PAULA DAVIS
on beating burnout 96
The pandemic has made stress and anxiety familiar terms for just about everyone. But what does a true case of burnout look like?
Part of the problem with the burnout conversation is that we often misapply the word, or use it too loosely. The World Health Organization has updated its definition to clarify that this is something that happens within the context of work. Put simply, burnout is the manifestation of chronic workplace stress.
Everyone has everyday work and life stressors to deal with, and this stress exists on a continuum. One way to know if you are moving out of the stress zone into something that looks like burnout is to understand the three dimensions of burnout. The first is chronic physical and emotional exhaustion. We often just stop right there in defining burnout, and as a result, we misapply self-care and stress-management strategies to tackle exhaustion. But there is more to it. Burnout also entails a sense of chronic cynicism. People start to bug you, particularly your clients or the people you are called upon to work with, serve or help. All of a sudden their calls come in and you think to yourself, ‘Do we really have to have this call? Can’t you figure this out on your own?’
The third dimension of burnout is a sense of lost impact and disengagement from your work that leads to a ‘ Why bother? Who cares?’ mentality. If we just have a bad day,
sometimes we’ll say, ‘Ugh! I’m so burned out!’, but in reality we are not using the term correctly unless all three elements are present.
What are the root causes of burnout?
A simple formula is ‘Too many job demands and too few resources’. Job demands are all of the things that require consistent effort and energy, and you could probably list 25 of them pretty quickly. Job resources are the aspects of your work that are more motivational and energy giving in nature. The research points to a core five that leaders, teams and individuals really need to pay attention to as potential drivers of burnout.
The first driver is a lack of autonomy, meaning you have little choice or say in how your day unfolds. You can’t say Yes or No to projects, you have little decision-making discretions, high workload and high pressure, and often there is not enough staffing. This is the single biggest driver for burnout.
The second driver is a lack of support from leaders and colleagues. Basically, you’re in an environment where you just don’t feel supported. Perceived unfairness is a third driver. If you’re in an environment that lacks transparency, where there is arbitrary decision-making or favouritism going on, that is an important job demand to pay attention to.
The fourth driver is a values-disconnect. This is what leads people to think to themselves, ‘I expect certain things from my workplace, and my organization just isn’t providing them.’ The fifth one is something I see quite often, and that is a lack of recognition. People report that they are not being thanked for their work. Nobody is noticing that they’ve put in extra time or gone the extra mile, and that really starts to wear people down.
You believe the solution to burnout is systems based. How so?
When I first started looking into burnout (after experiencing it myself ), I was focused on, ‘What did I do wrong? What could I have done differently?’ But the research is clear — and is backed up by my own conversations with people who have burned out: The environment in which you work is a big driver and influencer of whether or not burnout occurs.
Of course, walking into an organization and saying, “You have to fix your culture” is not going to work; changing
Teams that debrief on a regular basis experience less burnout.
an entire culture is very slow and expensive. So, where do we need to look within organizational systems to gain traction on dealing with this issue?
In my experience, that entry point is teams. I think of teams as mini cultures within the broader organizational culture. If you focus on teams, you can talk very directly to individual contributors and leaders and prescribe strategies that will help fortify the team. For me, this became a sweet spot to hit lots of different constituencies within the organizational system and start to tackle this issue in a systemic way with holistic strategies.
You have said that many of the tools and frameworks required to prevent burnout are ‘tiny noticeable things’ (TNTS). Please explain.
One simple thing teams can start doing right away is to embrace the practice of debriefing. You can do this at different points within the time frame of a project, a deal or whatever you’re working on. At pivotal points in the project, and especially at the end, simply come together to reflect and ask, ‘What were we intending to do here? Did we achieve our goals? Which aspects went well, and what could we change going forward?’