Meet Tessa Kampen

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Tessa Kampen. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Tessa, so great to have you with us today. There are so many topics we want to ask you about, but perhaps the one we can start with is burnout. How have you overcome or avoided burnout?

Burnout is a big issue these days. I have clients who are experiencing it and every day I hear of more and more people taking mental health breaks. I am a “yes” person, which means I have a hard time saying no. I am a people pleaser and I’ve learned that I need to be ok with saying no to certain things or else I will over yes myself and that was making me feel overwhelmed. So that is the first thing, learning to say no. The other thing I discovered was that when we do work that brings us joy, we can decrease burnout up to 75%. So that is what I started doing – I learned and leaned into the things that bring me joy and I make sure I do those things every day. I know for some people, this may sound easier said than done, especially if their work doesn’t provide them this opportunity, but here is the interesting part – you only need approximately 20% of work or things that bring you joy to achieve this. So that could mean doing things that fill you up after work, or asking your boss to give you an opportunity to do things that bring you joy. There are many ways to do this.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I am so blessed to get to do the work that I do – I like to call myself and engagement catalyst who is on a mission to create a world where people are understood. Through leadership and team development training and consulting, I get to help create spaces of understanding so team members can feel valued, seen and heard and therefore increasing connection and collaboration. I started this work in 2021 and what I have realized is that most of us are misunderstood. We are misunderstood at work when it comes to our gifts and strengths, we are misunderstood in our communication, and these misunderstandings cause most of the frustrations we deal with on a day to day basis. What I love about this work, is that I get to help people understand themselves and others and through this work, I witness team members “seeing” each other for the first time. I get to witness guilt and judgement melt away by simply helping people to lead with understanding instead of assumptions. There is something really special about seeing two people who seem so disconnected and different finally say, “I understand you now”. This is why I get up each day. Helping people understand their gifts and strengths is a game changer for many of them. Most of us believe that we need to be well rounded and we’ve never taken time to uncover what we are really good at and what brings us joy. When I learned that a strength is something that makes us come alive, something that makes us feel strong, something that brings us joy and often times we are also good at it – I started investing more time into those things and not the things that drained me. And this has become my message – work on the things you love! Just because you are good at something, if it drains you – stop doing it! I really believe we can create change if people paused and understood themselves and others and this is the message I will continue to work on and bring to those I serve.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Flexibility, Focus, and Consistency.

Flexibility because things are constantly changing and if you are not flexible and adaptable, you will die. My best advice is to love your goal but don’t marry your plans. Being open to opportunities and pivots is what leads to success. There are opportunities all around us and not every one of them is meant for us, but they are meant to teach us something even if we don’t get the opportunity in the way we wanted it. I think the best way to develop this skill is to view everything as R&D – research and development. What I mean by that is that you can take something from each experience and use that to develop yourself for the next opportunity. Therefore remaining flexible to constant improvement and change.

Finding my focus has helped me in many ways but the most important way has been evident in my business. Trying to be all things to all people is a recipe for burnout and once I found my focus and stuck to it, not only do I feel more energized but I have grown my business and influence. I love to share and show others how to find their FOR. In order to be focused, you have to know what you want to be known for? Once I answered that question, everything changed. So my advice for anyone feeling like they need more focus in their life, answer the question:” What do you want to be known for?

Consistency compounds. We all know this, but I have experienced it. I am in the consulting business and that takes time because I believe in building relationships and as we know, that takes time. So it is really easy to get discouraged and not see fruits of your labor. But when you have a vision that is bigger than you are that pulls you forward like I do (creating a world where people are understood) you need to keep moving. I am consistent in my focus to learning more about what it means to be understood. I am focused on developing and cultivating those skills in myself. I am consistent in staying focused and not following the shiny objects. And I show up every day no matter what. I can’t wait to “feel” like doing it, I just have to do it and the feeling follows.

I really LOVE what I get to do, I feel like the luckiest girl on the planet. And perhaps that is why this doesn’t feel like work.

What would you advise – going all in on your strengths or investing on areas where you aren’t as strong to be more well-rounded?

YES!!!! I am a firm believer in developing your strengths, not your limitations as I have already shared. We don’t need more well rounded people, we need well rounded teams, families, etc but we need people to get really great at what they are good at. We grow the most synaptic connections in our areas of strength not in our weaknesses. And here’s the thing about strengths – they are things that make you feel strong, that energize you – not simply things you are good at. You can be good at something and hate it, or it drains you – therefore it is no longer a strength but a competency and I will even say a weakness. If it doesn’t energize you or bring you joy it is not a strength.

If I am weak at something, I can put in the effort to improve that area but I will still only improve slightly and it will take a really long time to get even mediocre at it – especially if I don’t love it. If I love doing that thing that I am not good at, I may actually be able to get good at it – but we typically do not love the things we are weak at. For myself, I am not strong when it comes to details. I don’t spend a lot of time reviewing my work, overlooking to make sure there are no mistakes, etc. It drains me in fact to spend time doing that. But I love being creative and sharing ideas. I can create systems to help me be more detailed but I won’t ever enjoy it and I would not get amazing at that, because that isn’t my gift. It is better to have someone take care of this for me who LOVES that kind of stuff and have them release their brilliance in that area, and I focus on my creative side and release that into the world.

I wish more people understood this and when they do it is a game changer for them, it hits a nerve and major AHA moments come from this new way of thinking. This was a big AHA moment for me as well when I learned the value of our strengths from my mentors. This has allowed me to release guilt and judgement on myself and others around things that I felt I should have been good at and it was only because I was comparing myself to others. This has been the biggest game changer for me and many of my clients. The sooner we stop thinking about what we “should” be good at and start focusing on what we are good at, what gifts and strengths we do have, the more fulfilled we will become.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.tessakampen.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tkampen211
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tessa-kampen-42673263/