Erin Rocchio: Executive and Team Coach

Thrive. Lead. Impact.

What Is Workplace Burnout?

There comes a time in most of our lives where we have the worst type of “ah-ha!” moment at work – the moment where we realize and acknowledge that we are miserable in our position (don’t worry, you are not alone). 

In this moment, we’re overwhelmed by feelings of negativity, of hopelessness. We feel the tension so deeply that looking at our emails can feel like a monumental task. There are plenty of reasons why this feeling might have come to you, but the culprit usually comes down to one single idea:

Burnout. Workplace burnout, emotional burnout, job burnout, it’s all the same.

So now that we’ve identified the problem, we have to explore it. Getting to know the ins and outs of this awful feeling can help us conquer it in the long run. 

As far as definitions go, “burnout” is a type of stress that compounds over time, leaving you so physically and emotionally drained that it’s affecting your day-to-day life, especially at work. Burnout makes us feel like our accomplishments are meaningless and that our work serves no purpose, leaving us completely unmotivated to get anything done. 

The idea that stress can affect our lives beyond what’s in front of us (meaning our mental and physical health) is relatively new. The whole world is trying to figure out how to establish and maintain professional lives that aren’t overwhelmed by it. That’s why the work behind mitigating burnout can feel so intimidating: we’re all trying to figure this out together. 

Burnout can wreak havoc on you (“I”), your team (“we”), and the systems (“it”) that make up your workplace, so it’s imperative that you begin the journey to overcoming workplace burnout as soon as you recognize it.

What Causes Burnout?

Workplace burnout can come from a few different sources. 

One of those sources that we all need to keep an eye out for is mental health. Depression is a driver of some cases of workplace burnout, so when you start to recognize these feelings, it’s imperative that you sit down with yourself and really consider the situation you’re in as well as the emotions that are popping up. If those feelings weigh insurmountably heavily on your shoulders, it may be time to seek help from a medical professional. 

Once you’ve ruled out mental health as the culprit, workplace burnout can come from two other places: you or your environment. 

It’s important to ask yourself a few questions to determine what’s causing your burnout. If you’re working in a way that doesn’t serve you or honor the boundaries you need to set for yourself, it’s possible that the burnout was caused by the way you approach your work. This is very common in high-achieving leaders. If this is the case, you have an amazing opportunity to redefine how you work so that it is conducive to your spiritual, mental, and emotional well-being. 

There is also a good chance that your burnout isn’t an “I” issue but a “we” and “it” issue. 

“We” is all about your team. Are you and other leaders in your space asking your team to work beyond their abilities? Are leaders willing to work with others? To trust them? 

When the “we” is affected by workplace burnout, negative attitudes settle into “it,” meaning the systems that make up a company. Asking team members to work after-hours when it isn’t appropriate, maintaining unrealistic workloads, and a lack of communication, for example, all set a precedent for creating systemic workplace burnout. 

How Can We Fix Workplace Burnout? 

The key to finding a solution to workplace burnout is digging deep into all of the pieces that make up your workplace through the lenses of “I,” “we,” and “it.” Recognizing that there is a problem at all is a huge step.

If you’re in a leadership position and you recognize signs of burnout in your workplace, it’s incredible that you’ve made your way to this article. I have worked with countless teams to improve workplace culture with burnout in mind and have the resources to take you, your team, and the systems of your workplace to healthy, purposeful, and whole futures you never considered before. 

Who Is Wholeness At Work For?

Erin Rocchio, MPOD, created Wholeness At Work with a distinct goal in mind—to help leaders learn the science behind burnout symptoms, gain a comprehensive understanding of its sources, and discover personalized solutions to the chronic power stress of burnout. It is essential to understand burnout as a whole to avoid it. But, who is Wholeness At Work for? We dive into that today.

What Is Wholeness At Work?

Burnout is officially recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as an “occupational phenomenon” since 2019. This year (2020) has brought on an enclave of burnout that couldn’t have been predicted and has taken its toll on individuals and entire organizations in a huge way. While it has not been formally evaluated, we have seen some of the repercussions of individuals and businesses being pushed to their absolute limits as we never have before.

Wholeness At Work will dive into the science behind burnout. It will extensively cover the symptoms, sources, and solutions for an in-depth understanding of this phenomenon. This coaching program is designed for individuals or teams to help identify where burnout persists and how to work through it.

The Recovering MBA: Enneagram 1

The Enneagram One is purposeful—always looking to improve themselves and the things around them. But, the constant quest for improvement can be exhausting. Continually trying to find approval from others and proving your goodness through sheer determination will only get you so far. In Wholeness At Work, you will find resources to help you identify the sources of burnout in yourself, your team, and the systems you have in place to ensure that you not only avoid burnout as an individual but can help alleviate those symptoms in your team.

The Conscious CEO: Enneagram 3

Being results-driven and successful is most often the main objective for the Enneagram Three. These are the true “people” people who want to make a social impact and connection with others, and be productive at the same time. But, this personality is susceptible to working, working, working, and never stopping. Wholeness At Work will help you evaluate when it is time to work and when it is time to step back and focus inward. You can’t sustain high performance if you are continually grinding day and night. How can you strike that beautiful place of balance where, as a whole person, you are being fulfilled and renewed on all levels?

The Millennial Manager: Enneagram 7

The Enneagram 7 seeks possibility and freedom, which are beautiful qualities. But, the enthusiasm for what’s possible, without grounded focus, can cause Type Sevens to spin out fairly quickly. So, how can you take all of these positive qualities of possibility seeking, vision, and self-realization and use them to avoid burnout? We can help guide you in Wholeness At Work.

The Type-A Working Mom: Enneagram 8

Do you have so much on your plate that you feel exhausted all the time? The Enneagram 8  is a type-A personality—they want control of their life and everything in it. But, some things we simply don’t have control of (See: 2020). That is what can send this type into a spiral, always aiming to achieve and execute flawlessly, even when the challenges thrown their way are too much for one person. We will help you step back and prioritize you in Wholeness At Work.

In reality, this self-guided coaching program is for anyone who is experiencing burnout at work or in their leadership roles wherever they come. It will help you identify systems and patterns that are feeding into – and maintaining – the cycle of burnout in your life. By identifying these and digging into all the root causes of your burnout pain, you can dismantle and reconstruct a way of leading and living that is more sustainable for you, your team, and your world. We are here for you at every step.

How Can Time Management Help You To Manage Stress At Work?

Remember college? You would get an assignment for a 3,000-word paper due in two weeks, and, without fail, you would say to yourself, “I am going to start TODAY.” But, ‘today’ would happen, and something more exciting would come up. A week would roll by, and pretty soon, you are sitting with a paper deadline in 24 hours thinking, “I should have scheduled my time better.” Many of us still experience this in one way or another throughout our careers, and that is where time management can come in handy.

What Is Time Management?

We are all well aware of the common thoughts on time management. Whether you work on time blocking your schedule to accomplish all that you can in the day or abide by the time management matrix, all of us have learned the tips and tricks to be productive. What few resources fail to mention, though, is that there are deeper drives to time management as a whole.

The scheduling of our day occurs at the behavioral or external level, which is important but certainly not the root of why you can’t seem to get tasks done. There are deeper drives at play. Beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and values motivate our behavior—as they should. So, how do you align your actions and structures with your thoughts, core values, and deep commitments?

1 | Focus On What Is Important

Your schedule should not just be a reflection of tasks that drop a dime into your bank account every few minutes. Instead, it should reflect what is important to you. There is a popular process creatd by Stephen Covey that puts tasks and commitments into 4 quadrants of time management: Urgent + Important, Not Urgent + Important, Urgent + Not Important, Not Urgent + Not Important. This works well, but it is not all that you need to have successful and holistic time management values. Instead, this can be step 1 of 6 needed for wholeness in time management. We would urge you as you work through this, though, to not just only think through your workday, think through personal tasks as well, and allow your schedule to reflect you as a whole person.

2 | Prioritize Your Day

Now that you have your most important (and least important) duties laid out in front of you, it is time to prioritize. This is separate from the quadrants because something could be urgent + important, and easily delegated. You know the saying, “You have the same amount of hours in a day as [insert accomplished person’s name].” And it is true. But that sentiment doesn’t cover the fact that whoever you thought of would more than likely delegate one or many tasks a day. Everything from getting ready in the morning, picking out clothes, accounting, and the like can be delegated for some of the world’s most successful people. While we all don’t have that privilege, we can consider what is a priority for ourselves: jumping on a client call, going to your toddler’s baseball game, launching that new project you’ve been working on for months, etc., and then move down the list from there. 

3 | Align Your Core Values

We could write a whole book on values, but we don’t want to get too deep into that here. Values aren’t just something you have painted onto your office wall and think of passively. They should ease their way into the fiber of everything you do. Just as your personality comes to light in every one of your interactions, your values should be clear even in time management. As you think through how your time is being used up each day, ask yourself it is aligning with the values you hold true? If the answer is no, it might be time to drop the task or delegate to someone who would find alignment. 

4 | Keep Your Overall Vision In Mind

In this context, vision is synonymous with goals. But, vision encapsulates not just the endpoint where you can check off a box and say “done,” but how do your tasks feed into your overall vision for you.

Imagine you are just starting your business, and your vision is to someday expand your one-person accounting firm to an office full of accountants, investors, and financial representatives. Something like a marketing task might not align with the image you have for yourself, but without being able to delegate in this phase, it is good—if not helpful—to think of your overall vision. “If I work hard on marketing now, some day I can fulfill the dream of owning a full-service financial firm.”

Aligning tasks with your vision is an excellent way to restructure your feelings about some things that simply have to get done but don’t necessarily feed your fire. 

5 | Leave Time For Renewal

Often overlooked in time management is renewal. For those of us who were or are athletes, we know how essential rest is to ultimate performance. Working out every single day may seem like it would set you on the fast-track to ultimate strength and agility, but, on the contrary, your muscles are actually building and repairing on your rest days. So, the rest is where your power comes from.

Similarly, when you schedule a time for rest and renewal in your workday, you will be a stronger executive or team member when you return. There are science-backed ways to rest at the beginning, middle, and end of your day. The thing is, you must be intentional about it. Scheduling out a 20-minute walk when you typically experience your mid-day slump or being intentional about your sleep will not only make you feel better, it will also ensure that the time you spend on tasks is meant with the vibrancy and energy you so wonderfully have within you. 

6 | Practice Essentialism

All of these steps may feel like an arduous task in itself, but they are leading us to a fundamental process: essentialism. What is essential today in your life? By going through these five previous steps, you are more equipped to say “no” when an un-essential task raises its hand and “yes” when something essential comes up by aligning your day with your values, vision, etc—which is one of the main benefits of time management in this form.

Yeses and nos start to become more comfortable. Think about how good it would feel to be able to confidently say, “No, I do not want to take on this project because it does not align with my overall vision.” It can happen with practice. What you do not do in a day is just as important as what you do. If you are putting more effort into the things that don’t get you any results in your work and personal life than the things that do, it is time to reevaluate. As you work on effective time management, we hope that you view it as not just management of work time, but your time as a whole. That you use positive stress to fuel you and avoid negative stress.

Renewing your spirit, prioritizing things that are important to you, and avoiding burnout. As always, I am here to help you in whatever you may need.

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 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.

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Erin Rocchio

Wholeness at Work