Burnout

How Psychological Safety Impacts Burnout

Over the years, I’ve spent a significant amount of time working with teams. Some who have come a tremendously long way, and some who are just starting out on the path. No doubt, we all live and work in teams of some sort. And, we all have opinions about them!

Here’s a new distinction I want to share with you: psychological safety on teams and its impact on individual burnout.

You may have seen this remarkable study from Google last year, that exposed the results of their two-year long study on high-performing teams. They discovered that what matters most to high-performing teams is psychological safety – a belief that you are safe to speak your mind, make mistakes, and you won’t be punished. In other words, can we take risks on this team without feeling insecure or embarrassed?

Psychological safety is not the same as trust.

Trust is believing someone has your back, that they’re competent enough to do so, and that their future actions will align with your best interests. Trust is still vital for teams because it lowers the amount of energy you have to spend monitoring your behavior. It’s the ease that comes when you know you’re on the same side, so to speak.

Here’s what’s fascinating about this idea of psychological safety, though:

For teams with low psychological safety, speaking up feels incredibly risky. Often, folks have direct experience getting burned when they do, even if they believe they are doing the right thing. Some are punished or fired for going against the tide, causing a tremendous amount of fear.

Even for those who don’t witness these incidents directly, the stories spread quickly, and soon you’ve got an entire organizational culture of fear, self-protection, and survival.

Working (or living) in an environment of heightened fear activates all kinds of survival responses physiologically. Our fight-or-flight system gets triggered, our brain becomes flooded with stress hormones, and our awareness narrows dramatically. We are no longer able to access much beyond surviving this moment. Our experience, talents, gifts, presence all diminish and can feel very far away.

Prolonged states of fight-or-flight (or chronic power stress) wreak havoc on our bodies, minds, and emotional wellbeing. Enter stage left: leadership burnout.

If you and many of your team members are frighteningly close to burning out (or live in a continued state of high stress), check in with yourself about the environment you’re fostering on the team.

Are individuals safe to speak what’s on their minds without repercussion, or are you inadvertently breeding a culture of fear and stress?

If you’re worried that psychological safety may be at risk for you/your team, try this:

Find an objective, trusted ally who will tell you the truth. Ask them if others are afraid to speak up, share honestly, present bold ideas, even fail around you. Listen with an open mind, even if it’s hard to hear.

If the answer is “yes,” it’s time to self-reflect. Look back on your default behaviors that may send a subtle (or explicit) message that people have to be careful around here. Any recent time of acute pressure or stress? How did you engage with your team then?

Revisit your core values and business strategy. Who are you committed to being as a leader? What kind of team culture does the business depend on for its success?

Last, own it. Open up to your team, be vulnerable about your experience, your values, and your own lack of awareness around psychological safety on the team. Apologize for what they’ve been going through. Ask for forgiveness. Create a shared plan for making the team culture better and live up to your promises.

Leadership burnout is preventable… once we become aware of its source(es). Don’t let yourself, team leader, be one of them.

To your thriving,
Erin

PS. If you are struggling with any of the above and want to chat confidentially, let’s set up a brief call. I’ve seen all stages and levels of health on teams. I don’t judge. I am on your side and believe in transformation. And, I promise I’ll tell you the truth (even when no one else will).

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How To Build Resilient Teams In a High Stress World

I hope you have had or will have some time away this summer to grant yourself the gift of renewal. Some mental downtime, emotional nourishment, physical recovery, and spiritual salve.

Not only do we crave it, we deeply need it, as human beings and as leaders.

In this increasingly VUCA world of ours, the complexities and pressures of our interconnected, always-on ways of working are stacking up the stressors on leaders everywhere. This is the reality now and one that will only accelerate.

I grew up with an illusion about what it meant to be “resilient.” As an athlete, being resilient meant being tough under stress, enduring pain, never complaining about it, and charging through.

It meant hiding my needs, especially the subtler emotional and spiritual ones, even when they were screaming in my ear. It meant disconnecting and cutting off – from myself.

So, if it’s not this, then what is resilience really? Resilience is the capacity of an individual (or system) to effectively manage the cycle of performance and recovery.

Catch that? Recovery, or renewal, is essential to our ability to navigate challenges, learn from complexity, and respond to stress wisely. Without renewal, we are automatic triggers walking around on two legs, our stress through the roof and our effect on others pretty icky. Eventually, we implode or explode, burning ourselves or others out.

Luckily, there are many ways to support yourself and your team – ensuring that everyone is handling stress in the healthiest way possible. Here are a few of the ways I personally work with leaders to ensure they have healthy, resilient teams:

Individual coaching, assessment, and insight around your patterns of performance and recovery (instruments on: burnout, personality, 360, and heart rate variability)

Team training on best practice and candid dialogue about personal/organizational factors affecting resilience; piloting new behaviors together and finding what actually works for you

Organizational exploration around those best practices to cascade across the culture, from leadership to the front line

For me, finding a tangible and affordable opportunity to create real resilience for the leaders (and people) I care about is the fulfillment of my values and mission to end suffering at work. So, I hope you’ll join me for this vital exploration into what it really takes to sustain great performance and be resilient in leadership today.

Send me a message and we can start exploring what support structure would be best for you and your team.

To your thriving,

Erin

PS. Research continues to show us all the ways renewal keeps us at our best, especially as leaders. Boyatzis and McKee have made the brilliant link between a leader’s renewal and her ability to consistently demonstrate emotional intelligence (EQ). If you’re looking for a deep dive on why renewal matters to leaders, this is one of my go-to reads.

Three Questions That Will Help You Prevent Burnout

Maybe it’s the dreamy quality of early summer in San Diego that makes this season feel so naturally reflective. Or, we’re so pulled by all the activities, options, and potential paths that we are called to slow down and relax into what’s most meaningful for us. Either way, I’m compelled to do a little navel-gazing this time of year, so let’s dive in together…

You’ve heard me say before that sustaining your leadership performance over the long haul – and fully achieving your potential – requires equal attention to both the context in which you’re leading (external/how) and the content of your work (inner/why).

Burnout prevention and recovery must include this inner and outer alignment. The question is, how do you find it?

One of the things I love most about a personality typing system like the Enneagram is that it helps us quickly identify the inner content of our lives so we can get ourselves unstuck and truly thrive. It highlights elements that we’re often blind to, like our core drives, passions, needs, fears, and automatic patterns or habits.

I’ve learned that even while we might be working inside of a “burnout culture,” it’s often the internal mental and emotional patterns that keep us hooked into ways of working that will exhaust us, regardless of how ideal our job is set up to be.

Let’s take a look. For each of us, we are run by two primary inner patterns or habits: a thought pattern and an emotional pattern. In the language of the Enneagram, the thought habits include the continuous loop of ideas and fixations in our minds, while the emotional habits typically follow those thoughts with persistent reactions or feelings.

For me (as a Type 3), I can unconsciously fixate on thoughts about strategies for success and ways of creating an image of being successful (ugh, I know). This is often immediately followed by an emotional roller coaster of striving and anxiety, fear that others will think I’m a failure, and sadness/shame when I don’t feel I measure up.

You can see how quickly folks like me can spiral into a mode of hyper-pressure, workaholism, constant scanning for acknowledgment, and ultimately, burnout and resentment. Yikes, I’m tired just thinking about it!

The point is not to change these patterns, because often that is simply unavailable to us. Instead, we start by noticing them, trying to understand them, and doing our best to meet ourselves with a dose of compassion.

When we can stop, pause, and look inside ourselves, we’re able to see when our stress is generated from our own thoughts and feelings versus external factors. That awareness can give us new access into positive solutions – moving from being run by our automatic habits of personality to intentionally choosing the thoughts, emotions, and actions that are more sustainable for us.

So, as you lie on your beach towel this summer and sleepily gaze up at the clouds above, ask yourself:

What thoughts and emotions tend to loop habitually in my mind and heart?
How might these patterns be contributing to my state of burnout/wellbeing?
And, what helps me “unhook” from these mental and emotional habits and move into conscious choice?

I would love to hear from you, so please share what you’re learning with our growing community on LinkedIn or Twitter. There are so many of you incredible people committed to working, leading, and giving in sustainable ways. Let yourself be inspired by one another!

Today and all year long, may these reflections serve your leadership path and offer you some new freedom along the way.

To your thriving,

Erin

PS. This is the Type 3 habit, but all personality types have their own unique thought and emotional patterns. Curious about yours? Click here to understand your Enneagram type or reach out to me for some individual guidance on how awareness of your Enneagram can support your growth.

How to Uncover What’s Really Causing Your Burnout

We need to address the elephant in the room. Sometimes, some company cultures and bosses are just BAD. They don’t care about your wellbeing, your happiness, or even your long-term commitment… they want the work done and they wanted it yesterday. All of it. No whining. The End.

Maybe they are cynical, burned out themselves, or so trained to work in unsustainable ways that they don’t realize they are even doing it.

Environments like these can create and reinforce entire systems of burnout. Here, the exhaustion and negativity feeds on itself and is essentially built into the job. You’ve heard some businesses – even industries – described as “churn and burn.” I’m sorry to say it, but more self-care is not the antidote if you work in a place like this.

For others, the corporate culture is amazing – inspiring, energizing, and completely fulfilling. However, in the midst of all this inspiring work, you wake up one day to realize your job responsibilities have taken over your entire life. 70 hours a week is the new norm. Boundaries sound like a fantasy. Social life… what social life? Family… oh yeah, I used to have one of those!

We need to be really honest with ourselves. When we say we’re suffering from burnout, we must realize that some of it is ours to own. And some of it simply isn’t.

Before you can apply the right remedy, you must be clear about the cause of your pain.

Here are some questions to help you get to the source of what you may be feeling right now:

1. What can I own about the way I’m working?

What fears might be keeping me stuck in a burnout loop?
What choices am I making that aren’t aligned with my values or needs?
Have I delegated what I know I can/should to my team?
Have I attempted a courageous conversation with my boss about more sustainable ways of fulfilling my role?
What can I own about the way I’m working?

2. What might my boss and/or company own about how I’m asked to work?

What about my company’s culture calls for a burnout-style approach to work?
Am I empowered to challenge this approach or find a more balanced way?
Are those in charge open and willing to work with employees/leaders?

Observe your assumptions, own your part, and take an honest look at any structural factors outside of your control that might be keeping your burnout in place. As you step back and look objectively about what’s happening for you/by you/around you, you can now take thoughtful action.

If you’re simply stuck in the cluster and mess of it all, I can help. There is a way out. I’m here to help you find it.

To your thriving,
Erin

PS. If you’re a boss and you have suddenly realized you’re inadvertently creating a ‘burn and churn” workplace for your team, fear not! Congratulations, actually… you are rare and awesome for even being aware. Huge first step. Now, send me a message. Together, we can help you discover more sustainable ways for your team to perform at its peak AND ensure your teammates flourish.

How To Find Meaning In Your Work – Even When It Feels Hard

For many of us, especially those in service-based businesses such as healthcare, consulting, fundraising and the like, we thrive on providing value for others. We live to serve and see our work as an opportunity to make a difference. We care deeply. And we give all of ourselves.

Sometimes, though, in the humdrum and trappings of modern work, we can lose sight of how our work connects to something bigger. The pressure of organizational structure weighs heavy, we focus on the non-essential and never-ending to-do’s and get crushed by the scope of it all.

When we lose connection with what gives us meaning, we are infinitely more apt to flame out and throw our hands up in despair.

Especially when we care. Especially when we work our asses off.

And when desperation hits, we become emotionally exhausted, our cynicism peaks, and our job performance declines. Cue the downward burnout cycle.

For some lines of work, like those who practice medicine, considerable research has been done to help address this chronic, systemic problem. For physicians in particular (one of the most demanding jobs in modern society, in my humble opinion), research shows that when they are able to carve out 20% of their role for work they find personally fulfilling, such as a research project that contributes to an issue they feel passionately about, they are significantly less likely to experience the effects of burnout. Even when working 100 plus hours a week and experiencing chronic sleep deprivation, finding work that’s meaningful makes that big of a difference. If meaning matters that much for them, there’s got to be value in it for the rest of us, too.

So, how do you and I go about finding meaning in our jobs? Here’s a start.

1. Step Back

Gain some perspective on how your work fits into the broader whole, how you contribute to something beyond pushing papers and answering emails.

2. Ask Yourself

How does my work make a positive difference for those I work with and those I serve? What’s my impact on my community or society as a whole, even indirectly?

3. Find Patterns

Explore ways in which your positive impact reflects what matters most to you – your values – and demonstrates what your ultimate calling, or purpose, might be.

4. Connect and Share

When we share about what lights our heart up and how we get to experience a piece of that magic in our work, the positive emotion amplifies. We appreciate ourselves more. We see our colleagues in a softer, more graceful light. Our passion and care creates more passion and caring for those around us. Research says so.

Connecting back to our work’s meaning is one practice we must never abandon if we are committed to thriving, not surviving. I encourage you to find some time this week to recall why you do what you do, what meaning it inspires in you, and breathe in fully appreciating that you do matter and your work is valued.

I promise it will be worth it.

The Three Enneagram Types Most Prone To Burnout

Burnout is one of those things that sneaks up on most people. In fact, many people suffering from burnout don’t even realize it’s something they’re battling until it causes noticeably drastic havoc in their life.

For this reason, one of the first steps to resolving issues of burnout includes gaining self-awareness about your personality type. Even if you’re not facing the burnout cliff, this awareness is a vital lever in accelerating any leadership journey.

Using the Enneagram framework, I’ve honed in on three personality types especially vulnerable to the symptoms of burnout: emotional exhaustion, cynicism/withdrawal, and decreased effectiveness. These types include: the Achiever, the Enthusiast, and the Helper.

The Achiever (3)
Perpetually feeling responsible for getting stuff done and adding value to others, these folks are prone to overworking both at work and at home. They neglect their physical well being, maintain a continual state of stress, and have difficulty sticking to their priorities. On top of it all, they tell themselves they must look like they have it all together. Oh, the pressure!

The Enthusiast (7)
These folks revel in all of the future possibilities they want to pursue and they do so with abandon. Focus becomes a challenge, making clear thinking and deliberate action a real stretch. Their path to freedom involves connecting with the needs of the present moment, yet they avoid sitting still in the discomfort of the here and now. At the end of the day, these adventurers can be distracted, mentally tangled, and stretched thin.

The Helper (2)
Ever generous with their time and resources, these kind souls can become so focused on the needs of others that they forget their own (emotional, physical, or otherwise). They embody selflessness, and yet, their breaking points are dramatic. They look to others to fill their cup with appreciation and it often feels not enough, creating both rage and sadness that drain them deeply.

Keep in mind that EVERY personality type struggles to maintain equilibrium in different ways, so you may feel burned out and not identify with a type mentioned here. All of us can experience burnout in our own ways when the circumstances are right.

For this reason, I encourage you to simply notice where you feel stretched. What pulls at you? What voice tells you to do more, be more? How does your inner “gremlin” apply pressure on you, and how do you instinctively respond?

If you’d like to dive deeper, I’d encourage you to take my burnout self assessment. It’s only 15 questions and will provide your unique burnout score, which will help you understand what steps your should currently be taking to either avoid or come back from burnout.

However you assess your current level of burnout, my hope is that you can enjoy any moments of quiet space that find you, take a deep breath in reflection about what matters most, and dance with self-compassion in the chaos of all the rest.

How Psychological Safety Impacts Burnout

How To Build Resilient Teams In a High Stress World

Three Questions That Will Help You Prevent Burnout

How to Uncover What’s Really Causing Your Burnout

How To Find Meaning In Your Work – Even When It Feels Hard

The Three Enneagram Types Most Prone To Burnout

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