The Burnout Myth: Why Burnout is NOT the Real Challenge

Throughout my 13 years of coaching, I have not heard these phrases as frequently as I have in the past year: 

“How do I manage burnout? My whole team is on the verge of it. Even I am too.”

2020 was a defining year in what would usher in the future of work. It redefined “work” as we knew it to be. As the pandemic reared its ugly head across the globe, businesses and organisations were forced to grapple with this whole concept of “Work-from-Home”, or WFH as we term it now. The onslaught of WFH brought along with it another phenomenon, known as zoom fatigue, where people are exhausted from the sheer amount of online meetings and lack of work-life balance. 

Closer to home, we see the extent to which burnout has invaded our shores. According to a Work Trend Index Report commissioned by Microsoft — that sought to investigate how the pandemic has impacted wellbeing at work globally — Singapore had 37% of her responders citing an increased rate of burnout after the pandemic struck. In comparison, the Asia average stood at 29%. 

Multiple research studies have proven how burnout can result in severe ramifications not only on a physical and psychological level but has a profound impact on work performance and productivity. 

What we have witnessed in the last year, was frenzied organisations and business leaders scrambling to get on top of this phenomenon. We saw this through the proliferation of articles addressing how to combat burnout as well as mental wellness campaigns targeted at raising awareness and educating people on how to cope with burnout. 

As we see leaders continue to fight this fire, what we might fail to realise is that burnout is not a new buzzword. 

The Origins of Burnout

In fact, the first person credited for coining the term “burnout” was Herbert Freudenberger in 1980. Most recently, WHO has recognised and classified burnout as an occupational phenomenon and even expanded its definition in 2019. What burnout typically looks like is where people experience increasing levels of exhaustion that lead to detachment from their work. Eventually, this culminates in a sense of ineffectiveness in their role.

2020 did not bring about a redefinition of what burnout is — the pandemic should not alter our thinking and approach to burnout. 2020 was the trigger point that aggravated it and created intensified workloads that saw heightened emotional responses.

Recognising these syndromes of burnout is a good first step. But burnout was simply the manifestation of pre-existing issues. If we want to deal with it decisively, more needs to be done to stem its corrosive root causes, which then begs the question:

What is the real challenge at hand?

Challenge #1:

We don’t know how to be honest with each other

From my interactions with many leaders, one of the main contributing factors to burnout in the past year is the number of meetings that many now find themselves a participant of. The higher management’s intention is to grasp the opportunity to involve as many people as possible in every meeting, in the name of “giving exposure” to all employees. The result of which is people feeling “guilt-tripped” to attend those meetings and overwhelmed by its amount on top of the workload already on their plate. 

Let’s be real. Most of us don’t have the habit of expressing our emotions, especially in moments where tension begins brewing. Because we are not intentional in sharing how we feel at the point of potential conflict arising, then in all likelihood, it is only a matter of time before our pent-up emotions erupt. We then end up treading down the path of burnout.

The real challenge then is not burnout, but the absence of a culture that encourages honest communication between leaders and their people. If sharing one’s struggles and reservations come as second nature, we can nip these moments of frustration in the bud, before it escalates any further. 

Challenge #2:

We hold an archaic view of delegating job tasks

As I coach multiple top leaders, I’ve encountered many leaders who are helpless in dealing with their people leaving, one after another, largely due to burnout. One scenario I want to highlight is where we find our people completely drained, despite doing something they are competent in. In the face of that, the typical response is to psych ourselves to suck it up and push on without making a fuss. 

This leads to the real challenge that we face — our archaic view of deployment. 

What is our default approach that we adopt towards deployment? It is a primitive approach where everyone is hired and deployed to a position with a predefined job description based on their competency and experience. We believe that as long as people are good at doing something, that must mean that they are energised by it. On the contrary, there are tasks that people feel drained by even though they excel in them. 

The only way forward is if we, as leaders, make that intentional step to leverage strengths-based partnerships and redeploy job tasks accordingly across the people in our teams. This is a quote I use often when coaching leaders:

The weight of a task, whether light or heavy, is dependent on the hands that hold it. 

Our role as leaders should be to identify what tasks are energising or draining to our people. Following this, we must give them every opportunity to major in the tasks that energise them, even if those tasks fall outside of their job scope. 

From Burnout to Balance

Through sharing my thoughts, in no way do I intend to disregard the very real impact caused by burnout, both to people and organisations. There is no doubt that the pandemic has drastically exacerbated the effects of burnout. 

What I do hope though, is to challenge the prevailing mindset amongst leaders, myself included, on our inherent ways of doing things that might result in burnout. Burnout is a battle that leaders are bound to wage. If we are to truly combat it decisively, let us employ the right strategies to erode this phenomenon from its root. As leaders, we are in a prime position of influence. Whether we take intentional steps to use that influence positively or negatively — to effect change that can move our people from burnout to balance — is up to us.