learning leadership through lighting a wood fire 🌱

(4 minute read)

Hi! Welcome to Our Best Work Weekly, a newsletter from Healthy Pour where you'll get weekly tips on creating a healthy workplace, becoming a more compassionate leader, and cultivating a regenerative relationship with work. 

Last week, I had the pleasure and privilege to escape to a cottage with my dog, Barley, to relax, read, and make some broths and soups to enjoy in the coming weeks. This cottage also had a wood-burning stove. Having seen family members quickly start a roaring fire in one of these things, I thought, “How hard can it be?” 

I grabbed a bit of starter, tore off a piece of one of the cardboard boxes I had used to transport fresh food, set it all on fire, threw a piece of firewood on it, and then watched it promptly go out. Even the little starter block didn’t stay lit.

Well, shit. 

I had no idea what I was doing. 

What followed was an hour and a half (and all my cardboard boxes) to sort out how to light this thing and, even more challenging, keep it lit. But I did it. Through excessive failure, I figured out how to use the hatchet and mallet to split off smaller kindling for the starter and cardboard to light. I figured out how to position the kindling so it lit the larger pieces of wood I split. I gently added more firewood so the embers beneath would stay hot enough to keep everything going. 

And, of course, on my rural escape away from all things business and work, all I thought about was leadership and my EMBERS & FLAMES burnout prevention program, not because I was feeling anxiety about it, but because its functionality was illuminated before my eyes.

When I developed EMBERS & FLAMES, I thought the acronyms were so clever. I was pleased with myself! But lighting that fire drove home just how appropriate the metaphor is. (We’re not doing modesty in 2025, folks. Share your wins loud!)

EMBERS (Emotional & physical well-being, Managing stress, Boundaries & balance, Evaluating goals & values, Rest & leisure, and Social support) are what we need to be well and able to engage in work healthily. It’s the foundation. If an organization comprises individuals who are not well—who cannot effectively manage their stress, don’t have boundaries, etc.—that will naturally embed itself in the organization’s culture. These EMBERS are primarily for the individual to manage because they’re so personal, but the organization must also make these factors accessible. That’s where the FLAMES come in.

The organization is responsible for FLAMES (Fairness, feedback & development, Locus of control, Alignment of purpose & values, Manageable workload, Emotional resources, and Social support). These are systems-based, structured, and codified into the organization’s policies, procedures, and scaffolding. FLAMES, in its entirety, is a work design and culture strategy that prevents toxicity and burnout culture while cultivating a healthy, human-centered, and regenerative workplace.

My original thinking when building the program was, “Oh, how clever! You need the EMBERS to start the FLAMES!” but building that fire solidified how important both were for the healthy functioning of an organization. Both people and the organizational systems must be healthy in order to to feed each other. 

Of course, I could have just poured lighter fluid on the thing and called it a day, but that doesn’t mean the fire would have lasted the hours I needed. I would have been left with charred wood, not a fire. Many organizations rely on the lighter fluid, so we have burnout cultures. Toxic.

I believe the method in which we light a fire is where leadership comes in.

I had watched someone else expertly build a fire, so I assumed I could also do that and failed repeatedly. Is that not how so many of us started our leadership journeys?

I then tried to light the fire with starters but didn’t do anything to keep it going. “You can do this. We believe in you but won’t provide you with the resources to do it well.” How often do we see that in the workplace?

I watched YouTube videos of people starting fires, but what I needed to do was stay with the kindling, watch it, adjust it, and feed it to get it moving. I needed to actually practice. I needed to tend the fire in front of me. Once it was on its way, I could step back and add more firewood when it was ready. Success.  

Have a very Happy New Year, and see you next Monday!