Causes of Burnout
The foremost researcher of Burnout, Christine Maslach, has found six causes for burnout.
Workload We all know having too much work will cause exhaustion that leads to burn out, but how many know that having too little work can also lead to burn out? One time, I had wished to work less, and my workload fell by 40%, but I was bored out of my mind, and my managers didn’t want to be bothered to “deal” with me. Yes, it was just as stressful pretending to be busy as it was actually being busy!
Control It’s hard to be productive when you work in chaos. Even worse when work direction changes willy nilly causing good work to be thrown away as individuals are moved to new projects without warning. As an agile coach, I work with teams who were so completely change fatigued that they don’t even try to engage in the change any more, because they know the change will simply be undone in a few months, if not weeks, by leaders who constantly switch direction.
Reward Money and compensation are important, but even people who get paid very well burn out when they stop getting appreciation and recognition for their work. VPs, Directors, and high level individual contributors can often fall prey to this cause of burnout, because people stop saying thank you and CEOs don’t have time (or skills) to add the individual touch to performance management.
Community When surveying for the level of engagement in a workplace, the Gallup organization always asks if individuals have a best friend at work. Not having one is terrible for morale.
Fairness Unfair treatment in the workplace delivers daggers to the heart of productivity. Thinking beyond promotions and compensation, fairness can be captured in what one team I worked with said, “the team is really working, but stakeholders don’t see it that way. Putting in your all and its not good enough? The team is discouraged.”
Values This cause of burnout is the most difficult to diagnose, but if values do not align, it’s difficult to to tap into the indoor depths of creativity. I remember working with a large energy company and being ashamed to tell my left liberal friends who actively crusade against Big Oil, but inside of the organization I found a group of individuals who were dedicated to safety, sustainability, and care for the environment and the people working in dangerous locations, and those values fueled me to deliver great work. On the flip side, an organization whose mission is to deliver shareholder value does not easily align with anyone’s values, because that’s a flat and generic mission that doesn’t get people going home excitedly to tell their friends about their cool work.
Protecting From Burnout
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