🎙️Transcript: AA-ISP - The Great Resignation

AA-ISP: "The Great Resignation, Mental Health, and Employee Retention"
Host/Moderator: Kat Andruha (Chapter President, AA-ISP Silicon Valley) and Andre Anderson (Former Chapter President)
Panelists:
- Sean Kawaguchi (Board of Directors, TCR - Nonprofit Mental Health Organization; Recruiting Team, Workato)
- Jeff Riseley (Founder, Sales Health Alliance)
- Susan Warden (North America Sales Development Leader, Asana)
- Gabrielle Blackwell (SDR Manager, Gong)
- Ralph Barsi (VP, Global Sales Development, Tray.io)

📺 View on YouTube

Summary

This powerful and deeply personal AA-ISP Silicon Valley chapter meeting confronts the mental health crisis that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent Great Resignation phenomenon affecting sales organizations.

Moderator Kat Andruha opens with radical vulnerability, sharing that she has "two-day-old hair" from studying for her MBA until 1:00 AM while managing a global team, two kids, and trying to take vacation—illustrating that even chapter presidents and high performers reach their breaking point.

This sets the tone for an unprecedented conversation where sales leaders openly discuss burnout, anxiety, stress management, and the toll that 18 months of operating in crisis mode has taken on individuals and teams.

Ralph Barsi particularly moves the audience by forgoing his professional introduction to share personal losses including bandmates to suicide and heart attacks, emphasizing "I am you. I am one of you."

The panel explores how the pandemic revealed deep unpreparedness in the sales profession for navigating intense, sustained uncertainty and change.

Jeff Riseley introduces the critical concept that most people tried to power through the pandemic using willpower—a resource designed for short sprints like the fourth quarter of a basketball game or the final days of a month, not 18 months of continuous crisis.

He explains willpower as an "elastic band" that stretches when we constantly tell ourselves "I can't" or "I have to," and eventually snaps back violently, creating the burnout and resignations we're witnessing at scale.

The panelists discuss how traditional interventions like two-week vacations and wellness days are insufficient to offload the accumulated stress, which is why organizations are seeing more extreme responses like sabbaticals and mass departures.

Throughout the discussion, the panel emphasizes that mental health support requires systemic cultural change rather than superficial perks.

Sean Kawaguchi shares how Workato's CEO invites employees to ride Peloton together, modeling vulnerability from the top.

Gabrielle Blackwell discusses Gong's experience directly navigating the Great Resignation and implementing responsive strategies.

Susan Warden explains Asana's mission-driven approach that brings people "outside of themselves toward the greater good."

The conversation repeatedly returns to the importance of assuming positive intent, creating psychological safety, recognizing that people's baseline has fundamentally shifted, and building genuine community rather than transactional work relationships.

The session concludes with unanimous agreement that the conversation could easily continue for two hours and plans to create a "part two" focused on actionable strategies for supporting each other through continued uncertainty.

BIG Takeaways

• The Pandemic Revealed Widespread Unpreparedness for Sustained Uncertainty – Jeff Riseley delivers a profound insight that COVID-19 exposed how unprepared the majority of sales professionals are when it comes to navigating intense, prolonged change and uncertainty.

Most people defaulted to surviving the pandemic using primarily willpower, which is fundamentally the wrong tool for this job. Willpower is designed for short sprints—pushing through the fourth quarter of a basketball game, the final days of a sales month, or a single intense project deadline. It's not meant to be deployed continuously for 18 months of operating in crisis mode.

This misapplication of willpower is central to understanding why traditional wellness interventions like two-week vacations and wellness days are proving insufficient to prevent the burnout and resignations we're witnessing.

Organizations and individuals need to develop entirely new muscle memory for operating sustainably during extended periods of uncertainty rather than constantly relying on brute force to power through.

• The Elastic Band Theory: Understanding the Great Resignation Snapback – Jeff introduces a powerful metaphor for understanding the mental health crisis and mass resignations: willpower functions like an elastic band that stretches every time we tell ourselves "I can't have that" or "I have to do this."

Using the example of someone dieting without clear purpose, every denial stretches the band further—"I can't have that dessert, I can't skip the gym, I can't miss this meeting, I can't take a break."

Eventually, when the person finally allows themselves to "cheat," the elastic band doesn't just return to its starting position—it snaps back past the original point, creating an overcorrection that undoes all progress. This is precisely what's happening at scale with the Great Resignation.

People spent 18 months stretching their willpower elastic bands, and now they're snapping back past their original baseline, leading to extreme responses like sabbaticals, career changes, and resignations.

The best performers during the pandemic reframed their mindset from "I can't" to "The world is operating at 30% right now—what can I do?" This subtle shift prevents the elastic band from stretching to unsustainable lengths.

• Vulnerability from Leadership Cascades Throughout Organizations – Ralph Barsi's decision to forgo his professional introduction and instead share deeply personal losses—including bandmates who died by suicide and heart attack, and his brother-in-law's death at age 42—sets a powerful precedent for authentic leadership.

By declaring "I am you. I am one of you. I go through the same stuff that everybody goes through," Ralph demonstrates that true leadership isn't about projecting invincibility but about modeling vulnerability and shared humanity.

Sean Kawaguchi reinforces this by describing how Workato's CEO invites employees to join him for Peloton rides, creating transparency and connection from the top down.

This vulnerability cascade matters because it creates psychological safety for team members to acknowledge their own struggles without fear of judgment or career consequences. When leaders pretend they have it all together, team members hide their struggles and suffer in silence.

When leaders openly share their challenges, it gives permission for everyone to be human and seek support when needed.

• Assuming Positive Intent Is the Foundation of Compassionate Culture – Jeff Riseley emphasizes that both leaders and individual contributors must approach every interaction—whether a Slack message that "rubs you the wrong way" or a missed deadline—from a baseline assumption of positive intent.

This principle becomes especially critical during times of sustained stress when everyone's baseline has fundamentally shifted. That colleague who seems short in their communications might be having a terrible day, dealing with personal crisis, or simply exhausted from months of operating at unsustainable levels.

Rather than taking things personally or making negative assumptions, assuming positive intent creates space for compassion and understanding. This doesn't mean accepting poor behavior indefinitely, but it does mean approaching situations with curiosity rather than judgment—asking "What might be going on for this person?" before jumping to conclusions.

This practice prevents minor conflicts from escalating and helps teams weather difficult periods together rather than fragmenting under stress.

• People Are Seeking Meaning and Purpose, Not Just Paychecks – The Great Resignation isn't primarily about compensation or benefits—it's fundamentally about people reassessing whether their work matters and whether they feel fulfilled.

Jeff explains that after 18 months of sustained crisis, people are asking deeper questions: "Do I matter? Does my work have meaning? Am I making a contribution that aligns with my values?"

This explains why companies with strong mission-driven cultures like Asana, which Susan Warden describes as bringing "people outside of themselves toward the greater good," are better positioned to retain talent.

Similarly, organizations that help employees see the direct impact of their work and connect daily tasks to larger purpose experience less turnover. This isn't about corporate slogans or surface-level mission statements—it's about genuinely helping people understand how their role contributes to something meaningful.

Leaders who can articulate this connection and regularly remind their teams of the "why" behind the work create stronger engagement and retention than those who focus solely on metrics and compensation.

• Traditional Wellness Perks Don't Address Systemic Culture Problems – The panel consensus is that superficial wellness initiatives like meditation apps, wellness days, or free snacks don't address the root causes of burnout and mental health crises in sales organizations.

Gabrielle Blackwell shares lessons from Gong's direct experience with the Great Resignation, emphasizing that effective responses require systemic cultural changes rather than band-aid solutions.

This means examining fundamental questions: Do people feel psychologically safe bringing their whole selves to work? Can team members admit when they're struggling without fear of being perceived as weak or uncommitted? Are managers trained to recognize signs of burnout and have conversations about mental health? Do performance metrics account for sustainable pacing or do they incentivize unsustainable sprinting?

Sean Kawaguchi describes creating separate onboarding channels for new recruits because he recognizes the overwhelming isolation of starting remotely—this kind of thoughtful, proactive support addressing real pain points matters far more than generic wellness offerings.

True cultural change requires leadership commitment, manager training, policy adjustments, and sustained focus rather than one-time initiatives.

• Communication Styles and Boundaries Require Explicit Agreement – Andre Anderson raises the critical but often overlooked point that effective teams explicitly discuss and align on communication preferences rather than assuming everyone operates the same way.

Some people prefer Slack, others email, some want synchronous video calls, others need asynchronous communication to manage their energy. Rather than expecting team members to adapt to a single prescribed style, high-functioning teams make these preferences explicit—"I'm big on Slack, don't email me" or "I need 24 hours to respond to complex questions."

This becomes especially important in distributed, remote-first environments where you can't read body language or catch casual conversations. Sean emphasizes that as leaders and individual contributors, "it takes work" to understand these preferences and honor them, but this investment prevents miscommunications, reduces friction, and helps people feel seen and respected.

Creating space for people to articulate their needs—whether it's communication style, working hours, or boundaries around after-hours contact—demonstrates respect for their autonomy and prevents the kind of boundary violations that lead to resentment and burnout.

Transcript

Jess Farmer (00:06):
That was great. That was awesome. So hi everyone. Thanks for joining the Silicon Valley chapter meeting. My name is Jess, I work with the AA-ISP, so I'm on the team.

We'll give it a few more seconds. There's still some people pouring in and then we'll get started. All right, let's just go for it. So that was—I don't know if some of you heard that. We had some great music going. That was awesome.

So welcome to the Silicon Valley chapter meeting. It's on a great topic. There's a great panel lined up. I only have two announcements and then I'll hand it off.

So here, AA-ISP has a few fantastic upcoming webinars, so make sure, check it out, share it with friends who you think might benefit. And lastly, but not least, we are so excited. Our in-person annual leadership summit is back this March, and if you register before November 12th, we have an early bird discount.

So great time to get together, learn, share, network, check out all the cool tools and all of our different tech providers. So with that, I will go ahead and hand it over to Kat.

Kat Andruha (01:20):
Hello everybody. My name is Kat Andruha, and I am the chapter president of the AA-ISP Silicon Valley. Thank you so much for joining us.

We have a ton of our chapter board members on the line—Penelope, Michael Tso, Michael Mishler, Andre, Nicholas, everybody wave your hands high in the air. You just don't care. Say hello to the team.

The AA-ISP has been a part of my life, I don't know, since about 2009. So it's really helped me hone in on my best practices. So we're really excited that all of you are here. And today we're specifically talking about the great resignation and mental health and what's going on post pandemic.

Just to kind of give you guys some insight, I've got like two-day-old hair. I've been up till 1:00 AM studying for my MBA stuff. I've got two kids, a husband that works full-time, also trying to take time off to go on vacation.

Kat Andruha (02:22):
And I manage a team globally. So I'm at that point too, where I am up to here mentally as well. So it happens to everybody on this call. I don't care how super amazing you are, how robotic you can possibly be, we all reach a point.

So we are here to share some best practices around what you can do to de-stress, but also help your employees, help your company, help your team, and help yourself move further up in that success ladder by managing stress and anxiety and your mental wellbeing. So with that being said, I am going to pass it off to our amazing panel to introduce themselves to you and here they are. Sean, I'm going to pass it right off to you.

Sean Kawaguchi (03:04):
Sounds great. Alright. It's really nice to meet everyone. I'm Sean Kawaguchi. I'm part of the board of directors over at TCR. It's a nonprofit mental health organization, and I also—I'm on the recruiting team over at Workato.

So just a little background about me: helping building out the recruiting team, helping spread the word about mental health. It takes up a lot of time. I consider myself to be a pretty big mental health advocate, just seeing how much work goes into being in sales and recruiting and just being in tech overall.

And so having the chance to really work with everybody here, very excited to meet all of you and yeah, excited to get this panel going.

Kat Andruha (03:50):
Jeff, you want to?

Jeff Riseley (03:50):
Yeah, for sure. No, nice to meet everyone as well. And great intro, Sean. My name's Jeff Riseley. I'm the founder of the Sales Health Alliance, and I created the Sales Health Alliance to really focus on creating more awareness around mental health and sales and really empowering sales teams to reach peak levels of sales performance through better mental health.

So everything I teach is around stress management, anxiety, how do you bounce back from rejection and navigate things like burnout. So I'm really excited to be part of this conversation. It's definitely required.

There's been a lot of data that's been popping up, those scary numbers that we've all been seeing about how crazy the situation has gotten for a lot of us. So yeah, looking forward to contributing and having a great panel discussion with everyone here. I'm pumped.

Kat Andruha (04:34):
Great, Susan.

Susan Warden (04:37):
Hi everyone. My name is Susan and I run the North America sales development team at Asana. And Asana does have a big focus on mental health and wellbeing, provides the tools and so on, as well as just their mission and focus, which kind of brings people outside of themselves toward the greater good. So I'm definitely looking forward to this discussion.

Kat Andruha (05:01):
Thank you, GB.

Gabrielle Blackwell (05:03):
Hey everyone. I'm GB or Gabrielle Blackwell. I'm an SDR manager at Gong. I think one of the things I'm really excited about is talking about some lessons learned from this year as Gong has definitely not been—the great resignation has not been a stranger to Gong.

So some of the ways that we've responded, some of the encouraging things that we've seen from the SDRs on our team as well. So I'm also really excited to learn from everyone else on the panel too.

Kat Andruha (05:27):
Thank you and definitely last but not least, a regular to the AA-ISP panels. Ralph.

Ralph Barsi (05:34):
Hey, good morning. Good afternoon, everybody. So I'm not looking at the slides, I'm actually looking at the gallery view and I see some very, very special people on there who have joined today—people that I've known for 30 years, and it's just an honor to be able to be here with them.

I'm not going to share the professional background. Instead, I decided to go the personal route. So I am a husband of 25 years. I met my college sweetheart 30 years ago and we celebrated 25 years of marriage last month. We have three beautiful boys—two of them are in college, one of 'em in high school.

I've been a drummer my whole life in a rock band that actually lost two of our vocalists. One of them committed suicide, one of them died of a heart attack at age 38. In 2014, I lost my brother-in-law to heart failure at age 42.

And I am you. I am one of you. I go through the same stuff that everybody out there goes through. And if I can impart any wisdom today and shed any light, then I've done my job.

Kat Andruha (06:46):
Thank you for sharing, Ralph. I love that you took it down that personal path. Let's dive a little bit deeper with our moderator, Andre Anderson. Also not a stranger to the AA-ISP. He actually was the chapter president when I joined as a little SDR back in 2009. Not going to age us at all. Andre, you want to take it away and let's start this conversation.

Sean Kawaguchi (49:28):
And so that being said, leadership just from the top down, everyone's very transparent. Even our CEO, he is like, "Hey, if you guys want to hop on Peloton and ride with me," that kind of culture has been really key to Workato.

And so I have always tried to do that wherever I've gone. And I always want to make sure that everyone feels heard. And so even the people that I've brought on recently from a recruiting standpoint, I created a separate channel for them because I know something that people really struggle with going into a new company that I've heard from my friends and people that are acquaintances is that they feel overwhelmed and they're like, "Hey, I'm just sitting here in a room by myself trying to get acclimated to this new job."

And one of the last things that I want them to worry about is how to fit into the culture. And so that said, I think that I've seen it here in the Bay area—not everyone is always like, "Hey, let's be friends." But I am trying to be one of those people that is changing that. So if anybody wants to be friends, whether we work together or not, my door is always open to all of you.

Andre Anderson (50:47):
Again, sometimes you have work friends, work worlds. That's cool, as long as it doesn't feel toxic. You're being that kind of agent to empower is a key piece, which is the core of the question.

And I think you brought up an interesting point in terms of just zeroing in on communication styles, knowing where people want to listen because some people are Slack, some people are email or any combination thereof. It's our job as leaders, but also as individual contributors to like, "Hey, I'm big on Slack, don't email me." So it takes work.

That way you don't end up as one of these statistics that we showed earlier. Now one thing I want to point out, so thank you for that, Sean. We only have six minutes left and I think it's fitting that we have Jeff round out the question and this question as we end this could easily be two hours.

Andre Anderson (51:43):
I think someone commented with Stella, I was like, can we do a part two on this? And I would like, yes, I have six questions. We only went through two of the questions and I've written down three pages of notes.

So rather than running my mouth, we'll end with Jeff and then maybe we can get back with Kat and put time on the calendar to—can you revisit this because this is clearly resonating on so many different levels. But Jeff, for you, I mean from what you do and what you've observed and even in your own business, I mean, what's the best way to bridge that gap and to create that community?

In fact, this could be a good mic drop answer as we round out our panel today. I mean, what do you recommend individual contributors to do to create that community, but also as leaders as well?

Jeff Riseley (52:35):
Yeah, so I'll do my best for a mic drop moment. No pressure. Lots of pressure. No, I think the main things are—it's just really both ways. Leaders, individual contributors, approaching them from the mindset that, look, we have to assume positive intent in every single situation that we encounter.

Whether it's the Slack message that comes through and we're like, "Well, that rubs me the wrong way," but let's assume that that person might just be having a bad day. We want to be compassionate to each other.

I think what didn't come up in the conversation or that I'm seeing in sort of this great resignation conversation that isn't being talked about enough is I think that COVID has really shown how unprepared the majority of us are when it comes to navigating intense change and uncertainty and things like a global pandemic.

And I think a lot of us defaulted to getting through the pandemic using primarily willpower.

Jeff Riseley (53:30):
And that's really not an effective way to push through what we're going through because willpower is meant to use in short spurts. It's to push through the fourth quarter of a basketball game or a sports game to get you to win. It's used to push through on those final few days of the month to get through.

It's not meant to be used for 18 months to just get through. And the way you want to think about willpower is you want to think of it like an elastic band. So the best way to think about that is if you think about someone who's dieting and doesn't really know why they're dieting and they go to the grocery store and in their head, their dialogue is, "I can't have that, I can't have that, I can't have that. I can't have that."

And every time they say "I can't," that elastic band is going bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger.

Jeff Riseley (54:14):
And then when they finally can have something, they sort of break their diet and they cheat. What happens? The elastic band snaps back to where it started, past the point of where it started and all of a sudden you're back. You're not able to offload the stress.

And I think that's what's happening right now. The best people that I've seen navigate the pandemic have seen this is, "Look, the world's operating at 30% right now. What can I do?" But the vast majority of people are saying "I can't."

And what we're seeing with this great resignation is we're seeing that snap back where two-week vacations, wellness days—it's not good enough to offload the stress that we've all been dealing with. And it's snapping back past that point, which is why we're seeing things like sabbaticals, people making reactionary decisions of changing companies. A lot of it is due to that in that search for more meaning, more purpose.

Jeff Riseley (55:01):
They want to matter in their lives and they were feeling unfulfilled in their work and they're trying to navigate that on a daily basis. And it's being compassionate that, like I said, going back to what I started with is assuming that positive intent and being compassionate that look, the vast majority—as we were unprepared for the crazy shit storm that we all went through.

A lot of us are experiencing that snapback, which is really uncomfortable, and we feel guilty and we feel ashamed for doing that. And it's being compassionate that that's probably happening within our teams, not only from leaders, but also from individual contributors to have that understanding and to work through that together.

Andre Anderson (55:36):
Right. Yeah, no, that's a really interesting point. We've all been doing this through brute force and yeah, that's good for a quarter in push, but not for 18 months, right?

Jeff Riseley (55:48):
Yeah. As soon as that internal dialogue is, "I can't. I can't, can't," or "I have to, have to," it's that you're using that willpower and it's at some point going to snap back and I think that's what we're seeing at scale right now.

Andre Anderson (56:01):
No, I mean you taught me a lot about willpower. I was like, "Well, okay, I guess I'm not getting Jack in the Box for lunch today. I'm going to do a cold shower. It's going to offset the Peloton ride I did earlier, but today was going to be a cheat day."

But taking care of each other, being compassionate. I think another point that was brought up earlier in terms of having perspective—we have a mechanism by which we can watch this with the company-provided laptops and we have fresh water and it looks like everyone is healthy. But maybe we're alive and functional.

There's so much to be grateful for and I think a lot of it can translate into what we do day to day, which again, the job doesn't define us. So we're kind of ending the conversation today as we started, right, coming from that personal level. But I wish we could have more time, Kat, what should we do? Should we make a part two?

Kat Andruha (56:59):
The panel—it looks like most of the people are in, so what we just need to do is just lock down a date and we can definitely do this again. This was so inspiring. Sometimes just sitting here and learning from each other is amazing.

And next time, what we'll do too is really just hone in on maybe if there's any audience questions on follow-up, what have you been doing? Let's all chat with each other and see what did we do? Let's make it an action plan, right? We learn, we change, and we grow, and let's see what we can all do together to support each other.

Penelope just threw everyone's links up in the chat. Please connect with any of these amazing panelists. If you have more questions or you have more areas that you want to dive into, do it. The world is your oyster. It's up to you to decide that for yourself.

So we're all here to support. So thank you, Andre, for an amazing moderation. Thank you, Penelope for all of your help. Thank you to all of our chapter members. Don't forget, come be a member too. We need more of you guys out there. So thank you again to all of our panelists. Amazing.

Andre Anderson (58:06):
Thank you. Thank you, panelists. Yay. Thank you. Thanks. See you. Yes, bye.