Hey, it's Rachel Cook, your modern mentor.

I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise, where we help leaders activate performance without sacrificing humanity.

This is part three in our series on burnout.

In part one, we redefined burnout not just as too much work, but as too little of what makes work meaningful. We talked about

what happens when we're missing clarity, momentum, connection, or purpose. And then in part two,

we looked at the burden we're placing on managers and at how they're carrying so much more than they

need to, or that's productive. And it's time to lay down some of those

unnecessary burdens. And now we're at part three, and this is where we begin to rebuild. But

slowly and gently, because burnout is not a binary. You're not either burned out or not

burned out. You don't fix it in one fell swoop. You chip away at it. You make

space for small experiments. You choose shifts that create breathing room and relief. One conversation,

one reset at a time. And remember, if you're looking for more support or resources, head over to

leadabovenoise.com forward slash burnout for some more

goods over there. So today, I want to use a framework that I've used with so many teams, and it's my

activation framework, which stands on the four pillars of deliver, develop, connect, and thrive.

And when we understand each of these, the framework

becomes our roadmap for healing while dialing up our impact. Each pillar gives us a lens,

a way to look at how we're working and how it might be fueling or quietly draining ourselves or

our teams. And I want to use each pillar to ask a few questions that you can bring to your

teams or just sit with yourself. Let this be an invitation to reflect, to collaborate, and to

experiment. And then after each set of questions, I'll offer up a couple of tangible actions you

might think about taking. Not full solutions, but starting points.

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