Burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It occurs when you feel overwhelmed and unable to meet constant demands. Burnout has both a human cost and a business cost and is better prevented in the first place than managed when it does occur.
As a leader, you need to spot the signs of burnout in yourself and others at an early stage and take steps to address both the symptoms and the causes. In this chapter, you find ten mindful ways to reduce the risk of burnout in yourself and those around you.
Identifying the Symptoms of Burnout
The best way to reduce the risk of burnout is to identify the symptoms and take action before things escalate to burnout stage.
In a report published in 2001 (‘Job Burnout’ by Christina Maslach, Wilmar Schaufeli and Michale Leiter), three key symptoms lead to burnout (see also Figure 20-1):
Exhaustion: Depletion of emotional resources to cope with the current work environment leading to a stressed-out, overwhelmed employee
Cynicism: A distant attitude toward a job leading to a disgruntled employee
Inefficacy: A reduced sense of personal accomplishment leading to a stressed-out employee with a cynical attitude who has given up trying
FIGURE 20-1: When these symptoms combine, the result is burnout.
Answer the following questions to see whether you or those around you may be suffering from burnout.
Does every day feel like a bad day?
Does it feel like a waste of energy to care about your work or home life?
Do you feel exhausted all the time?
Do you feel that the majority of your day is spent on mind-numbingly dull tasks and activities?
Do you feel that the majority of your day is spent on tasks that are overwhelming or feel never-ending?
Do you feel that nothing you do makes a difference or is appreciated?
If you answered yes to the majority of these questions, you may be experiencing or approaching burnout and need to seek some professional support and help.
Regularly practicing mindfulness has been proven to reduce the risk of burnout and may make you aware of the signs at an earlier stage. However, if you’re acutely suffering from burnout and haven’t practiced mindfulness before, you may not be in the best state of mind to benefit from it and may need to take steps to regain your balance and equilibrium before starting to learn mindfulness.
Recognising the Causes of Burnout
A number of work-related factors (see Table 20-1) can lead to burnout. The good news is that you can activity manage most of these factors and reduce their risk.
People with stacks of papers on their desk, a huge to-do list and a look of panic or manicness on their face
Ensure that job demands aren’t excessive or unreasonable and/or provide support to help them regain a sense of control.
Conflicting job demands
Employees who work hard but often achieve little, constantly juggling tasks, often ‘losing the plot’, becoming distracted and unable to focus
Encourage employees to plan their work better, working through one task at a time rather than attempting to unsuccessfully multitask.
Role ambiguity – a lack of adequate information to do the job well
Employees who are constantly working hard but fail to meet targets and/or achieve what’s expected of them
Review employee job descriptions and amend if unclear. Provide a mentor if appropriate. If no job description exists, involve the employees in writing one.
Lack of appropriate resources
Employees who may have had improper training and/or inadequate resources to do their job effectively and who may be struggling to get work done, using outdated equipment
Provide training and appropriate resources to help employees work more efficiently.
Lack of social support
Employees new to the role with an absent line manager or co-workers who don’t support them, or those who feel ignored or ostracised
Lack of support from managers is a major cause of burnout. Ensure that all employees receive adequate and appropriate support.
Lack of feedback on performance
Employees who don’t know how well or badly they’re performing and don’t know what’s expected of them and how to achieve it
Informal or formal feedback is important – ensure that all employees know whether they’re on track, and if they’re not, what they need to do to rectify matters.
Lack of control of work
Employees who are told what to do and are unable to mold or shape the way in which their work is done, or employees who are never or rarely involved in the decision-making process.
The less involved employees have a sense of control over their work and decision-making processes, the higher the rates of burnout. Involve employees as much as you can in decisions that directly impact their work
Burnout costs associated with prolonged staff absence are much higher than the cost of temporary staff to cover the absence. Prevention is better than cure.
Providing mindfulness training and weekly drop-in sessions on a voluntary basis can help employees manage themselves better and reduce their risk of burnout.
Avoiding Work Mismatching
Work mismatching (see examples below) can be a major contributor to burnout.
Common work mismatching includes
Employees being overloaded with work
Employees working hard on tasks they’re ill-equipped to perform
Employees with insufficient control over the resources needed to do their work effectively
Employees with insufficient authority to pursue their work in the most effective manner
Keep a mindful eye out for work mismatching, and take steps to redress the balance as soon as possible to reduce risk of burnout.
Making Work More Rewarding
For staff to feel engaged and motivated, they need to feel that their work is sufficiently rewarding. A lack of appropriate recognition or reward for work can lead to burnout.
If an employee feels that they’re receiving insufficient financial rewards (salary or benefits commensurate with their achievements), they may start to look for alternative employment. If they can’t find alternative roles that reward them better financially, they may feel trapped, and resentment and frustration may escalate, leading to burnout.
Employees who feel that their hard work is ignored or not appreciated by others may suffer from a lack of social rewards. Even the least sociable, most introverted employees still need to feel that they’re a part of a larger social group and that their work is appreciated by others. Feeling ignored or unappreciated can be a cause of great unhappiness, and their effectiveness will suffer as a result.
Even the most hardworking and committed employees may quit or experience burnout if they feel that their work is underappreciated having once again been routinely denied a pay raise or promotion due to budget cuts. In times of financial austerity, companies may not be able to offer staff the pay raises and financial rewards they’d like to.
Mindful organisations find other ways to reward employees, This may include the freedom to work at times and locations that suit them, providing training, secondments, or mentoring to help them develop. Mindful organisations may also publically recognise and celebrate success and strive to provide a stimulating and fun working environment that promotes both productivity and well-being.
Increasing Your Self-Efficacy
Self-efficacy is concerned with your belief in yourself and your ability to successfully accomplish and manage goals and tasks that have meaning for you. The stronger your perceptions of self-efficacy, the less stress you’re likely to encounter, even in challenging situations. Situations will cause you less stress if you believe that you can cope.
The most effective way to enhance your self-efficacy is through performing tasks that give you a sense of mastery then pausing to fully acknowledge your achievement and the emotions, thoughts and bodily sensations this evokes. The successful achievement of goals, however small, ignites your brain’s reward circuitry, releasing feel-good hormones into your bloodstream and encouraging your brain to seek new challenges and ways to excel.
You may also wish to try simply observing a work colleague accomplishing something meaningful. Doing so can make you feel more positive and can help you to increase your ability to meet any challenges you may face.
Identifying the Essentials You Need from Your Work
It’s worth spending a little time to consider to what extent your current job fulfils your needs. The happier and more fulfilled you feel, the less risk you have of suffering burnout.
The Harvard Business Review recently surveyed hundreds of executives, identifying six key things that a dream company would provide. The following six questions are inspired by their responses:
Does your current job allow you to be yourself?
Does your current job keep you fully informed as to what’s really going on?
Does your current job magnify your strengths?
Does your current job give you daily work that is rewarding?
Do you work for a company where stupid rules don’t exist?
Does your company stand for something meaningful?
How does your company measure up? Few companies meet all the above criteria, but this list is a useful starting point that will help you to carve out your ideal job role.
Encouraging Creativity
Burnout has a negative impact on your performance, increases your tendency for rigid thinking, and decreases your ability to think accurately, flexibly, and creatively. Forward-thinking companies encourage creativity, even amongst those staff that aren’t formally in ‘creative’ roles.
For example, Google lets its employees work on anything they want for one day a week so long as they’re still in the office. Google call this ‘Innovation Time Off’. By giving employees the freedom to work on their pet projects for one day a week, they encourage staff to be creative. As a result, many new product launches have originated from Innovation Time Off, and Google has been listed many times at the very top of Fortune magazine’s list of best companies to work for.
Mindful leaders encourage creativity in their own work and the work of others. If work temporarily provides you with no form of creative outlet, it’s important to find one at home – whether it’s gardening, completing DIY projects, dressmaking or painting landscapes. Be creative with your creativity – try something new and have fun!
Taking Good Care of Yourself
At work, it’s easy to feel as if you’re on a treadmill and always have something to do. Sitting down and ‘doing nothing’ may not seem like the answer, but it can be.
When you become infected with the busyness virus, you gobble down your lunch without even tasting it while you keep on working. You arrive at work earlier and earlier ‘to avoid the traffic’ and stay late because ‘it’s vital I get this finished’. In the long term, this is unsustainable.
Although thinking that you must always be seen sitting at your desk and working hard may seem seductive, your body isn’t a machine. It doesn’t matter how much caffeine and sugar you pump into your body as fuel, eventually the abuse of sitting down for long periods of time each day, or dashing around for 18 hours a day will catch up with you and physically stop you from working.
Mindful leaders know when to take a break to recharge themselves and regain equilibrium. It may look like they’re ‘doing nothing’, but in reality, mindfulness exercises increase your brain activity and can be hard work! However, their investment pays off by making them more productive when working and getting more done in less time.
Getting Support
Leadership can be a lonely job. It can be difficult to find people to confide in, and you may at times feel that asking for support is a sign of weakness.
The closer you get to burnout, the more you may want to bury yourself in your office and avoid contact with workmates. Maintaining social connections takes time and effot, but supportive people are the best way to protect yourself from burning out.
Many mindfulness evangelists who used to have high-powered demanding jobs are keen to share their burnout story with others to prevent others from the same fate. Mindfulness can certainly help you to recover after experiencing burnout, but it’s better that you get professional support to learn mindfulness before your experience burnout.
Taking Time Out to Appreciate the Good
As you discover in Chapter 3, humans tend to suffer from a negativity bias. In simple terms, your brain pays more attention to things it perceives as potentially harmful or threatening, but the good things in life pass you by unnoticed. Smiling triggers a release of feel-good hormones into your bloodstream, rapidly reducing your blood pressure and releasing stress.
The next time you experience something nice, pause to appreciate it and take a few moments to fully benefit from it. Paying additional conscious attention to the good things in life, however small or trivial they may seem, can help you gain balance and perspective in your working life. What’s more, it’s free of charge and takes very little time. Enjoy!
Burnout costs associated with prolonged staff absence are much higher than the cost of temporary staff to cover the absence. Prevention is better than cure.
Many mindfulness evangelists who used to have high-powered demanding jobs are keen to share their burnout story with others to prevent others from the same fate. Mindfulness can certainly help you to recover after experiencing burnout, but it’s better that you get professional support to learn mindfulness before your experience burnout.