Who we are — Turning Burnout into Personal Development
Have you ever taken time to look at a tree trunk? Take for example the tree trunk of the olive tree that I am attaching in this article. Just take a minute to look at the intricacies of the trunk. Notice the different dents, indentations, curves, the different geometrical shapes formed over time.
This olive tree must be about my age, about 50 years old. It has been shaped by the wind, the humidity and the lack of humidity, by the small but frequent hit from the lawn mower as it cuts the grass around it. Some of the rounder shaped marks were caused by good and bad trimming of the branches. The contours in the body reflect the passing quality of the ground where the olive tree is planted, the shortages and excesses of fertilizers. The silhouette is also affected by other external forces such as insects, birds, dogs and humans, and how the tree reacts to the changes in the environment. And by the way, it is an extremely productive olive tree, given a couple hundred pounds of olives every year.
Just as the appearance of trunk from this olive tree is shaped by different forces, our own personalities are shaped by our experiences. Those live forces mold the way we think, the way we approach others and situations, the way we behave before challenge and how we react to impacts and intensity of our VUCA world.
As a young child living in Alicante, a coastal city bathed by the Spanish Mediterranean Sea, we used to spend our summers by the beach. Since we did not have at first a place to stay, my dad would drive all of us to the beach before work, and we would stay there until either lunch time (that’s Spanish lunch time — 3pm) or later in the afternoon whenever he had space in his schedule. I am saying “all” because in addition to my two brothers and sister, we always had in summer some cousins visiting, plus my mother, of course. About six to seven of us would pile up on the whatever small car we used to have (seatbelt laws were not a thing then), and we would drive the 20–30 minutes that it would take to get to the beach. Going there, we were all excited and happy… coming back, was another thing. We were sun-burned, thirsty, hungry and hot… and of course — and I mean this literarily — very sandy and salty. Sand and salt were everywhere as you can imagine. Stuck to our bodies, in our swimsuits, in our hairs. And even if one had managed to keep sand off one’s body, someone else did not, which meant that we ended up all even sandier that we piled up into the car to head back to the city.
Why am I telling you this? Since those days, I really don’t care for sand in my feet, hands and definitely not in my swimsuit. I avoid situations where sand is involved, like going to the beach with the kids, or jogging by the beach. Sand castles with the kids was never my activity of choice and when I have to go, I make sure that I am as far as possible from anyone else to avoid getting splatter with sandy substance. And this is despite the fact that now, during summer, the beach is less than a 5-minute walk from our summer home, and it is also equipped with a wooden walkway to arrive to the beachy part of the beach. There are even little fountains towards the exit to clean and wash your feet. Some places even have full showers to avoid getting into the buses or trams sandy.
In our VUCA world, the way we engage with others is also affected by our own experiences. These experiences have also the potential to feed our personal biases and cross-contaminate the way we engage with different people.
Let me tell you the story that I heard from an old friend. Let´s call him Brian. Brian was hired by a small distributor in Miami to develop new streams of revenues. He had been in sales his whole professional life and was well-connected within the Miami area, the telecom industry and Latin America in general, especially Central America and México. Soon after starting his new job, he realized that the overall income that he was “promised”, a combination of salary plus commission, was going to be difficult to achieve since the company did not have many products to sell, reducing his potential for commissions. Whatever products the company had to sell, were ruled by a set of strict rules — See, the distributor had the right to distribute certain product brands into Latin America whenever a local distributor did not already exist in that area, and if the product sold did not come into direct competition from the existing direct sales by the manufacturer. In addition, within the distributor, other channels of distribution had priorities meaning that he could only access product once all the other customers had received their products, making it difficult to pin point a specific delivery date, an important detail for most sales. And finally, all products had to be pre-paid since the distributor did not want to finance anyone in an industry that was used to 30-day payment terms.
Shortly after he started his new job, he started to feel the pressure to perform but was not given the tools to succeed. This was very frustrating and demotivating. Instead of acknowledging the fact that he lacked the tools, he questioned his own professional efficacy, his professional ability to sell product. Why wasn’t he able to close more deals? Why wasn’t he able to negotiate higher volumes? Why could he move more product into the channels that he knew so well?
He tried harder, taking potential customers out to lunch, for drinks, setting up breakfast sessions to present the different products, increasing the volume of calls to the point where some customers stopped taking his calls… pretty soon, he was physically and emotionally exhausted. There was only so much rejection that he could sustained. He would pick the phone, started dialing, while questioning his selling tactic, and hanging up before dialing the last number.
He later started displaying some signs of cynicism. He would present his failures in humorous fashion, self-deprecating his skills and using black humor during his budget presentations. At the office, people started avoiding him.
When Brian was pressured to sell more, he requested some tools such a short-term financing for a few existing customers and a guaranteed allotment of certain products. The requests were denied. He realized that this organization lacked integrity or commitment necessary to fulfill his responsibilities, attaching a negative emotional reaction to any interaction with its management. He questioned the trust and support of the leadership, resulting in his own disparaging and disruptive behaviors. He was even tempted to sabotage other parts of the organization to ensure some product allotment.
After only six months, he was completely burnout. And burnout leaves very nasty scars in your trunk. Brian started questioning his own line of work, despite his extensive experience and worthwhile industry network. He retreated and started spending more time at the office and less with the customers. When his supervisor started harassing him about going out to get more sales, he started passing more times at coffee shops, reporting that he was out in customer meetings. He gained weight, felt exhausted constantly and emotionally fragile but he did not want to share his preoccupations with his partner. He ate his own feelings. Eventually, his partner left, adding to the emotional agony that he was feeling.
It was at this point that I ran into him during a visit to Miami. I walked into La Estancia,one of my favorite Argentine eateries with amazing empanadas and media lunas, when I noticed him sitting by himself, looking at the screensaver in his laptop. I sat with him and we started a conversation. The fact that we were not close friends probably helped. We were acquaintances from previous jobs. When I noticed his state, I opened up by telling him about my doctoral thesis that I was working on — the effects of frequent change on the wellbeing of telecom employees in the US. I spoke about burnout, cynicism and incivility. He connected the dots and soon was verbalizing his own situation. He was ready to talk, and he spilled his thoughts and emotions. After several hours talking he took two decisions right there. First, give his two-week notice at work. And second, call back his partner, apologize and take her out on a dinner date to share with her what had happened. He walked out of the restaurant, smiling, and energized. He was ready to make his next move.
Needless to say, verbalizing his situation, finding his true values, identifying the conflict between his own values with those of his employer, and prioritizing his life, was the challenge that he required to move on and grow personally and professionally. Yes, it took him several months to find a job that he wanted to do. He was looking for more in a job than a salary — he was looking for an organizational culture that would be aligned with his own values. He wanted a challenging job that would be properly supported. He interviewed the leadership during his own interviews, making sure that those were the people that he wanted to work with, people vested on the growth and success of their employees. And he did find that job, supported by his partner and energized by his new found direction in life. While he looked for that perfect job, he volunteered in his community. He also devoted more time to his personal relationships, reaching out to friends and family. These priorities re-energized him even more, pushing him forward in his growth. Those scars in his trunk, those lessons learned, catalyzed into a new level of happiness and professional and personal wellbeing.
In our personal and professional lives, we will encounter those difficult moments that will make us question our own efficacy. Do not hide or avoid those moments but learn from them as the vertical development opportunities that they are. Those moments will allow us to grow and evolve into a better “I”, a better person. Our productivity will most likely improve as we approach our work and life with a new perspective.
