Successful but Burned Out: Hasika’s Leadership Breakthrough (a client success story)

Blake Schofield:
Real leadership. Real life. Real impact. No more choosing between your career and your life. Here you’ll find honest conversations, science-backed strategies, and inspiring stories to help you thrive at work and truly enjoy your life outside of it. 

I’m your host, Blake, and I’m honored to help you create more impact with ease.

Blake Schofield (00:12.568)
Today’s episode is about something many leaders quietly experience but rarely talk about. From the outside, everything looks successful. Strong performance, promotions, increasing responsibility. But internally, something feels off. Energy drops, the work that once felt exciting starts to feel heavy. And even though you’re capable of doing the job, it no longer feels like you’re operating at your highest level. That’s often what burnout actually looks like for high performing leaders…not failure, misalignment.

What many organizations don’t realize is that when leaders get stuck in these cycles, it often shows up inside companies as disengagement, declining performance, or eventually attrition risk within the leadership pipeline. Leaders start to believe the problem must be the company, the role, or the environment and often they leave only to find themselves facing the same patterns again somewhere else. Because the real issue was never capability. And until leaders understand how they actually work best, the patterns that created the burnout often follow them from role to role. 

What’s really missing is clarity around how they create their highest value as a leader and the patterns they’ve developed over time that quietly create stress, pressure, and burnout. 

Blake Schofield (02:02.36)
Today’s conversation is with my client Hasika, a leader who spent more than a decade succeeding in the consumer goods industry. She was trusted, promoted, and consistently delivered results. But behind that success, she was experiencing cycles of burnout that were becoming harder to ignore.

What changed everything for her wasn’t just finding a new opportunity. It was gaining deep clarity about her unique fingerprint for success, how she naturally thinks, solves problems, and creates value as a leader, and learning how to recognize and shift the patterns that have been driving those burnout cycles. That clarity didn’t just change how she approached her career. 

It also changes how she’s showing up with colleagues, how she navigates challenges and stress in real time, and how she’s able to create stronger impact with the people around her. And that’s really what this work is about, helping leaders understand how they operate at their best so they can lead more effectively, support their teams more thoughtfully, and create stronger outcomes inside the organizations they serve.

This episode is a powerful example of what can happen when leaders understand how they work best and begin aligning their work with how they’re naturally wired to thrive. Let’s dive in.

Blake Schofield (00:01.672)

I do want to make sure that for today we dive into and understand what is your intention behind this. What do you think is the heart of what you hope our time together will do for people that listen?

Hasika (00:20.352)

I think so much of what I learned with you in the last couple of months is things that I maybe had observations but didn’t really know how to put into practice or there were patterns that emerged that I didn’t even realize were patterns. I think helping people see that there is value in having somebody kind of walk you through your own unique fingerprint for success and how to apply it to your daily life as well as your work life and how do you take that and really allow you to be your best version of yourself is very possible in a very short amount of time. I was definitely skeptical of how quickly things would fall into place. I think for somebody like me, that tends to be a little bit more quantitatively biased, kind of leaning in and taking that leap of faith and really doing the work to also optimizing in real time can have really outsized impacts in your life.

Blake Schofield (02:29.32)

I think one of the biggest things that really came to heart in our work together is the bigger why which was to use your leadership position and skills to create a greater sense of belonging, inclusivity, and understanding of how people work together to create better results together. And that came in such a big way over and over and over again, an understanding of what your experience has been and how that experience has given you a really unique perspective about things that often organizations or leaders are blind to that are eroding the ability for people inside the organization to create their best impact. 

And so my hope is that as we dive into your story and your journey, that part of your story comes out and that through you sharing your experience other people can begin to see ways that they can not only understand themselves better so they can perform better, but they can begin to understand their teams and cross-functional partners better so that this time together is part of that legacy and the work that you’re doing.

Hasika (04:11.149)

I love it.

Blake Schofield (04:13.086)

Awesome.

Blake Schofield (00:01.312)

Hasika, thank you so much for joining me today. I’ve really been looking forward to our time together today.

Hasika (00:11.533)

Same, this is super exciting for me. Thanks for having me.

Blake Schofield (00:15.276)

Of course. You know, as you and I started this journey together back in November, so just four short months ago, and, but we had been in each other’s realm for a while. I think, you know, we’ve been on LinkedIn, hadn’t really connected. I would just love to open up in talking about your journey by having you share a little bit about your career and what was going on when you ended up reaching out

Hasika (00:54.209)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I had been in the consumer goods space a little over a decade and had seen a lot of early success in my career through promotions, new opportunities, really being the go-to person that an executive could lean on and rely on for support for their special projects and things like that. I think, you know, something that was simmering in the background that was kind of a constant that I just kind of ignored and moved on from was really navigating the political landscape. 

I think it was generally tough for me at various stages, at various companies particularly with my peers, some of whom felt like I was getting preferential treatment or unfair advantages for whatever reason. And so I think you know, it’s interesting because I think earlier in your career, it’s very much about what you can do and just being able to deliver, constantly deliver results. And I think…

Hasika (02:25.341)

as you kind of mature through your career, it becomes also about being able to navigate politically the landmines that your peers or cross-functional partners may also throw in your way and kind of be able to successfully navigate through that and bring other people along on the journey. And I think especially because there was quite a bit of an age difference sometimes with my peers that it was tough for me to relate to them a little bit more on a person to person level and I think that had some unintended consequences where it felt like we may not always see eye to eye on things and it became a bit about, well…

Hasika (03:22.165)

You don’t know what you’re talking about because you haven’t been doing this for X number of years or things like that. And so I think, you know, on the one hand, people’s instinctive reaction to me sometimes was very much about, well, how could you possibly understand or how could you possibly know you haven’t been doing this long enough or you haven’t experienced some of the things firsthand? 

On the other hand, any time I would try to give a suggestion or try to improve things within the organization, it would get blocked or sideswiped from my peers because I maybe wasn’t communicating it in the right way or it felt like a bit of a dig when that wasn’t the intention. So I think I first started thinking about coaching in general as I started getting into the director level. That’s when the disparity between my cross-functional partners and my peers and myself started becoming very visible in terms of age, life experience, things like that. So that was one of the first main catalysts. 

And then I think second was because I had gone through various portions of my career at sort of an accelerated clip rate. I was going through these cycles of burnouts where I feel like I would be on high highs because I delivered some amazing result that nobody had previously been able to do. And then I would go into these really low lows where, you know, I physically could not even get myself to want to go to work, which is very much not in my personality trait. 

So I think it was a combination of understanding that if I wanted to continue to move up in my career, I was going to have to figure out a better way to maintain my emotional health as well as strive results and then also figure out how to create positive change within an organization when I may not immediately have a ton of allies that were sort of at the upfront. So I think those were the two big catalysts for why I wanted to really start this journey. 

And I think what struck me about your story was very similar that you were also a top performer, high achiever at Target and at other companies where you were being given these impossible tasks to turn around. And you’d seen a lot of success that way and growth opportunities that way. 

For somebody that’s very results oriented, think I loved seeing another female that had also driven results in that way and in a similar industry. I feel like having somebody that kind of understands your world a little bit can help shape and help think through things a little bit differently as an outsider coming in versus somebody completely like a therapist or psychologist where they might not have a concept for exactly what you’re going through. I think that was really important to me. 

Hasika (07:24.981)

And then I think your story about how you’d gone through cycles of burnout multiple times was something that really resonated with me and I don’t think a lot of people talk about that so it feels sometimes very isolating when you’re going through that to have to kind of get yourself out of it.

Blake Schofield (07:50.191)

Thank you. Yeah, there was so much when we connected about your journey that had echoes of mine. I remember earlier on in my career being told that I was intense and intimidating. I actually found an an old review back from, think 2009 after, which was the year that my buying team won number two buying team out of 90 inside JCPenney and that review said, relax. And it’s, I laugh about it now, but it was incredibly challenging at the time.

Because what I can say now, knowing what I didn’t know then is that I was in survival mode every single day, feeling like if I didn’t deliver the results that I would be at risk. And the pressure was so high that I didn’t know another way to get around it. And I definitely didn’t feel safe in the environment that I was in to admit what I was struggling with. 

So I was driving all of these results but I felt extremely isolated about the personal struggles I was dealing with within it. And in some ways, the advice and guidance that I was given was actually more harmful than it was helpful. And I saw so much of that with you and your journey as someone who is very ambitious, who is really able to see and transform and move businesses and teams forward in really innovative ways that you were having several of those same examples, but didn’t really have somebody that could see or understand what you needed in order to really perform at your best.

Hasika (09:49.931)

Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly right. And I think in addition to that, there were a couple of moves for me professionally where the dynamic was such that I was working very closely with the most senior executive team for a period of several years. And so while they weren’t my peers, they were the people that I was spending most of my time with. And so, and they became, you know, my close confidants and I think, you know, it’s a different type of role being a chief of staff and some of it is art. You see people on their best days and worst days and you try to problem solve and figure it out with them. But then of course there was the business side of things and helping transform and helping build new processes and capabilities and things like that enterprise wide. 

The interesting thing is a part of that role there’s a lot of discretion involved, right? So there are a lot of things that I’d done, but it wouldn’t have been appropriate for it to be visible that I was the one doing those things. And so, you know, when I transformed and transitioned back into more of a normal business operations role in the marketing space, it was really tough for the levels of people that were sort of above me to really understand what my true capabilities were. And then it also became very awkward because there was a lot of insider information that I had that…

Hasika (11:52.447)

I just wanted to progress the business in the right way that aligned with our strategy. And it was tough navigating the landmine of also not overshadowing my boss or my boss’s boss because of my historical relationships with the CEO or CFO or things like that. So I think that was a really, really tough dynamic for me to go back and navigate. And it had a lot less to do with the actual job. 

And it had a lot more to do with managing the politics, which was I think an added layer of stress of I don’t feel like I can talk to anybody because my peers, it doesn’t feel like they’re on my side. It’s not appropriate for me to go back and like reach out to, you know, the executive team. And I also was embarrassed. I didn’t want to feel like I was failing or you know, kind of coming off short in terms of everybody’s expectations of all the amazing things I could do and frankly my own expectations of what I should be able to do. So I think that dynamic was very isolating for me. And you know what, the thing that nobody really tells you is like, when you leave the West Wing, you still know all the trade secrets. You still know where all the bodies are buried. Now you’re on the other side. Everybody wants answers. You still can’t talk. You still can’t say anything, but you don’t have the protection and you don’t have the security of being in the West Wing per se.

Hasika (13:54.129)

So I think that was a really tough dynamic to navigate because I felt like I had to be very, very careful about the words I was saying because it could easily be weaponized in the wrong way.

Blake Schofield (14:08.812)

Yeah, so many interesting dynamics in your career. I’d love to fast forward a little bit. Sounds like you were seeing these patterns and these challenges, experiencing them while still delivering great results and just continuing to move. And then there was a shift in a moment in time, which made you decide, hey, I need to get help because what I’m doing isn’t working. Tell me a little bit about what was going on there.

Hasika (14:35.403)

Yeah, I made a voluntary decision to leave my job and really focus on my mental health. I was so burnt out, so tired that I just knew that if I didn’t take care of myself in the right way, I wasn’t going to have the career and the longevity that I desired. So, you know, I spent several months not doing anything work related, traveling, really focusing on myself. 

But I think the baggage of a lot of what I went through was still kind of remnant and still there that I didn’t properly process through and I didn’t really have a way of dealing with from a framework perspective. And then I think additionally, I was really struggling with figuring out what it is I wanted to do with my job, career-wise, what I was looking for, even understanding and being able to articulate what it is that I do uniquely well, because I think so much of my confidence and my perception of self had been eroded that I wasn’t even sure what I was doing. I felt like I was kind of wading through life, if you will, for, you know, several months.

So I think that’s when I had a bit more of a realization moment of one, I need to think about connecting with somebody that specializes in this area. I think my time specifically working in the executive office.

Hasika (16:35.091)

It became clear to me that everybody has an executive coach. It’s very much seen as a, if I want to be a professional athlete, I wouldn’t balk at having a coach help me work through my training plans. I would have a nutritionist. I would have a staff around me that was really taking care of my wellbeing. But when we seek help and primarily in the mental health space,

It still feels like a stigma. So I think seeing other executives work with an executive coach, work on soft skills, work on things that had nothing to do with driving results was helpful and valuable to me. And I think it just kind of naturally came to a head where I felt like you had the right qualities of somebody I would be looking for in this space and where I probably needed

to burn out so severely where it just felt like the right timing.

Blake Schofield (17:43.425)

It’s interesting to hear you say that. I think one of the biggest things I hope to help people understand is that burnout is not an indicator that something is wrong with you or that you lack capability. It really is a sign and symptom of being in misalignment. really truly is that clear. It’s just that almost none of us have been given the map and understanding of what we need and how we work best in order to operate. 

And I think for those that end up in leadership and going up, often we get there through pushing forward and working harder. And that is how we’ve been taught as opposed to being able to identify what are the signs and symptoms of what something feels like when it’s in alignment and it is easy.

Where are we wasting time and energy? Where are we pushing things that are actually creating burnout cycles? And my hope is to be able to help really clearly identify and create that map for people so that we stop seeing burnout as a personal failure. And we stop thinking that just taking time off or whatever those things are will solve them that we started understanding their cycles we are going through. And most people don’t notice it until they’re at the absolute peak. 

And what I heard you saying, I think it’s really so common is, right, when you keep going and you don’t solve the root, you will eventually hit the breakdown moment. And the breakdown moment, one of two things happen. You either hit a severe physical, mental or emotional breakdown where you cannot keep doing what you’ve done before. I finally got to that one on my third round.

And I see so many leaders taking leaves of absences because they get to that point. So you are not alone in that. And the second thing that happens, if that doesn’t happen, is you end up getting put on a performance plan or laid off, even if you’ve been a top performer your entire career. Both of those things are really devastating in terms of putting you a position where you’re at increased risk that could have been avoidable.

Hasika (20:07.512)

Yeah.

Blake Schofield (20:07.66)

And that is the hardest part is that so often people wait and wait and wait until it’s so bad.

Blake Schofield (20:18.126)

And part of my goal is to help leaders and organizations understand there are signs and symptoms. You can get ahead of this and that the change can be much easier and much faster than we think that it seems to be, I guess. So when we connected, you had been in the job search, you had been going through that process, you had had some interviews, but not nearly as many as you wanted for the amount of time, energy and effort you were putting in.

Hasika (20:33.196)

Yeah.

Blake Schofield (20:46.742)

You were leveraging your networking connections. But tell me a little bit more, what was that experience like and what were you finding happening as you went through that process?

Hasika (20:57.845)

Yeah, it was, I think, a very interesting experience and in some ways a blessing in disguise for sure. I think prior to my job search, every role, job opportunity that I’d gotten had sort of fallen into my lap at a specific moment, an executive recruited me from X company to Y company. There was a new need on the business, so they shifted me there. I spent almost no time in my career thinking about what it was I wanted to do in the next three to five years. I only thought about becoming in the executive office one day, 20 years from now kind of thing. 

When I left my prior company, I was struggling to articulate to myself what it was I was looking for. I was very confused because well-meaning, I had a lot of people in my ear telling me what they thought I should be doing next.

And it was from people that had also made it to the top of the career pyramid. generally people that I really respected their value and what they thought of me and they’d seen my work up close and personal. So I think that added a level of confusion for sure for me because I think never in my life had I ever turned down opportunities or things like that because that’s just not what I did. And for the first time I was really starting to interview, I was having some success.

Hasika (23:04.163)

And then some opportunities didn’t quite feel right. And so, you I was cutting out of the process or I turned down one or two roles pretty early on and then it would start to get a little quiet. And then I’m like, shoot, did I make the right decision or not? Should I have taken those opportunities? So it was probably one of the hardest things but also the most important thing for me to figure out what it is that I was good at. And that was really a lot of the upfront work that you and I did together, especially in those first couple of months. I probably spent thousands of hours endlessly interviewing for things, endlessly applying to things that were dead ends. 

And then I think focusing on fewer activity and more personal connections and more lightly scripted punch points of what it is I was looking for actually was a lot more successful in opening up doors, you know, to the tune of I was saving like 85 to 90 % of my time that I was previously just like endlessly interviewing for or endlessly applying for things that, you know, were just kind of a black hole. And so some of that was definitely symptomatic of a changing, economic situation and transformation in AI and recruiting and the mass influx of job applicants that were searching, you know, prior to other points in my career. 

And then some of it was I just wasn’t clear on what it was I was looking for. So people weren’t really able to leverage their network in the best way possible. And then when I started to become very specific and very clear as uncomfortable as that was for me that actually provided a ton more opportunity and ability to get in the right rooms.

Blake Schofield (25:17.422)

I’m excited to dive into this. There are so many things from your journey that I think are huge and beneficial learning. So I’m going to try and hit them and keep moving.

Blake Schofield (25:32.345)

Hearing you say 85 to 90 % of the time that you were spending doing this on your own was eliminated through the work is one of the things I keep trying to help people understand. It can be so much easier. You just said as well, I wasn’t clear. And through this process of getting clear on my unique fingerprint for success and what exactly I was looking for.

I got much more narrow and specific and that was uncomfortable for me, but it actually yielded the best results. Let me ask when you and I first started working together, you had been in the job search how long?

Hasika (26:11.69)

Probably three to four months more formally. Before that I was maybe more taking inbound things, not necessarily doing outbound.

Blake Schofield (26:21.74)

Okay. Did you believe that you were clear on what you were looking for and what your skillset was at that time? Okay. This is the key point I want to hit because so often I cannot tell you the like thousands of conversations I’ve had with people where they come and start telling me their circumstance and they believe they’re clear. And I am like, no, you have about 15 % of what you actually need.

Hasika (26:32.426)

Yes.

Blake Schofield (26:51.736)

So knowing what you know now from what you knew then when you believed you had clarity, what is that shift?

Hasika (27:01.442)

Yeah, I think the main way I was positioning myself was a bit of a Swiss army knife that I could, I was a little bit of a jack of all trades, could do a little bit of everything. And while that was true and while that is one of my skill sets and one of the things that is a unique fingerprint to myself, it as you and I worked together, it actually became increasingly clear that organizations, especially recruiters that may not know the nuances of every job, very often had no idea what to do with me, what bucket to put me in, because my resume had a little bit of everything in it. And my speech was, I can do a bit of everything. Like, what do you need? I can go do it. 

And so I think without having sometimes the formal introduction into an organization that I had previously had all throughout my career when I changed roles, I wasn’t selling myself. So I never really developed an articulate pitch. Somebody else, very senior, was developing the pitch for me. And then I just had to interview and show up really well. 

So I think that was the biggest shift of, okay, I wasn’t previously articulating a quick punch list of how I lead, how I drive results, and in what situations I work best in to external parties where they could figure out within their organization, how does this person fit in? And I think once I was starting to do that in a much more meaningful way, I legitimately had hiring managers and recruiters that were like, my God, you are exactly what we’re looking for in this specific area and to do these specific things, because that was sort of how I repositioned

Hasika (29:21.694)

myself and being able to drive transformation and drive new processes and build businesses that were declining and lacked clarity and turning them around and driving business results.

And by the way, I mean, probably 85 % of the Fortune 500 companies are doing some version of this now. But now that sort of helped make it way more clear for people to figure out, what kinds of businesses would we put her in? Less about the function, less about the role itself. And I think that was probably the single biggest unlock.

Blake Schofield (30:05.39)

As you went through, one of the things I’ve heard for years doing this work is the question like, how did you get clarity? And how did you figure out what your unique fingerprint for success was? And I often say the process is a lot deeper. Most people are doing it from this very like tops down, put people in a box and say, this is who you are and assign some sort of, I’m strategizer, I’m a whatever.

Our process is very different than that. Can you share a little bit about what that journey was for you and how do you think that has now changed your perception of who you are, how you show up, obviously how you showed up in the job search, and how you think that will impact the trajectory of your career?

Hasika (30:55.254)

Yeah, I think that’s a great question. One of the ways we did that was through the Kolbe assessment. And so there’s sort of four key dimensions that it measures you on. But I think out of the four dimensions, the one that was probably the biggest unlock for me of how I probably operate differently than a lot of people was this idea of quick start and I think my perception was once you get to a certain level, you have to be a good executor. That’s kind of how you drive results. That’s how you kind of move up through your career. 

So this idea that the speed at which I operate or how quickly I go from what is the problem to what are all the ways we could solve this problem. Being unique didn’t even occur to me. And I think similar to what you were saying, that was an area where now looking back, I could tell that I was overwhelming people above, below, across from me by just thinking out loud all these new great ideas of how I can solve things. And in my mind, I’m like, look at all these amazing possibilities. And I think the language of Kolbe and understanding the different dimensions also helped me understand that when I go into quick start mode, there may be groups of people that are like, yeah, let’s go.

Hasika (32:47.446)

There are lot of people that are probably like, my God, what is happening? I just got this massive ask. I need a few days to even process what was asked of me. And I’ve already raced into like, how are we going to start driving this? And so in the process of wanting to move things ahead, move things along, I left people behind unknowingly. And that was a big source of friction. Not necessarily because I thought my way was better or whatever have you, but it was just from the source of I was leaving people behind because I wasn’t taking into account where they were on the change curve. 

So I think that was probably, and there were a lot within the four dimensions, but I think for me specifically, that was a big unlock to the point where I even texted my mentor who had told me multiple times that if you would just slow down like 10%, you would actually be like 50 % more effective. This was the CFO of a company and he, like I heard him sort of, but I was like, what do you mean?

Blake Schofield (34:10.378)

Yes, so what do you mean?

Hasika (34:10.506)

I’m driving all these great results, why are you complaining? And I think it took you and me really talking about Kolve and really talking about how other people could be processing my speed and how I could be leaving people behind. That really then sunk in for me to the point where I texted him and I was like, I now understand what you said a year later.

Blake Schofield (34:40.814)

The what do you mean I think was the biggest struggle and I see this all the time inside companies and I think well-meaning leaders that lack the understanding of it needs to be specific, it needs to be tangible, it needs to connect to what you’re doing on a day-to-day basis to hit. I remember, like I said, early on in my career I was told I was intimidating, et cetera. I’m like, I don’t feel like I’m intimidating. I love people. I want to be very helpful. What do you mean?

And I got that feedback several times with absolutely nothing actionable. What am I specifically doing that is creating that so that I can create change? And it wasn’t until actually I went to Target when I finally was so exacerbated of like, I don’t know what to do with this, please explain to me. And I got a very specific, tangible example and very specific steps to take. 

And that fundamentally changed the game for me in so many ways and unlocked a much greater ability to lead and partner and collaborate and create results that I had been desperately seeking. But I think I didn’t have leaders around me that had the words or the ability to do it. And that’s one of the things Kolbe is amazing. But every client that I have that takes Kolbe on their own is like, what do do with this? And I think that often happens with assessments.

It’s gotta be brought into collaboration where you see it. So thank you for explaining that. So the Kolbe is one piece of how we unlock your natural way of working. Really the unique fingerprint for success™ is the second, which is the natural pattern behind every success you’ve ever had. How has unlocking that shifted your perspective and how you’re showing up now and how you’ll show up in the future?

Hasika (36:36.01)

Yeah, I think the way you framed a lot of the exercises really helped me as a more structured thinker on, okay, what are different examples where you’ve driven success? Talk about it in very specific detail, what was the process you took? How did you, you know, collaborate with your peers? How did you bring people along on the journey? How did you position this? And ultimately, what were the results? And I think doing that over and over again helped me see similarities across a lot of the big things that I’ve worked on and led on how I naturally go about solving a really complicated problem. 

And I think through our work together, it was helpful for me to understand that that’s not just the normal way of doing things and there is no like one universal way, right? So like,

The way you normally do things, because it’s habitual to you, does not mean that it’s habitual to everybody, right? So that is truly something you uniquely bring to the table. And I think because I was used to taking that for granted and some of the things that I naturally did that, you know, I’ve just done for years, like how I’ve thought about problems, not just within marketing, but I would think about how they impact supply chain, how they would impact finance, how they would impact the company’s strategy, how they would impact the consumer end to end. 

Hasika (38:39.274)

I realized that’s not just like the standard way of operating and being able to articulate that actually helped me see that that is a unique gift that I possess of being able to take really complicated business problems and see all of the possible interconnections between functions all the way through end to end and being able to see very clearly in my head a solution is not normal and something I have a unique ability to go do. I think on the other hand, what that process helped teach me was because some things I can just see in my head or I just have an intuition for how those dots may connect, I actually probably need to do more work with my peers and other people around me that

I need to make those dots very abundantly clear, right? Like they may be implied, but like how do I make sure that I’m forcing those connections and really driving that through line? So I think that process, really helped me understand what it is I’m uniquely good at. And then it gave me something to very specifically talk about in translating that into what are my superpowers, right? What can I uniquely bring to the table? And so that was the through line. 

Like in moments of chaos, where the organization is changing directions, I can see very clearly what are the two or three things that I need to do before they’re assigned to me and how did all these dots connect across the organization before it’s been formally delivered into an ask. And so I think positioning it a bit more that way also helped unlock some incremental value in terms of the level at which I was operating at was not just, you know the baseline for my role or my title, but there were elements of it that went above the scope in terms of showing that I had future capabilities and leadership opportunities to kind of stretch into bigger things.

Blake Schofield (41:22.862)

So you mentioned that impacted your job search and process.

Hasika (41:31.637)

Yeah, I just recently started at a large multinational company working on one of their largest categories, thinking about the end-to-end strategy for how do we message this to consumers? How do we think about sourcing of this commodity? How do we think about really the evergreen nature of how we’re talking to customers wherever they are, whether it’s in the store, whether it’s in markets, whether it’s in PR or through advertisement, things like that. 

So it’s a really cool end-to-end role and as far as I’ve heard within the organization, because it’s quite a large organization, there aren’t very many roles that span across different functions like that, thinking all the way from ESG and supply chain all the way through marketing and communications the way this role does. that was a really cool opportunity. And one of the things that was very interesting in my interview process was

this role that I interviewed for sort of morphed into a different role as I started talking about my unique capabilities where you know originally they had brought me in to talk about one specific area of the business more tied to marketing operations leading new capabilities building things like that and then it quickly morphed into.

Wait, actually have this other part of the business, you know, kind of same larger team where we need somebody to help transform the entire thinking end to end. And you’ve done that in a lot of other roles and companies. But also just kind of the way you think about connecting the dots. We don’t really have somebody like that internally that can do it because they’re all very siloed decisions and

Hasika (43:46.049)

the divisions have historically not necessarily talked to each other. So I think that was a really cool unlock that through the interview process, I was able to show a capability in something I didn’t even know existed from a role perspective, and then it manifested into a completely different role.

Blake Schofield (44:06.659)

Yeah, that’s awesome. And I’ve seen that happen so many times. And it’s something I think we really negate as leaders.If you had not understood what your unique fingerprint for success™ was and your highest value in the market and what actually gave you energy, drive and momentum, you would have had an entirely different conversation. You would have gotten an entirely different role.

And therefore it would have changed the trajectory of your career path. Whereas now you’re very clear that you love to transform and do those things. And you moved into a new company and a new role where you literally getting exactly the next step that you need to move you in your long-term career path, which is amazing. I’m so happy for you.

Hasika (44:52.49)

Yeah, no, I’m really excited and I definitely don’t think I could have gotten here without your help and support. And I think just it seems basic, when we talk about business transformation, we oftentimes talk about getting back to the fundamentals. I think rebalancing your life in a lot of ways is kind of similar. You kind of have to get back to the fundamentals and the building blocks of creating new habits, creating new priorities, creating new ways of doing things that simplify in a lot of ways. 

So even some of the small things that we talked about of writing down three wins every week. I’ve continued to do that because I know my natural tendency is that I’ve moved on to the next five things and I’ve not taken a moment to celebrate those things that I completed and so you know that first week it was really funny.

I had my second one-on-one with my manager at the end of the week or whatever, and so she was asking how onboarding was going, things like that. And so I rattled off of a few of the wins that I’d written down, and she was like you had 30 one-on-ones in your first week at the company. And in my head, I was like, I probably should have talked to more people this week or whatever. She was like, I think that might be a record for how many people have come into a new company and onboarded with that many different leaders that quickly. And so, you know, something that I didn’t necessarily even…

Hasika (46:45.002)

probably give myself credit for as a win. It was perceived as a win externally. So I think like even those small things that we talked about of taking those times to celebrate those even little victories has really helped give me some positive momentum at the end of the week where I might be feeling drained or stressed or whatever have you.

Blake Schofield (47:12.079)

There’s so much we’ve dug into and a few things that I would really love to dig into, but I want to be respectful. Is it possible for us to go a little bit longer? Do you have a hard stop?

Hasika (47:27.104)

I could probably do like 15 more minutes.

Blake Schofield (47:29.187)

Okay, let’s do it. I always talk about three misalignments that create burnout and really stop us from leading careers and lives that are energizing and more in ease. We talked a lot about one, which is the natural way of working and really being able to understand your highest value, but we haven’t talked much about two or three.

The second one is beliefs and conditioning. And then the third one is environment and how you’re operating in it. You’ve had huge wins in both of those, but I would love to, if we could start because I remember, you know, when you decided to take this path, one of the big questions was like, can I do this on my own? And should I wait until I’m in a different position? And one of the things I shared with you is what I know to be true is that when we have these patterns of things happening, a new job does not solve them. So many times there are leaders who believe they need to change their job or their industry because they’re burned out or unfulfilled or feel unvalued and it really is not necessary. And so when we talked about it, it was like, I know based on what you’re telling me that these things will continue if we don’t solve them.

You had some trust in me and faith in me in that moment, and now you know it from a lived experience. Could you share an example of some beliefs or some challenges that you were struggling with that you now realize were causing the burnout cycles and the things that would have continued even if you had moved, if you had not actually done this work.

Hasika (49:24.106)

Yeah, yeah, I think there’s a lot to unpack there as well for me. Interestingly enough, and I think you and I have the shared experience where throughout our career, there was probably a moment in a lot of roles we were in where we were starting to hit a burnout point and a leader saw it and moved us into a different role or a different opportunity or gave us a bigger set of responsibilities. 

And that kind of shifted, it like helped bring some excitement. I think especially for people that value the learning, opportunities it just kind of shifted the burnout and kind of swept it under the rug but it didn’t necessarily disappear. And so then I think for me the way that transpired was similarly I had a lot of leaders that kind of plucked me into bigger roles and because of the work I was doing even though I was in various stages of burnouts during those times. And so it shifted the burnout, but it created this one unhealthy obsession with sort of driving results and sort of proving I deserve to be where I was. 

I think you know, some of it was internalized. Some of it was, you know, pretty blatantly articulated to me that they didn’t, people didn’t think that I deserved whatever I had in terms of career. So I think there was a lot of that, that I was internalizing where I just felt like this unhealthy obsession with trying to prove that I deserved to be wherever I was. And in some ways I think that was

Hasika (51:36.825)

creating a bit of a bull in a china shop. Kind of a state, if you will. So I think that was one big thing. I think the second was I’d driven so many results

And I was often praised for being able to do things without resources, without help, without a ton of the support around me. And so I think that created also the sense of like, well, if I want to keep winning, then I kind of have to keep doing this on my own and without support. And so I think that was a big belief system I had which was in order to do well I have to do the impossible and I have to do it by myself. I have to do these monumental things to get recognized and so I think that those two things were probably the hardest and I still feel like that’s something I have to continue to work out because there’s a lot to unpack there. And you and I, we’ve talked about that a lot of that stems even from early ages and childhood and some of the things that you do well as a kid and being praised for being independent and being really smart and things like that. I think that was probably those two things in combination together probably created the biggest belief system that I had to overcome. 

Hasika (53:39.467)

And then I think with that, how you and I talked about doing a lot of micro testing, right? Like, let’s figure out ways where you can start to challenge these norms and create new neural pathways of breaking down these prior belief systems that you had. And a big part of that was asking for help. And so in the job process, you know, one of the biggest things that I had to overcome was this idea of even asking for help for a lot of people that ended up doing me so many favors and opening up doors and things like that because it was like, if I haven’t tipped the scale in doing all these favors for them, then it feels really selfish for me to ask for help. Right? 

And so that was like a big barrier to unlock and I think one of the things that I saw over and over again was as I started asking for help, people were like grateful that and appreciative and they loved that I wanted their input specifically. So there was still some two-way reciprocity that really helped with that but I think that was a huge thing for me to overcome because again like I said a lot of my prior history and my wins have been kind of conditioned in a way of like doing beyond the scope of my role and doing kind of pushing up a boulder up a hill with limited support around me. So yeah, think that was, those were the biggest changes.

Blake Schofield (55:36.068)

Yeah, thank you for that. You had so many as we went through this journey from recognizing that you were great learning the things you were successful in and that were measurable, but maybe actually had some belief systems around failing or things that you didn’t do, things that you felt like you might not be good at, the asking for help. Also some of the things that through our work.

We did a lot of work to help you see the patterns of how this was showing up and help give you tools and knowledge and understanding of, when am I triggered? And how can I start to shift that? How can I catch it earlier? How can I start to challenge those things?

Blake Schofield (56:54.221)
What we do is absolutely different than traditional therapy. I have a lot of clients that have come doing this work either currently with therapy or have done therapy. I think therapy can be helpful in awareness, but often therapy is not nearly as effective, not as fast, and doesn’t address the entire holistic approach versus some of the work that we do here at Impact with Ease™.

I’d love to understand how that was a more holistic approach? How did that help you see and identify how these belief systems or emotional triggers were showing up in your day-to-day life? How they were impacting you and then start being able to shift those so that you could create different results without the stress or the anxiety or the burnout.

Hasika (57:51.735)

Yeah, I think to your point, I’ve tried therapy in the past with mixed results. And I think a part of it is that therapy focuses a lot more on exposure to triggering things and it felt like it wasn’t connecting the dots to all the different aspects of my life and all the aspects of my being. It was focused primarily on specific traumas or specific areas, primarily related to my personal life, not necessarily my career. 

What was helpful as we talked was it became clear that sometimes my trust issues or my need to hold onto things really tight was actually impacting various aspects of my life. And so then, especially as we talk about building connections with new people, it’s hard to let people in when you’re kind of holding yourself very tight because you’re scared of those ramifications, right? 

So I think that understanding and connecting all those dots really helped me in real time understand where I may have some trigger points and in real time, like how I could address some of that. I think for me, before we started, there were things that I noticed I was doing or had been pointed out to me, but then it would come like a week later, like, ugh, I shouldn’t have done that. 

Hasika (01:00:05.738)

Maybe I said this, but it was perceived that way, or different things like that. I think our work together, helped me see some of those things happening in real time and figure out how to address them in the right way. And some of it was just, again, my quick start. Like, how do you not act quickly? How do you actually just create space and time from whatever’s triggering you? Because my natural instinct to fix things and fix things fast can also be that double-edged sword of because I’m doing things like in a fugue state, I, you know, am not reacting the best way. And so, understanding and pinpointing some of my tendencies and where I can slow down and where are those impacts in various aspects of my life, I think really came together in a much more holistic way than I think traditional therapy has for me specifically.

Blake Schofield (01:01:30.635)

Awesome. And now you have an understanding of what to do in real time when those challenges come and why the burnout cycles were happening so that you can create that space to have a different reaction. Awesome, Hasika. Well, thank you so much. I will just round it out by asking you.

Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you wanted to share? Or what would be on your heart to share with leaders now understanding what you know today versus what you were experiencing in your career before?

Hasika (01:02:21.794)

I think I would go back to the beginning of where we started, which is, I think in a lot of ways, even if you tend to be really intuitive, corporate America like kind of pushes leaders into being more data oriented and more results oriented and looking at success only through a certain lens. And so that’s conditioned us to think that if we haven’t seen results in a very specific way, then they don’t exist. Or if we haven’t seen the results through the quantities, then it was a fluke. Right. 

And so I would say in something like self betterment, I think leaning in and taking that bit of faith was super helpful for me and like not doing it half-heartedly, like really kind of leaning in. And even if in the beginning I was kind of like, okay, this seems a little hokey. Like really putting my faith and trust in somebody else that has done this, that has spent countless thousands of hours and resources into building a program like this was super impactful for me. 

So I don’t think, I think my intuition that I could do this alone because I was recognizing the symptoms was a little bit misguided in the sense of like, I would have done it if I could have at that moment and I couldn’t. And so I think that was like the real eye-opening moment for me of even though I saw these things, I didn’t feel like I had the capabilities to change how I was feeling or drive different results or, you know, like work through some of my trauma. And so I think that would be the point of just being open-minded and letting yourself experience different things.

Blake Schofield (01:04:54.361)
Thank you. If somebody’s listening to this, who can relate to your journey and your story and they asked you how has doing this work changed your life? What would your answer be?

Hasika (01:05:17.634)

I think it’s made me more perceptive and more emotional and softer sides of people and connections and also what makes me tick and what makes them tick. So I think that’s equally important as the other things, especially in business. And so I think that is probably the biggest takeaway in terms of what I’ve been able to get from this, as well as like now what I’m able to take forward is like also understanding and having a better appreciation for people as their full selves and not just a part of them.

Blake Schofield (01:06:17.196)

Thank you so much. I greatly appreciate you. for those of you listening, I hope that Hasika’s journey has helped expand your perspective about what’s possible for your career and life as well.

Hasika (01:06:30.903)

Thank you.

Blake Schofield (01:04:16.000)

Most successful people don’t realize they’re in burnout because stress and exhaustion have become so normalized. But burnout is actually a sign of deeper misalignment between how you’re wired to thrive and how you’re actually working and living.

Fix the misalignment and everything changes.

Take the free quiz at www.impactwithease.com/burnout-type to discover your burnout type and get next steps to reclaim your energy, lead with confidence, and create more ease in your life and career.