What To Do About Workplace Burnout W/ Dr. Christina Maslach

How do you know if you are burned out and what are the factors that might be contributing to your burnout?

I've been taking a little bit of a detour into burnout because of my own experience of burnout.

I've burned out a number of times in my life.

I've burned out in graduate school,

Burned out as a new parent,

And then most recently burned out in 2020 as a mental health provider writing a book and taking care of my kids.

And for me,

When I burn out,

I get into physical exhaustion.

I know I'm burned out when I wake up in the morning and I don't want to face my day.

I know I'm burned out when I start to isolate and stop calling people back,

Stop texting people back.

I know I'm burned out when I fall back into old behaviors and patterns of coping that aren't the healthiest for me.

And I imagine that you may have experienced burnout at some point too.

And we have two episodes on burnout that are addressing it from two different angles.

Last week we talked with Dr.

Judd about burnout at the individual level,

Some of the habits that we can get into to try and manage our stress and anxiety that just dig us deeper.

And he was really focusing on healthcare workers and their burnout.

And in preparation for my conversation with Dr.

Judd,

As I was reading about burnout,

There's one name that showed up more than the rest,

Which is Dr.

Maslach.

Dr.

Christina Maslach is the pioneer of research on job burnout,

Producing the standard assessment tool,

Which is named after her,

The Maslach Burnout Inventory.

It's used in pretty much every study that is done on burnout.

She has award-winning articles,

Several books,

Including Burnout,

The Cost of Caring.

And her newest book that's coming out is The Burnout Challenge.

Her research achievements over the past five decades have led to multiple awards from the National Academy of Sciences,

Western Psychological Association,

Society of Personality and Social Psychology.

And she has received awards in her outstanding teaching,

Including USA Professor of the Year in 1997.

In 2021,

She was named by Business Insider as one of the top hundred people transforming business.

And she received her undergraduate degree from Harvard and her PhD from Stanford University and has been on the Berkeley faculty since then.

So Dr.

Maslach has a wealth of experience and research in the arena of burnout.

We get a chance to turn to her today and we're going to explore what is burnout from a research perspective and then go on to talk about six core systemic factors that contribute to burnout.

And I will wrap things up after our conversation with a few suggestions based on what we talk about to help you prevent burnout and get things moving in a different direction.

You are someone who's been researching burnout for decades now,

And now you are facing a high demand of folks that probably need you.

We need your help to teach us about burnout,

How we can approach it differently.

And I'm wondering what it's been like for you and how you've navigated your own burnout,

What you've learned for yourself.

It's learning from what you've learned and sort of applying it and practicing what you write about and what you've discovered.

Obviously now it's more busy and so I've had to juggle a lot more.

But on the other hand,

I've got good people that I work with and family and it's been a different kind of experience,

But it has given me a vantage point to really talk to a lot of different folks who are in very different kinds of situations and get a better understanding of what's going on.

But I think one of the things that some people are saying is they're somehow linking burnout and the pandemic together in a way that's not appropriate,

As though it didn't exist and along comes the pandemic and once we're past the pandemic,

Burnout will go away.

Well,

No,

It's been here for a long time,

The burnout has,

And there were some things that really got a lot worse for people,

Particularly first responders,

Healthcare people,

Et cetera,

Because of the pandemic,

But it didn't begin there.

So it's kind of interesting to hear how people have thought about it and talked about it and often use the word to mean multiple,

Multiple different things.

So we have a bit of a tower of Babel problem,

Are we actually meaning the same thing when we use the term?

So there's a lot of challenges,

But on the other hand,

I think there were things about the pandemic that brought attention to some issues that people haven't dealt with before.

Right.

I think about the many folks that in the very early stages when things started to shut down,

Felt this degree of relief.

Oh,

Good,

I don't have to go.

I don't have to go.

That may be an indicator of some burnout,

Right?

I remember being in graduate school,

Which was a burnout time in my life and having sort of fantasies of getting some like mono or some kind of illness where I wouldn't have to go to work.

And that sounded like a relief in some way to not have to go.

And these are all signs that maybe there's something about the environment or the workplace.

About what you're doing,

Yeah.

There was a quote I actually used in the book from an article that had come out a number of years ago.

And somebody was saying he'd had to deal with clients and sometimes very difficult ones and had a boss who was just like,

Boss from hell and kind of pushing him and giving him the hardest things.

And he said to his wife,

And this is what I was quoting,

You know,

I wish I could just get hit gently by a bus so that I would have nothing serious,

But enough that I would have to just go home and stay in bed and have a cast or something like that.

And his wife,

Bless her,

Said,

You're leaving now.

Just get out of there.

If the thing is,

Yeah,

Please hurt me so that I don't have to work there.

It's like,

Okay,

No,

There's another solution.

That's one definition of burnout is if you feel like you'd rather be hit by a bus than go to work,

But you have some research-based ones.

That's true.

Extracted by the World Health Organization now is the workplace phenomena of burnout.

And it has these three characteristics.

This is what your inventory measures.

And you've been measuring this for decades and have a lot of data on it.

So how do we actually define,

With science,

Define burnout?

Okay,

Well,

So burnout,

Just to put it in a general context,

Is a response,

A stress response to chronic job stressors,

As World Health said,

That have not been successfully managed.

So chronic is a key word here.

This means that the stressors are there high frequency all the time,

Most of the time.

And we know from a lot of work on stress and coping and health that we don't recover well from chronic stressors.

They're much harder to relax,

Recover,

Get your sleep,

All that kind of thing when it's chronic as opposed to acute,

Occasional,

Whatever.

And World Health put it in a nice way,

I thought,

That have not,

Stressors,

Job stressors that have not been successfully managed.

There's an optimistic note in there.

They could be successfully managed.

We don't have to just sort of endure them.

And I think that's an important key.

But the burnout experience is characterized by three things.

One is exhaustion.

If it were only the stress response,

If it was only that,

Only exhaustion,

Then why would we call it a different name than exhaustion?

So there's two other parts of the burnout experience,

Which I think kind of make it clear in terms of what exactly it's talking about with the stress response.

And one of these things is that you are beginning to get negative,

Cynical,

Hostile about the job you are doing.

Take this job and shove it,

Kind of thing.

And why do I have to do it?

Why can't people run it well?

All these kind of things.

For me,

That's really more the hallmark because what's happening there is that people are shifting from trying to do their very best to do the bare minimum.

And when you have that happening,

Then the quality of the care,

The service,

The education,

Whatever,

The cure,

Whatever it is that you're providing for people is not the very best.

We as patients or clients or students or whatever are not really getting as good an education,

Healthcare,

Et cetera,

From all of this.

And then the third part is how you feel not just about the job,

But how you feel about yourself.

Why can't I do it?

Why can't I handle it?

Maybe I made a mistake.

I shouldn't be in.

Why am I doing this as a physician or whatever it happens to be?

That whole notion of professional efficacy is really what we're looking at,

What you're doing on the job is beginning to go downhill.

So it's those three things,

The exhaustion from responding to chronic stressors,

The negative response to the environment,

And a negative response to why am I here and I'm not good at what's happening.

And so when you get that trifecta,

That's what we really mean by burnout.

Yeah.

And that's what your measure measures.

And folks can,

I'll put a link to it if people want to access that.

You know,

I love metaphors.

And one of the metaphors I often will talk with people about is sort of you're caught in a pickle from baseball.

You're in between the bases and you need to run hard in one direction to get to one base,

But you know you're going to get out if you go that way.

Then you think,

Well,

Maybe I should just leave my job,

But that's also another kind of out,

Right?

Because some people want it,

They have to stay at their jobs because this is how they're getting their income or they really have invested their life and they used to have a lot of meaning at doing this work or they're a parent or a caregiver and this is their life's work.

But I liked your definition even better than being in a pickle,

Which is you are a pickle.

You're not in a pickle,

You're the pickle and the pickle is in brine.

And there's some reasons why you're experiencing burnout and it's not because you aren't running fast enough or that you chose the wrong base run to.

So I'll help elaborate on that metaphor.

The pickle metaphor,

What it's pointing out is the difference between in a general way focusing on the person as opposed to the environment in very general terms.

And a pickle doesn't start out being a pickle,

It starts out being a cucumber.

And it's only because it's in an environment of brine that it becomes something else.

And it's an important point because too often I think we focus just on the person and just assume that whatever is going on was because of what they did or failed to do or didn't have the strength or the courage or the knowledge or whatever.

And this for me is one of the biggest challenges.

And so the book,

The Burnout Challenge is really trying to address these.

And that is that we're always looking at what's happening to the person in terms of effect.

And we're really not doing a good job of focusing on the sources,

The causes.

And it's not that coping strategies aren't helpful or useful,

But it's only part of the picture and it's not the complete answer.

It's only a part of it.

And for a lot of people,

It's interesting how that once they kind of realize you've got to be looking at those chronic job stressors that are not being successfully managed,

Part of the job is to deal with those.

It's not just take a long weekend or maybe we won't work on Fridays or all these kinds of things or we'll put some exercise bike so people can work it off during the day.

There's other stuff.

And so our book is really trying to look at that job person relationship,

Not in an either or way,

But in a both and way.

You know,

You look at the person and the context environment and you try and work on how can you get better matches,

Better fit between people and their job.

And sometimes it's changing physical aspects of the job.

But what we're finding is you need to take into account the psychological and the social bases of a good match.

So that notion of sort of ergonomic,

The fit between the physical human body and the design of the chair and the design of the workstation,

You know,

So it doesn't injure people,

You know,

Doing the work,

That it supports the physical body.

Same principle,

But now we're adding in what are the social,

Those psychological core needs that we all have to belong,

To feel competent.

That's part of the match too.

And that's often where there's a disconnect between what people are trying to do as quote solutions to burnout,

Which is basically what's wrong with you,

Let's fix you up.

Yeah.

Well,

You've written about six core mismatches that can happen or matches that can happen that and I do think sometimes it's helpful to look at where is it,

The outliers where it's going right.

And I've had a few of those in my practice,

The outliers where it's growing right.

I worked with and I'll change identifying information and stuff,

But I worked with a restaurant owner during COVID and I watched the demand.

So one of those mismatches is the ratio of demands to resources.

So if you're a restaurant owner during COVID,

Your demands are going up and up and up and your resources are going down and down and down and the stress on this individual.

And I remember sort of starting out with this angle of,

Well,

We need to get you more sleep and we need to make sure you're exercising and doing all those individual kind of events.

And I'd send them off and they'd come back and be like,

Well,

Sorry,

I had to go in at 3 AM again.

And one day they came back and they said,

You know,

I got to tell you what happened this week.

And I was like,

What happened?

And they said,

Well,

My oven broke.

And I was like,

Oh no,

This is going to be a disaster,

Right?

How can you handle one more thing?

And they said,

My oven broke and it was just amazing to see the outpouring of help of the staff that stepped in,

That I drove up and went to the oven people and they helped me get a new one.

And that was actually the key to them coming in and saying,

And it was a really good week because it was about recognizing support.

And I started to get a different headspace on,

Okay,

Actually what's going to get us through some of these stressors,

Which are out of our control or some of these other matches.

So let's talk about the most obvious one is yes,

If there's too much work on your plate and you don't have enough resources,

You will burn out.

But there's periods of time where that's just the case.

If you're a new parent,

If you are starting school as a teacher,

If you're a healthcare worker that's dealing with all the things they've been helping,

Dealing with.

Let's talk about some of the others as well,

The other matches or mismatches.

Yeah,

Well,

They're in each of those six areas,

As you point out very correctly,

There's both.

And in fact,

The idea is you look at those six areas and find which ones are going well,

Which ones are maybe problem areas and what is stuff that is feasible and doable that we can actually make a change.

So that the areas have the pivot points,

Okay,

It's really working not well here,

But how could you begin to get a little more,

Better fit on one of these?

So you've mentioned the first one,

Which is workload.

So overload or a sustainable load that people can manage.

The second one is often very important in conjunction with workload is control.

And that means how much autonomy and choice and discretion do you have about how you do your job?

Can you innovate a little bit or course correct or respond to,

Oops,

It's a little different than what we thought,

That kind of thing.

Or are you locked in and you can't,

You have to,

What you say,

What you do is already mandated and you have no discretion.

And so when people are talking about workload,

They're often talking about uncontrollable workload and control turns out to be the big mismatch area,

Not necessarily how many tasks you have and getting done.

And these six areas,

By the way,

Can overlap.

You can have multiple kinds of things happening.

They're not like totally independent.

So a third area has to do with what we call reward,

Meaning positive feedback of any kind.

And for when you do a job well,

People often think,

Okay,

That's about salary.

Am I getting paid enough for benefits?

Turns out in the research,

We're finding a lot of importance,

Sometimes more than those two things,

Of social recognition that people say,

Thank you.

Oh my gosh,

So glad you managed to handle that.

We just about lost that client and you know,

Da,

Da,

Da,

Da,

Or,

You know,

Pat on the back or,

You know,

Kind of things that sort of say,

I'm so glad you were there and you were able to do this.

And that kind of recognition that you've worked hard,

You've done well and people notice and it's made a difference.

I'm going to pause you on those two before you mentioned the last three,

Because those two feel really important.

And sometimes when we're working with leadership teams,

We have to be careful with those two.

So the first one being,

Well,

I want to talk about the social recognition one.

What is it to the individual that you're working with that would feel like recognition for them?

Because sometimes what leaders do is they put up these things like customer of the week or I'm going to put a big acknowledgement on Slack of look at what so-and-so is doing and not thinking about the whole team,

How this may impact others on the team.

And also not thinking about the individual that they're working with,

What would actually be recognition for them?

Like what would feel good to them?

What do they need?

Sort of those love languages kind of thing of relationship,

Right?

But that's also part I think of a leader's job is to start to ask questions and get a sense.

Am I just handing out Starbucks cards to people that don't drink coffee or am I actually getting people what they need in terms of recognition?

Same thing with autonomy too,

Because I think that a lot of times leaders will go in and think that they have a flexible work environment because they're allowing for this or allowing for that.

And they're not really actually asking their employees,

What does flexibility mean to them?

I once worked with an organization,

I was talking with the CEO and he was talking about,

He had brought an employee in and we were talking about flexibility in the workplace and she had said,

Gosh,

You know what the most beneficial thing you ever did was letting me set my work schedule so that from three to six,

No one can contact me,

No one has access to me and they know I'm a hundred percent off because I'm a single mom.

And from three to six,

I'm a hundred percent on being a mom.

And that gives me what exactly what I need to be able to be really effective from like five to 7am when my kid is sleeping and nine to 11 at night when my kid is sleeping.

So these are some of the things that we need to start to have conversations about is also for the individual,

What is recognition and what is flexibility or autonomy mean to them?

Right.

Again,

In the book,

One of the things we talk about and we say,

How do you work on building better matches and creating them is that there are three C's that we've learned about over the years and working with the data and with different organizations and it's communicate,

Customize and commit.

And what you're talking about fits very,

Very,

Very well under the first collaborate is really the word that I prefer to use because you have to work together on this.

And that means finding out what would make a difference and what sort of things rather than assuming I know what will work.

And in fact,

One of the,

I will say one of the most demoralizing things that happens to a lot of people with burnout is for them to be saying,

And it's related to control as well,

As well.

Okay,

I'm an engineer.

I've been trained to do this kind of work and I'm doing this work and I never ever get asked what are the problems that we could fix to make it smoother or could we do something a little different or how is it going?

Or it's just,

You just get this top down,

It's going to be this.

No,

We're going to change the whole thing and you're going to now be over here.

And it's demoralizing not to be recognized,

Not to be treated as though you have in fact experience expertise,

Et cetera,

That you're bringing,

That you may have some thoughts.

Doesn't mean they're all correct or the best ideas,

But let me be a part of this.

This is important for all kinds of things,

For the sense of I belong to this larger group that is doing these kinds of things that I have the competence,

Rather than being treated like someone who doesn't know what they're doing.

So of course I know what I'm doing,

But it's no kind of thing,

But I can't talk about it.

So anyway,

If we get to those three C's,

Because that's not so much research data,

That's practice data of what has worked.

So for the recognition,

But I do agree with you that finding out more about what would work and realizing that you don't have to customize literally to every individual that a lot of these core needs everybody shares,

But there will be things like people who have families and people who don't.

And this is why cafeteria style benefits is the way to go because it's not like,

Well,

Why are you getting this?

Just because you have a kid,

Kind of thing.

Well,

Okay,

Here's a bunch of things you all get to have too,

Or whatever it is.

And these people want this,

And these people over there want to get that.

And so you can do that in a sense of saying,

What would be good options for people in terms of flexibility?

Coming in late,

Staying late,

Working from home,

Having specific hours off,

Because when school gets out at a different time,

Then business,

How did we design that?

Instead of being smarter about it.

All of those kinds of things,

I think you're on the right track there.

Which leads to one of the six,

Which is fairness.

And I love the line,

I think I read it in a kindergarten teacher's room on one of those posters they put up,

Which is,

Fairness is you getting what you need,

Not necessarily getting the same.

So fairness and how that relates to inequity in the workplace and discrimination in the workplace,

And those are things that I think people are more aware of.

It's one of those outgrowths of the last few years where there's a more awareness of how fairness and discrimination impacts stress levels and impacts work performance and burnout.

That's a big mismatch as well that can play a big role in burnout.

It can be a big mismatch.

And it's one that I don't think has been recognized as much.

I mean,

I've worked with organizations where we did an assessment and people are saying,

Oh,

People are going to complain about the workload and they're going to complain about the reward,

They don't get paid enough.

And I come back in with the data and say,

It looks like people aren't having big problems in those areas,

But fairness is a bit,

What?

They think we're not fair?

It's kind of like a shock to the system.

It's not even a way you think about it.

How could that be?

You know,

Kind of thing.

And yet,

When there's a lot of unfairness,

Inequity,

I mean,

It is right.

This is where glass ceilings exist.

This is where discrimination exists of people not being treated fairly in terms of opportunities or all kinds of things.

That negative cynicism about the job,

That is for me,

The hallmark of burnout,

This is where it begins to really skyrocket around these issues.

What is this place like?

How dare they do things which don't show basic respect to everybody?

It doesn't mean everybody has to be treated the very same,

But there has to be a fair process,

There has to be a fair judgment about whatever.

I worked with one organization,

In fact,

I quote them as a little example in the book,

That turned out to have a big fairness issue.

And there were different things within the organization.

It was almost a thousand people,

Different departments.

But everybody pretty much agreed that one of the unfair things was a distinguished service award,

Where somebody got some extra money for doing something above and beyond,

Something special.

And it's like,

What's wrong with that?

I mean,

People do,

Dah,

Dah,

Dah,

Dah,

Dah.

I said,

Maybe we need to put more money in it,

Make it a little bit of a bigger award.

And I said,

People weren't complaining about the reward,

They were complaining about it was unfair who got it.

It went to the wrong people.

It was rigged in some way,

And it was people who didn't deserve it at all were getting this award.

And the people who should have gotten it,

Who'd really done something special,

No.

What happened?

So it was like,

Okay,

We worked with the organization,

They set up a whole thing to try and come up with a better system for giving special recognition to people who had gone above and beyond and done something really very cool.

And eventually they put it in place.

And when we went back and visited another year,

The fairness issues had just really dropped down a lot.

They were clearly working on it.

These chronic job stressors,

In physician burnout literature,

They talk about it as pebbles in your shoe.

And it's these chronic,

Everyday thing that's there,

That's annoying,

That's painful,

That is just gets in the way,

And it's always,

You can't get rid of it.

So this was something that,

An award that was hated,

And it's a nice award with money.

And you're thinking,

Why could that be?

How bad could that be?

It could be very bad if it was just an emblem of how unfair and crooked the whole system was,

And you're working there.

And it's like people,

Even if they heard they might be nominated,

They didn't want anybody to know or say,

No,

No,

No,

No,

Because I don't want to be viewed as one of those people who don't deserve it.

So fairness issues for all kinds of things are often an important marker of how we do things,

Who we are.

And it's hard to take pride and be committed and feel good about the work you're doing when you see and are being treated in ways that are so unfair.

So that's one area.

Another area is really about the workplace community.

And that means,

With community,

It means the people whose paths you cross on a regular basis,

Your colleagues,

Boss,

People you supervise,

Customers,

Clients,

And is it an environment where there's support and there's trust and there's a willingness to figure out,

How can we,

If we disagree,

Come to a decision on something?

When it's going badly,

People are feeling isolated,

Feeling afraid.

There's a culture of fear.

I don't dare speak up.

I don't,

Because if I say I'm stressed or can we do this differently or be critical and try and get a different solution,

Is it going to be viewed as,

Let's,

This person is less than 100% and throw them under the bus and harassment,

Bullying,

Instability,

Putting people down.

People talk about this often using the word toxic,

A toxic workplace,

You know,

Like,

I think I'm good at the work I do.

I wish I could do it.

And to your point earlier,

I wish I didn't have to do it here in this office,

In this building.

And of course,

Along comes a pandemic and says,

You can't come to the building because it's now unsafe to be all close to people and all the rest of that.

And it's like,

I'm at home.

I don't have to commute.

I don't have to be directly with these people.

Maybe still deal with them on Zoom meetings,

But it's a different kind of environment.

It wasn't always good for everybody in that regard,

But that was one kind of possibility.

And I actually don't think absence of community is the solution either.

Right.

So maybe you went home and on Zoom,

But now it's,

You don't have the,

You know,

Maybe as many pebbles in your shoe,

But you have something different,

Which is isolation and community and the incredible support that community can provide when you have the right one that to get through hard stuff.

And,

You know,

Again,

Thinking about the places where it's going right.

I work,

I work a lot.

I go into schools quite a bit and work with teachers and then have my kids in school as well.

And my older child is in a school where every person on the,

On the staff participates in creating an elective and the elective can be anything that they're interested in.

So after this,

I'm going to go work in the kitchen with the kitchen staff.

And I I'm like the lunch lady on Tuesdays.

So before,

So I was chatting with the,

The main chef of the school and chatting with him about his elective,

Which is he leads the kids in D and D,

Which is Dungeons and Dragons in the afternoons.

And so here's the person that's cooking your food.

That's also sharing in this game with the kids and the kids are expressing appreciation to him and he's engaged with the kids and feels meaning and purpose because he knows who he's cooking for.

And it has a sense of,

Okay,

We're in community with each other.

We are showing up with our interests and our individual pursuits and we see each other as humans,

Not just as like the,

You know,

Person that's giving and receiving me my emails or just cooking my food that I can,

You know,

Dehumanize and not really value or give appreciation to.

So that the community one feels so central.

Oh yeah,

No,

It is central.

And that's why I'm saying that when it goes bad and it goes toxic and people are saying,

You know,

I don't know who to turn to if I need to ask advice or a question,

Or I've just had a bad day and need just to cry on somebody's shoulder,

You know,

Because the culture and this was happening way before the pandemic was building up into this culture of fear that if you say anything that somehow suggests you are not perfect,

Not 150%,

Then you're kind of like a marked person.

And this goes even to medical students who realize that the letter they get for an internship might be on the line if somebody thinks,

Oh,

You've got a problem.

I'm not going to say I've got a problem.

I mean,

You know,

But if I have problems,

Where do I go and who do I talk to?

So the stigma that gets attached to burnout that,

You know,

And we can see it with,

You know,

Other kinds of mental health problems as well,

Leads people not to seek help,

Not to self-disclose,

Not to do kinds of things that might actually be helpful.

And so for me,

I mean,

You know,

One of the things we've learned from psychology,

Sociology for decades and decades and decades is that people need other people in your life and you need to be the kind of people that other people need as well.

And whether it's in your family or your neighbors or at work or in school,

You know,

It's that social,

I can't say social network anymore,

Can I?

The social community of you and others doing things for each other,

Helping each other,

Correcting when there's errors,

But in a way that sort of makes you learn and grow,

Being there for fun and laughing and,

You know,

Having a good time and pats on the back and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

That social,

You know,

Kind of blanket that is so,

So,

So important for all of us as we grow up and every aspect of our lives is getting really shredded in a lot of these work environments.

It's not a healthy place for people to be with other people.

I agree with you,

Getting away from it is not necessarily the solution,

You know,

But people found that,

Ah,

They had to deal with it differently now when they weren't in the office.

And in some cases they were then getting exposed to other kinds of nasty stuff from people,

You know,

That nobody else could see or hear because it was done,

You know,

More surreptitiously on the internet.

So it wasn't necessarily always a good thing,

But we learn from what worked well and what doesn't and I think need to use that as we go forward.

So how would you,

How would you work with an organization that is missing this,

This aspect of community,

Right,

Because we can't ask the individual just to,

Well,

Start being vulnerable and say you're worried about it.

No,

No,

No,

No.

And expect the organization to respond well.

But yeah,

How do we work with that?

It's not about going to the individual.

It's going to the job.

It's going to the team,

The leadership.

It's going to the first line managers.

It's going to,

You know,

The solutions to burnout are more we solutions,

Not me.

And it's not,

I individually have to kind of change the,

You know,

The whole climate here.

Obviously it's not one person's thing,

But there could be ways that individuals begin to raise some issues or questions or suggest how about we get together and kind of,

You know,

Maybe redo our intake process over here.

Can we,

You know,

Kind of get to a better place so it can start from bottom up.

It can also clearly come in in an important way if first line managers are really,

You know,

Committed to doing the best for his or her team,

His or her people,

Rather than just being the passer on of what comes from above,

You know,

And being more punitive and,

You know,

It's when you don't do well as opposed to when you do.

So our whole approach is much more about how you have to change and redesign the job and the processes.

So it's not,

Not judge the individual because the individual,

If you frame it as what can the individual do,

You come up with individual answers.

And in many cases it has to be more collective,

You know,

Shared social answers.

So we need a different process rather than just always going to the person.

Yeah.

I was working with a leader who was having a challenge with her,

The people on her staff,

Not writing notes.

The first approach was,

Well,

I'm going to go in and like,

You know,

Give them reinforcements if they write the notes.

And I just got curious and we started having these conversations about,

Well,

What do you think the barriers to writing the notes are?

There may be many different barriers.

For some people it's like they're done with the end of the day and they need to get home to somebody or they're exhausted or what are the,

Or maybe writing isn't their strength and they're more verbally inclined,

You know?

And so like having conversations with your staff about first what the barriers are and then for the folks that are successful in writing the notes,

What are they doing?

What ideas do other people have?

Exactly.

And how could we brainstorm together about some different strategies and having a diverse sort of examples of what's working,

What are the barriers?

So that it's a conversation to solve the problem as opposed to the sort of this top down intervention.

I'm going to tell you what to do and if you don't do it,

You get punished.

And if you do do it,

You get rewarded.

That's sort of old,

You know,

Sort of old way of doing things.

So this kind of,

And that builds community,

Problem solving together and saying we all,

You know,

Struggle at different things,

Including the leaders,

Helps people feel like we're on the same page and where it's normal to struggle with things.

And it's also beneficial to have a diversity,

A diverse group with ideas and strategies that are similar from each other.

Yeah.

Those great examples.

That's great examples.

It's exactly what I think we've been learning from,

You know,

All of the research on burnout is that that is more the strategy you need to take.

It does require for a lot of people what they haven't thought about before,

Which is what could we do to solve this problem?

What could we do?

You know,

There's always finger pointing,

Well,

Somebody should take care of it or we shouldn't have,

You know,

That kind of thing.

And making it clear that there is stuff you could,

You could change and do differently and flies under the radar of,

You know,

The upper bosses and it doesn't require a lot of money.

So,

And you've got some control over things that you could sort of,

You know,

What are the,

What are our top 10 pebbles in our shoe?

You know,

Where,

Where could we start and begin to make a difference?

And I have found that wherever we have worked with people and they kind of come up with something like,

You know,

The distinguished service award,

Which they all said,

Ah,

You know,

I mean,

When I mentioned that all of you and,

You know,

In the assessment wrote about how much you hated this award and wanted to put a stake through its heart,

I got a huge ovation,

Not for me,

But for the fact that yes,

Finally,

Somebody said that the award was bad.

And,

But what it did in that case and many others is once they've begun to make a change and fix something and make it a little bit better and a better fit and a better match for people,

Whatever it is,

It builds hope.

It builds optimism.

So the last one,

Let me repeat what we have.

So we have five.

So we have a workload,

Imbalance to resources.

We have,

We talked about fairness in the workplace.

We talked about autonomy and having some sensitive control.

We just talked about community and what was the other one?

Reward.

Oh,

And reward.

Yeah.

What's rewarding?

Positive.

You had to give positive feedback.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So what's the sixth one?

Again,

One that doesn't,

I think is a really important one,

But it often doesn't come up.

People don't know how to talk about it or recognize it or whatever,

But it's values.

Or we can also think of it,

The values.

What is the important meaning of the kind of work you're doing?

Whether you're teaching or you're building something or you're serving people in a restaurant or,

I mean,

It doesn't,

There's some value meaning things you take pride in,

Things that motivate you to do a good job.

You want people to really think you're the best cook ever and all that kind of thing.

When people are working in any kind of job environments where there are ethical conflicts,

Where I have to lie,

Cheat or steal,

People talk about moral injury,

That I am forced by the system,

The job to say things and do things that I wish I didn't have to say and do,

Even if maybe they're necessary or just sort of feeling that this is wrong or I don't want to have to be,

I can't look at myself in the mirror in the morning knowing what I'm going in in terms of the job kind of thing.

And when people are,

They talk about it often,

It's interesting,

The phrase that often comes up in the interviews is the erosion of my soul at some point.

And I don't know that I can keep doing it.

And it does lead people to quit and say,

Even if they say,

Oh,

No,

No,

We'll give you a bigger salary,

We'll pay you more.

And they're really saying,

I can't,

No,

I'll take a pay cut if I can be working doing something that I feel good about.

And again,

In the book,

We quote some examples,

I remember one of a doctor,

Emergency physician,

Who had had an unbelievable career in the military in Afghanistan,

Dealing with the worst circumstances,

But that was really what her job was about and what she could do to help the soldiers who were wounded and stuff.

And she came back to the United States and was in a big hospital and burned out,

Saying all they care about is do I bring in money?

It's being a worker bee,

It's not about really providing.

And she finally said,

I can't do this anymore.

And she quit and got a job at a lower salary,

But working with children and got her values and her meaning back in the work.

This is the values,

The meaning of the work I'm doing.

And I just,

In the other place,

It was just,

You know,

Was dragging me down.

I couldn't do that anymore and feel good about it.

Yeah.

So sometimes it's leaving the environment because it's a values mismatch.

And then a lot of the work that I do with folks is finding the values that maybe you've lost track of because you've been so busy in the workload or you've detached a bit or you've forgotten the reason why you became a teacher or the reason why you went into serving people food or the reason why you're a therapist even,

Right?

All of these things can happen when you just start getting into burnout mode and going through the motions.

And values can be the thing that really helps us dig deep and gives us energy when we have nothing left.

I mean,

That's certainly what I found in my own life when I felt burned out,

If I can remember the values,

The why,

Then it helps me be able to be more present with my clients.

Yeah.

And it can also,

I mean,

Using it,

It can bring you back to why you're here and what you're doing.

And sometimes it's how do I get more of what means a lot to me?

And are there things about where I'm working,

Who I'm working with,

How I work with my colleagues that,

You know,

Whatever,

You know,

Different ways that sort of make that a little bit more,

You know,

Front and center for me.

But it can also mean if I decide I can't keep this,

So there's something not working here and I need to go elsewhere,

What am I looking for somewhere else?

And how do I know that this will be a better alternative for me?

You know,

And is it more important?

I mean,

I remember talking with a woman who had been a student of mine as an undergraduate at Cal and she came back for a reunion thing and we were talking and she had been into green environmental kind of issues way before anybody else was,

You know,

And she was working as an environmental consultant.

I'm saying,

Oh,

How great,

You know?

And she said,

No,

I think I'm quitting.

It's awful.

I'm thinking,

Okay,

Tell me about it.

And it turned out it was okay on everything except the values.

And basically what she had to do was be a consultant for people who were raising the environment to put up a parking lot or a new building.

And then this was not at all what,

You know,

Really she wanted to be doing,

You know,

In that kind of work.

But she had a close friend who was also doing that job,

But her friend had young kids and the company did have wonderful childcare facility and it was near schools.

And so that woman was saying,

This is more important that I have this,

Even though working for these other guys is not my thing,

But,

You know,

For now this is better.

So they had given their also life circumstances.

This is where the person job match,

You know,

Kind of comes in.

One woman could work with those kinds of issues because she was getting the kind of support and resources that she needed for her family life.

The other one didn't,

And this was just not enough to go against what she,

You know,

Really wanted to be able to achieve in life.

And so she was looking for something else,

You know,

It wasn't about the salary and it wasn't about a nice office and it wasn't,

You know,

It was,

I don't want to be working doing this,

You know,

Kind of thing.

And there may be different points in time where some of these mismatches are more important to us than others,

Depending on where we are developmentally in our life and what's going on in our personal world.

And if COVID showed us anything,

It's that yes,

Our personal life impacts our work life and vice versa.

These are not separate entities,

Although we were in the belief system before this that they were.

So if you are,

You know,

Maybe not getting a lot of appreciation at home and you're not getting a lot of appreciation at work,

You're going to get burned out,

More burned out.

But if you have,

You know,

A ton of appreciation to other areas of your life,

It might be,

You know,

Able to deal with some of these other mismatches.

But it's really is individualized in terms of what people need in these different areas.

And people can be creative in this regard.

And sometimes I think it's having the presence of examples or the exhortation about thinking about what else you could do.

I mean,

For example,

Earlier on in my research,

I,

You know,

Mentioned the first book I ever wrote was ways in which people who had really difficult,

Challenging jobs,

You know,

Working with other people,

For example,

Police officers,

Therapists working with jurors who were delinquents and having all kinds of problems,

Stuff like that.

So the guy that I talked to about that,

That I'm thinking of now is,

Was someone who would organize pickup basketball games with kids in his neighborhood or on the local playground because he just wanted to have times where he was with normal,

Average,

You know,

Just people,

Kids,

You know,

He realized he didn't want to be turning into this cynical,

Hostile,

Screw these people,

You know,

Because they can't live their life or they're doing things that are illegal or something like that.

Or medical people who have moonlighted like at summer camps,

You know,

Doing medical services because it's a different kind of relationship and it's a,

You know,

It counters what they had to deal with a lot,

You know,

With their dealing with kids with leukemia,

For example,

Where you're losing a lot to death.

And here,

This is just average,

You know,

Camp injuries or,

You know,

Or something like that.

Or a police officer who would do extra work as a,

As a photographer for people at weddings or bar mitzvahs or something like that,

Where people were happy to see him and,

You know,

Get something that he could do that would add to the,

You know,

The celebration or whatever.

And so there's ways in which people can try and recognize what they're facing and how do you get other people to hang out with who can all help each other on this,

Or you can do other things that kind of counter some of what you're having and you're thinking about your overall life.

You know,

There's some stuff I do and here's how I'm going to cope with the fact that it is a tough kind of thing to do.

And here are the other things that make for a better life.

This is why I grow a garden.

I was just,

I was just coming into work on Monday and I had a really long workday with a lot of intense clients and everyone,

You know,

Every single person you see,

They have something that breaks your heart,

Right?

As a therapist.

And so I,

You know,

I'm like,

I'm just going to go to the store and buy a ton of plants and put them in,

Put them in my little pots and water some plants.

And it gives me a sense of if I water this,

It will grow.

And sometimes if we water people,

They don't always grow.

They have hard stuff happening in their life.

So there's lots of ways in which,

Yeah,

We can find outlets and not have work be everything.

And I do think that's one of the challenges these days with just changes in terms of technology.

I do want to ask you,

And as we're closing up,

Just what you're seeing in terms of how burnout has changed and not only with COVID,

But also just with technology,

Everything from I hear about people,

You know,

Going into the bathroom while they're on zoom and people don't have breaks the way they used to have breaks anymore.

And yeah.

So any suggestions in that department?

Yes.

So in the book,

We give a lots of examples from a lot of different places and different people and to for each of those six areas.

So we've got a chapter on each one of the six that looks at what some of the issues,

Problems are and how,

When you pivot,

What could you move to or how this group or that person or whatever,

You know,

Did to make a,

You know,

Turn that around,

You know,

Not everybody got to work from home,

But those who did some of it worked well,

Some of it worked terribly and everything in between.

We need to,

Again,

Learn from what was needed or what was helpful and what was not on all of this.

For some people,

The absence of the boundaries actually brought them more joy and pleasure in their family because they were often away and now they were at home.

And so I can't tell you how many people were talking about the absent dad who was always flying on a plane to some other place,

You know,

Or,

You know,

Traveling and now was home more often and could take the kids out,

You know,

To the local park or,

You know,

Do whatever.

But for others,

There was a sense in which,

You know,

The commute actually provided a boundary,

You know,

Between work and home,

Although it was wasted time,

You're not being paid for,

You can't be doing,

You know,

Good stuff often.

And,

You know,

We're looking for ways in which they could sort of re-establish,

You know,

How do you not have it all blended too much so that,

You know,

Is it work time,

Fun time,

You know,

Personal time,

Sleep time?

So I think there's a lot to be learned there of what worked well and what did not.

With technology,

Yes.

And that's not a new thing,

I mean,

The way we live our lives keeps evolving over decades and centuries.

And we continue to adjust and evolve and take in what's good and then say,

Oh,

But now we have another problem.

Sometimes technology is just another different way of doing it.

We used to see people having real burnout issues when they were having to deal with being on call.

And now you're on call all the time because,

You know,

Anybody can,

You know,

From anywhere in the world or whatever,

You know,

Can send you a message of some kind.

So there's some of the ways in which they manifest themselves are different.

But on the other hand,

Sometimes there are things that make it so much better and easier.

Think with a lot of things in life,

We have to recognize that,

You know,

Almost everything is a little bit of a double-edged sword.

There are positives and there are some negatives.

When you think about the six areas,

You can say,

Oh my gosh,

Six different places where I might get more stressed and,

You know,

Have sources of burnout.

The positive twist is you can pivot and you've got six different paths that can take you to a better place.

And maybe you can't move this immovable thing over here,

But you could experiment with doing something differently over there.

There is no one size that fits all.

And looking for it and unfortunately just implementing it.

And so when I mentioned those three Cs,

The collaboration,

The communication really has to be much more two-way,

Three-way,

Four-way rather than just one-way top-down.

Without getting feedback,

You could get so much better feedback on if you're going to spend the money,

If you're going to make a change,

If you're going to,

You know,

How are we going to do it?

What are those chronic job stressors?

What are the pebbles in the chute?

How can we begin?

Not just one,

But several.

Do one,

Try something,

Get a good win,

Move on.

You know,

The world will continue to change.

The pandemic showed us that.

It's going to continue to change even more.

And we always have to be in a mode of,

Okay,

So how are things going and can we get a better fit?

Can we get a better match here?

So I guess I just want to say for folks that are listening to this,

There's a lot that you took in today and appreciated just starting with the conversation about what is burnout and then going through these six main areas of fit.

And in the burnout challenge,

Folks can go in and take a deeper dive,

Read other people's experiences and stories,

And then also look at the evidence base and your suggestions after decades of hearing these stories and researching these folks of ideas that leaders can implement,

Coworkers can implement,

And then you as an individual can implement so that we can change some of the brine and we're not quite as pickled as we feel.

I feel pickled a lot of days.

And this is,

I think,

Inspiring work,

Important work.

It couldn't be coming out at a better time right now,

Especially for our healthcare workers.

The recent Mayo Clinic study that just came out was like,

Oh gosh,

The folks that are our helpers need some more support.

And the burnout challenge is going to be a useful intervention and tool for folks.

So thank you for your life's work on burnout.

Thank you for this book and thank you for this hour.

It's a real honor to spend it with you and put a face to the name that I read all over the place and just an honor and delight to be in your presence.

So thank you,

Dr.

Maslach.

Well,

Thank you.

It was nice having the hour to chat with you.

Yes.

Alrighty.

So I mentioned on the show that the Maslach Burnout Inventory is the most commonly used tool to assess whether you might be at risk for burnout.

And I will put a link to her inventory in the show notes.

But some of the questions you may relate to,

There are things like,

I feel emotionally drained by my work.

I feel frustrated by my work.

I feel tired when I get up in the morning and have to face another day at work.

I've become more insensitive to people since I've been working.

I'm afraid that this job is making me uncaring.

And those questions allude to the first two categories of burnout,

Which are really exhaustion and cynicism.

How are you doing?

Are you exhausted?

And are you starting to feel a little bit cynical,

Whether you are a caregiver,

A parent,

Or maybe in other environments that you're in?

The third component of burnout has to do with your sense of accomplishment.

If you start to feel like you are not being effective at your job or effective as a parent or caregiver,

That can contribute to burnout as well.

So do you feel full of energy?

Do you feel like you accomplished many worthwhile things in your work?

Do you feel that you're able to be effective in how you look after your clients' or patients' problems?

These are some of the components that are part of the personal achievement aspect of burnout.

So your first practice for this week is to go take the inventory.

And this is not a,

Like,

You either are burned out or you're not inventory.

It's an assessment to kind of look at how crispy are you,

Going to the pickle metaphor.

Are you getting a little bit salty?

Are you getting a little bit crispy?

And where are you at in terms of these three pieces of exhaustion,

Cynicism,

And effectiveness?

Then I'd like for you to take a look at the six mismatches that can happen between you and your workplace and tackle one of them.

So just to repeat,

The six mismatches are your workload imbalance.

If you have too much work on your plate and not enough resources,

Do you need to make an intervention there?

Your sense of fairness in the workplace.

Is there an aspect of your workplace that feels unfair?

And how could you create some community or reach out to somebody that is a safe person?

If you can identify someone that feels safe,

A mentor,

An ally to help discuss some of the unfairness within the workplace.

Or if you are a leader,

How can you work on fairness and equity within your workplace?

Another aspect is appreciation.

And part of working on workplace burnout is also giving appreciations.

Are you offering appreciations to your coworkers?

Are you rewarding people,

Acknowledging people for the work?

Not only are you receiving it,

But can be part of the workplace change by upping appreciations.

The fourth factor has to do with autonomy.

If you are a leader,

How can you create more flexibility and autonomy in the workplace?

If you are an employee,

How can you seek out more autonomy and flexibility for yourself?

And then also belonging and community.

Where do you feel a sense of belonging within the workplace and how can you continue to cultivate those relationships?

Invest in conversations,

Check in.

How are you doing?

How are things going at the beginning of the Zoom meeting rather than just going straight into the meeting?

And then finally,

Values.

We talk about values all the time on this podcast,

But I think that Dr.

Maslach had some interesting things to say about values when you have a values mismatch,

How toxic it can be.

And that may mean leaving the workplace environment that you are in to find something that is a better match,

Or it may be remembering what your values are.

So there's your practice for the week.

Give yourself an assessment.

How burned out are you?

And then look at these six core factors and see which ones are the biggest pebbles in your shoe that maybe you could start to address and remembering the best way to address it is to not address it alone.

These things need to be addressed as a we,

Not only as a me.

Thanks so much for listening to Your Life in Process.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Your Life in Process.

When you enter your life in process,

When you become psychologically flexible,

You become free.

If you like this episode or think it would be helpful to somebody,

Please leave a review over at podchaser.

Com.

And if you have any questions,

You can leave them for me by phone at 805-457-2776,

Or send me a voicemail by email at podcast at yourlifeinprocess.

Com.

I want to thank my team,

Craig,

Angela Stubbs,

Ashley Hyatt,

And thank you to Ben Gold at Bell and Branch for his original music.

This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only,

And it's not meant to be a substitute for mental health treatment.