What Leaders Completely Fail To Understand About Burnout
That Has Horribly Detrimental Long-Term Effects On Productivity And The Bottom-Line
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What Leaders Completely Fail To Understand About Burnout
That Has Horribly Detrimental Long-Term Effects On Productivity And The Bottom-Line
Without a Doubt, Burnout is the Largest Problem that Leaders are Facing in Today’s World.
How Bad is Burnout Impacting the Workplace?
Well, it is Currently Impacting Over 80% of the Workforce...
With Trends Expected to Get Worse.
Burnout is also Happening Worse for Younger Populations...
With some Reports saying that 85% of Millennials are in Burnout...
And 87% of Gen Z is in Burnout.
Then, what Happens to Productivity?
From the Research, We Know that People are Only Capable of Achieving 5% of their Productivity Potential while in Burnout...
And Productivity “Can” and “Does” Go into the Negatives when you Account for Mistakes, Coffee Badging, Active Disengagement, Insubordination, and Strikes...
Which are Far More Likely to Occur in Burnout.
Plus, it is Not like Burnout is a “New Concept”...
We’ve been Talking about Burnout as a Society since the 70’s.
That is 50 Years where We’ve “Known” About Burnout Existing...
Yet, it has Continued to Become “Significantly” Worse.
But Why?
How has it Become So Bad?
The Reason is that the Vast Majority of Leaders Completely Fail to Understand What Burnout Is.
Most People, even “Experts”, Believe that Burnout Is...
An Individual Work Problem that can Be Turned On and Off like a Switch.
The Solutions tend to Follow Something like this...
If You are in Burnout...
You Need to Go Fix It...
Perhaps by Doing Meditation or Taking a Vacation for a Week...
And then You are Expected to Be Back in Office Fresh as New!
But, “Clearly”, this Solution Does “Not” Work...
Because We See from the Data that We’ve been Doing this for 50 Years, but the Rates of Burnout “Continue” to Get “Worse”.
So...
What is it that Leaders are Failing to Understand?
Well, there are Three Aspects to this.
The First Failure in Understanding...
The Belief that Burnout is a “Work” Problem.
Does Work “Contribute” to the Problem?
Yes.
But is Burnout “Just” a Work Problem?
No.
Burnout is a Psychophysiological Problem that is Created from Chronic Dis-Stress...
And as I Always Say...
All Stress Adds.
It Does “Not” Matter “Where” Stressors are Coming From...
They All Matter Equally from a Psychophysiological Perspective.
Do You have Work Stressors?
That is Added to Your Total Psychophysiological Stressors.
Do You have Home Stressors?
That is Added to Your Total Psychophysiological Stressors.
Do You have Chronic Illness?
That is Added to Your Total Psychophysiological Stressors.
It “Does Not Matter” Where Your Stressors are Coming From...
They “All” Add Together...
And When they Go Over a Certain Point, known as Our Stress Threshold...
We Enter Dis-Stress...
And Burnout Only Happens after We have Been “Stuck” in Dis-Stress for a Long Period of Time.
Which Brings us to the Second Failure in Understanding Burnout...
Burnout is “Not” a Switch that You can Turn On or Off.
It is a “Process” that Occurs Over a Long Period of Time.
If You Think that Doing Meditation or Taking Even a Month-Long Vacation is Going to Completely “Clear Up” Your Burnout...
You’re Completely Mistaken.
That is Why So Many People “Feel” Better After a Break...
But then Quickly Relapse into Worsening Burnout.
When You take these Breaks, Your Body can “Begin” to Heal...
And You May Even “Feel” Better Because of That...
But You Must Remember that Burnout is a Result of “Chronic” Dis-Stress...
Which Some People have Been In their “Entire” Lives...
Which is Part of “Why” Burnout is Occurring So High in Younger and Younger Populations...
Mixed with Other Factors like Stressors from Struggling to Gain Employment, Constant Fears of Being Replaced by AI, Increased Costs of Living that Far Exceed Increases in Income, Higher Rates of Chronic Diseases in Younger Populations, and More.
If You Think a “Wellness Retreat” is Going to Fix “All” of the Damage that has been Caused from the Extreme Levels of Chronic Dis-Stress...
You’re Delusional...
But the Wellness Retreat Centers will be Happy to Steal Your Money to Make You “Feel” just a Tad Better, before You Make Yourself Worse Going Back to the Office...
A Form of Emotional Abuse by Helping You “Just Enough” to Believe that “They” are Your Saviors, while Doing Nothing of Consequence to Truly Help You.
This then Brings Us into the Third Failure in Understanding...
Burnout is Not an Individual Problem.
Can Burnout “Start” with an Individual?
Absolutely.
But, by Our Psychophysiological Design, We are Interdependent.
Not “Just” in Work...
But in How Our Bodies “Literally” Interact with Each Other.
Through the Functions of Neurocardiology and Mirror Neurons...
Our States of Being “Directly” Impact Others’ States of Being.
What Does This Mean?
If “I” am Experiencing Stress...
I can, Literally, “Spread” that Stress to Others who are Around Me.
This Scientifically Occurs through Mirroring and HRV Entrainment.
This Tells Us that “Burnout” is Not an Individual Problem...
And that Individual Burnout can Become “Group Burnout”.
In Fact, We “Saw” this Occur in the Data around Burnout.
When Did Burnout “Decrease” in Recent Years?
During Covid, when Everyone was “Separated” and Unable to Impact Each Other Directly via Psychophysiology...
Aka, Group Burnout was Stopped.
It was the First time in Decades We Began to See Burnout Decrease.
Then What Happened?
There have been the Return-to-Office “Mandates”...
And What has Occurred?
Burnout has “Increased” Proportionally to the Amount of Days “Required” in Office.
Why?
More People with Burnout in the Same Space Cause Worse Group Burnout, Faster...
Especially when “Nothing” Else has been Done to Improve Work and Life Conditions.
The Result is that Everyone, including Leaders, has Been Worse Off because of Group Burnout Spreading.
When You Understand the Psychophysiological Reality of Burnout...
It is Very Simple and Easy to See “Why” the Workplace has Become So Horribly Toxic in Today’s World.
Burnout is a Psychophysiological Result of Chronic Dis-Stress...
That has Continued to Spread Due to Group Burnout...
With “Fast-Fix Solutions” that Completely Fail to Address the Underlying Problems...
Which is Destroying Workplace Productivity and the Bottom-Line.
It is Even Worse than this, though, because from a Work Perspective, Burnout is the Opposite of Flow States.
What Does that Mean?
Everyone in Burnout is...
Less Innovative...
Solves Problems More Slowly...
Makes More Mistakes...
Learns Slower...
And Simultaneously Feels Worse the Entire Time.
All of these Results are then “Spread” throughout the Workplace Due to Group Burnout.
This is the Reality that We are Currently Living In...
And it Will Continue to Get Worse, Unless Leaders Begin to “Truly” Understand How Burnout Works.
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So, what is it that Leaders Need to Begin to Understand?
What Needs to Become “Crystal Clear” if Leaders want to Change this Outcome?
That is what We Will look at Next.
I have 5 Points that Leaders Must Shift in How They Approach Burnout.
Let’s Dive In…
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