SETTING HEALTHY BOUNDARIES IS KEY TO PREVENTING EMPLOYEE BURNOUT.
Workish (not-so-best practices) by Sandy Marshall is FP Work’s take on the absurdities of the workplace. We also get serious with real advice from business experts.
According to a not-soreal survey by the Workish University Business Review, today’s professionals are more drained than an iphone battery.
It’s the age of a new business blueprint. Corporations are racing to construct hybrid work arrangements faster than a Facebook redesign. Even though remote workers are scrambling to strategize from Cottage HQ, employee burnout is continuing to rise.
Now, more than ever, securing meaning and balance is essential at work. But identifying and preventing burnout is becoming mission critical: Team members might work overtime on investor plans for Meetings, Inc. while planning a trip on HMS Great Resignation.
Identifying burnout involves more than clocking project overtime. And with lessened visibility when managing relationships in remote work environments, colleagues won’t necessarily raise their hands once they’ve hit the limit.
For insights and advice around identifying and preventing employee burnout, Workish spoke with Impact Leadership Group’s managing partner Christine Robinson, and president Dave Robinson. They told us to avoid burnout it’s important to set healthy professional boundaries, lead by example, and stay connected to purpose and meaning.
Workish: First of all: what is burnout?
Dave Robinson: The definition of burnout has morphed since psychologist Herbert Freudenberger first coined the term “burnout” in the 1970s, to most recently how the World Health Organization
defines burnout as a syndrome. Now, the widely accepted definition includes three primary elements:
❚ A lack of meaning and purpose at work
❚ Feeling emotionally exhausted
❚ Depersonalization: a shift in how we experience our working relationships, from mutually satisfying to less connected.
In general, this means having far less patience and finding most people annoying. Christine Robinson: Burnout used to be understood as simply a function of overwork, or what we sometimes describe to our clients as “over-caring,” and therefore overdoing things. Over the last few years, our understanding has become more nuanced.
Most people can relate to the unrelenting fatigue that characterizes burnout, but the element that seems to increasingly plague many leaders is losing their sense of purpose. When there’s little meaning to make it all seem worthwhile, people start thinking about needing a change. Depersonalization can seem less obvious, but can sneak up on leaders and manifest in less social support and, over time, a lack of empathy for colleagues.
This can be costly to an individual, to their relationships, and to the organization. When you have multiple leaders operating from a similar place of burnout, the impact on corporate culture can become quite problematic.
Workish: How can we avoid burnout in the first place?
DR: It’s critical to know how to set healthy professional boundaries, recognize your limits and work within them. If we want to manifest a balanced working environment with healthy boundaries to enhance capacity, then we need to teach those we’re responsible for, and those we’re responsible to, how we wish to be treated.
For instance, if someone is feeling overworked, overloaded, or overwhelmed because they have more work than they can handle — and if they don’t say anything about it — they’re essentially sending an unspoken message that it’s OK to load them up like a pack-mule willing to do back-breaking work. People will continue overburdening them until they can’t take it. They “give in” to the workload until they have to “give up” due to emotional and physical exhaustion. CR: Adding a layer to this discussion, the emotional exhaustion many feel at work also comes from not living in alignment with their values, while simultaneously falling into default expectations or trying to please others. This is especially relevant for marginalized groups for whom the range of “accepted” behaviour is often narrower.
DR: When people start to experience burnout, it’s important they don’t suffer in silence. Having a confidante with whom to share what’s going on is tremendously helpful to mitigate isolation. Burnout as a form of biopsychosocial stress can impact a person’s ability to perform their job on multiple levels, and when left unchecked over a long period of time, can lead to or exacerbate other concerns around mental health and well-being.
Workish: What’s your advice for those looking to find balance this summer while simultaneously gearing-up for a busy hybrid work environment in the fall?
CR: Summer’s a great time to unplug, but it’s also important for us to recognize that we’ve all experienced an unbelievably difficult period. I would encourage people to allow themselves permission to feel tired, take time for extra rest wherever possible, and really refill the tank.
As we look to the promise of a busy fall, I remind our clients to focus less on the uncertainty and things they have no influence over, and try as much as possible to stay in the moment, focusing on the things we can control versus those we can’t. Let’s recognize we’ve gained skills in adapting to uncertainty over this last year and a half, which means we may be more ready than we think to take on whatever tests and celebrations the fall may have in store.
DR: Leaders need to remember that as many colleagues navigate a return to work after being away for so long, the mental health wave of the pandemic may just be getting started. Some people may have more social anxiety than ever before, especially those who experienced more personal burden through the pandemic or were already challenged or burnt-out going in.
When supporting others, focus on being curious versus critical. Everyone has had a unique experience, and patience is key. Whenever possible, be kind to others and gentle with yourself. We’ve got to fill our cups first before we can serve others.
CR: And a final point for leaders: consider the ripple effect and importance of the impact our example has on our teams. Are you the adaptable, empathetic leader they’ll want to follow? If you’re a senior leader, you likely have a lot of capacity ... but just because you do, doesn’t mean everyone who’s watching you does.
If that means pushing back on the tyranny of the urgent for the sake of your people, maybe that’s exactly the leader they need, especially in these times. This isn’t the time to push people harder, but to work with more heart.
Sandy Marshall (@Marshallsandy) is a Partner at Norman Howard, and a Chicago Emmy-nominated writer and producer. Got a topic for Workish to tackle? Email us at Fp_work@ Postmedia.com. You can follow Sandy at: twitter.com/ Marshallsandy or linkedin. com/in/sandymarshall/