Rest Without Guilt – Protecting Your Holiday Peace with Me’chelle Degree

Jeremy Burrows · 0:13

Hey friends, welcome to the Leader Assistant Podcast. It's your host, Jeremy Burrows, and today is episode 402. Thanks for tuning in. You can check out the show notes for this conversation at leaderassistant.com/402. And today I'm excited to be speaking with Me'chelle Degree. Me'chelle is, yeah, founder of Third Degree Solutions, also works full-time, has a day job and a side hustle like myself. So it's fun to connect with you, Me'chelle. And Yeah, welcome to the show.

Me'chelle Degree · 0:56

Likewise. I'm excited to be here. I really am. I feel like we're approaching the end of the year. A lot of things are happening, the holidays. So excited to have the conversation with you today.

Jeremy Burrows · 1:08

Awesome. And tell us what part of the world you're in, Me'chelle, and what do you like to do when you're not working?

Me'chelle Degree · 1:17

So I am in North Carolina and we are in fall right now. So I will be open that the fall in North Carolina, you get all the seasons in one day. So because of that, my voice sounds a little raspy because I'm over here dealing with sinus issues like half of North Carolina right now. And the awful part is, what do I like to do when I'm not working? I love being outside. I love digging in flowers, playing in dirt. I love the beach. I love the mountains. I love it all. So yeah, that's where I am. I'm on the East Coast.

Jeremy Burrows · 1:51

Love it. Love it. What part of North Carolina?

Me'chelle Degree · 1:55

Raleigh. Raleigh, okay. I'm a Raleigh girl. Mm-hmm. Go Pack. I'm probably the only person that's still holding on to NC State Wolfpack. I'm not a Carolina girl at all. I'll cheer for Duke all the way to the end if they're playing Carolina. But when it comes down to Duke and State, I'm going to cheer for State.

Jeremy Burrows · 2:15

Nice, nice. Well, super excited to have you on the show. Tell us a little bit about your career journey and where you're at now and how you got there.

Me'chelle Degree · 2:25

Sure. I'm gonna date myself and I don't care because my grandmother passed a couple of weeks ago and she was 94. So I'm 58 years old. When I came outta college, laptops had just came out. So I was a road warrior for many years. I traveled all over the world teaching people how to use laptops, worked for a training company for a long time and came into IT Because at that time, Ericsson slash Sony Ericsson, eventually I started out in IT as a trainer and then became a project manager. And from there I have just grown into project management, change management. I'm over at a company now, Cisco, and I'm a program manager. I've been in fed civilian space and now I'm in Department of War. So all things IT, girl. But the fun part of me, the exciting part, I love talking and speaking. So I'm a keynote speaker, number one bestselling author. Yay, excited about that.

Jeremy Burrows · 3:30

Mm-hmm.

Me'chelle Degree · 3:30

And I do a lot of training and coaching workshops. So I say that because, again, we're down to the end of the year. I get excited talking about everybody— I'm talking to people about the holidays because I'm a resilience architect. Excited to have that conversation with you today on how to survive the holidays.

Jeremy Burrows · 3:49

Love it. Love it. What I have to ask. So, you know, I've been an assistant for about 20 years and I've, you know, obviously speak with assistants and train and coach them and have talked to thousands of assistants over the years. And one of the more maybe popular, uh, alternative jobs, I guess you could say, for assistants is project manager. A lot of assistants do a lot of project management. And then I know project manager and program manager sometimes are interchangeable depending on the industry or the company. So for— just give us, if you wouldn't mind, your like 60-second pitch on, you know, what's a program manager and is that, you know, have you seen assistants? in your career as a program manager, you know, transition to that role?

Me'chelle Degree · 4:47

No, I will tell you, I have joked with some friends. I have a lot of friends that are executive assistants for some major heavy hitters. And when we talk about— when they say, you know, Me'chelle, tell them about your job, and I'm like, I'm a high-paid executive assistant, basically. The same way you manage projects, I manage projects on a bigger scale. A project is a project. So the beauty of being a project manager is you can go to any company. You can go to any company and manage a project. It's going to have a beginning and it's going to have an end, and you're just making sure all the tasks in between get done on time and on budget. As a program manager, I don't have just one project. I'm responsible for the overall program. So there are several project managers and projects going on, and they are rolling up to that program manager level. So that's what I do. I think that it is a skill set. I laugh and joke, but I had to change it. I used to say all women manage projects all day. We manage households, we manage kids' schedules. But my neighbor corrected me. He said, men do it too. We manage projects, we manage the kids, we manage households. So now I'm saying people do it. So yeah, I just do it on a bigger scale being a program manager. I have a lot of projects that roll up to it. So overall budget.

Jeremy Burrows · 6:13

Love it. That's super helpful and concise way to describe it. Thanks for doing that. That's awesome. So, okay, so let's talk about your, your book. What's the topic of your book? And give us a little bit of just maybe a couple tips related to leadership and resilience for assistants listening.

Me'chelle Degree · 6:33

Sure. I have 2 books actually. I have one, Get Your House in Order. I'm a little OCD. If you saw my house right now, I'm getting ready to get the carpet cleaned and all that, that nobody Nobody else notices but me. Okay. I like things to be in order. And I was on a trip and I was thinking about that, and I was given this. HOUSE is an acronym for hope, opportunities, uniqueness, success, and expectations of your life. If you don't have hope in what you're doing, it's never going to work. And you're also given so many opportunities. You just got to look at those opportunities that are available. And you have the uniqueness. I can't be Jeremy and he can't be Me'chelle because I'm the best Me'chelle out there. There's nobody like this Me'chelle. And I think people need to realize that, right? And then you have success. What does success look like for you? You know, I— my father talks about it, and his success is sitting on the 50-yard line at a, um, Super Bowl. And I'm like, are you serious right now? He said, I'm gonna tell you, if I could sit on the 50-yard line at the Super Bowl, I will know that's the best success in life. And I realized at that moment, success looks different for all of us. You have to decide what that is. Expectations. If you don't have expectations on your life or for you, nobody else will either. So I am asking everybody to get their house in order. That's what it was. COVID hit. Everybody asked me to reframe it and tell me, how do you do this now that COVID's coming out— I mean, has come and gone? It's the same thing. You still got to hope for something each day. I think it just changes, right? Mm-hmm. But the past couple of years, I've been talking about this thing called resilience. During COVID I had breast cancer. I'm a daddy's girl. My father is huge in my eyes. He got really sick with a pulmonary embolism, and I filed for divorce all in 2020. 2021, I got a huge promotion. So in the midst of going through challenges, I still was doing it at work and got a huge promotion in the midst of it. And what I realized is that spring of 2021 pretty much flatlined because I kept pushing forward because people would say, keep going, you got it, you do this and da da da. That is crazy. And I'm making everybody reframe resilience. Resilience isn't about just pushing forward, keep going, and all those things. It's about the reset. And when you reset, step back, look at it, you can keep going. So for the past 2 years, that's all I've been talking about is resilience. I've talked about it to boards for them to become more resilient. I've talked about it with groups of women how to reignite resilience, and talking to you guys today about how do you do it during the holidays? How can I be resilient and not burn out? How do I once in my life get to enjoy the holidays and manage all the executives and the end of the year and everything else that I have going on?

Jeremy Burrows · 9:50

Love it. Well, let's get into that then. How do we do that, Me'chelle?

Me'chelle Degree · 9:55

There are a couple of things. When I think about my friends that are executives, the one thing I tell them all the time is, they have this invisible pressure of managing the executive's expectations, right? Because they're expected to anticipate their needs, manage the priorities, also make sure they do all the problem solving. And here's the thing I want you to understand as you close this year: the difference between urgency and importance. There is a difference, and you have to have those, um, conversations now prior to getting to those holidays about the priorities and the deadlines and the trade-off. So I think one thing is remember that being indispensable does not require being available every minute of the day. That's not going to make you indispensable. What's going to make you indispensable is being solid in that role and showing up. But you don't have to be available every second the phone rings or a text comes in or a ping or email. That's one thing. Number 2, protecting your time without feeling guilty. Team. And what I mean by that is during the holidays, you know, professionals may be coordinating their executive travels, the end-of-the-year meetings, the celebrations, the requests, all the things. But what I want to talk to you and introduce you to is the Pause, Prioritize, and Protect method. Pause, Prioritize, and Protect method. Before saying yes to that event, or yes, you can do it, pause, breathe for a second, determine is that a priority, and then protect the time required for the existing commitments that you have made, and then prioritize what's important so that you can protect yourself. So again, saying yes to someone else's urgency can also become a no to something that matters to you. So what's the priority? The next one is probably recognizing burnout before the holidays becomes overwhelming. You need to ask yourself now, you know, be honest, take an audit. Where are you? Are you already exhausted? Because what we don't want you to end up with is a resentment of the holidays or resentment of that exec that does wait till the last minute. Again, I said it before, encourage the— have the conversation now. Have the conversation now. Do an audit of where you are now so that you can reset. Because I'm feeling it now, burnout doesn't always tell you it's here. It doesn't say, hey, I'm burned out. It looks like, you know, we as women, we want to be reliable. We want to say we got it. We want to keep going. No. Burnout is crazy. Don't try to keep being resilient like that. Don't burn out. Be even more successful by having a plan for it.

Jeremy Burrows · 13:01

What do you do practically in your life, whether it's the holidays or not, but how do you plan for that? And is it as simple as having a conversation with your team and your executives, hey, I'm out these days? Is it something a little more involved? How do you— what do you do practically?

Me'chelle Degree · 13:23

You know what, practically, I would— if I, if I know I'm going to be going on vacation, and I know that all the execs know this, you do it daily anyway. You look at the calendar. But what we do is say, I can't go on vacation this time because he has this happening or she has this moving. So what you're doing is you're moving your vacation out, you're moving it out because of priorities. You're the priority. If you're burnt out and you're being ugly and nasty and exhausted and forgetting things, you're not helping that exec. So if you and your family or your friends or your kids decided that on X date we're going to do X thing, make it the priority. Do not keep moving your schedule. Your execs aren't going to move. The business isn't going to move. And guess what? If you die, the business is going to mourn for a couple of days and then they're going to keep going. So make you the priority. Don't keep moving that schedule out. Go ahead and take the time off that you need now, but be proactive. Talk to the exec, tell them what you have in place, that who will be taking care of them. Is there anything else that I'm not aware of that's going to happen while I'm on that week vacation or 2-week vacation? So that you can plan accordingly and have someone in place.

Jeremy Burrows · 14:38

All right. Love it.

Me'chelle Degree · 14:40

That would be my words to you. You have to plan. You plan for them. You remind them of their kids' soccer games. You remind them of your anniversary is coming up. Or you remind them you might not want to do that meeting because you had already said that your son's going off to college. Who's reminding you? Who's balancing your calendar? Only you can do that. The other thing is about that burnout. If you're running around supporting everybody else and carrying their emotions, And being calm for them. You got to take time and be calm for you.

Jeremy Burrows · 15:14

Super, super helpful. That's awesome. Thank you. How do you deal with colleagues or executives who you've planned, you've done the work, you've planned it out, you've said, this is where I'm going to be, here's who's covering, and they still call you or text you when you're on vacation?

Me'chelle Degree · 15:37

It's going to happen. It's going to happen. The question is, are you going to answer?

Jeremy Burrows · 15:41

Right.

Me'chelle Degree · 15:41

Are you going to answer? The world— I mean, let's just be honest. I'm awful. I love to travel. I have a map in my house that says, she's going places. I don't tell people where I'm going now because I used to go out of the country all the time. And I would say, and I'm not taking my work phone. Well, guess what? They knew my personal phone.

Jeremy Burrows · 16:04

Right.

Me'chelle Degree · 16:05

Then I would say, I'm not answering it because I'm out of the country and I'm not paying a fee. Well, now they call me on WhatsApp. What you got to do is not answer. You're not that important. What's important is you're on vacation with your family, and this might be the last one, but you were over here on a call and missing the last opportunities because your kids are going off to college. Not even going off to college. How about they're growing up? And you're missing out on memories because you're over here still answering calls and working business. At the end of the day, if you die, who's going to be there? Your kids, your family, your friends, the people that you shortchanged that time for.

Jeremy Burrows · 16:48

Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I get that a lot from assistants where it's like, my executive keeps emailing me at 2 AM on Saturday or you know, noon on Sunday. And I'm like, okay, well, did you reply to them at 2 AM on Saturday? Did you reply to them at noon on Sunday? Or did you just figure it out when you got to work on Monday?

Me'chelle Degree · 17:14

Yeah, that part. That part. Because what you're doing is you're training them how to treat you. You're training them that it's okay to call you on Saturday. I even have been in church and my phone's going off and I just turn it off. I'm in church. I'm not answering that. It's not— it's not going to be the end of the world. And it goes back to the same thing I asked, like, um, if a company is having issues or they had layoffs, I mean, at the end of the day, then what? You're going to be mad because you're going to want to tell them, I gave up this holiday, or I did this for you, and I did this for you. You did that by choice. You did it by choice.

Jeremy Burrows · 17:56

Well said, Me'chelle. Well said. And yeah, I really appreciate you taking a few minutes to share your wisdom and sharing a little bit of your story. What's kind of one final thought that you want to share with assistants listening before we wrap up?

Me'chelle Degree · 18:13

I'll give you one. As I told you before, I'm the resilience coach. So I talk about the resilience compass. And that compass has 4 points. Any strong compass has 4 points. Mine is purpose. purpose, the passion, the people, and the practice. And everybody knows your purpose is your North Star— what truly matters to you and what expectations need to be renegotiated for it to become your purpose. Your passion is what restores you, what gives— makes you— gives you joy. What do you love? And then the people who support you. I always tell everybody, my tribe is my vibe. My tribe is my vibe. It keeps me going. And then the practice is going to pretty much be, you know, what are your daily habits? What are you doing to get this emotion? So what I would like to leave all the exec— um, eminent assistants with and executives with are purpose, passion, and people. Know the priorities. Know the priorities. What is it? You might have to set the priorities for them. The passion— protect your joy. Protect those things that matter and make sure you hold them where they need to be. and decency and in order. Know the structure. And then the people— set, set healthy boundaries around you. Still do the job, do a great job, but just make sure everybody knows the boundaries. And then practice it. Build in recovery time for you to regroup and reset to start it all over again. So if you do those 4 things and you do it daily, you'll still be resilient, you'll still lead, and you will enjoy the holidays.

Jeremy Burrows · 19:49

Perfect. Awesome. Well, what's the best place for people to reach out and say hi and learn more about what you're up to?

Me'chelle Degree · 19:58

They can go to my website, mechelledegree.com. That is all E's. M-E-C-H-E-L-L-E degree, D-E-G-R-E-E. They can also reach me via email, mechelle@thirddegreesolutions.com. And again, that's my name, Mechelle, M-E-C-H-E-L-L-E at the@ sign and spell third, T-H-I-R-D, not the number, degree, D-E-G-R-E-E, and solutions with the S dot com. Those are the best ways to reach out to me. I'm on social media as Coach Me'chelle or Me'chelle Degree, as well as LinkedIn.

Jeremy Burrows · 20:40

Perfect. Well, I will put all those links in the show notes as well at leaderassistant.com/402. And really appreciate you being on the show and hope you have a good rest of your holiday season and keep doing what you're doing.

Me'chelle Degree · 20:55

Thank you, Jeremy. Glad to be here.