fast for us not to have time to, you know, really think.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And you know, recently I've read articles where you know more CEOs the turnover is faster. Some are opting out stepping down, not taking the role. The turnover is faster. Some are opting out stepping down, not taking the role. And I have to think it's, you know, and I too, covid will forever be, you know, a line in the sand for me where I don't think the business, the industry has normalized and I think it left its mark on us as humans as well. So, irene, here's the big question. So I don't see things slowing down how? It's maladaptive to your point. So where does that leave us? We can't just drop the ball.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So because it is so fast and we'll continue to go faster, it's not slowing down. If you look, even two years ago and you compare it to today, it's accelerated three times. So you only have to think through what you can control. So, really, you can't control the market, you can't control the noise, you can't control politics or the financial market. You can control yourself, and I think doing some of the work on self and who you want to be as a leader, and where you're thriving and where you're not, is job number one.
Speaker 2:The second thing that we spend a lot of time on with senior teams is really defining strategy and where you want to spend your energy and focus from a strategic priority and a goal perspective, and how are you lining people up to that and creating clarity for them? So when there is a lack of clarity, there's fear. Change also causes fear and it causes people to slow down unless they know with clarity what we're going to do in the change, and leaders tend to move so quickly they forget the basics. I feel like we have to go back to basics, which is let's be clear about who I am as a leader. Let's be clear about the strategy and the goals I am as a leader. Let's be clear about the strategy and the goals. Let's communicate that. And let me, as a leader, meet individually with each person on my team to help them understand their contribution to those goals. I mean, that sounds so simple, but if I were to tell you how many people I meet with every day who have not done that work or haven't continued to adapt as change has come, so you can have a plan. But if you're going to pivot, make sure you tell people you're pivoting, we're moving too fast and we're forgetting the basics, and I think those are the things that we have to go back to in the maladaptive world. But it starts with us.
Speaker 2:If you are not okay, if you are feeling stress, tightness in the body and the brain, the body screams to you and it doesn't like what's going on. But if you have to keep grabbing another cup of coffee or another glass of wine, or you've gained 10, 20 pounds and you stopped working out, or relationships at home or friendships are gone because you're too busy, those are symptoms of a bigger problem are gone because you're too busy, those are symptoms of a bigger problem. There's some reason you're not able to really get back to what's healthy for you, and that's what creates resilience is that being able to move into the work and back out to rest, back out to work hard. And that's what I've learned. I've learned to recognize when I need to rest and when I do, I back out and then I'm back in pretty hardcore, making it work, and then I'm taking the beat. And I would love to say that it's scheduled like 8 to 5 or 9 to 5.
Speaker 2:I run a business that's not like that, but some days, you know, I'll work till 3.30 or 4 and I'm done. But every day, from 4.30 to 5.30, almost every day, I'll work till three, 30 or four and I'm done. But every day, from four, 30 to five 30, almost every day, I move my body and I do check email at night periodically, but I'm not, you know, overworking. In the evenings I try. I have dinner every night with my husband and I do have Saturday morning sometimes where I have to catch up, but then I'm done and I break out for two days. So you've got to know what works for you and everyone's super different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and it sounds well, I've experienced it. When you're in a big business and even, let's say, you own your own business, which is going to, it will take your every waking hour to you know, to it, until you decide where the line is. And because we're human, we have a limit. And so if you, if some of our podcast listeners and viewers today are hearing this and they're like, well gosh, I'm right there, I'm in the crosshairs. Where do I even start? Do you have some just like simplistic things that they could at least do to maybe start that journey with themselves?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I have. Um, the first questions I ask people when I meet with them is so what do you want, like? Where are you going with this? What are you trying to achieve? Right, I think you have to ask yourself that Like what? What am I? I'm working all the time I'm. I have a family, or maybe I don't. I want one, whatever. What are you? What's your goal Like? What's your purpose here? What are you trying to get to as a human in the world? Because work is a portion of that, but it isn't all of it. So I think that's the first question. And then, right next to that question, if you can answer it, most people struggle, they do, they're like I don't know and I'm like, okay, good, we'll get there.
Speaker 2:And then the next piece is write down your top five values and tell me how you feel about if you're living those values. And that's where it gets fascinating, because people will say my most important value is my family, my children, my relationships. You know all these warm and fuzzy things, and I'm like let's talk about how much time are you spending these warm and fuzzy things. And I'm like let's talk about how much time are you spending, how fulfilled are you in those buckets and they're not. So the happiness factor in life is feeling connected to what matters to you. And if you aren't connected to what matters to you and you're veering off, that's when we start getting dysregulation. If you're never spending time on the things that you value the most, you're really not going to feel satisfied as a human. But there's a part of us that feels we have to do what the world wants us to do, and we just said the world is maladaptive. So if we're going to measure ourselves against the world, we might want to recheck ourselves and decide how do I become the best version of myself to perform in that bucket of work, to have a good time at home, to build relationships, to have self-care, to manage my health, to exercise, to eat well? I'm super, super disciplined in that space. I'll be 55 this year. I feel better than I've ever felt.
Speaker 2:But it's a process, like I work it, you know. But I want to be the leader that I can be, and that means taking care of myself and being there for my kids and my grandkids, you know. So it's it's. It's more complex to be a leader, and we thought it was. We just thought it was go to work and manage the PNL and make a ton of money and operate that business. That is what we should do. But how do we do it? If this is falling apart and this isn't okay and this is misaligned? You will never be as successful as you can possibly be if you haven't done that work. You could be good, but you probably won't be great.
Speaker 1:I think that is sound advice and certainly I've experienced that myself and actually the quest to be great at work. If you let it take your everything, that's going to be a pretty short run, and I've told other people that I've mentored before to please remember it's a journey. It, however, you think this is going to turn out. If you look back on a full career, it's probably not going to be what you envision right now. So, you know, really look at it holistically and it's not a race. You know there's so many topics that you and I could delve into around leadership.
Speaker 1:This just touches the surface, so I would love for you to come back, irene, and let's really dig deeper on particular subject matter, and I think it will help a lot of people, which is part of the intent of doing this podcast. It's not all business. It's how you bring yourself to work and how you show up for a team. You know I'd love to talk about the watch out signs for people on your team. You know how you can help them after you've helped yourself and so, if you would, I would love to have you back, because I have enjoyed this greatly.
Speaker 2:I have enjoyed it and you know, philosophically, I'd love to create awareness for people. I think any amount of education and awareness that we can create for people on this topic is so important today. We have huge responsibility as leaders to help our teams and our organizations, and it's harder to lead today than it has ever been, so I'd love to come back. I appreciate you so much. Thank you for having me today.
Speaker 1:Love it. Thanks, irene, and to everyone listening, thanks for joining us today. I hope you found value in this. Please drop us a note. You can reach me on LinkedIn. You can reach out to Doing Business in Bentonville on their website. And until next time, everyone, have a great day.