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Woke up hunting for problems
Peak burnout
Chelsea Ryckis was at peak burnout. She had co-founded Ethos Benefits, she worked with her husband, her employees were excellent, and the culture was great. Still, her heart rate jumped with every email, every call felt like the end of the world, and she kept asking herself why she hated a business she had dreamed of building.
The raise request
Then an employee asked for a raise of something like $25,000. She had no structure for that conversation and no path to show anyone. It caught her off guard: she solved every problem for this person, so how could she pay far more when the job they were hired to do was not getting done? Then she realized she was the problem, because she had allowed the behavior to continue.
A longer goal
She changed the goal from surviving the day to picturing the business five to ten years out. In five years she did not want to be the one solving that problem, so she decided a department should, and she would train them. Her focus moved from managing people day to day to managing process. She went deep into leadership, coaching, and hard conversations, and client and employee retention have been strong since.
Why does burnout make everything feel threatening?
Psychologist Christina Maslach, who developed the standard burnout inventory with Susan Jackson, describes burnout as emotional exhaustion, cynicism toward work, and a reduced sense of accomplishment. Chronic stress has also been linked in animal and human studies to heightened amygdala reactivity, which makes ordinary events register as threats. In 2019 the World Health Organization described burnout in its International Classification of Diseases as an occupational phenomenon.
Why does growth strain founder-led companies?
In a 1972 Harvard Business Review article, Larry Greiner described companies growing through phases, each ending in a crisis. The first is a crisis of leadership, when the founders' informal style of management no longer fits a larger company. Later phases bring a crisis of autonomy, when managers want more freedom than the top allows. Greiner paired each stage with a new management practice, such as delegation after the autonomy crisis.
How do pay bands shape raise conversations?
Many companies group jobs into levels and attach a salary range, called a pay band, to each level. A raise then usually means a move within the band or a promotion to the next level. The approach grew out of job evaluation systems, such as the method Edward Hay developed in the 1950s.
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