Chief Change Officer
#145 Darcy Eikenberg on Turning Career Burnout into a Comeback
Mon, 20 Jan 2025
Quitting your job might feel like the only way out. When the office vibe is toxic, politics are exhausting, and every workday feels like a chore, it’s tempting to call it quits—whether quietly or dramatically. But Darcy Eikenberg, author of Red Cape Rescue: Save Your Career Without Leaving Your Job, challenges that idea. Darcy believes you can transform your career from within. In today’s episode, we explore how to rebound from burnout and discover the superpowers you already have to create positive change. Key Highlights of Our Interview: Feeling in Control – How Red Cape Revolution Inspires “Red Cape Revolution isn’t about superhero costumes; it’s about bringing that sense of confidence, where your shoulders are back, and you’re ready to face the world, into the workplace. With Red Cape Rescue, you can turn those career speed bumps into moments of self-rescue, without waiting on anyone else for change.” Crafting a Fear Strategy for Modern Life “We all have that primitive part of our brain—the same one that saved our ancestors from tigers. It kicks in when we see an email from our boss, triggering fear even when there’s no real threat. I call it the ‘lizard brain,’ but we can override it by tapping into our ‘heroic brain’ to control our responses.” “Our fear responses are overused in today’s world, making us pull back and hide. Instead, I encourage people to forge a fear strategy: decide ahead of time how to respond when fear hits. Ask yourself, ‘What’s in my control here?’ and choose a different thought to keep fear from taking the wheel.” Can’t See the Label from Inside the Jar? Here’s a Trick “We’re all stuck in our own jars, so I recommend stepping back by recording yourself venting about a situation. Play it back, pull out the facts, and let go of the stories your brain adds. It’s like listening to a friend’s dilemma—it’s amazing what we hear from the outside.” Self-Awareness: The Key to Unlocking Clarity “True clarity comes from self-awareness. If something bothers you, take a deeper look: What personal value feels violated? Self-reflection is vital because the same situation might impact you differently than others, all depending on how you’re wired.” Connect with us: Host: Vince Chan | Guests: Darcy Eikenberg ______________________ --Chief Change Officer-- Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself. Open a World of Deep Human Intelligence for Growth Progressives, Visionary Underdogs, Transformation Gurus & Bold Hearts. 6 Million+ All-Time Downloads. Reaching 80+ Countries Daily. Global Top 3% Podcast. Top 10 US Business. Top 1 US Careers. >>>100,000+ subscribers are outgrowing. Act Today.<<< --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.18 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 1.5% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>170,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: What are the signs of career burnout?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chan, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. So, you're thinking of quitting your job? Trust me, I've been there many times in my corporate life. You've hit a roadblock.
Each morning, you're dragging yourself out of bed, dreading the day ahead. The oldest boy feels off. Politics and gossip. A draining. And deadlines seem endless. Walking away feels like the only way out. Whether quietly or loudly. But our guest today, Darcy Eichenberg.
Author of the book titled Red Cape Rescue, Save Your Career Without Leaving Your Job, says, You don't have to quit to save your career. But how? I know what it's like to feel stuck. Back then, I wished for someone who could help me find a way out. When reading Darcy's book, I kept thinking, I wish I would have this when I needed it. But you don't have to wait.
In today's episode, Darcy and I dive into why staying might be the best move and how you can bounce back from a low point. We are all Incredibles with the superpowers to save ourselves. Let's get started.
Chapter 2: How can you transform your career from within?
Yeah, thanks, Vincent. And I'm so honored that you saw yourself in the book because it really reflected my own journey. I was a successful professional like you had been for many years. And every few years got new opportunities, just things happened. I followed the next thread of a promotion or a move to a different city. And then one day I was leading a group in my consulting firm.
I was talking to my boss and she told me she was going to retire. All of a sudden, like that was the next step up and I realized, wow, I don't want that job. And then in the next moment, I recognized... What's next for me? And this was really a crossroads point in my career because I looked good on paper, right? I looked like I had everything that I needed. I had a great job.
I had great friends, a big company, made enough money. But I realized that I didn't know where I wanted to go next. And I was trusting my company and just the economy and the environment to... push me along instead of me being clear about how I wanted to push myself, what I was being pulled toward.
So that started my journey of actually finding my first coach, recognizing I didn't know how to do this. No one teaches us in school how to navigate our careers. I think we're probably doing a better job now with a generation coming up, but I still think there's a lot of myths out there.
And so I was on my own personal journey of discovery of who was I at this point in my life and what did I want and how could I make a contribution to people, to the world and to my own self? I wanted to make an impact. I never thought that I would have my own business. I never thought I would be successful.
a coach or a speaker or an author those weren't thoughts that were placed in my head but as i really learned more about myself and i started on my own internal journey i realized there were skills and talents and abilities that i had that could support people in helping make them better as opposed to me being have to be the person out in front who's doing everything
And I learned about the world of human development, of human potential, which included at the time the world of coaching, personal development. I actually had an opportunity to create an internal coaching business in the company that I had grown up in. I realized... If the right job for me wasn't there, the right job, the next job wasn't there, maybe I could make it up.
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Chapter 3: What is a fear strategy and how do you create one?
And so I did and went through a business case process to sell that into the company. And once I got the okay to do that, it gave me an opportunity to see what this new world could look like. A couple of years later, went out on my own and coaching and teaching and speaking ever since, about 15 years. So that's how I got into where I am now.
And the book you reference, Red Cape Rescue, Save Your Career Without Leaving Your Job, I wrote a couple years ago, and it was really a accumulation of a lot of the learnings that I had, that my clients have had, and people just like you have had about how to get over those stuck places. When you're on a career path and you get stuck, you hit a roadblock.
I've seen too many good people, myself included, stumble at those points and think less of themselves. I think the lessons that I've learned is that we all have tools in our control that we can use to get out of being unstuck and get back on a path that works for us.
Many coaches out there say, I help leaders with this and that. But I'm curious, in your practice, which specific groups of leaders are you working with? What particular qualities or types of people do you focus on helping and empowering?
Chapter 4: Why is self-awareness essential for career clarity?
Yeah, so right now I primarily work with a senior level leader or an executive of a team. I also work with broader teams. I think there's a myth sometimes that when you're in a higher level role that you don't have the same career fears and questions that you might have when you're growing your career.
But the truth is that as you grow, as you're in a higher level position, everything gets even more complicated. And you have fewer people that you can talk to, feel safe and okay with saying, I don't know what to do next, or I'm not sure where I should go from here. We look at people like that and we think, oh, they have all the answers, but truth is, We're all human.
And no matter where you are and what level you are, there are things that we just can't figure out by ourselves, no matter how smart we are or how experienced we are. So really more of a leader level person at this point in my practice, Although the book is really aimed for people at all levels in their career. It's one of the reasons that I created it.
Not everybody can afford or invest in the work of a personal coach. So having something that is accessible, like a book that is a low investment, that's easy to read, maybe even fun to read, is an opportunity to help more people.
Your book is called Red Cape Rescue. The first question that came to my mind was, why Red Cape? What is the meaning behind this title?
So my company is called Red Cape Revolution. And the story behind that is remembering when you were a kid and you'd grab a towel or a sheet and you throw it around your shoulders. You'd stand up straight and you felt confident. You felt in control, even if you are only in control of the backyard. In everything that I've done,
throughout my work, I've wanted people to be able to regain that feeling. What would change in our lives at work if we could all have that red cape feeling? If we could all feel like we were confident, where our shoulders are thrown back, we were in control. And I believe we can have that feeling.
I just think we don't always recognize it and we don't always recognize what is in our control as opposed to waiting for others to change or waiting for others to tell us what to feel, what to think. So Red Cape Rescue was a spinoff of Red Cape Revolution, which is... What if you could rescue your career? What if you didn't have to change your career or change your job?
Anytime you hit a roadblock, you hit that speed bump, you hit that point where you're like, you get news and your boss is retiring and you don't want that job like happened to me. So that's really what a red cape rescue is. It's a rescue in your career that you can do yourself.
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Chapter 5: What does 'Red Cape' symbolize in career resilience?
actions to take, how we can think differently about the actions that we take to get unstuck. So they really revolve around the knowledge that we only control those three things. And like you, Vince, I work with a lot of smart, accomplished people. It's sometimes a surprise to us when we really look at it and we realize what we are trying to control that is out of our control.
We can't control the economy. We can't control what's going on in the world. Can we make a choice about how we're thinking about it? Absolutely. And can that choice change how we feel, what our experience is of it? We can actually all see the same thing, but make different choices about what we think about it, what we say about it, and what we do about it.
And once we recognize we have the reins of those three levers, and only those three levers, if we ask our boss for a raise, what they will say. But we can take the first step. We can plan our thoughts, plan our conversation. We can plan our mindset of no matter what they say, at least we've reached out, we've expressed what we need.
So each of the chapters are really designed to go deeper into different ways that you can work on your thoughts, which again, many people may call mindset, but I do like to think about controlling your thoughts because there are a lot of thoughts that you can choose differently. The same way with your words and what you do,
We can make active choices of those in the same way that you chose the shirt you put on today.
The first section, reset, really resonates with me. Knowing yourself, understanding yourself. That self-awareness you emphasize is powerful. Once we graduate from college... We are basically on our own with no career center or clear path to guide us. Yet, we have 30, 40, even 50 years of work life ahead.
And even when career centers are available in college or business school, the scope is often narrowed, leaving us without realistic guidance on figuring ourselves out and charting our own course. So this self-awareness, this self-empowerment that you talk about and reset how you think really feels essential.
From your experience working with seasoned leaders and helping them figure out who they are and where they're going, Could you share a few examples? Maybe one success story and one more challenging case. Just to give us some insights into the process, the lessons learned, and what navigating those challenges can look like. Story time.
Sure. Storytime. Sure. One of my favorite stories. And I won't use the names so that they don't recognize themselves because our work is always confidential. But was a leader in a large advertising firm. She led...
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Chapter 6: How do you handle career roadblocks and setbacks?
I love to hear about the other side of things too. We just discussed a more successful case, but I'm also curious about the challenges you faced in helping people through this journey. Stories where things didn't go as planned. Maybe there's a single story that stands out, or maybe it's a pattern across different experiences.
Whether it's due to a client's own psychology, some part of their past serving as a barrier to change, or something else entirely. I'll be interested to know why, even with all the interventions, guidance, and effort, things sometimes just don't click. Any insights you can share from these not so successful transformations would be valuable.
Chapter 7: What are the three stages of transformation?
I'll tell you some of the story about somebody who's Getting the mindset was getting in his own way. I had worked with a leader at a large financial services firm and had led a very big team, but they had, during COVID, had gone remote, though the team was more detached.
Part of the team was very much heads down into on computers, working on data, managing fraud, just a lot of like very intensive tasks. computer-based work as opposed to conversations and decisions and connections with people. And that's what the role was. His role was to manage that group plus folks who were actually creating new tools. And
We during a process of getting some stakeholder feedback, he heard that he was coming across as basically very negative and it was holding him back. And if this was a surprise to him because he just felt he was being realistic, times were hard. The team was very dispersed. Some of the team members weren't happy. the organization itself was going through a lot of change.
And he fought the external perception of they saw it as negative and didn't feel that it was... that this is somebody that they wanted to promote, that they wanted to give new opportunities to, that they wanted to invest in. He fought that was not his intention to be negative. His intention was to be realistic. So this is an example of... choosing a thought. And the truth is, both are correct.
It was realistic that things were hard and there were issues in the company and things weren't perfect. People perceiving that the person leaned more negatively was getting in the way of them seeing this person as a potential for the future.
And so I think it's an example of recognizing that we don't have to agree with others' perceptions or we don't have to like everything that's going on, but we can look at the circumstance in a, just as it is. This is just the circumstance. The circumstance is people perceive this. And then we can make a choice to say, does that get in the way of what I want or not.
And he was fighting against himself to some degree of feeling like, I don't want to change how I think. And where we ended up in really working on this was that you don't have to change what you think, but being aware of how others think Helps us to be able to influence them, to be able to get more of the things that we need, and quite honestly, not get in our own way.
Because in an environment where people are scared, where there's fear, where there's worry, and what environment doesn't have that today? The... People are drawn to people who can be realistic, but also be optimistic or be hopeful. And then not toxic positivity, not butterflies and fairies, but to be leaning more toward the future rather than, oh my gosh, how hard today and the past has been.
And he had to really work on his mindset to shift that, recognizing that to do the things he wanted to do He needed others to go along with him, and others were not going to advocate for him, support him, want to be on his team, if they perceived that every time they were, it would be negative, pushed down, it would be just feeling very heavy and hard.
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Chapter 8: What strategies can help you communicate your value?
The one that knows what does future Vince want? What does future Darcy want? You mentioned the title of one of my chapters is called Listen to the Whispers. You know, that's the one we need to tune into more. That heroic brain that says, no, you can do this. You can have the hard conversation about why you were passed over for the promotion. You can confront your colleague.
about the deadlines that they missed. You can go to that networking event and meet that executive at the company that you're really interested in. But we talk ourselves out of it. And the lizard brain, the amygdala, that primitive brain is what talks us out of it. So a couple of strategies for that is to talk back to it. One of the strategies, I talk about this in the book, but it's not mine.
I originally saw it in a book called Positive Intelligence. The strategy is to give that negative voice, that loser brain voice, a name. So mine is Mrs. Washington, which was a teacher in elementary school. When that lizard brain comes up, I say, okay, Mrs. Washington, I've got it. Forget it. I hear you, and you're just nagging at me. You're just doing your thing.
And it almost makes you smile, and it just separates that... fear voice from your heartfelt, your heroic voice and just can help you put a beat in there between the action of fear, which might be, oh, I'm going to respond to this email and I'm going to, you know, flame him or, oh, I'm not going to do anything or I'll stay home tonight because they don't really want me at that party anyway.
It's all these things. We have to use that executive part of our brain, the heroic brain, to talk back and to that fear. Now, there are really good biological reasons when we're in situations where that fear is physically saving us. I think we know what those are. When we say, let me not walk on the dark street, let me not answer the door to somebody who I don't know.
But I think in today's always-on world, we're overusing it, and so we're pulling back and we're hiding. We're not taking active control. We're letting everything else control us and letting the fear pull us down, as opposed to saying, okay, what's true about this? What's in my control? What choices can I make? So that's the piece about fear.
in the book i talk about forging a fear strategy of recognizing ahead of time this is using your executive brain and deciding ahead of time like when that thing happens when the next time my boss pops on teams and says what are you working on and that creates fear worrying me I'm going to have a go-to strategy. I'm going to choose a different thought. I'm going to do something else.
But to decide ahead of time, what do I do when the things that make me fearful hit? And so I think we have a lot more control. If we're feeling that we're spending too much time in fear, I think it's worth looking and saying, where do I have control that maybe I'm not taking control right now?
Great, I'll definitely try some of your strategies. To wrap up though, there's so many things we can do from reading books and getting professional help to learning from others. If you had to give us just a couple of pieces of advice that we can start working, that we can start trying right now, what would those be?
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