"You can't burn out if you have never been on fire..." Jeff Schmidt
2005-01-12
Katarzyna Kloskowska-Kustosz
International Business Voice, Styczeń 2005
We all wish our job was meaningful; we want the things we do to be important and useful. We put plenty of time and energy into our work, as long as we have the strength... When we start running out of energy we lose our inner peace. Our frustration grows... Our professional effectiveness drops. We are facing professional burnout syndrome. Ironically, those who are strongly motivated, ambitious and really engaged in their work are the ones most prone to this syndrome...
Professional burnout is a state of being physically, emotionally and intellectually exhausted, resulting in chronic tiredness. It is accompanied by a negative attitude towards work, people and life, feelings of helplessness and hopelessness in their situation, and frequently many psychosomatic symptoms. Moreover, professional burnout is accompanied by an unwillingness to take any new action.
How to develop burnout workers
Traditionally,
the development of employees in many organisations is understood as
acquiring new skills and knowledge with the aim of increasing the
employee's effectiveness. Usually this is done through various types
of trainings.
However, it is worth remembering that for complete,
rounded development it is necessary to maintain equilibrium between
all spheres of life important for us. Thus, equipping workers with
the skills to help them regain this balance may be a good solution.
These can be the skills from the areas described below.
Managing stress
The inability to manage stress is one cause of professional burnout. A typical working day is full of stressful situations, one after another. If we do not learn to manage the resulting tension, the consequences will be multiplied. An ambitious worker wanting to fulfil their tasks well has every chance of getting caught in a vicious circle. So it is essential that workers be taught how to minimise stress-induced tension.
‘Me' as the source of stress
An additional source of stress comes from increasing work pressure by ourselves. It may result from unrealistic wishes and expectations towards ourselves and others. For example, ‘I want to be better than all of the others', ‘I want to do everything perfectly', ‘I want all my employees to like and respect me'. We cannot fulfil such expectations, of which we are even often unaware. It is good to exchange them, through conscious work, with more realistic assumptions. What is necessary here are the skills within the areas of assertiveness and setting oneself goals.
Cognitive paralysis
People
working long within a certain profession or in a certain post very
often start to feel the state known as cognitive paralysis - ‘I
cannot think of anything new I could do to do my job better'.
People
with long practice sometimes face a situation where it is very hard
for them to reach the resources they have. Finally they do not know
what they do not know yet, what they cannot do and start behaving
like they did not know what they already know!
At this stage the
techniques of creative problem solving and the ability to use them
become extremely important.
Relations with others
We
are very often subject to loneliness as a result of too many purely
professional relations, contacting all day long lots of people with
whom it is necessary to maintain professional business relations.
This great number of business contacts instead of bringing
satisfaction becomes a real burden. We do really miss true,
supportive relations.
In this case it is also advisable to
strengthen the skills of being assertive. Managing negative emotions,
accepting criticism and saying ‘No', these are skills that let you
observe your relations with others and introduce more equilibrium
into your life.
Individual coaching for managers
Individual
coaching with a holistic approach may be the answer to the problems
of professional burnout among managers. This is a type of coaching
involving not only knowledge and skills, but also the system of
views, values and habits of acting and thinking, the meaning of
balance between personal and professional life, the way the relations
with others are built, and managing emotions.
Each of these
factors can influence the effectiveness of our work in a stimulating
or restricting way. The changes during this individual coaching are
introduced through discovering the causes of ineffective behaviours
and searching for new, more effective and satisfying solutions. If we
concentrate on the resources we possess, then with the help of a
professional coach the positive changes we observe have the chance of
becoming really permanent changes.
Summary
Professional burnout is characteristic of all professions having one common trait - contact with other people. The more ambitious and involved the employees, the more endangered they are by professional burnout. It is good, then, to have a close look at yourself and your people, recognise the symptoms early and counteract them immediately. Otherwise, the costs of desisting may be very high.
I wish you all the very best in quickly spotting the earliest signs of burnout - and managing them well.