40. Is Caring Too Much Sabotaging Your Career? with Teresa Vozza

Career Burnout — SECRETS OF THE CORPORATE GAME — EPISODE 40

Being too emotionally invested in your work is like a double-edged sword. Kendall Berg chats with Teresa Vozza, an award-winning leadership expert and former CHRO, she shares her insights on recognizing and managing burnout among high-achieving executives, especially women. Teresa, who has over 20 years of corporate leadership experience, talked about her personal battle with burnout and emphasized the importance of understanding “overcare” and its signs such as performance anxiety and perfectionism. 

Why High Achievers Need to Embrace Rest: Lessons from Silent Burnout

Burnout can often be silent and insidious, creeping up slowly without major symptoms. Many high-achieving individuals, especially women, wear their ability to juggle numerous tasks as a badge of honor. Teresa explains how society often rewards this relentless drive with promotions, pay raises, and recognition, making it easy to continue pushing forward. However, just because one has the capacity to handle more doesn’t mean they should. This mindset neglects the importance of restoring energy and can lead to diminished resilience and executive functioning.

Kendall and Teresa discuss how over time, this impacts the ability to think, create solutions, and stay engaged. High achievers must recognize the signs of overextension, as decision-making suffers when not adequately rested and nourished. Incorporating rest, rejuvenation, and reflection into one’s routine is essential for sustaining high performance and avoiding burnout. Building proper self-care practices into a high achiever’s mindset is crucial for maintaining long-term success and well-being.

Mastering Time Management: Tips for Balancing Work, Family, and Self-Care

Time is the biggest constraint in balancing business, work, life, and success. Identifying small areas where one isn’t at their best can help in making necessary cuts to create space for more meaningful activities. Teresa explains why for busy moms, carving out personal time is essential, despite the joy children bring. Logging off work to spend time with kids often isn’t enough; there must be dedicated time solely for oneself. Whether it’s 20, 30, or even 10 minutes, finding and protecting this sacred time is crucial. A practical approach involves taking a piece of paper, scanning the week’s activities, and identifying one thing to stop doing to reclaim 10–30 minutes.

These small adjustments create sacred spaces that insulate from career over-involvement or over-care. Balanced care is about being intentional with time and space, ensuring that work remains productive without crossing into obsession. By maintaining cognitive capacity and accessing intuition, one can effectively address problems without sacrificing personal well-being.

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Highlights

• 00:00 Intro
• 3:17 Understanding Overcare
• 5:05 Importance of recognizing overcare through feelings and physical signs to maintain balanced care.
• 6:38 Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
• 7:28 Teresa’s personal story of silent and insidious burnout
• 9:04 The societal rewards for high achievers
• 11:53 Balancing Career and Personal Life
• 14:27 Strategies to unwind from the identity of being the go-to person by asking what you want more of in life.
• 15:48 Tactical Steps to Manage Overcare
• 20:46 The importance of carving out sacred time for oneself, even for busy moms.
• 22:34 Encouragement to identify and stop non-essential activities to make space for personal time. 24:00 Balanced Care vs. Overcare

Learn more about Teresa

Website: https://www.teresavozza.ca/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teresa-vozza-chrl-cca/

That Career Coach

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