Human First, Leader Second with Massimo Backus - EP 027

 

In this episode, Massimo Backus shares his transformative journey toward becoming a more compassionate and effective leader. It all started when he received unexpected feedback: despite his skills and capabilities, he was seen as a “bad leader.” That wake-up call pushed him to look inward and embrace self-compassion as a crucial tool for growth.

Massimo shares how learning to be kinder to himself not only improved his own well-being but also allowed him to create a space of psychological safety for those around him. He believes self-compassion isn't just a personal practice—it’s a leadership philosophy that can foster healthier, more human-centered work environments.

Massimo’s new book, Human First, Leader Second: How Self-Compassion Outperforms Self-Criticism, offers a compelling blueprint for leaders who want to tap into self-compassion to foster resilience, connection, and lasting success.

Tune in as Massimo explains why embracing your own humanity and cultivating self-compassion is essential for leaders who want to inspire, connect, and create positive change.

Key Takeaways

• Self-compassion is a key to effective leadership and personal well-being.
• Leaders need to embrace their humanity and create a culture of self-compassion in organizations.
• Self-compassion improves all aspects of personal and professional well-being.
• Practicing self-compassion allows leaders to be more resilient, curious, and better at rebounding from setbacks.

Episode Chapters

00:00 - Introduction and Background

02:17 - Discovering the Need for Self-Compassion

06:20 - The Epiphany of Self-Compassion

13:32 - The Benefits of Practicing Self-Compassion

19:17 - The Connection Between Internal and External Goals

25:22 - Hiding Our Humanity

32:23 - The Importance of Taking an Exit Ramp

36:59 - Breaking the Cycle of Isolation

39:49 - Starting the Journey of Self-Compassion

42:25 - Embracing Your Humanity as a Leader

Connect with Massimo and check out his book here:
https://massimobackus.com/book
https://www.linkedin.com/in/massimo-backus/

 

If you’re ready to have a deeper conversation about how to maximize impact, profit and pleasure in your business and life, you can schedule a time to connect with me right here >>> 

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Episode Transcript

 

Rachel Anzalone (00:01.866)

Hello and welcome to Pleasure and Profits. I'm your host, Rachel Anzalone, and my guest today is Massimo Bacchus. Massimo has built his successful executive coaching practice based on the radical idea that self-compassion is a leadership epiphany. It's radical because it's in direct opposition to the traditional leadership orthodoxy that you have to become less of a human to be a better leader.

Now, through his coaching practice, group facilitation, speaking and the launch of his upcoming book, Human First, Leader Second, Massimo is taking his message of self-compassion to the C-suites of the Fortune 100. Welcome to the show, Massimo.

 

Massimo Backus (00:44.514)

Thanks for having me, Rachel. It's great to be here with you.

 

Rachel Anzalone (00:47.152)

I'm so excited to get into your book and hear all about that. But before we go there, I would love to know where this idea about self-compassion and it being a key to effective leadership, what inspired that for you and how has that developed and evolved for you in your own coaching practice?

 

Massimo Backus (01:05.036)

Yeah, I mean it truly was an epiphany for me and that I stumbled into this out of sheer necessity to find answers for my own challenges, my own issues.

At one point in time, working in a corporate role, was responsible for global leadership development and traveled around the country and was running large leadership seminars. And part of that program, the leaders that were participants would go through a 360 assessment to get feedback that would inform their development goals within the program. And I thought that I should eat my own dog food, drink your own champagne, if you will to participate in that as well, to get feedback so that I can be a part of this process with them and understand what it's like. 

And when I got the feedback from my team that I was leading, it shared some information that really caught me by surprise because to the participants and the leaders that I supported in these programs and that I coached, I was seen as highly capable and skilled and was lauded for my success and impact. But the feedback from my team and some peers and people back in the main office was that I was objectively a bad leader and a bad manager. And that I was defensive and that I shut down people's ideas that I didn't create a space for psychological safety, that they didn't trust me. And that was in direct opposition of who I wanted to be, who I thought I was. And yet it was objectively true because it was coming from multiple people. 

And...I couldn't reconcile this at first. Like it, caught me by surprise so much so that when I heard that I was defensive, said, “I'm not defensive. I think you guys are being defensive or saying that I'm defensive,” which is pathetic and humiliating. 

And I spent the next several month, trying to fix this. I took it very seriously. I wanted to change it. It certainly didn't like that I was hearing this feedback, that I was having this impact on my team, and I was committed to making it right, making amends and fixing things. And after trying to fix this on my own for a few months, I met with my manager thinking that they were gonna say, you're doing great, you've turned the ship around and that everything's wonderful. Well, the reality is, my manager said, “We can tell that you've been trying, but there's very little change that's been made and the team feels the same way.”

And I was devastated and I was certain that I was going to lose my job. I was like, well, this is the end of the road for me. But as it happens, I was suggested that I go to a program called the Hoffman process. Instead of getting let go, they said, why don't you take this challenge you're having to, to a more capable, group of people that might be able to help you. And the Hoppen process has been around for 40 plus years and their slogan is “when you're serious about change.” So, and I was serious about change and I wasn't able to change it on my own and I could not figure out why because my heart was in the right place. My intention was I don't want to be this way. And yet I continued to be that way. 

What I learned during this retreat was this epiphany of self-compassion. What I realized is that there was a voice in my head, my own voice that was there for so long from when I was before I can remember that was so incredibly harsh and critical and judgmental of me that I felt like I was under attack at all times. And so I was defensive. I was constantly defending against things in the outside world. 

The reality is I was under attack by myself. Nothing outside of me was a threat, but I perceived it that way because I was incessantly beating myself up for not being perfect enough or smart enough or what have you. And the epiphany hit me as I was on a walk during a break in between the program. And I remember that that voice was gone because there was no voice. And it was the silence that was so new to me. And in the silence, I noticed that my senses were heightened, that I could hear the rustling of the leaves as the breeze was going through the trees. And I felt the sun hit my skin and how it actually warmed my body. 

And I started laughing in that moment hysterically, it was probably a good thing that I was alone because the laughter could have been alarming to somebody to see, you know, how much I was laughing. And it was the kind of childlike laughter that you laugh so much that you end up laughing about how much you're laughing. And it just feels so good because it's unfettered, abundant joy. And I came to that epiphany through the practice of self-compassion, which is the acknowledgement that I am suffering and I can be the source of comfort for myself. That I can be the source of care that I need so that I will not feel like I'm under a threat by myself from this critical voice and that I can speak to myself more kindly so that when I made a mistake or someone had a different point of view from me that that wasn't a threat because I knew that I was okay even though the outside world was not as I wanted it to be. 

It seems trivial and trite and like a very juvenile thing to be operating that way. I also know that I'm very much not alone in how our experience with a critic or a judge or an imposter syndrome, striving to be something that we don't think that we are, can really tear people apart and bring out some of our worst qualities that we don't want to be that way, but it still happens.

And I spent the next few years after I had this epiphany as kind of an anthropologist of self-compassion, diligently practicing with myself because in that moment I made a commitment to myself that I would never go back to the way I was before. And that meant that every day I had to practice self-compassion. Every day I had to strive towards being loving to myself. 

But I did that kind of clandestinely, it was something that I was just doing for me. I didn't initially share this with people openly. I certainly didn't have an aspiration to write a book about it at that point in time. But it was many years later after doing my own quiet study of myself and observing other people and the clients that I work with that I realized this is a universal concept that so many people could benefit from. while there's a tremendous amount of research, 20 years of really robust research and some incredible thought leaders in the space, Kristin Neff, Serena Chen, Chris Germer, that are doing this great research in the corporate space with the clients that I work with. This notion of self-compassion is a far distant idea. And I was called to make sure that those people got in on the news that there's something here that's valuable and important and that is a necessity, I believe.

 

Rachel Anzalone (08:48.81)

That's an incredible story. So first of all, I can fully relate to that moment when the voice stops for the first time. I remember having that moment myself. I think I was around age 32. And having this realization that my mind wasn't racing and that I didn't remember any moment prior in my life when that was ever the case, that it had always been there and had always been that way.

And then this holy shit moment of like, is this what other people are experiencing? Like, are other people walking around without their mind racing and having these intense, you know, these thoughts all the time? And I think it's pretty common, especially in high performers, right? Like really capable people, you know, whether it's in the entrepreneurial space or in a corporate space, people who are well accomplished, I think, part of probably what motivates a lot of people is that voice early on. And then there's a point where we have to sort of disentangle from that. 

And that's what I hear you talking about in terms of finding that that self-compassion was the key to that. And you said, you know, it might sound juvenile. And yet the thing is, is that even we could work on these things for a lifetime and there's still more and more and more layers. 

So even if we've been doing the work for 10 years or 20 years or for however long, there's always these moments that come up where you're like, shit, I'm doing it again. Or I've taken care of it in this whole area of my life, but in this area, I'm still being too hard on myself or too, I don't think there's a point where we get past it 100%, maybe when we reach enlightenment.

 

Massimo Backus (10:43.846)

I think that it is something that you recommit to every day. And on hard days, you gotta recommit to it maybe every hour. And we're never done. What you just said reminded me of something. And part of this epiphany for me, this acknowledgement was a bit of a reconciliation with how I've treated myself throughout my life.

And I'm not talking about an inner child. I'm not talking about this as a spiritual concept. But the biological truth is that you and I are the same people that we were when we were children. We inhabit the same body, we're the same DNA, right? So that isn't somewhat of our past. We're still that person, those experiences, that trauma, the joy, whatever happened when we were young, it is who we are today. And it's very alive in us. And so when we get triggered by things, it's like, yeah, that's because we've still got this, this, this experience, this patterning that happened for us at a young age. 

And for most people, the inner critic, whatever it looks like, and I consider them WIMPS is what I like to call this, this part of our psychology. And WIMPS is an acronym for a well-intentioned misinformed protector. Well-intentioned misinformed protector. 

Well-intentioned because that part of our psychology was created to help us survive. I'm gonna be critical of myself so that other people don't hurt me. I'm gonna be critical of myself because that will keep me safe from external threats. I'm gonna strive for perfection because if I do, I'll make better decisions than if I'm lazy. The problem is, it's misinformed because it's something that was created within us when we're children and we were not fully developed. We didn't have the skills and capabilities that we do as adults. And so we don't need those things anymore. 

So they serve the function and many, many high performers will look back and they will say to me, I'm afraid that if I practice self-compassion, I'm going to lose my edge. I'm afraid that I'm not so hard on myself that I, that I won't work hard. And that's one of the big myths that we need to debunk because I have never worked harder, been more fulfilled or more successful or more impactful in my life since I started practicing self-compassion. My ambition has not gone away. My drive, my desire for growth and prosperity has not been taken away at all. What's been taken away is that incessant beratement in the internal battle that is exhausting, that shows up in rumination and stress and anxiety and fighting and social comparison, that when we look at it objectively, we know that it's not productive. Anyone who goes on social media and finds themselves socially comparing does not feel better afterwards.

 

Rachel Anzalone (13:53.258)

No, definitely not. Yeah. So I just want to link some of these things together. So number one, the idea of the inner critic being a protective voice. That's super interesting. I haven't thought of that that way. I'm familiar with like internal family systems, processes, and some of these things. And that's kind of a new insight for me. So I would love for you to talk a little bit more about that. What in your understanding propels the inner self to use criticism as a tool for protective mechanism, I guess. Does that make sense what I'm asking? I'm trying to connect those dots.

 

Massimo Backus (14:43.336)

It does. It does. And to clarify this concept a little bit, the protective part of us, it could be criticism, but criticism can show up in perfectionism. Right? It can show up in somebody who is a bit of a hard ass, who's always pushing for better, the person that's like, I'm the most driven person. Right? I'm the most ambitious person. We know those types of people. Right? 

But they also have some version of criticism that comes along with that. For me, my, you know, my go -to was defensiveness. But there was a criticism that followed that. Why did you get defensive? Why are you upset by that? You know, but the, but the way that these winds show up, whether it be perfectionism or defensiveness, or for some people it's being a contrarian, which is like, I'm always going to play the devil's advocate. Right? And that's basically a desire to have control. If I always place the devil's advocate that I'm in control because I'm always taking a stance that no one's really going to take with me. So I get to control my narrative. 

The idea that these are well intentioned is that they are there to, they have protected us in some form or fashion. They have given us a sense of security in some form or fashion. And potentially when we were younger, that was effective. But what I find is that those people that are the high performers, at some point they start to realize this is actually causing more harm than good. But it's a well-worn path, it's a well-worn relationship that I have and I don't know how to change it, but I'm starting to hear that I'm too overbearing for people or I'm too defensive or my perfectionism is getting in the way of my relationships. And now I want to change it because you no longer need that protection. 

And the question is, what are the real threats that are out there in the world? What really is a threat? We're confident.

 

Rachel Anzalone (16:57.86)

It's definitely not somebody not getting a document into you on time or something like that, right? Like there are very few.

 

Massimo Backus (17:06.902)

And a lot of the things that we perceive as threats are things that are outside of our control.

And once you realize that there's a lot of that, a lot of the things that are outside of our control aren't threats, it's easy to let those things go. And that space can then be occupied by the things that are in your control. Which is how do we speak to ourselves? How do we treat ourselves? How do we ensure that we're internally resourced instead of striving for self-esteem through external validation? Which I think of as it's like eating Cheetos. You know, when you eat a Cheeto, you don't just eat one Cheeto, you end up eating like the whole bag, because they're designed to be moreish.

But there's no, you're not satiated when you're done. There's no nourishment to them. You're probably still hungry. And when I eat them, I have a little bit of shame after eating the Cheetos, because I'm like, just ate a bag of Cheetos. 

Whereas self-compassion is like eating nutrient dense whole foods. It sustains you. And to the point of not losing your edge when you practice self-compassion, it doesn't make you less ambitious or less good at what you do, but it takes away your need for it. If I was driven by self-esteem and I wrote a book, my self -worth would be tied to the success of a book. If it doesn't sell a certain number of copies, if it's not beloved by all, if it's not praised, then I am of less worth.

But to publish a book from a place of self-compassion is I have a message that I believe in. I'm internally resourced to be enough just as I am. And it will serve its purpose in the way that it does. And I recognize what is out of my control, which essentially once the book is printed, everything else is out of my control. I can't control who reads it, when they read it, how they read it. Right?

 

Rachel Anzalone (18:57.278)

Absolutely. Yep.

 

Massimo Backus (19:03.551)

I have to let go of all of that and not be attached to the outcome. That doesn't take away the fact that I have dreams, I have ambitions for it, but my self-worth is not connected to that in any way at all.

 

Rachel Anzalone (19:16.904)

Yeah, this is one of the parallels I think between our work is I saw in my work behind the scenes supporting speakers, authors, thought leaders in the world. What I saw happening a lot was external goals that they were driving towards, the team was driving towards sort of at the expense of everything else. And when I started to ask the questions and dig into like, why are these the goals that we have and what is it they are actually wanting to be experiencing, there was this huge disconnect between the two and that there was sort of this external behavior happening without an awareness of how it connected or didn't connect to the internal desire or the internal drive or that what most people are looking for is they want to feel a particular way, they want to feel satisfied, they want to feel safe, want to feel fulfilled, they want to feel like they're contributing, and then measuring, you know, how many followers they have on Facebook or what their top line revenue goal is, and as a metric of that, and when the two really aren't connected, and that when you start to get into like, what, what is your personal goal, experience, desire, objective that you want from this activity that you're doing?

Rarely is it connected to a dollar amount or a number of people or any of those things. It really is about feeling satisfied that you did the work that you were meant to do and that it's in the hands of the people who are meant to receive it.

 

Massimo Backus (20:56.002)

Wow. That's a pretty profound distinction that you're calling out Rachel that I haven't really thought about before. Because there are those internal goals that you can't measure by followers or revenue. I'm curious when you look back on those people that you worked with, what were they hoping that those external revenue follower sales goals, what were they hoping that the outcome of that would be the result?

 

Rachel Anzalone (21:28.434)

I think often it's the case that there's a belief that once I hit those goals, then I can have the stuff that I want to have. Then I can have more time with my family. Then I can have the dream house. Then I can take the vacations. Then I can run in the circles that I want to run in, like whatever it is. Those revenue goals, whatever those goals are, those external things have to be hit first. I mean, think you could hear so many really wildly successful people who say, “I got there and then it didn't feel the way I thought it was gonna feel and then I had to unpack everything,” right? And so my goal is to help people unpack that before they spend their whole life trying to get to a thing to find out that what they really wanted was to feel satisfied and to feel whole inside, whatever that means to them.

 

Massimo Backus (22:23.832)

Yeah, that's what I want for everyone. And the beautiful thing is that it's available to us all now. We don't have to achieve any sort of measurement of external success to have that now. And having it now doesn't take away from the opportunity or the potential for that external success.

And I think it makes it a lot more enjoyable along the way. And that was the big epiphany that I had because I didn't think that that was the case. I thought that I just had to continue to push, push, push. And at some point I would get to a place and then I'd be able to sit back and feel good about myself that I would have earned it by then or something. 

And I was running an executive offsite a few years back and this very driven, analytical, litigious CFO who was very closed off and intimidated everyone because she was so just powerful and bright and intelligent and was always thinking 10 steps ahead of the next person, opened up a little bit for the first time and shared a little bit of vulnerability about their background and what their upbringing was like and realized that they were trying to run towards something. They were trying to prove something all along. And in that moment, they first allowed themselves to acknowledge that maybe I am the person that I want to be right now. Maybe I don't need to push so hard because all I'm doing is pushing people away. Right? 

And I said, you know, it's interesting that most people, I believe this is true for all people, is that we already are who we're trying to become. We already are who we're trying to become. We just have to allow that to be a belief. We have to believe that that's true. And that is not something that any of us are taught. There's no blueprint for how to do that. And it's really hard.

 

Rachel Anzalone (24:27.817)

The story is like you have to learn the things and you have to do all this work to get there someday, right? And not that it's already in you or not that you're already that person. Our culture is that we have to earn it.

 

Massimo Backus (24:52.664)

Yeah, you have to earn it and it's got to be demonstrated by continuing to eat the Cheetos, continuing to look for external validation. I want more money, I want more friends, more followers, a bigger team, a bigger company, more and more and more. And that I'm just going to continue to get the validation, I'm enough, I'm enough, I'm enough because I have these. But we've all experienced that thing where you reach the goal that you were striving for and it just does not taste as sweet as you thought it would.

And that taste does not last as long as you hoped it would. And all of a sudden you're just looking for the next thing. And you can't go back in time and reclaim that missed opportunity to be present and just enjoy something or to go back and experience the hurt that you had and mind the lesson, the learning from our own suffering. Because there's a lot of richness in our own pain. When we allow ourselves to actually feel sadness, that is as rich of a human experience as it is the joyful laughter that I experienced that day.

And we try and minimize these things. Like, don't want to feel sadness. I don't want to feel anger because we judge our emotions. Like, when people will tell me, like, I'm not an angry person and I experience anger, my first thought is, I wonder what's missing for them. What are they missing out on by not experiencing anger?

 

Rachel Anzalone (26:25.938)

Yeah, my first thought is where is it all getting stuffed and when is it going to come out? 

 

Massimo Backus (26:31.158)

Yeah, that's true. That's true.

 

Rachel Anzalone (26:51.774)

That too. Yeah. So I'm curious then, so you have this realization for yourself around self-compassion and I'm curious what your process was then for linking that to your own leadership skills and then evolving that into this book concept, this human first leader second and the coaching that you're doing now.

 

Massimo Backus (26:59.99)

You know, the… I never aspired to be an author. That was never a career goal of mine. The desire to write it, it was really more of a calling, I suppose. It came out of a need that I had, I was looking for, is there a book around self-compassion? I really want to learn more about this. And is there a book around self-compassion for executives and for leaders in the types of organizations that I support? I just couldn't find one.

And it was in that that I realized, I guess, I should do that. Because I saw the need. And it wasn't just for me, it was for the thousands of leaders that I've worked with. And what I realized in writing the book and doing the research for it was that I'm not the expert. I'll never be the expert. And that it's...

This isn't a certification. This isn't like I got certified in self-compassion, so therefore I am. You know, it's something that is a lifelong journey. It's a commitment. And that I've learned more about self-compassion in the process of writing this book than I ever thought that I could because it was a forcing function for me to address a lot of my wimps, my inner critic, my imposter syndrome, who am I to write a book? Why does anybody care? Is this brand suicide that I'm attaching my credentials and my career to this concept that could be perceived as too woo-woo or weak? All sorts of doubt that came into it. 

Adding to the fact that I'm dyslexic and writing does not come easily to me, I was like, what am I doing? This is a Sisyphean effort that I'm you know, trying to take this on. But there was one constant, which is, I believe with every fiber of my being that there is nothing more important or more powerful than learning to love yourself. For each person, there is nothing more important than that. 

And the interesting thing about self-compassion is Chris Germer, who's one of the kind of leading researchers in the space, says that the research is getting boring. The research around self-compassion is getting boring because any marker of wellness, of personal, professional well-being, is improved through self-compassion. All of them. Every single one. Meaning that self-compassion is like the God particle. It is an accelerator for anything that we want to be more of as humans.

More loving, more caring, more patient, more thoughtful, better at listening, more trusting, more trustworthy, a better communicator, whatever it is, self-compassion will help that. I want to be more resilient. I want to have more grit. I want to be more curious. I want to be better at learning. I want to be better at rebounding from setbacks. It's not a cure-all. This isn't a magical pill. It takes a lot of hard work.

But the practice itself improves all of those other areas. I can't think of another psychological construct that is that profound and that powerful. And at its core, it's about learning to have a better relationship with ourselves. I imagine a world where people in power, people of influence, people that are the matriarchs and patriarchs of families, lead and love from a place of loving themselves first.

And that's the kind of world that I want to live in.

 

Rachel Anzalone (30:54.726)

Yes, I'll second that. I think that's the world that so many of our peers, people who listen to this podcast, that's the world that we're really wanting to create and committed to creating. And I think it's interesting that you didn't find any books about this in relation to leadership, you know, for executives.

Because it is, we sort of have this separation of like this is the spiritual, the woo woo, the personal development. And then on the other side is business leadership and that they've been separated for so long and it feels like they're starting to mingle together and we're starting to have a cultural awareness that the leader is the person as your book title indicates and that that development as an individual is then going to have profound impact on the entire team, on the entire business, on the bottom line ultimately, right?

 

Massimo Backus (31:54.648)

The biggest waste of time, money, and organizational resources in any business today is people trying to hide their humanity. Hide the fact that they have doubts, that they have weaknesses, that they have limitations, have insecurities. People just trying to hide all those things, hiding our humanity. And the most bizarre, surprising thing about this is that we're not doing a very good job of hiding it.

 

Rachel Anzalone (32:26.416)

No. Right. Right.

 

Massimo Backus (32:27.948)

Right? We're delusional in thinking that we are. I thought that I had changed, that I was no longer defensive, that I was showing up differently. The only person I was hiding my own insecurities from was myself. Everyone else saw it. It was on full display. That's where the feedback came from. I didn't see it. So we're doing a really good job of hiding our humanity from ourselves. But in the process, everyone else is at the mercy of having to be witness to it. And it's when you accept that part of yourselves that you can actually change. I don't mean acceptance as apathy or I mean acceptance as taking personal accountability. And then when we're really honest with ourselves, then we can choose and we say, now that I accepted that this is true, if I want to change it, I can, but I first have to acknowledge that it's true.

That is a really uncomfortable thing to do, admitting that I was at, I mean, Rachel, I was so defensive that if I loaded the dishwasher, I've never loaded the dishwasher right in my marriage. And I know that and I accept it. But my wife would come in and move the plate or the bowl or the cup and put it in the right place that I would get really defensive about that. As opposed to just accepting, I can't seem to get this one right. I'm going be okay with that. That's not something that I'm ever going to get right for whatever reason, but I don't need to get defensive about it. But it was showing up in all aspects. 

That's an example of something that I accepted and I didn't change. There's a lot of things that you accept as square one and then you actually do want to change it.

 

Rachel Anzalone (34:21.319)

Yeah, I remember hearing an author speak a few years ago. And it was it was at a point in my life where I had been working really, really, really, really hard for a while, which is what has had been my habit was work really, really hard, like to the point of exhaustion, take a break, jump back into something new, work really, really hard to the point of exhaustion. And I had been doing this for a while. And I was kind of at that point where like I knew I wasn't okay. I knew I couldn't keep going the way that I had been going. And yet I was like hanging on so tightly, right? Because the story is if I let go for a second, it'll all fall apart. And I went to this very short, like one or two day retreat. And there was a woman there speaking who I'd never heard speak before. And she had lived in a Buddhist monastery for a long time. And she just said this one little nugget that just frots like made me stop. And it was that the ego will tell us if we stop moving that we'll just turn into a blob of nothing. Like the ego has this story that we can't slow down, that we can't pause, that we can't reflect, that if we stop moving so quickly that it'll just fall apart and that it's a lie and that if we test to the lie, we'll find out that it's a lie, but we have to be willing to test it. 

And you know that I think this is the thing that so many leaders struggle with is this idea that they're on a trajectory and that if they slow down to reflect, if they slow down to do the work of self-compassion, if they slow down to get feedback and process that feedback, that suddenly things will fall apart around them. And that there really is a little bit of a leap of faith that has to happen in order to do that the first time.

But I'm wondering if you have any advice, recommendations for anyone who's like, OK, I hear what you're saying. How do I start this process in the world that I'm in where things are moving quickly and there's this hustle happening around me and I'm expected to perform a certain way. Like how do people get started?

 

Massimo Backus (36:59.636)

If you don't listen to that internal sense that you're reaching your breaking point, you will break. Right? And, I was forced into an opportunity to be confronted with this. So it wasn't a choice. Thankfully it worked, but that's not the ideal. The ideal would be that we can step into it because it's a choice. 

And so for anyone listening who is, I'm running too fast, I'm at burnout, I'm beyond burnout, but I can't stop. You need to find an exit ramp. You need to truck yourself enough to take an exit ramp. And know that it's going to be hard and uncomfortable, but so is staying on that highway and just continuing to, you know, to run until your tires are bare, right? There were in my own life, there were many opportunities to take exit ramps and I didn't trust myself to do it. And one of my biggest regrets in my life are the times when I didn't trust myself, but all signs were telling me that I needed to do something different. That's what I regret. 

And so in those moments where you realize that you need to take the exit ramp, but you're not trusting yourself, then that is exactly what you need to do is to be able to stop and be like, I trust that this is the right thing for me to do. And because there's people in the world like you and I, Rachel, that have been through that and are open to sharing what that experience is like from a place of being humble, not as, you know, we're enlightened and therefore, you know, follow us to the promised land, but in that we can genuinely empathize with it is so scary. And yet on the other side, we know that it works out, but we also know what that fear is. It's like, it's very visceral.

The people need to talk to one another about what is going on. Isolation is part of this mental health epidemic that we have is because people are isolated. We are more connected now than we've ever been before and we're more isolated because people aren't talking about their inner experience with each other.

And when I hear people talk about burnout, it's usually a badge of honor because I've been working so hard as opposed to I am burnt out and I'm terrified that if I don't slow down, I'm going to break and I'm terrified if I do slow down, everything's going to fall apart.

That's powerful to share that with somebody. And I know that when people share those things, what they will hear is, you're not alone.

 

Rachel Anzalone (40:15.004)

Yeah, absolutely. That's been my experience. And I think what is most important, really in this conversation in the context of your book, and the in the context of the work that we both do is that often those people in leadership positions don't take that. They don't have that person to talk to to say that to because they're at the top of an organization and they don't have peers and finding those peers or finding a coach like yourself or somebody to support them, who understands those experiences, who can support them through it is really critical because you can't say to the person in the cubicle next to you, I'm having a bad day, let's go have a beer, because there's no cubicle next to you. Often leaders find themselves in situations of isolation because they are at the top and they are the one who's responsible for so many other people's lives and livelihoods. So it becomes even more important to invest in self-care, self-compassion, and slowing down in that way.

 

Massimo Backus (41:25.932)

And even if it's the first time you're admitting it, can be really scary even to admit, you know, to even like speak it into words can be terrifying because we used to keep our head down, just repress, push down, whatever it is I'm feeling, you know, I'm tired, I'm uncomfortable, just keep pushing forward. I'm busy. Something else is important. and that's why all of this is a practice. And with practice, it gets better. I have good days and I have really bad days. I make mistakes, I screw up. I still get defensive.

I am just as flawed as I've ever been. The only difference is I can be honest with myself when it happens, of course, correct quickly. It becomes less scary because ultimately I know I've got my back. And when we abandon ourselves, who do we have to look to when we're at the top? And so it's so important for leaders to not abandon themselves.

And typically, we're the first person to abandon in a leadership position because we're so focused on serving everyone else that we forget about another person on the team that's really important, which is us.

 

Rachel Anzalone (42:38.778)

Mm. That is a beautiful message to end on. Thank you so much. Your book comes out again. It's called The Human First, Leader Second, and it comes out on September 10th. And where can people find it? Where can they find you? How can they connect with you?

 

Massimo Backus (42:51.714)

September 10th.

 

Massimo Backus (42:58.274)

The book is on Amazon right now for pre-order and people can find me at massimobackus.com or on LinkedIn. I'm the only Massimo Backus that's out there in the world. And Rachel, just wanted to say thank you for this wonderful enriching conversation. I love the work that you're doing in the world and the message that you're spreading.

 

Rachel Anzalone (43:22.76)

Likewise, thank you so much for being here and thank you all for listening. Until next time, I'm wishing you even more pleasure and profits. See you soon.