by Kandi Wiens for Harvard Business Review
“It’s not you. It’s your job!” That’s become one of my favorite conversation starters when my coaching clients and workshop participants tell me they’re burned out. In addition to suffering from the low energy, low motivation, and low work performance that are characteristic of burnout, many of them carry unnecessary guilt or shame, assuming they’re somehow at fault for their own work-related stress and burnout.
Research has established, however, that burnout is primarily the result of psychologically hazardous factors that occur at your workplace. (So no, it isn’t just an individual problem; it’s an organizational issue.) More specifically, burnout happens when there’s an ongoing mismatch between the conditions an employee needs to support their well-being and their best work, and what their organization actually provides. Not being given the resources or time you need to manage your workload, for example, or working in an environment where you have insufficient control and autonomy, are known burnout triggers.
In my work as a researcher and executive coach, I’ve worked with hundreds of people across industries who’ve experienced this debilitating workplace syndrome. Some of them are able to identify what’s contributing to their chronic workplace stress and learn how to advocate for themselves with their leaders to remediate those issues and/or take the time they need to recover and regain their equilibrium. Others, however, miss the signs they’re headed toward the danger zone because their experience doesn’t “fit the profile” of what they think burnout looks like or because they’re responding to their workplace stress in old ways that worked in the past but don’t fit the current situation. No two experiences of burnout are exactly alike, however, and recovery requires that you pinpoint the unique workplace conditions that are contributing to your stress.
One way to do this is to use your self-awareness skills to tune in and discover what your experience of burnout is trying to tell you — indeed, what it’s been trying to tell you all along. Here are some of the vital and lesser-known messages that burnout can reveal, and what to do about them.
You’ve outgrown your role.
While work demands that outstrip your capacity to meet them are a known cause of burnout, work stress can actually result from feeling chronically underutilized as well, or from feeling that your efforts just aren’t being applied in the right context. If you’re persistently restless, bored, directionless, disengaged, or not challenged at work, it’s likely you’ve grown beyond your current role and are ready for the next phase of your career.
Often, that will mean leveling up, but burnout could also be a signal that it’s time to explore a new career altogether. My own experience of debilitating burnout was a wake-up call: It was time to leave my exhausting consulting career and pursue a dream to earn my doctorate and go into research and teaching.
Engage in some self-reflection: What career would make you feel motivated, engaged, and energized? Identify the role that supports your continued growth and effectiveness, and take the first step in pursuing it.
This is not what you signed up for.
A perennial issue my clients grapple with is the disconnection they feel between what they expected when they were hired and what they actually experience at work. In occupational psychology this is known as a breach in the psychological contract with your organization. It can result in distrust, disengagement, and compromised performance, and if these conditions persist, they can devolve into cynicism and burnout.
Pinpointing exactly where your expectations aren’t squaring with your experience is key to resolving this dangerous disconnect. Is it your workload? Your day-to-day responsibilities? Your work culture? Your compensation? Next, determine why it occurred. Is miscommunication to blame? Did you take on extra responsibilities after a coworker left? Is it an organizational issue, such as restructuring or new leadership? Are you a victim of the well-known experience of scope creep?
Speak with leadership about clarifying your role, responsibilities, and expectations, and work together to identify a set of shared objectives and goals that honor what’s important to you. Keep those lines of communication open — ongoing talks with leadership ensure that you remain in alignment.
You’re expected to over-index on work.
Work cultures that glorify and reward overwork, expect their employees to be “always on,” and encourage personal sacrifices for work are breeding grounds for burnout. But not only is the old “rise ‘n’ grind” mentality unsustainable, it isn’t even effective: Research has consistently shown that chronic overwork leads to a decrease in productivity, higher absenteeism and turnover, poorer health, and burnout. One recent study showed that compared to a work week of 40 hours, the risk of burnout doubles when hours exceed 60, triples when hours exceed 74, and quadruples once a person works 84 or more hours per week.
When this happens, it’s time to put your priorities back where they belong: on your own well-being. Communicate and maintain your boundaries regarding when you are (and importantly, are not) available, and resist the temptation to check in after work hours. Examine your tasks and see where “the three Ds” could apply: What can you delegate, de-emphasize, or discontinue?
Find ways to engage in regular periods of rest and renewal where you fully disconnect from your job and reconnect with family, friends, and personal activities you enjoy. Taking time to decompress and recharge interrupts the stress cycle and prevents work-related stress from becoming chronic and taking us into the danger zone of burnout.
Your work culture doesn’t align with your values.
Values mismatches always cause stress and inner turmoil because they threaten us at a level that’s fundamental to our identity. When that happens, it’s very difficult to find meaning and purpose in our work. There are obvious examples, such as being expected to act in ways that violate your moral code, but subtler values mismatches can be just as damaging when it comes to increasing your risk of burnout.
One of my senior-level clients, for example, found herself on the fast track to burnout after a new CEO pivoted away from the company’s long-time strategy of organic growth and implemented a strategy of aggressive acquisitions that often came with mass layoffs. This executive didn’t face any changes to her workload she couldn’t handle, but she fundamentally disagreed with the CEO’s “scorched earth” attitude toward layoffs, and found herself feeling increasingly demoralized and disengaged. Eventually, she worked with a recruiter to find a new role.
Values mismatches should never be ignored. If you want to remain in your role and it’s possible to reach an acceptable solution, talk to leadership well before your well-being is compromised. If there is no possible resolution, or if values mismatches stem from a work environment that allows or ignores unethical behavior such as stealing, cheating, lying, deception, exclusion, or unfairness, your best solution is to create an exit strategy and leave.
Your workplace is toxic.
The McKinsey Health Institute found that the single biggest driver of negative employee outcomes is toxic workplace behavior. Employees experiencing high levels of toxic behavior at work were eight times more likely to experience burnout symptoms such as exhaustion, reduced ability to regulate emotional and cognitive processes, and lack of engagement, and burned-out employees were six times more likely to quit within three to six months. Recent data from MIT found that a toxic corporate culture is more than 10 times more likely to predict company attrition than employee compensation.
“Toxic behavior” is something of a catch-all term, but it refers to behaviors that leave you feeling belittled, disrespected, intimidated, unsafe, or undermined. At work, it can take the form of harassment, unfair treatment, cutthroat competition, manipulation, gossiping, gaslighting, unethical behavior, or abusive management.
Importantly, you need not be directly affected by toxic behavior to suffer from its ill effects. Research shows that witnessing toxic behavior results in psychological harm and low morale. Employees who work in toxic environments often feel overwhelmed, distrustful, and cynical, and become disengaged as a form of self-protection.
If you’re burned out from working in a toxic work environment, don’t waste your time trying to advocate for culture change, hoping that colleagues’ toxic behavior will improve, or counting on self-care strategies to make your job tolerable. In the immediate term, protect yourself by doing whatever you can to reduce your exposure to toxic coworkers. But as with unresolvable values conflicts, your first and best form of self-care is to develop an exit strategy and leave.
. . .
You never have to settle for being a victim to the experience of burnout. Your own experiences and emotions provide trustworthy data that can reveal what’s contributing to your workplace stress and leading to burnout. Using your self-awareness to pay attention to and act on that information allows you to take back some of the control and agency that burnout has claimed, and opens up a path to restoring your well-being and reconnecting with your enthusiasm for work.
