Dr. Jen Clifden
Educator | Researcher | Burnout Preventionist
The Light You Cast™
Space and support for leaders to thrive alongside their staff
"Leadership is not about being in charge.
It’s about taking care of those in our charge."
(Simon Sinek)
The Light You Cast™ for Leaders is designed to restore and energize our leaders' innate psychological capital-- intuition, vision, confidence, adaptability, compassion, curiosity, and presence. Knowing how to strategically realize one's psychological strength in the midst of stress keeps burnout at bay and actualizes a leader's most potent asset-- one's presence.
We do that by providing pathway of strategic experiences, knowledge, practices, and procedures that enable them to explore, exercise, and expand their inner adaptive leadership capacities (emotional intelligence, intuition, and integrity) while simultaneously developing their stress awareness and energy management skills so they know how to efficiently metabolize the energy embedded stress that feeds burnout into energy that fuels their innate personal gifts that called them to leadership in the first place.
We then explore the direct connection between a leader's mental, emotional, and psychological health and their increased capacity to create resonant relationships with those in their charge.
What We Know About Leader Burnout
Leaders are at higher risk for experiencing burnout because of multiple job demands, unsustainable workloads, shrinking budgets, lack of support, high turn-over rate of those in their care, organizational politics, secondary/vicarious trauma, constant interruptions, loss of professional agency, and loss of work-life balance (Wells, Maxfieled, & Klocko, 2011, Microsoft WorkTrend Index, 2022).
Power stress, a unique leadership stressor is a manifestation of daily complex decision making, isolation and loneliness, and role stress (doing many different jobs within the job of the leader) has become chronic and pervasive (Resonant Leadership, 2005)
41% of senior leaders in education experience signs and symptoms of burnout and exhaustion, the highest among all categories in educational staff (Teacher Wellbeing Index, 2022)
Studies showed that 65% of leaders experienced burnout symptoms, leading to decreased productivity, increased absenteeism, and higher turnover rates within their teams and that more than 50% of managers feel burned out (Harvard Business Review, 2023).
Unchecked and accumulated stress in one’s professional life can reach a destructive tipping point where what innocuously begins as an “occupational identity crisis” for the leader generalizes to their entire self-concept (Vandenberghe & Huberman, 1999).
Burnout Prevention
for you and your staff
Burnout is preventable-- for you and your staff.
Leaders can learn adaptive perspectives, practices, and processes to manage, magnify, maintain, and protect their energy and create energizing spaces of resonance and cultures of care those in their charge.
Awareness as the Antidote
BURNOUT AWARENESS
What contextual conditions provoke burnout? What contextual conditions provoke compassion fatigue? What are the tell-tale (visible and invisible) symptoms of burnout, compassion fatigue, and moral injury in yourself and your staff? What is sacrifice syndrome, and why is it so prevalent in leaders? We increase leader awareness of early (and not so early) warning signs and manifestations of burnout, compassion fatigue, and sacrifice syndrome so they know how to strategically respond in a way that brings relief to these symptoms.
STRESS AWARENESS
Leaders learn about the nuanced phenomenon of the science of stress (sometimes it is helpful; sometimes it is harmful). Leaders learn how to identify safe stress from toxic stress while they explore the difference between 7 unavoidable stressors that can feed burnout or fuel connection and resilience in both themselves and their staff.
INTERNAL STRESS APPRAISAL AWARENESS
Sensing, seeing, and responding to energy is an essential role of the leader. Leaders must be connected to their intuition and instincts as much as their rational intelligence to sense and respond to the subtle needs of those in their care. We cultivate a leader's capacity of interoception (inner energy awareness) as they discover how their internal system reacts to the 7 core stressors that drive burnout while they engage science- backed cognitive-behavioral practices to metabolize stress as a catalyst to grow their innate leadership strengths and competencies.
CONTEXT/CULTURE AWARENESS
Leaders have direct impact and influence on the culture and context of the workplace in which they lead. Leaders learn the fundamentals and science behind Human Factors and Ergonomics (HFE) systems to reduce occupational stress, create cultures of visibility and value, and hard-wire recognition into organizational routines.
SOCIAL AWARENESS
Leading is all about relationships. Leaders explore the 4 elements to being a relationship researcher as they learn how to manage their stress and magnify their metrics of mental health, create healthy boundaries that protect their greatest assets (compassion, empathy, understanding, and inner harmony), and discover how to strategically create and sustain resonance relationships (being in-tune with others) and diminish dissonance and disconnection.
NAVIGATIONAL SYSTEMS AWARENESS
Leaders lead within systems. Knowing how to strategically navigate systems is an essential intelligence of the leader. We increase leader knowledge of Systems Science to heighten awareness how complex systems (both their nervous system and the large systems in which they work and live) seek to create balance from opposing forces. All systems are designed to return to harmony after periods of disruption. Leaders learn the foundations of Navigational Intelligence and discover how to become aware of systemic barriers that block or diminish human dignity and potential and how to dissolve them.
Core Practices
The Light You Cast™for Leaders engages leaders and leadership teams in exploring and experiencing adaptive perspectives, practices, and processes to manage, magnify, and maintain their MENTAL HEALTH and WELL-BEING so to create energizing spaces that stoke resonate relationships, inspire impact, and are imbued with compassion, clarity, and calm.
REST
Healing Pillar
Regulate Nervous System | Restore Rhythm of the Body
Engage trauma-informed, body-centered "pressure relief valve" practices that harmonize, soothe, and regulate the nervous system's response to stress.
RESTORATION
Healing Pillar
Making Meaning | Integration
Consciously metabolize
mental and emotional stress through our signature cognitive - behavioral Burn Clean Process to build cognitive clarity, asset-based perception, emotional intelligence, and behavioral patterns that align with one's integrity.
REVITALIZATION
Healing Pillar
Connection with Others
Cultivate social intelligence and relationship skills to see, sense and respond to another's behavioral cues without taking it personally while creating resonate relationship patterns where others feel seen and safe.
The Light You Cast™ for Leaders is based on:
Resonant Relationship Theory
Healing-Centered Design
Mindfulness
Social and Emotional Learning Theory
Interpersonal Neurobiology
Human Factors and Ergonomics (HFE)
ON-DEMAND| Self-Paced Option
Start by creating SPACE and SUPPORT for yourself to find your balance and maintain healthy perspectives and boundaries that keep burnout, compassion fatigue, and sacrifice syndrome at bay. As you learn how to strategically cope with clarity and calm both in the midst of stress and uncertainty, you will enable yourself to best respond to stress reactions and burnout stress responses in those in your care.
The Light You CastTM ON-DEMAND training is the perfect base curriculum to couple with any leadership in-person retreats or professional learning experiences. This foundational curriculum, that you can engage at your own pace when it best fits your schedule will provide you with the science behind burnout and compassion fatigue awareness and preention while you learn the foundations of MENTAL HEALTH and WELL-BEING promotion for yourself and your staff.
The Light You Cast™ ONLINE Curriculum can also be offered to compliment and deepen any in-person professional development experiences.
IN-PERSON | Collective Learning
The Power of Regenerative Braking
Leadership Retreat
Regenerative braking is a hybrid/electric car principle where taking one's foot off the gas and/or putting the foot on the brake positively feeds energy back into the electric system to replenish the vehicle so that it has more range.
We also know that regenerative braking not only feeds energy back into the system to extend its range, continual, short bursts in the battery range through consistent regenerative braking has a positive accumulative impact and improves the overall efficiency of the vehicle over time.
The Light You Cast™ for Leaders Regenerative Braking Retreat is designed specifically for leaders to explore, discover, and practice creating a sustainable balance between impactful effort and efficient energy recovery in leadership to heal from and stave off energetic depletion that manifests as burnout, sacrifice syndrome, compassion fatigue, and moral injury while learning how to see and respond to symptoms of burnout in those in their care.
In this highly experiential and engaging 3 hour retreat, leaders will explore the ways the (3) pillars of MENTAL HEALTH and WELL-BEING stabilize their system as they learn about the core competencies of Whole-Systems Leadership practices (Morris, 2012) that promote the health and well-being of those in their care
REST
Whole Systems Leadership Competencies
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Deep Listening
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Awareness of self
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Awareness of inner and outer systems
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Leaders will engage and experience ACTIVE REST practices that deepen interoception-- one's ability to be aware of what is happening in the body while one expands their capacity to be aware of what is happening around the body.
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We will leverage trauma-responsive restorative body practices that slow a busy mind, soothe the nervous system, and revitalize sensations that signal symptoms of burnout, compassion fatigue, and sacrifice syndrome
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Leaders will learn all about Systems Science while they explore how there inner energy system is designed to default to a natural set-point of health and well-being while they discover the blocks that get in the way
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Leaders will reconnect with their core power source: core strengths, core values, core calling, and core purpose
RESTORATION
Whole Systems Leadership Competencies
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Awareness of systems
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Suspending certainty, embracing uncertainty
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Leaders will explore 8 stressors that drive burnout, compassion fatigue, and sacrifice syndrome in themselves and those in their charge
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Through gaining awareness of the Stress Spectrum, leaders will explore their relationship to stress and discover how their unique "system of stress appraisal" shapes and frames their perspective and perceptual agility
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Leaders will the science of managing one of the top stressors for leaders- time stress
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Leaders will be guided through a research-based 5 step process for transforming stress into moments that strategically cultivate adaptive leadership capacities (emotional intelligence, intuition, integrity, and social awareness) that allow them to adapt to change and uncertainty with calm and clear direction
REVITALIZATION
Whole Systems Leadership Competencies
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Seeking diverse perspectives
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Taking adaptive action
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Leaders will explore the foundations of RELATIONAL HEALTH and RESONATE RELATIONSHIPS and learn how relational health is intimately interconnected with MENTAL HEALTH
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Leaders will learn strategies for "reading" the room and "reading" another person's stress symptoms so know how to best respond with care, compassion, and understanding while they discover that people's "problems" are not problematic-- they are powerful points of origin that lead to innovative options for action
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Leaders will learn how to balance their intellect and clear seeing with their instincts and intuition before taking action
*This retreat can be offered as a stand-alone, one full day or two half-days, professional development session if you are looking for one a one time event for your leadership team.
*All content and trainings can be engaged individually with Jen as an
Individual Executive Coaching offering
5-6 hour, in-person, training
Connect with Jen for a customized investment quote for the size of your group or as an
Individual Executive Coaching offering
Training Design & Delivery
The Light You Cast™for Leaders curriculum is designed to be offered as a series of in-person training where we gather as a cohort or group to engage in soothing body-mind healing movement, group learning, peer processing, and collective healing.
This in-person training can either complement the online, self-paced modules, or it can stand on its own as the in-person professional development experience.
All training sessions include:
Direct instruction on current, evidence-based knowledge and research about burnout, compassion fatigue, human resilience, and adaptive leadership.
Trauma-informed somatic practices that strengthen the parasympathetic nervous system's relaxation response and calm a busy mind.
Beautifully illustrated Put Into Practice training handbook that outlines detailed application practices to integrate into one's daily life as a leader.
Personal reflection and peer connection time for personal and team integration.
Each of the Core Topics Trainings engage the leader in expanding one's awareness of the early (and not so early) signs and symptoms of the three manifestations of burnout, compassion fatigue, moral injury, and sacrifice syndrome while we engage our signature, research-based energetically restorative practices that teaches the leader how to strategically metabolize toxic stressors that lead to burnout into catalysts for burning clean (mindbodysoul health) and burning bright (increased capacity to lead with the light of compassion, empathy, an hope for those in their care).
Core Topics Trainings
(3 hours each)
Stress, Failure, and Fear in Leadership
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Navigating the necessary catalysts to stoking personal health and professional impact as a leader
#2
#1
The Energetic Essentials for Leaders -
The science of hope and the soul of joy
"Health is not the absence of illness. Real health is the will to overcome every form of adversity and use even the worst of circumstances as a springboard to new growth and development." (Daisaku Ikeda) Fear is needed in leadership. Failure is necessary in leadership. Stress is actualy a leader's greatest navigational guide to how to bring more of one's soul and innate leadership assets into one's role. Leaders experience unique stressors that demand a sophisticated skillfullness in metabolizing the energy of such stressors in productive ways otherwise they fall prey to burning out harder and faster than most. This is why turnover in leadership positions is so high. In this session, we break down the different leadership stressors of Systems Stress, Power Stress, and Role Stress, and we explore how the energy of these stressors can quickly cause sacrifice syndrom if left unchecked. As leaders raise their awareness of what these stressors look and feel like, we explore the 4 steps to "moving the energy" embedded in stress, fear, and failure into powerful catalyts for impact and personal health. We will explore the Stress Spectrum of safe stress “eustress” all the way up to traumatic stress so that the leader can explore how their mind, body, and soul system “distills” different stress events and how to strategically stoke wisom, insight, and value-based impact from stress, fear, and most importantly, failure. In this session, we focus our attention on specific practices that leaders can leverage THROUGH stressful moments to take the toxicity out of toxic stress so to leverage stress as a catalyst to stoking soul strength, mental health, and impactful leadership in alignment with the leader’s calling.
“Hope is not a wish, but an intention. Most of us do not think of ourselves as heroic agents of change, but if we have enough hope in what we see, then we find the strength to make change happen.” (Ladder to the Light, 2021) Core to effective and efficient leadership is hope and joy. Hope is intimately tied to your capacity to imagine, innovate, and see possibility. Hope and joy are also energetically contagious! The caregivers we lead flourish when the space we create for them is infused with our hope, joy, and vision for where we are going and what we are trying to create as a collective. Learn how to REST one's attention in the present moment so to cultivate the 5 core competencies of joy - especially in one's calling as a leader. We will then engage TLYC signature practice for RESTORING hope in the midst of darkness, uncertainty, and disillusionment. You will leave empowered to REVITALIZE your relationships with the powerful energy of joy and hope. Resonant relationships with those in one's care as a leader depend on the energy of hope and joy.
Leading Others Without Losing Yourself
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Protecting yourself from compassion fatigue and sacrifice syndrome while creating the contexts for co-regulation and resonance
#3
#4
The Leader as Navigational Guide
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Developing a Restoration - Resonance - Retention Cycle in yourself and your staff
with Dr. Nuhu Sims (Equity Expert)
As leaders, we are charged with taking care of those in our charge (Simon Sinek). In order to take care of those in our care, we need to first understand the complex ways different care-based calling stressors impact the energy reserves of the mind, the body, and the soul of not just ourselves, but those in our care. Leaders will learn how to see, sense, and respond to those in their care from a lens of burnout-awareness to promote non-reactive, co-regulation that leads to resonate relationship building. In this session, leaders will apply what they have learned about stress, the Soul Distillation System, and the stages and manifestations of burnout, compassion fatigue, and moral injury so they know how to see, sense, and respond to it in their staff without taking their behavior personally. In addition, leaders will learn concrete strategies to create healthy boundaries to protect their energy while they care for caregivers experiencing burnout and compassion fatigue. Leaders will also explore how 8 core stressors manifest as either (and both): burnout, compassion fatigue, and moral injury. Leaders will leave the session being able to both self asses and assess those in their care for the obvious and not so obvious manifestations of losing one's inner energy resources amidst care-based calling stressors, and they will learn how to connect with those in their care suffering from the "costs of caring."
"As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our PRESENCE automatically liberates others." (Williamson) You are the beacon of hope and light for those in your care to find safety and support in expressing their needs and desires to best engage their calling as a caregiver. Navigational Intelligence in large systems of care means that as a leader, you know how to be a beacon of light in the darkness for those in the system who come face to face with systemic barriers that inhibit their capacity to shine their own light to those in their care. In this session, Dr. Nuhu Sims (Equity Expert and Director of Equity and Restorative Practice at Brooklyn Center Community Schools) guides us in conversation and strategy on how to intentionally develop Navigational Intelligence so that, as a leader, you are able to support and guide others as they navigate the systems of care in which they work. This session will provide you with awareness of how to notice and name signs and symptons of burnout and compassion fatigue in your staff as well as concrete stratgies for how to help those in your care recognize and metabolize systematic stressors that lead to burnout.
*Core topics can be engaged as individual, stand alone, 3 hour training offerings.
*Core topics can also be engaged as a cohesive training program were all 4 training sessions are explored, in order over, a series of weeks or months.
*All content and trainings can be engaged individually with Jen as an Individual Executive Coaching offering
4 trainings, 3-4 hours each
Connect with Jen for a customized investment quote for yourself or the size of your group or as Individual Executive Coaching Sessions
Connect with Jen for a customized investment quote for the size of your group
Outcomes
Through the The Light You Cast™ for Leaders,
we will enact the cycle of healing and mindbodysoul restoration:
RECOGNITION
Validate leaders need for sustained and systematic support in monitoring and assessing their physical, emotional, mental, and soul health in care-based systems in which they lead.
EDUCATION & AWARENESS
Explore the 3 R's of leader mindbodysoul healing and health -
REST, RESTORATION, REVITALIZATION; raise awareness of the primary sources of toxic stress in leadership; explore the stages and manifestations of soul sickness: burnout, compassion fatigue, moral injury, and sacrifice syndrome in leadership
AWAKENING
Discover and engage trauma-informed mind/body principles, practices, and perspectives to REGULATE and soothe the nervous system so to RELATE to stress in a healthy way in order to cultivate REASON and wisdom from pain, uncertainty, stress, and anxiety.
RESTORATION
Learn how to engage The Burn Clean CycleTM, our signature 4 step cognitive - behavioral practice for metabolizing stress into mental strength and agility, emotional health and vitality, value-based self-agency and action, and post-traumatic wisdom.
EMBODIMENT
Experience slow and gentle body-based movement poses designed to melt tension while providing moderate amounts of healthy stress to boost mental and emotional energy, improve balance and body-awareness, and help to reduce inflammation that leads to disease; cultivate brain-health through mindfulness-based visualizations that activate the self-regulatory part of the brain to soothe stress, alleviate anxiety, and over-ride overwhelm.
SUSTAINED SUPPORT
Engage in strategic site-based support and peer networking so to continually manage and mitigate the onset of leader burnout, secondary trauma, and moral injury while magnifying collective healing and individual restoration and rejuvenation.
Certificate of Completion
Earn a Certificate of Completion for total number of "clock hours" of participation to submit to their accrediting body for Continuing Education Credit consideration.
