Understanding and Extinguishing Burnout

Are you suffering from burnout without even realising it like most people do until it becomes debilitating?

We tend to think of Burnout as something that is a recent phenomenon, caused by the ever-increasing pressures of life and work plus the speed of technological advancement.

We’re always on and always working it seems, and the more we do the more we are expected to do so no wonder we’re burning hard and burning out.

But it’s not just a modern phenomenon, burnout has been around and formally recognised for over 50 years! It was originally a phrase used by US air traffic controllers as far back as 1971 who got ‘burn out’ a form of exhaustion due to the extreme pressures of their roles. This was recorded against them as “a decline in quality and quantity of work production” so, you know, before #EmployeeWellbeing was a thing!

The parallels between what they claimed was causing it and what we recognise today are pretty startling, but we’ll come on to those in a minute.

The mainstream adoption of the word “burnout” as a single word, and in its currently understood format, is widely accredited to psychologist Herbert Freudenberger who, in 1974, described it as something that was particularly prominent in people from the caring profession (doctors, nurses etc)

To understand it more let’s like to look at What causes Burnout then understand the different elements and How it presents and finally How to help prevent it as individuals and organisation looking after our employees

So without further ado lets dig in..

What Causes Burnout?

There are believed to be multiple contributing factors from 4 main sources, Individual, Workplace, Society and Psychological / Emotional factors. It could be any or many of these acting upon a single person and causing them to ‘burn’ and can often go hand in hand with Imposter Phenomenon with either one triggering the other

Individual Factors include

1. Perfectionism: Where we set excessively high standards for oneself and are overly critical of mistakes which leads to chronic stress.

2. Overcommitment: Taking on too many responsibilities, both at work and in personal life, can result in overwhelming stress and exhaustion.

3. Lack of Boundaries: The inability to set boundaries between work and personal life can lead to constant work-related stress and lack of personal time (as well as arguments at home!)

4. Lack of Self-Care: Neglecting physical health, sleep, nutrition, and relaxation can deplete energy reserves and make coping with stress more difficult.

5. Low Resilience: Limited coping mechanisms or poor stress management skills can exacerbate feelings of being overwhelmed. These are taught and learnt skills that many people don’t have

Workplace Factors

1. High Workload: Consistently high demands and unrealistic deadlines can lead to prolonged stress and burnout. We think we’re running up the ladder but we’re just running ourselves down.

2. Lack of Control: Feeling powerless or lacking control over work-related decisions can contribute to feelings of helplessness and stress.

3. Insufficient Rewards: Lack of recognition, inadequate compensation, and minimal opportunities for advancement can diminish motivation and increase dissatisfaction.

4. Poor Work Environment: Toxic work culture, lack of support from colleagues or supervisors, and poor communication can contribute to stress.

5. Role Ambiguity: Unclear job expectations and responsibilities can cause confusion and stress.

6. Lack of Resources: Inadequate tools, training, or support to complete tasks can lead to frustration and increased effort to meet demands.

7. Work-Life Imbalance: Excessive work demands that interfere with personal time and responsibilities can lead to chronic stress and burnout.

Societal Factors

1. Economic Pressures: One of the key drivers for many is financial instability, job insecurity, and economic downturns can increase stress and contribute to burnout.

2. Cultural Expectations: Societal pressures to achieve and succeed, coupled with stigmatization of mental health issues, can prevent individuals from seeking help.

3. Technological Overload: The often-quoted constant connectivity and the pressure to be always available through digital devices can blur the lines between work and personal life.

4. Social Isolation: Lack of a supportive social network can increase feelings of isolation and stress, making it harder to cope with work-related pressures.

Psychological / Emotional Factors

1. Chronic Stress: Prolonged exposure to stress without adequate recovery can exhaust physical and emotional resources.

2. Emotional Exhaustion: Persistent emotional demands, such as dealing with difficult clients or patients, can lead to emotional depletion.

3. Cynicism and Detachment: Developing a negative or detached attitude towards work and colleagues can be both a cause and a symptom of burnout.

A pretty comprehensive list that is almost impossible to avoid in one way shape or form for the vast majority of us, and looking down that list it’s easy to see how one of these can easily lead to another and the chain getting longer and heavier unless we can break it.

How does it typically present?

Herbert Freudenberger took his afore mentioned findings and worked with Gail North to identify the 12 commonly understood stages...

1. Compulsion to Prove Oneself: Often occurs at the start of a new job or role where individuals feel the need to prove their worth. It progresses into feeling like we are not good enough even when we are succeeding in the role.

2. Working Harder: In an effort to meet expectations, individuals push themselves excessively, neglecting their own needs. We become a ‘yes’ person but can’t fit all the work in so the hours get longer and harder to try and accommodate it.

3. Neglecting Our Needs: Personal care, sleep, exercise and relaxation are sacrificed for work. This can lead to physical and emotional exhaustion and keeps on getting worse with many illnesses including Cancer accredited to it

4. Displacement of Conflicts: Problems and conflicts are dismissed or rationalized instead of being addressed. This can result in increased irritability and mood swings. Deep down we know something is wrong but ignore it or are overwhelmed by it so turn to work to try and bury it

5. Revision of Values: Values change to focus almost exclusively on work, neglecting hobbies, family, and social activities. The moral compass starts pointing south so only work matters and our self-worth is measured by it

6. Denial of Emerging Problems: Individuals become intolerant and blame others for their problems. They view themselves as indispensable and reject the notion that their stress levels are problematic. Empathy goes out the window and cynicism takes its place

7. Withdrawal: Social withdrawal increases as the individual feels overwhelmed. We may start avoiding friends, family, and social activities. Seclusion and relying on guilty pleasures then become the norm.

8. Odd Behavioural Changes: It’s obvious to the world but still not to us, our behavioural changes become noticeable to others and a concern to family and friends alike. Individuals may become increasingly cynical, hostile, or detached.

9. Depersonalization: A sense of detachment from one's work and others develops. Individuals feel disconnected from their job and their own personal needs. We feel like an outsider watching our own life and detached from everything, now we’re just going through the motions with a negative indifference to everything

10. Inner Emptiness: Feelings of emptiness and unfulfillment dominate. To cope, individuals may resort to overeating, substance abuse, or other compulsive behaviours. Self-worth has plummeted it all feels pointless, we feel worthless and daydream about quitting

11. Depression: Symptoms of depression emerge, including hopelessness, apathy, and a sense of inefficacy. Life loses its meaning and joy. Emotional and mental exhaustion are constantly battering us and we feel lost.

12. Full Burnout Syndrome: This final stage is characterized by total mental and physical collapse. Professional help is often necessary to recover from this stage. This is the hardest to work back from and often requires a long time to heal from

It is important to note that these ARE NOT always sequential, we don’t always tick these off starting at 1 and ending at 12 as Burnout becomes more severe. We can have any or all of these and different parts will affect people to different degrees depending on their circumstances.

So far so doom and gloom, and let’s be honest it IS doom and gloom when you are suffering with this, 70% of executives are considering leaving their jobs or the workplace due to wellbeing issues according to a recent Deloitte Survey.

So, what can we do, well that brings me nicely on to...

How to help prevent Burnout

Let’s look at this from 3 different angles because there are many ways to prevent or heal from burnout. Were we will cover

• Personal Strategies
• Professional Strategies
• Organisational Strategies

Because we can help ourselves, we can control our work environment and companies can be doing a lot more to support it too!

So how do we take more care of ourselves?

Personal Strategies

1. Prioritize Self-Care: Ensure adequate sleep, exercise regularly, and maintain a balanced diet. And on top of that for the next level practice relaxation techniques such as meditation, deep breathing, or yoga. There is only one you, so take care of that precious cargo.

2. Set Boundaries: Establish clear boundaries between work and personal life. Learn to say no to additional responsibilities when you're already feeling overwhelmed, a good tactic here is to ask “what would you like me to stop doing to take this on” that stops most people in their tracks!

3. Take Regular Breaks: Take short breaks throughout the workday to rest and recharge, get out early in the morning to get some vitamin D and reset your body and then make sure lunch is a non-negotiable. On top of that holidays should be a non-negotiable and ALWAYS taken WITHOUT work interference to disconnect completely and recharge you.

4. Pursue Hobbies and Interests: Engage in activities that you enjoy outside of work. Make time for hobbies, social activities, and interests that bring you joy and relaxation. Find your thing and create some time just to be in the moment and enjoy it.

5. Manage Time Effectively: Use time management techniques to prioritize tasks and avoid last-minute rushes. Block book activities in your diary and focus on one thing at a time to nail it and get that little dopamine hit that builds you up for the next task. And break tasks into smaller, manageable steps to reduce overwhelm.

Professional Strategies

1. Seek Support: Communicate with supervisors and colleagues about workload and stress levels. And don’t hesitate to ask for help or delegate tasks, when necessary, I mean your boss doesn’t so they? If you don’t feel able to do that get a Coach / Mentor who can give you that safe space to have those conversations and work through coping and winning strategies.

2. Create a Positive Work Environment:Foster a supportive and collaborative workplace culture. Encourage open communication and provide opportunities for professional development.

3. Set Realistic Goals: Set achievable and realistic goals for yourself and your team, think SMART. Break large projects into smaller milestones to make progress more manageable, and whatever you do celebrate the wins no matter how small as the momentum builds and creates a wave to surf forward on.

4. Develop Coping Mechanisms: Learn and practice stress management techniques that work for you. When you feel it gripping you find ways to bring yourself into the moment and reset your mindset. Consider professional counselling or Coaching / Mentoring if you feel overwhelmed.

5. Promote Work-Life Balance: Encourage flexible working hours or remote work options if possible, it is the new normal and so much better for most people's mental and physical health. Support policies that promote work-life balance, such as limiting after-hours emails and calls.

More than anything it is about being AWARE that this is happening and being actively engaged in removing it from our lives, having control is the easiest way to make the demons disappear and for the colours to start coming back into a grey feeling life.

So that is what we can so but what about companies, how can they help us, or if you are a Senior Executive or Business Leader what can YOU be doing to help both yourself and others in the company?

Organizational Strategies

1. Monitor Workload and Expectations: Regularly review and adjust workloads to ensure they are manageable. Set clear expectations and provide the necessary resources to meet them. Make sure that individuals have SMART targets that are agreed by all not a ‘top down’ directive

2. Encourage Professional Growth: Provide opportunities for training, career development, and skill-building. Be that boss you wish you’d always had! Recognize and reward accomplishments and contributions, and make it a companywide announcement so when one wins we all win and the ‘feel good’ is shared

3. Implement Wellness Programs: Offer wellness programs that focus on physical and mental health. And not just the usual ‘tick box’ ones that are a vanity metric, real ones that employees actually want and appreciate like Reechus and The Office Massage (TOM) Ltd heck you could even offer your senior executives dedicated Coaching and Mentoring from Up Front Coaching & Mentoring Ltd to give them a safe mental space to problem solve and grow (cheeky plug there but it makes such a huge difference)

4. Promote a Healthy Work Culture: Encourage a culture of recognition and appreciation. Address workplace conflicts promptly and fairly to prevent a toxic work environment. Develop Emotional intelligence in the management team to help ‘waterfall’ this throughout the entire business

5. Foster Autonomy and Control: Allow employees some degree of control over their work and how they complete tasks (working from home anyone?). Trust and empower employees to make decisions within their roles, a Leader should be there to support and grow the individuals within their responsibility, that way they grow and flourish.

We’ve looked at the cause, the symptoms and how to prevent or recover from it, and right now you’re thinking “that sounds too simple” and you’d be right as most of us CAN’T do this on our own.

I’ve honestly been there and, in a role I worked in, out of those 12 symptoms racked up an unhealthy 11. The scary thing is I didn’t realise it at the time, I thought it was ‘normal’ and that was what ‘high achievers’ and ‘business leaders’ just did. WRONG!

And worse still I didn’t realise that my narcissistic CEO was actually feeding off of it to get me to deliver more and take on more responsibility whilst they actively did less.

When I eventually left the role it took a while to unburn and come to terms with those ‘lost years’, but it subsequently lit another fire in me and one of my driving passions since has been to help others to NOT have to go through burnout or to pull them out of it if they are already burning.

You see it’s not something that we have to face alone, there is support and a way out that isn’t the ‘nuclear’ option, and talking about it is the first step to extinguishing it and a sign of strength not weakness.

I’ve helped many Senior Executives and Business Leaders come out the other side into a better life with a bright future that isn’t burning. If you’d like to chat, I would be proud and honoured to see if we can do the same with you

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Jon Cox is a Coach and Mentor for Senior Executives and Business leaders with 20+ years of running and supporting companies at Board level. He also holds industry recognised accreditations which include (but are not limited to) Six Sigma, Kaizen, Lean and Lane 4.

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Website: https://upfrontcoachingandmentoring.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joncoxupfront/