Fatigue, Burnout and The Great Resignation
It doesn’t take a hawk-eyed journalist to see that many professionals are feeling exhausted and ‘over-it’ right now. The pandemic, constant pivots and the relentless impact of not knowing exactly what comes next has taken a toll on people.
What has grabbed my attention though is how widespread the nature of the fatigue is, and the way it is shaping the decisions of even the most senior leaders I work with. Most executives I advise are considering long-term sabbaticals, dramatic career changes or even early retirement.
It is not an isolated or hard to understand pattern, but it is one that suggests (1) a wild season of leadership transition to come (2) the need to invest into the mental health of even our most seasoned team members, and (3) deeper consideration for how to support the career choices and decisions of the people we lead.
It might help to look at some of the research behind fatigue and burnout.
Experts describe it as a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. Burnout is what happens when you have reached your limits mentally, emotionally, and physically.
A bunch of people I know would say exactly that - “I’m at my limits here Phill”.
Concerningly, one study in December 2020 found that at least 75% of workers in the U.S. were burnt out. Not ‘on the way to burnout’, but presently experiencing it.
In our pre-pandemic patterns of life, I think many of us had become accustomed to ‘full plates and thick calendars’, and had likely developed effective tools and personal strategies to manage the stress of it all. But the past 18 months have changed that. Even the sharpest personal practices have needed to be reconsidered and adjusted. Those changes are hard to make though, given the circumstances.
**(Stepping out of the article for a moment of tire-kicking:
Some will also say at this point, “stop telling me to work differently and take time for myself!”
I get it.
The virtues of self-care and the primacy of mental health is something we’ve known for a minute now. However, you might find yourself in a business where the expectations and intensity of your role haven’t changed, and no amount of saying ‘take care of yourself’ is going to lower the expectations of the leaders you work for and with. This is a note then to recognise that this might be a point at which, for many organisations, change must happen first in the leaders. To quote a friend, “burnt out midlevel managers can’t just decide to ‘set healthy boundaries’. The top execs are truly the only ones who can drive this change”.
What is more, we need to keep in full view that this pandemic has disproportionately impacted minority groups, women and primary care-givers - for whom the challenges of white majority leadership, in white majority countries are significant enough to begin with. My friend Dom Price has captured thoughts on this, in his usual spicy way here - https://domprice.me/what-if-the-great-resignation-is-entitled-bs/
Ok - let’s keep going).**
Three interrelated elements factor into the professional burnout we are all witnessing, and perhaps experiencing ourselves: (1) emotional and physical exhaustion (2) a sense of being disconnected from work or family, and (3) a stubborn and hard to pin-down sense of being less effective.
Diet, sleep and physical movement play an extraordinary role in managing these challenges. Beyond that, what can we do to care for ourselves, future-proof the careers we have built, and support our teams? Here are a few nudges that might serve you:
- Strategically over-oscillate to time with your inner circle. Connection to people we love and trust is a baseline requirement for purpose and meaning in life. The conversations we have with trusted friends creates space for emotional processing, the right kinds of comparison - where you are reminded that you are not the only one experiencing certain things, and so often the encouragement to continue.
- Question for you: Who is your essential crew, and how can you prioritise time with them this week?
- Question for you the leader: How can you encourage and enable connections, and time for open dialogue for your teams? - Create new rules that allow for deep work. Reliable studies are showing that people are working longer hours, and more weekends than before the pandemic. To complicate things, the nature of remote work for many has led to an increase in ‘fragmented time’, meaning that work occurs in fits and spurts through the day. The kind of deep work that generates flow states, and makes for soul satisfying work, is a little harder to come by right now.
- Question for you: How might you structure your day in away that allows for more focused mono-tasking?
- Question for you the leader: How can you streamline the work flows of your team to better enable uninterrupted deep work?
- Settle the internal debate - self-care is a pre-requisite for performance. Self-care goes far beyond a bath-bomb and a herbal tea on a Sunday afternoon. It extends to all the decisions we make for ourselves that ensure emotional-buoyancy, physical reliability and cognitive performance. In case we needed reminding, we cannot give what we do not have. Any decision you can make that prioritises sustained effort and impact is a wise one. Setting realistic expectations, practicing saying ‘no’ to low value tasks, excusing yourself from draining obligations and fiercely protecting the personal time you have in each day are not luxurious options - they are a necessity right now.
- Question for you: How will you re-calibrate your routines in ways that support your success next year, and the year after that?
- Question for you the leader: How can you better understand and support the long term and sustained effort of the people you lead? What role is appropriate for you to play in this given your unique circumstances?
This pattern of fatigue, burnout, and resignation is an obvious one to others too. For more insights from trusted sources and interesting commentators, dig further into some of the below links to that grab your attention.
By Now, Burnout Is a Given by Lucy McBride at the Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/burnout-medical-condition-pandemic/619321/
What Is Pandemic Burnout and How Do We Overcome It? By MarcLener and Shirley Li at Psych Central: https://psychcentral.com/lib/pandemic-burnout-cope
Post-Pandemic Burnout Spurs The "GreatResignation" Among Workers by Ashley Stahl at Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2021/07/22/post-pandemic-burnout-spurs-the-great-resignation-among-workers/
Societal pandemic burnout: A COVID legacy byDouglas Queen and Keith Harding at IWJ: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7362153/
How to deal with a year of accumulated burnout from workingat home by Nilufar Ahmed at The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/how-to-deal-with-a-year-of-accumulated-burnout-from-working-at-home-156018
The Pandemic Has Created A New Kind Of Burnout, Which MakesWell-Being More Critical Than Ever by Naz Beheshti at Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nazbeheshti/2021/04/15/the-pandemic-has-created-a-new-kind-of-burnout-which-makes-well-being-more-critical-than-ever