For Mental Health Month, I thought it would be relevant to focus this newsletter on a topic that an increasing number of people encounter and yet many struggle to understand, namely, “Burnout”.
There was once a young girl who was distressed about having to deal with life’s many challenges. One day, her concerned mother called her to the kitchen and placed several items on the table in front of her – a hard-boiled egg still in its shell, a cooked carrot, a coffee bean and a cup of freshly made aromatic black coffee. Her daughter was puzzled, but the mother explained:
“Earlier, I placed the egg in boiling water, a really hostile environment for it! In response, the egg’s soft interior hardened. Its soft centre became hard and rigid, never to regain the tender heart it once had.
‘I also placed the carrot in boiling water and it behaved differently. After a while, its strong, crispy structure collapsed, becoming tasteless and mushy with no strength to support itself.
‘The coffee bean was faced with even more difficulty! It was ground into powder before being put into boiling water! But then it did something remarkable. It changed the colourless, hostile water into this rich, brown, wonderfully aromatic liquid you can see in the cup.
‘So don’t be like the egg by letting your soft gentle heart become hardened by external circumstances. And don’t be like the carrot, becoming weak and collapsing at the mercy of the environment. Instead, be like the coffee bean. It faced the most hostile challenge of all, yet it managed to influence and even transform its terrible circumstances into something beautiful.”
In common with all parables, this story gives us cause to pause and reflect. In this particular case, it’s about how we respond to what we perceive as adverse or challenging circumstances that invoke an experience of stress.
For me, this parable implies that we have a choice – that we can choose how we respond and that it’s simply a matter of deciding. Perhaps that’s true in many situations. But is it always as simple as making a choice? Can we really apply a ‘choosing strategy’ in all stressful situations and get through to the other side unscathed? I’m not so sure.
In preparing this article, I searched the internet for ‘burnout and stress’ and got almost 47 million results! Clearly, an awful lot of people have thought about this! There are many published works on this topic, including a plethora of well-researched scholarly articles.
By all accounts, it seems that stress-related issues are on the rise worldwide and are presenting increasingly serious problems to health, relationships and business. Arguably, it’s already reached pandemic proportions.
What the research shows
- The American Psychological Association’s (APA) 2022 Trends Report states that “burnout and stress are at all-time highs across professions.”
- The APA’s 2021 ‘Work and Well-being Survey’ of 1501 adult workers showed that 79% had experienced work-related stress in the month before the survey. Almost 60% reported negative impacts of work-related stress, which included lack of interest, reduced motivation or energy (26%); lack of effort at work (19%); cognitive weariness (36%); emotional exhaustion (32%); and physical fatigue (44%) which was a 38% increase since 2019.
- The Global Burnout Study (January 2022) found that employee burnout increased by more than 5% in the previous 12 months. 40% of those surveyed from 30 countries were experiencing burnout. This had increased from 29.6% in 2020. Women in middle-management roles had the highest level of burnout among all job levels.
So what exactly is ‘burnout’?
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), burnout is a syndrome resulting from workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It’s characterised by feelings of energy depletion leading to exhaustion, increased mental distance from one’s job, and negative or cynical feelings about one’s job, leading to reduced professional efficacy. (WHO, 2019)
The Mayo Clinic says that burnout is a special type of work-related stress that affects physical and mental health. It results in a high level of exhaustion involving a reduced sense of accomplishment and even loss of personal identity.
Common Symptoms of Burnout
Burnout is generally thought of as a syndrome, so it’s likely that a range of symptoms will be present in people suffering this condition. These can include:
- Experiencing excessive stress.
- Becoming highly cynical, critical or negative at work.
- Feeling that you must drag yourself to work and then having trouble getting started.
- Frequent sadness, anger, irritability and impatience with colleagues, customers or clients.
- Lacking energy results in fatigue.
- Difficulty concentrating.
- Reduced satisfaction with your own achievements.
- Feeling disillusioned about the job.
- Using food, drugs or alcohol to feel better or simply not to feel.
- Altered sleeping habits – insomnia or excessive sleep.
- Unexplained headaches, stomach or bowel problems, or other physical complaints.
People experiencing burnout are prone to isolating themselves from family and friends and may have frequent angry outbursts. Some become irresponsible with finances and unable to fulfil personal and professional responsibilities.
All of this can lead to an increased propensity for illness, high blood pressure, type-2 diabetes and even heart disease.
It paints an alarming picture. If we want to find solutions or ways to prevent burnout, it may be helpful to look at the typical causes.
So, what causes burnout?
Burnout can have several causes, all of which have implications for the way people are treated at work. Some of these can be relatively easy to correct, while others require longer and deeper interventions designed to influence organisational culture, leadership behaviour or team dynamics. Remember that burnout is generally not an immediate reaction to a sudden change in external circumstances. It’s mostly the result of a build-up of stress over a longer period of time.
Some of the commonly reported causes of burnout are:
Lack of Control – feeling unable to influence decisions that affect you at work. This may extend to having too few resources to do your job to the expected standards.
Unclear Job Expectations – ambiguity or lack of clarity about what you’re meant to deliver or the level of authority you have.
Dysfunctional Workplace Dynamics – for example, poor work relationships with colleagues; constantly being micro-managed; feeling undermined by others, or being bullied.
Extremes of Activity – either monotonous and boring or chaotic work environments where continual energy is needed just to stay focused, all of which leads to fatigue.
Lack of Social Support – resulting in feelings of isolation or loneliness at work or in your personal or family life.
Work-Life Imbalance – where work takes up most of your time and energy to the exclusion of family and friends.
Our Work with the Five Lens
The Five Lens assessment can give a strong indication of a person’s level of stress. When a client’s Emotional Resilience (Lens 2) is in the low or very low zone, the experience of stress is almost always high. This lens incorporates what is essentially a ‘stress scale’, and we’ve found that it has a high degree of accuracy. It’s especially accurate when the respondent’s Emotional Resilience is reported at low or very low levels. More often than not, this goes hand in hand with lower levels of Personal Mastery (Lens 1). When you see these reduced levels in Lenses 1 and 2, it’s almost certain that the client is functioning at low levels of integration relative to their primary Enneagram style. In fact, we use a particular formula to combine the scores in these first two lenses to provide an integration index used to determine how the Enneagram style is described in the client’s feedback report.
When working with clients who are deeply stressed, it’s important to proceed with care and compassion. It’s essential to create a safe space to help them feel comfortable to share their experience. In some instances, there may even be a need to refer them to a professional who can offer competent therapeutic support.
So, is it as simple as choosing?
When clients find themselves in this state, it seems unfair and unreasonable to expect them simply to make a choice and suddenly behave like the “coffee bean” rather than the “egg” or the “carrot”. There is no internal switch that can immediately snap them out of their distressed state. They often need plenty of non-judgemental, safe space where they feel accepted and heard. They need peace and quiet for a while where they can escape the feeling of being bombarded with tasks, deadlines and overwhelming expectations. They probably need emotional support and help in building useful coping mechanisms along with the strength to implement them.
Let’s always be ‘Client-Centred”
When people are deeply distressed, it’s often not the best strategy to simply plough through the Five Lens Personal Feedback Report (PFR) with them. We need to be client-centred, listening to their current experience and how stress is affecting them and clarifying what the underlying cause actually is, while continuing to create a safe, confidential, and supportive space for them. And always being ready to refer them to other competent professionals if the need arises. Once they’ve transitioned into a more recovered state, it may then be appropriate to work with them developmentally in coaching, using the FIVE LENS framework and Personal Feedback Report as valuable developmental tool and methodology.
