FRIED. The Burnout Podcast

"Skepticism is now the default posture." Henna Pryor
You're communicating more than ever. So why aren't people believing you? Deepfakes, scams, AI-polished everything, and a meeting transcript that gets screenshotted into a Slack thread before you've even logged off. Everyone you talk to is quietly verifying you, and that constant hypervigilance is exhausting for their nervous system and yours.
In this episode, I sit down with my friend Henna Pryor, CSP, workplace performance expert and author of Good Awkward, to dig into her new book, The Signal Gap: the distance between the signals you mean to send and what a verifying audience actually receives. Plus: why polish got cheap and then got suspicious, why your five-star survey scores are lying to you, the two walls every person walks into the room with, and why the speaking and presentation techniques we all learned might be quietly backfiring.
And here's the part I loved most. We are not trying to close the gap with more information anymore. We're closing it on a biological basis, with congruence, so people's nervous systems can finally relax around us. Spoiler: it's a mismatch.
Key Topics Covered
What the signal gap is, and why believability is breaking in subtle but costly ways
Why skepticism is now the default posture for almost everyone you talk to
How AI meeting summaries, screen grabs and side chats mean your message never stays put
Why polish got cheap, and the moment polish got cheap it got suspicious
How younger generations rebuilt the believability test: less trust in institutions, more in individuals
Congruence and the nervous system: why constant verification is a form of hypervigilance
The observant middle: the quiet majority between your superfans and your haters
Why we both rate every Uber five stars, and what that says about your survey data
The honest truth about "Amazon bestseller" and letting a title live without its context
Intent smuggling: how good, high-intent people open signal gaps without meaning to
AI disclosure, showing your work, and why "Tell me more about that LinkedIn post" is where believability dies
The two walls, cognitive ("yeah, but") and emotional, and how one sentence can lower both
Ubiquity: why techniques like mirroring stop working once everyone knows them
Glass walls: why the online version of you has to be safe for grandma, coworkers and college friends at once
Quotes
"A signal gap, by definition, is the distance between the signals you mean to send and what a verifying audience actually receives." (05:09 | Henna Pryor)
"Skepticism is now the default posture." (05:53 | Henna Pryor)
"Polish got cheap. Therefore, polish got suspicious." (10:40 | Henna Pryor)
"We are not trying to close the gap on an information basis anymore. Now we are trying to close the gap on a biological basis." (16:00 | Cait Donovan)
"We stay skeptical. We stay armed. We stay vigilant, which is horrible for your nervous system." (17:56 | Henna Pryor)
"I rate every single one of my Ubers five stars. Are they all five-star rides? Heck to the no." (23:48 | Henna Pryor)
"We don't like being corrected, but we love correcting." (41:28 | Henna Pryor)
"Any technique, tactic, practice, once it becomes ubiquitous, can stop being as effective as it once was." (48:25 | Henna Pryor)
In this episode, we mentioned...
The Signal Gap: How to Boost Believability and Influence in the Age of Doubt, by Henna Pryor
Good Awkward, by Henna Pryor
Henna's first time on FRIED: Henna Pryor: Embracing Awkward and Using AI to Reduce Burnout (FRIED #217): https://fried.caitdonovan.com/217
What Employee Engagement Surveys Really Tell You, a #straightfromcait episode (FRIED #361): https://fried.caitdonovan.com/361
Ewa Błaszczak: Heal Your Burnout by Detoxing Your Communication (FRIED #188): https://fried.caitdonovan.com/188
Tamsen Webster, whose thinking model is the backbone of Henna's "let people watch you think" chapter
Chris Voss and Never Split the Difference (mirroring)
Les Brown
Nancy Duarte, Seth Godin, Adam Grant and Robert Cialdini, all interviewed for The Signal Gap
Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations, by me
Connect with Henna
Henna Pryor, CSP, is a workplace performance expert, global keynote speaker, and author of the 18-time award-winning Good Awkward and the new The Signal Gap. An Inc. Magazine expert columnist, LinkedIn Learning instructor and two-time TEDx and SXSW speaker, she has spoken for organizations including Google, Workday, Johnson & Johnson and JPMorganChase. Henna blends behavioral science, humor and two decades of experience to help leaders strengthen their mental and social muscles, take smarter risks, increase influence and perform at their best.
Free first chapter of The Signal Gap, just for FRIED listeners: https://thesignalgap.com/fried
Preorder The Signal Gap (out November 10, 2026): https://thesignalgap.com
Website: https://pryoritygroup.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hennapryor
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hennapryor
Connect with Cait
Bring Cait to your organization: CaitDonovan.com
Book Cait to speak: https://bit.ly/bookcait
3-minute sizzle reel: https://bit.ly/caitdreel2025
Get Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations: https://caitdonovan.com/mismatch
Order Mismatch for your team (bulk copies): annick@caitdonovan.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/caitdonovanspeaks
Instagram: instagram.com/caitdonovanspeaks
About the Host
Cait Donovan is a globally recognized keynote speaker, one of the world's leading burnout experts, and host of FRIED. The Burnout Podcast, a top 1% podcast with more than 1 million downloads. With a background in biobehavioral health and Chinese medicine, Cait takes a systems-based approach to burnout, helping organizations, leaders, and individuals understand burnout not as a personal failure, but as a mismatch between people and the environments in which they work. Cait is the author of The Bouncebackability Factor and Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations. Her work has been featured in Forbes, NPR, The New York Post, and other major media outlets. Learn more about Cait's keynotes and workplace burnout programs at CaitDonovan.com.
Podcast production and show notes by Starlin Media: https://starlinmedia.com

A perfectly good solution aimed at the wrong problem is still the wrong solution.
Picture an employee who has been fantastic for years. Smart, dependable, great work. Lately they are quieter in meetings, they stopped volunteering for projects, and they are doing what is required and not one thing more. What would you do? Time off? Coaching? Better boundaries?
In this episode, I walk you through three different Sams. All three show the exact same disengagement. All three have completely different problems underneath it. One is a micromanaging new boss. One is a dementia diagnosis at home and no sleep. One is the person everybody relies on, who gets more work instead of more money, more authority or more say. And that is the point: when we treat the behavior as the diagnosis instead of the symptom, we spend time, energy and money fixing the wrong thing. Burnout is not a personal failure. It is a signal that something is out of alignment, and new polling says it is not getting any better.
In this episode, I cover:
Why the same disengagement can come from three completely different mismatches
The autonomy mismatch: when a new manager takes away the trust someone used to have
The capacity mismatch: when life changes and the workload no longer fits the time and energy you have
The effort-reward mismatch: when everything you put in stops being reflected in what you get back
Why a vacation, a coach or another resilience workshop will not fix a mismatch it was never aimed at
Why burnt out people almost never say more money would fix it, and what burnout does to how effort and reward feel
Compounding mismatches and the web of causation I wrote for burnout
Why removing blame does not remove responsibility, for managers, employees or organizations
The three questions to ask before you try to fix anyone: What am I seeing and what am I assuming? What has changed? Is there something I can do to bring this person closer to a match?
Why we keep solving symptoms instead of diagnoses, and what it costs us
Quotes
"A perfectly good solution aimed at the wrong problem is still the wrong solution." (00:51 | Cait Donovan)
"Oftentimes we are using the behavior as the diagnosis instead of the symptom." (01:08 | Cait Donovan)
"None of them have ever said that if they got paid more money, they would feel better." (04:26 | Cait Donovan)
"Burnout rarely comes from one isolated mismatch. I've actually never seen that happen, not once in thousands of people." (04:51 | Cait Donovan)
"Removing blame doesn't remove responsibility." (06:57 | Cait Donovan)
"We get much further along the path when we figure out what needs to change instead of starting with who needs to be fixed." (07:11 | Cait Donovan)
"Stop trying harder at solving the wrong thing. Start figuring out what actually needs to change." (12:37 | Cait Donovan)
In this episode, we mentioned...
Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations by Cait Donovan: https://caitdonovan.com/mismatch
Why Giving Your Best Employees More Autonomy Sometimes Backfires (And What to Do Instead), a #straightfromcait episode (FRIED, May 2026): https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/8e59a176-4ef4-43df-8463-9ba628e09da4
What Employee Engagement Surveys Really Tell You, a #straightfromcait episode (FRIED #361): https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/fc11fac2-c8b1-4286-bc21-4699dcd3fdc1
Can You Burn Out in a Good Workplace? a #straightfromcait episode (FRIED #363): https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/f389bde0-aa95-4454-96c2-0e12362b046a
Burnout Is Not Your Fault, It's a Mismatch: An Early Look at My New Book (FRIED #365): https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/ff4aaa82-f693-430a-95fc-6dddd162a6e4
Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations: Jess Pettitt Interviews Me About Mismatch (FRIED, Oct 2026): https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/8f53e92c-a8ef-4045-af5d-6d3066a0d903
If you work in HR, People and Culture, or you lead a team that has gone quiet, this is the conversation to bring to your organization.
Connect with Cait
Get your copy of Mismatch: https://caitdonovan.com/mismatch
Order Mismatch for your team (bulk copies): annick@caitdonovan.com
Book Cait to speak: https://bit.ly/bookcait
Watch the 3-minute sizzle reel: https://bit.ly/caitdreel2025
Instagram: https://instagram.com/caitdonovanspeaks
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/caitdonovanspeaks
XOXO, C
About the Host
Cait Donovan is a burnout expert, keynote speaker, and host of FRIED. The Burnout Podcast, a top 1% global show with over 1 million downloads and 360+ episodes, ending burnout culture since 2019. With a background in biobehavioral sciences and Traditional Chinese Medicine, she helps organizations find the mismatch behind burnout instead of blaming the people inside it. She is the author of The Bouncebackability Factor and Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations.

#straightfromcait #friedfam #endburnoutculture

"The same year that I filed bankruptcy, I was inducted into the Hall of Fame." Jess Pettitt
On Inauguration Day, my friend Jess Pettitt lost her largest contract. Not because of anything she did. The entire office she worked with was closed 21 minutes after the inauguration, and the people she'd been working with called her from the sidewalk, holding boxes of everything that had been on their desks. Then the state contracts went. Then the retainers. Twenty years of building a business, flipped in a minute. Bankruptcy. Depression. And in the middle of all of it, a call from the National Speakers Association: you're being inducted into the Hall of Fame.
This is not a highlight reel, and neither is her new book, Doing Good Better: Using Dysfunction as a Catalyst for Change.
In this episode, I sit down with Jess to talk about what really happens when everything falls apart at once, and why so many leaders end up burnt out and alone in it, convinced nobody can help them. We get into her five-stage climb for organizations in crisis, why most companies run on a story that's "reported up instead of verified across," the difference between planting a flag and hanging up decoration, and why the mess you're afraid of is already there. If you lead people, this is burnout prevention at the system level, not a pedicure.
Key Topics Covered:
What it's like to lose your largest contract 21 minutes into a new administration, and the wave of losses that followed
Filing bankruptcy and being inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame in the same year, and holding joy and tragedy at once
Why your identity being tied to your work makes a professional crisis a personal one
The leaders who believe "no one can help me," why they feel so alone, and why that loneliness is disempowering
Internal pressure vs. external pressure, and learning to function inside the pressure without doing it alone
Why so many leadership books ignore the fact that leaders are human
The climb: know your numbers, hold the line, earn the room, plant the flag, outlast the cycle
How organizations evolve into "a story that is reported up instead of verified across," and why no one is reading the quarterly report
The CEO of 80,000 employees still running his company like it had four people
Cooperatition: why cooperating with your competition is how you actually earn the room
Planting a flag vs. decoration: what Anthropic and Costco got right, and why a statement for your website isn't a value
Why the mess is already there, and why recognizing it is the hardest (and most important) step
Quotes:
"The same year that I filed bankruptcy, I was inducted into the Hall of Fame as a lifetime achievement for the 20 years of work." (13:42 | Jess Pettitt)
"Loneliness is disempowering." (20:19 | Jess Pettitt)
"Not to relieve the pressure, but to function inside the pressure, not alone. Now we can get somewhere." (22:28 | Jess Pettitt)
"So many leadership books are written in a way that ignores the fact that leaders are human." (22:50 | Cait Donovan)
"No one is reading that report. But above that, no one read it. No one knows anything because no one read it." (35:50 | Jess Pettitt)
"That's not planting a flag. That's decoration. I don't do decorations." (52:58 | Jess Pettitt)
"You are in a mess that you either do or don't acknowledge. You're not searching for a mess. It's already there." (55:56 | Jess Pettitt)
In this episode, we mentioned...
Doing Good Better: Using Dysfunction as a Catalyst for Change, by Jessica Pettitt
Good Enough Now, by Jessica Pettitt
Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations, by Cait Donovan (out October 27, 2026)
The National Speakers Association and the Speaker Hall of Fame
Maslow's hierarchy of needs
How a Leader's Ego Can Burn Out Their Team with Ewa Błaszczak (FRIED #362): https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/b700a7df-0551-43c9-a090-8dbf1c7d235f
Your Team Already Knows You're Burnt Out: Leadership, Capacity and the Busy Badge, with Anton Gunn (FRIED #366): https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/bf0988c2-d195-4618-8bd0-3b0f86c956fb
Daisy Auger-Dominguez: Burnt Out Leaders Lead Burnt Out Teams (FRIED, Sep 2024): https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/ffa7b9d6-0632-4b0f-bb12-0960a7c04459
#straightfromcait: How to Ask for Help (FRIED #10): https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/6a6bd8f1-6666-4018-97d5-a73c4545a75d
Connect with Jess Pettitt
Jess Pettitt, CSP, CPAE, is a leadership and crisis communications keynote speaker and advisor. She started out as a university administrator by day and a stand-up comic by night in New York City's comedy clubs, and spent 20+ years doing diversity, equity and inclusion work with more than 1,400 organizations and half a million audience members. In 2026 she was inducted into the National Speakers Association's Speaker Hall of Fame. Her newest book, Doing Good Better, is a no-fluff guide for leaders who sense a crisis, are in one, or might be the crisis.
Take the 6-question advisory survey: https://jesspettitt.com/advisory-survey
Website: https://jesspettitt.com
Book: Doing Good Better: Using Dysfunction as a Catalyst for Change
Connect with Cait
Book Cait to speak: https://bit.ly/bookcait
Watch the 3-min sizzle reel: https://bit.ly/caitdreel2025
Order Mismatch for your team (bulk copies): annick@caitdonovan.com
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/caitdonovanspeaks
Instagram: https://instagram.com/caitdonovanspeaks
If you work in HR, People and Culture, or you book speakers for leaders who are carrying more than anyone can see, this is for you.
About the Host
Cait Donovan is a burnout expert, keynote speaker, and host of FRIED. The Burnout Podcast, a top 1% global show with over 1 million downloads and 360+ episodes, ending burnout culture since 2019. With a background in biobehavioral sciences and Traditional Chinese Medicine, she helps organizations find the mismatch behind burnout instead of blaming the people inside it. She is the author of The Bouncebackability Factor and Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations.

Preorder Mismatch (out October 27, 2026): https://caitdonovan.com/mismatch

"I just, for the first time, realized that I'm not actually in a toxic workplace. I'm just in a bad match." From an email a coaching client sent me.
For almost three years, a woman in one of our UNFRIED coaching cohorts kept calling her workplace toxic. Then she listened to my episode on what "toxic" actually means according to the research, and she sent me that email. Nothing about her job changed that weekend. What changed was the story. The blame and the finger pointing dropped, and a much more useful question showed up: where's the mismatch?
That question is the whole book. Burnout isn't a personal failure, and it isn't always a bad company. It's a symptom of a mismatch between a person and the place they work, and it's not the only symptom. My new book, Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations, comes out October 27, 2026, and this week my friend Jess Pettitt, Hall of Fame speaker and author of Doing Good Better, turns the mic around and interviews me about it.
We talk about how a book about burnout stopped being about burnout, the cold email that turned into a book deal, why somebody could have built me a utopian workplace and I still would have burnt out, and the Mismatch Index I built so organizations can find the gap without ever weaponizing the results. We also get into why there are zero books on how to be a better employee, why leaders are being told to act like therapists, what it would look like to stop top-downing and start middling out, and why the one page I'd keep from the whole book is about interoception. (Yes, pee when you need to pee.)
Key Topics Covered:
How a book about burnout became a book about mismatch, and why mismatch underlies all of our people problems
The cold email that turned into a book deal, after I'd self-published my first book
Burnout as a party of one: when you're the solopreneur and also the boss you should be blaming
Why a utopian workplace wouldn't have saved me, and how the coping mechanisms that made me successful (hello, hyper-independence) turned on me
Burnout, attrition, disengagement and quiet quitting as symptoms of the same mismatch
The Mismatch Index: an assessment that shows which part of the gap is systemic, which part is leadership, and which part is you, and why companies only ever see aggregate results
Why we default to blame, and why every book on the shelf is about being a better leader and none are about being a better employee
What the fraud triangle and whistleblowers taught me about why good people go against the grain
Leaders are being told to be therapists, and the case for middling out instead of top-downing
The four behaviors that make a workplace actually toxic (ostracism, bullying, harassment and incivility), and why you should get out if you're being harmed
How to hire without building mismatch into your team, starting with your own leadership training and a real fit tool instead of your gut
The paper plate exercise, interoception, and the story behind the matches on the cover
Quotes:
"I'm the boss that I should be blaming." (07:36 | Cait Donovan)
"Somebody could have created a utopian workplace for me and I would have burnt out anyway." (08:51 | Cait Donovan)
"I started this book about burnout and now it's not about burnout anymore. It's about mismatch, and mismatch underlies all of our people problems." (13:43 | Cait Donovan)
"The company will never get the individual results. They only get aggregate results, because I will not allow this tool to be weaponized in any way, shape or form." (15:28 | Cait Donovan)
"You're decorating it, not fixing it." (17:30 | Jess Pettitt)
"Every single book I came across was how to make a better leader. There were zero books, not one book on how to be a better employee." (19:59 | Cait Donovan)
"Why are we always top-downing? Why can't we middle out?" (27:16 | Cait Donovan)
In this episode, we mentioned...
Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations, by Cait Donovan (out October 27, 2026): https://caitdonovan.com/mismatch
The Bouncebackability Factor, by Cait Donovan
Doing Good Better: Using Dysfunction as a Catalyst for Change, by Jessica Pettitt
Christina Maslach, Wilmar Schaufeli and Michael Leiter's research on burnout and the six areas of mismatch
Justin Patton, the trust guy
The Predictive Index
The fraud triangle

The 4 Behaviors of A Toxic Workplace, a #straightfromcait episode
Toxic or Just a Bad Fit? How to Tell the Difference at Work, with Leanne Elliott
Burnout Is Not Your Fault, It's a Mismatch: An Early Look at My New Book (FRIED #365)
Can You Burn Out in a Good Workplace? (FRIED #363)
#straightfromcait: Coping Mechanisms and Burnout: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (FRIED #2)
Connect with Jess Pettitt
Jess Pettitt, CSP, CPAE, is a leadership and crisis communications keynote speaker and advisor. She started out as a university administrator by day and a stand-up comic by night in New York City's comedy clubs, and has spent 20+ years working with more than 1,400 organizations and half a million audience members. In 2026 she was inducted into the National Speakers Association's Speaker Hall of Fame. Her newest book is Doing Good Better: Using Dysfunction as a Catalyst for Change.
Website: https://jesspettitt.com
Take the 6-question advisory survey: https://jesspettitt.com/advisory-survey
Book: Doing Good Better: Using Dysfunction as a Catalyst for Change
Connect with Cait
Preorder Mismatch (out October 27, 2026): https://caitdonovan.com/mismatch
Order Mismatch for your team (bulk copies): annick@caitdonovan.com
Book Cait to speak: https://bit.ly/bookcait
Watch the 3-min sizzle reel: https://bit.ly/caitdreel2025
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/caitdonovanspeaks
Instagram: https://instagram.com/caitdonovanspeaks
If you work in HR, People and Culture, or you lead a team that looks great on paper and is still burning out, this is for you.
About the Host
Cait Donovan is a burnout expert, keynote speaker, and host of FRIED. The Burnout Podcast, a top 1% global show with over 1 million downloads and 360+ episodes, ending burnout culture since 2019. With a background in biobehavioral sciences and Traditional Chinese Medicine, she helps organizations find the mismatch behind burnout instead of blaming the people inside it. She is the author of The Bouncebackability Factor and Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations.
Podcast production and show notes by Starlin Media: https://starlinmedia.com

Your team already knows you're burnt out. Anton Gunn said it out loud on one of his leadership lives, and I almost drove off the road: "Leaders, your team knows you're burnt out, so here's what we're going to do about it."
In this episode, I sit down with Anton Gunn, a leadership and workplace culture expert, former senior advisor to President Barack Obama, and one of the less than 1% of speakers in the Speaker Hall of Fame, to dig into why burnout is not a personal failure but an organizational capacity problem, and why the person at the top is usually the last to see it. We get into the reframe that stopped me in my tracks, "burnout is a signal, it's data that something is wrong in the organization," and then I push back with the biology, because your wiring matters too. High achievers, people pleasers and perfectionists do not slow down just because the culture is healthy.
Then Anton takes it somewhere I did not expect. The leaders who say "don't bring me your problems" are usually the ones already burning out. Busyness becomes a badge ("I ain't got time to bleed"). A single unilateral decision, made by a leader too busy to investigate, spirals into a 63% turnover rate over four years. And the fix is almost insultingly simple and almost nobody does it: three 30 minute one-on-ones a week. As Anton puts it, if you can't find 90 minutes in a five day week for your people, you don't deserve to lead.
This one is for the leader who feels the exhaustion and keeps performing through it, and for the HR and People and Culture teams watching it ripple across the org. You can't fix what you can't see. So let's look.
Key Topics Covered
Why burnout is an organizational capacity problem, not a personal willpower problem, and what "capacity" actually means
The reframe that reset the conversation: burnout is a signal, it's data that something is wrong in the system
Cait's pushback: the biology of burnout, and why high achievers, perfectionists and hyper-independent people burn out regardless of the culture
What a leader's job actually is (get the boulders out of the way so your people can do their best work)
Why "don't bring me your problems" is a burnout tell, and how it quietly shuts your whole team down
The busy badge: how "I ain't got time to bleed" becomes the most expensive line in the building
The meeting after the meeting, and what it signals about a leader who is too busy for their people
A real story: one unilateral decision that triggered a 63% turnover rate over four years
The one-on-one rule: three 30 minute conversations a week, and why skipping them means you don't deserve to lead
Giving your people (and your assistant) veto power over your calendar and permission to tell you your stuff stinks
The neuroscience of a burnt out brain, and why a checked-out leader is not a bad person, they are running offline
The three C's of 21st century leadership: commitment, competency and capacity
Quotes
"Burnout is a signal, it's data that something's wrong in the organization." (6:58 | Cait Donovan)
"The people who say don't bring me your problems are the people who probably already burned out." (24:17 | Anton Gunn)
"You can't fix what you can't see." (25:15 | Anton Gunn)
"Busyness demonstrates effectiveness, busyness demonstrates productivity. Busyness is a justification for our title and our role." (32:16 | Anton Gunn)
"That's what a lot of executives do. I ain't got time to listen to you, I ain't got time to hear what you're saying, because I'm so busy." (33:00 | Anton Gunn)
"If you can't find 90 minutes in a five day week to do three 30 minute one-on-ones, you don't deserve to lead." (36:44 | Anton Gunn)
"You've got to let people tell you that your stuff stinks." (37:50 | Anton Gunn)
"You've got to have commitment, competency and capacity. If you don't have all three, you're going to be ineffective as a leader." (46:00 | Anton Gunn)
> Times reflect the published YouTube cut (cold open + intro + interview). Verify against the final audio upload if the audio master is trimmed differently.
In this episode, we mentioned...
Kathleen Sebelius, former Governor of Kansas and Anton's boss in the Obama administration, and her rule: "if you bring me a problem, I'm going to solve it."
Predator (the 1987 film with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura), source of the "I ain't got time to bleed" line.
Chantal Lowe, the Olympian Cait sat next to at the National Speakers Association breakfast where she first met Anton.
Anton's three C's of 21st century leadership: commitment, competency, capacity.
Related FRIED episodes to binge next:
How a Leader's Ego Can Burn Out Their Team, with Ewa Błaszczak (FRIED #362) https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/b700a7df-0551-43c9-a090-8dbf1c7d235f
Why Your Culture Initiatives Keep Failing, And What Actually Works, with Chris Pineda (FRIED, 2026-04) https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/754b7335-ef6c-4973-88eb-c1e1abfd7f9f
We're Expecting the Wrong Things From Leaders, a #straightfromcait episode (FRIED, 2026-05) https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/09a4ac57-ae4f-4a74-be47-d00a4a14e930
Mattering at Work, with Zach Mercurio (FRIED, 2026-02) https://redcircle.com/shows/e4c0db0a-98a4-47e6-a2b0-6a291469e1d6/episodes/732dd931-b516-49a4-9547-3d388199a98a
Connect with Anton Gunn
Anton J. Gunn is a leadership and workplace culture expert with over 25 years of impact across healthcare, public service and corporate leadership. He is a former senior advisor to President Barack Obama and a former C-level executive at a multi-billion dollar health system. In 2026 he was inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame, an honor held by less than 1% of speakers globally. A graduate of the University of South Carolina, where he played SEC football and earned a master's degree in social work, and a former resident fellow at Harvard University, Anton is the author of three leadership books and has been featured in Time, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and on Good Morning America.
Website: https://antongunn.com
Free Leadership Diagnostic Assessment: https://antongunn.com/diagnostic
Connect with Cait
Book Cait to speak: https://bit.ly/bookcait
Speaking: https://caitdonovan.com/speaking
Watch the 3 minute sizzle reel: https://bit.ly/caitdreel2025
Order Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations (Oct 2026), bulk copies via annick@caitdonovan.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/caitdonovanspeaks
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/caitdonovanspeaks
About the Host
Cait Donovan is a keynote speaker and the host of FRIED. The Burnout Podcast, a top 1% global show with more than 1 million downloads that has been ending burnout culture since 2019. With a background in biobehavioral sciences and Traditional Chinese Medicine, Cait brings a science plus somatics lens to burnout, resentment and boundaries, and helps organizations treat burnout as a signal to fix the system, not a personal failure to fix the person. Her second book, Mismatch: Why Good People Burn Out in Good Organizations, arrives October 2026.