How are you dealing with burnout?
Mental Wellbeing and Inclusive Leadership
Recently, I was re-reading a book by Keith Payne, entitled The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live and Die[1]. This is a marvelous book which provides a different perspective on the roots of some basic behavioral developments as those behaviors are developed by the social inequalities. Two quotes made me think about the topic of this week’s blog. The first one was that “[N]ature and nurture always work together” (page 62) . The other quote relates to the “fundamental attribution error”. This occurs when we put more emphasis on our own impression, perceptions and stereotypes of a person instead of looking at the context and situation — Basically, we are quick to pass judgment on the person, regardless of the context and situation that may explain the behavior. Payne writes that “you are more likely to be blind to other people’s situations when you are rushed, busy, under-rested, or overburdened” (p. 62). Basically, our autopilot kicks in at its purest state when our guards and restraints go down because we may be under stressed, tired or under pressure. And of course, how many of us go through our days without feeling pressured, tired or pressed for time?
In a previous blog entry[2], I talked about the effects that labeling has on our leadership styles and the people around us. In short, the way we label individuals, affecting our perception of their abilities and worthiness, has a direct effect on how we go about influencing and interacting with them. As humans, labeling makes it very easy for us to navigate life — we see something or someone; we tap our memory database and seek resemblances with past experiences and exposures; we try to match what we are looking at with what we already know, feeling up any gaps in knowledge whenever possible and we act accordingly. Humans naturally dislike ambiguity and the unknown. Normalcy meant safety to our ancestors. The known-factor meant clearly discerning between one’s enemy and one’s friend. What a curious challenge in today’s society, where everything seems to be in constant motion, with changing status quo and normalcy quickly evolving into a new temporary normalcy. Ambiguity should have been built in our instincts, in a Darwinian manner, to adapt to our environment. Alas, it is not part of our repertoire of natural instincts. And that affects us as leaders.
My personal interest on the topics of change and wellbeing started at Nokia, where I worked in different roles and geographies for 17 years. I noticed that, while professional changes energized me, other colleagues were not as energized. Nokia had a philosophy summarized by “if it isn’t broken, break it”. Change was part of the organizational culture. Some people flourished in it; others went along with more effort and a bit of convincing; and others looked too exhausted to embrace any more variability in their lives. At a personal level, I noticed colleagues that maybe drank a bit too much; had affairs and divorces; took unnecessary risks; and had deteriorating health issues. Others just left the company. Some left the whole industry. In Argentina, a customer literally hung all his suits, bought a blueberry factory and change all his phone numbers for a fresh start. Hence, for my doctoral dissertation, I decided to look at the effects of the perception of change on the wellbeing of employees.
I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the perception of frequent change and the topics of burnout, organizational cynicism and incivility[3]. Around 2013, I surveyed the employees of a large US telecommunication manufacturer on their perceptions of frequency of change. In addition, I measured their level of psychological wellbeing based on three parameters — psychological (and physical) burnout, and their levels of organizational cynicism and incivility. My hypothesis was that, as the employees’ perception on the frequency of change increased, the level of burnout, organizational cynicism and incivility would also increase. I was seeking to measure the correlation and not causation at this time.
It is important to understand the definition of those three wellbeing measures.
Workplace incivility refers to an ambiguous low-intensity behavior, defying the organizational culture’s norms, beliefs and values, that harms the receiving employee[4]and those around him/her. Studies on bullying have shown that witnessing the act of bullying can be as impactful for an individual as being the victim of that bullying action. Still, in the case of incivility, the recipient of the behavior usually perceives being the victim of an action or verbal comment that disrespects the receiver and is perceived as rude. And, in most instances, the individual targeted by this uncivil behavior may be uncertain of the intention or reason for such rude behavior, questioning even the intentionality of the behavior — did they really mean to say that? Act like that towards me? Insult me? Being rude to me?
During a sales visit to Colombia, one of the younger marketing reps came up to me and requested to be moved to a different assignment and office. I was surprised since the direct manager of this individual talked highly of her and her ability to create and develop effective marketing campaign for one of our local customers. The manager even talked about finding more challenging positions for this individual. I was even more surprised because she was specifically requesting to be moved under a different manager since she “did not feel supported or appreciated” — “honestly, I feel disrespected”. She went on to describe some behaviors from her manager, which I had witnessed myself and did not perceived in the same manner. The manager in question had a tendency to release tension during conflicting meetings using humor. Basically, the manager, let’s call him David, used contrast to diffuse difficult situations, in some instances minimizing the root cause of the conflict by putting things into perspectives. In David’s efforts to contrast and minimize, the words used were interpreted by this marketing rep as accusatory and demeaning when aimed to her or a situation that she was dealing with. She mentioned several instances where this had happened. After providing the marketing rep with my perception and with her permission, I called David into the meeting. Before that, I made a prediction that David will use humor as soon as he entered the room and sensed the tension. As the manager walked in, feeling the tension, he started using some humor, trying to diffuse the unknown situation. I asked the manager to provide the marketing rep with feedback on her performance and his opinion of her potential for growth within our organization. He went silent, thought about it and said:
“Diana [not her real name] is the best marketing rep I have ever worked with. I am certain that with a bit more of experience within the organization and the customer, she will be able to take over more responsibilities, and move into a more regional supporting role. She is a great team member, really appreciated by the customer and her peers… and knowing also how much volunteer work she does on her own time, I will dare to say that she is probably a wonderful human being that definitely enriches our organization and represents our values within this community.”
In this instance, the perception of incivility by an employee was tainting her performance and interpretation of the manager’s words. Again, let me point out that we deal with perceptions and those perceptions are our realities. While we know the intent of our words, only the recipient knows the impact. As leaders, we need to be able to pair those two (intent and impact), since they are both triggers that will result in behaviors and consequences. In this case, Diana was feeling disrespected by David. The ambiguity of incivility adds to the challenge of stopping uncivil behaviors.
Organizational Cynicism is “an attitude that results from repeated exposure to mismanage change efforts”[5]. Organizational cynicism is commonly found in certain service industries such as law enforcement and emergency medical services. In many instances, it used as a coping mechanism with daily interactions with individuals and the perceived support (and politization) of those organizations. It usually occurs when we have been exposed to bad management practices, especially those which erode our trust on the leadership or the organizational processes.
A client told me about a previous situation when, while interviewing for a certain position, she found out that her future direct manager was pushing to internally promote a different individual for that same position. This manager’s candidate did not meet the requirements of the new leadership. The direct manager talked to my client and emphasized that he was fine with the leadership’s decision to hire her, instead of promoting his suggested candidate. After several weeks, it become evident that the direct manager’s words were empty — the direct manager would openly ignore my client’s comments and suggestions in favor of his former candidate; he would point out the errors made by my client while praising any achievements by the other candidate. He displayed a very friend attitude towards his former candidate, sharing lunches and close-door time with him, while displaying a business-like relationship with my client, insisting that any and all decisions went through him. My client lost trust on his direct manager, but also on the human resource management and leadership of the company that failed to intervene when made aware of the situation. My client developed a high level of organizational cynicism — when asked about the feasibility of a project, she would answer “well, let’s see what John [former candidate] thinks about it. Then I will tell you what the feasibility chances are for that project to get approved by Mike [direct manager]”. Eventually, she left the company. The organization cynicism was negatively affecting her work performance and also her personal life. When I asked her why she left, she told me:
“I grew tired of looking over my shoulder and didn’t like who I was becoming at work and at home. Being a cynic is exhausting… always aiming to find the humor on the negativity and injustice of the situation… eventually, all I saw was the negative and the unfairness. I could not be the best leader that I could be in that organization. ”
Cynicism focused on turning negative and unfair situations that should not be humorous such as poor management practices and organizational cultural practices, into humorous situations. Cynicism is also one of the three scales measured by Maslach’s burnout assessments such as the MBI-GS.
Christina Maslach has become the reference on organizational burnout. She started her research on occupations that involved a heavy load of interpersonal communication such as counselors, psychologists and educators. She defined burnout based on three dimensions — exhaustion, cynicism and professional inefficacy. Exhaustion referred to physical and emotional fatigue. In reference to burnout, cynicism is a substitute for depersonalization. Maslach defined cynicism in terms of the degree of engagement (or disengagement) with the organization, its leadership and the organizational processes, in particular. It involves a level of personal indifference and a feeling of detachment as well. The last dimension, professional inefficacy, relates to the perception by individuals on how productive and effective they feel they are at their work. Personal inefficacy qualifies an individual’s perception of their own professional competence and their ability to meaningfully contribute to their work and the work of others in the organization.
Part of living and leading in a VUCA world (a world that it volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous), is learning to lead and cope with uncertainty and ambiguity. Agility and clarity are two of the tools that Bob Johansen[6]from the Institute for the Future, suggested as solutions. As leaders, we are dealing with people, not situations — people will resolve situations. So how do we guide those individuals through constant and complex change? Two-way communication.
When we face a VUCA situation, we need to engage our team to ensure that they understand what our mission and short term goals are; we need to engage them for ideas; we need to engage them to ensure that they can verbalize their concerns and emotions in a psychological safe environment — a environment where they feel safe and comfortable challenging our direction and contributing to our journeys. It is not enough to just verbalize our desires and wishes — we need to incorporate their support by asking questions, not just about the clarity of the mission and the resources that they may need, but also about their emotional state.
Studies have shown that simply having a dialogue and having the perception that they are being heard, reduces the effects of burnout on employees. Conversations and dialogues should be developed and established in a safe environment to share one’s emotions on change and complexity. Those dialogues help those individuals verbalize what they are feeling, labeling that emotion, and also, they feel supported by others. The conversations are not about finding solutions but about feeling heard. It also has the benefit of improving the effectiveness of those individuals — instead of being emotionally inhibited, having all those emotions bottled up inside and constantly engage with the amygdala, the reptilian side of our brains that pushes us into the fight, freeze or fly mode, we push those emotions into the neo-frontal cortex, our logical part of the brain — we then start seeking solutions, instead of getting caught on an emotionally depleting rollercoaster.
Talking is one of the best solutions to reducing burnout and increasing our ability to deal with change.
As leader, we can and should choose to live with constant ambiguity and complexity. We need to constantly search for the most appropriate action to unknown, knowing that agility is key. Any solution that we come up with today will need to be modified and corrected as more details flow into our cognitive command centers. And we need to lead a whole team during those efforts — complexity requires greater cognitive power and knowledge and therefore, higher engagement with our teams. That engagement needs to be involved individuals at their prime state — creative, engaged, productive and effective. Burnout, cynicism and incivility feed on creativity, engagement, productivity and efficiency. Simple dialogue and conversation on the whole being, professional and emotional, will keep burnout at bay.
[1]Payne, K. (2017). The broken ladder: How inequality affectsthe way we think, live, and die. Penguin.
[2]Gallego, JM (2019) The Power of Labeling. Retrievedfrom https://medium.com/the-journey-towards-leaders-inclusiveness/the-power-of-labeling-a8c4e9ea65e0?source=friends_link&sk=905256c63c12599d38d32c766ef165cd
[3]Gallego-Toledo, J. M. (2015). The Relationship between perceived frequency of change and the wellbeing of telecom professionals (Doctoral dissertation, The University of the Rockies).
[4]Andersson, L. M., & Pearson, C. M. (1999). Tit for tat? The spiraling effect of incivility in the workplace. Academy of management review, 24(3), 452–471.
[5]Wanous, J. P., Reichers, A. E., & Austin, J. T. (1994, August). Organizational Cynicism: An Initial Study. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 1994, №1, pp. 269–273). Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy of Management.
[6]Euchner, J. (2013). Navigating the VUCA world: An interview with Bob Johansen. Research Technology Management, 56(1), 10.
