Overcoming Compounded Exhaustion in the New Year
Over the past two years, many individuals have experienced compounded emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion which lead to burnout. Going into this new year, how do we as leaders help our team with burnout and how do we overcome burnout on the individual level. Tune in as Traci and Rob discuss this prolonged exhaustive state many of us find ourselves in and how self-examination can be the first step towards a better year.
Check out similar episodes:
Announcer:
Hey, Overly Human listeners! Join Rob for the Bureau of Digital's Studio Operations and Forecasting Workshop online on March 10th. Get all the details at bureauofdigital.com.
Welcome to the Overly Human podcast where we discuss all things human in the workplace. Because it's not just business—it's personal too.
Rob:
Hey, Traci. Happy 2022. Happy new year. Welcome back.
Traci:
Thank you. I cannot believe it. It's 2022, another year. Are you ready for this year?
Rob:
I think so. I'm not always an optimist. I've striked that realistic place usually with the outlook on things, but I feel like 2022 is going to be a good year. I have high hopes, which I suppose scares me that I feel that way because of my recent experience with the years, but I'm still hopeful.
I know that both of us are lucky enough to be able to take some time off during the holidays and take a nice break at the end of the year. How was your break?
Traci:
My break was good. I did not realize how much I needed a break until I entered my break. I know that's the case for many people, especially this time of year, the frantic race to the holidays, and then coming off of what was unexpectedly a hard year. I think a lot of people went into 2021 thinking, "Oh, it's going to be so much better than 2020," and lots of optimism and it turned out to be a difficult year for many people and a lot of ups and downs and a lot of chaos, in a sense that it was hard to know what was around the next corner.
I think that handling that stress of feeling that with my clients and in my own life, it ended up that I slept like 12 hours the first night we got into break. I think my body just was like, "All right, you need to refuel. You need to put the oxygen mask on yourself for the next week and really take care to recalibrate before entering into this year." So it was a much-needed break, I'll say.
Rob:
Yeah. Today, we're going to talk about burnout. The best definition I found for that was burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. One of the funny things was, as I was looking for definitions, I kept gravitating back towards this one because I can't think of a better way to describe what we've all been through the last couple years than a period of excessive and prolonged stress, right? That has been the environment with all of the things going on in the world. I don't necessarily think it has to lead to burnout, but I think that additional piece probably makes it a little bit easier to get there.
Traci:
Yeah. I think it's been an interesting journey for a lot of us as leaders. We're all running companies and we're interacting with business as usual as we have for the last couple of decades, but we've had that extra added, prolonged stress around something unusual and different for us to navigate. So it's a bit of crisis management, but not the crisis management we felt in 2020. It's more like we are living in a new normal, and so it's a transitional management.
So I think the burnout that many of us are feeling is almost this crisis fatigue and readjustment to the new normal. There's many, many factors to what has caused this Great Resignation or great shifting of jobs or some of the things were experienced with people jumping to different agencies and whatnot, is trying to remedy this feeling, trying to remedy this feeling of prolonged stress that leads to exhaustion, leads to disconnection, leads to cynicism.
But there are ways to get around it. I mean, one of it is just recognizing it, right? It's that self-awareness in yourself, taking your own temperature and saying, "Is this actually what I'm experiencing or is it just work?" Because work's hard. Work is toil, it's work. Some days are good, some days are bad, sometimes are draining, some days aren't. But it should never feel like the soul is being sucked out of you, that you are just wiped day after day after day.
If you feel that, if you feel like you cannot get back up on that horse for all the effort in the world, then you are dealing with burnout and you need to personally deal with it. But then as leaders, if we see that look in our team's faces, if we see a collective sense of burnout, what do we do? How do we handle that?
Rob:
Yeah. I mean, it's funny you mentioned the work is toil. It's not always fun. It doesn't tickle. I'm reminded of being a young person and working mostly manual labor jobs back when I was an early and late teenager and remember coming home and talking to my dad about how hard work was and all of that. I'll never, ever forget what he looked at me and said, he's like, "Well, they're paying you, right? That's what the money's for."
And you're right, work isn't always going to be fun. That is part of the gig. But it shouldn't steal joy from everywhere else in your life, right?
Traci:
Right. Yeah. We shouldn't have this prolonged sense of stress because our bodies aren't... We're not developed as creatures to handle that much stress. A normal amount of stress is fine. Actually, we should experience stress every now and again. It's good for us. We have that flight or fight mode. We have that mechanism in our body for a reason and feeling a little bit of stress is good for the body because it kicks in those endorphins and it gets us thinking and moving and awake.
But it's the prolonged stress that tends to turn our bodies against ourselves. That's when we start to develop chronic illness, depression, mental issues. The number one mental disorder in America right now is anxiety. That's the number one diagnosed disorder right now and that is completely due to prolonged stress.
Rob:
Yeah. And I think it's really important to reiterate what you're saying, is the manifestations of that prolonged stress and burnout is physical. It doesn't start there, but that's how it manifests and that's one of the key signs that you're going through that, is that there's other things that start shutting down and not working right in your body.
Traci:
Yeah. And I think one of the interesting things is people think that, "Oh, my team's burnt out or I'm feeling burnt out because I've worked too much." Actually, what research shows, it is not the hours that you've worked that are causing burnout. Yes, we can be over-utilized and we can put too much pressure on our teams and take on too many projects and that can cause us to be overworked and tired.
But it's actually the mental infiltration, it's thinking about work all the time, it's being stressed about work, it's not being able to shut it off, it's basically consuming you that really causes burnout. There's a number of reasons why that happens.
I mean, for owners, it's not being able to compartmentalize, really being worried about... And we saw a lot of this during the pandemic when we really didn't know which way was up, was our business is going to be in jeopardy and so that was stressful. Now it's, can I maintain my staff? Is this going to keep going? I mean, the economy is strong and people are doing well, but are we able as leaders to actually turn the switch off? Even in times when times are good, have we been able to recalibrate?
We're not running away from the giant lion anymore like our ancestors did, but yet we're still acting like we are. So how can we take a breath and recalibrate and settle? Some of that is because we have not been able to unravel our new normal of so many of us now are working from home when we weren't before, and so it's not as clear cut to shut down the computer and lock the door and go home and experience a different facet of our lives.
Now it's very easy for people to keep the computer on the couch and you're watching a little TV and you're still on the computer and then maybe you've taken a break for half an hour to have dinner, but then you go back. People are not really putting boundaries in place to protect themselves from this issue of just mental exhaustion from not shutting off.
Announcer:
The Overly Human podcast is brought to you by Navigate the Journey. Navigate the Journey comes alongside entrepreneurial companies allowing them to get what they want from their business, their team, and their leaders. Learn more at navigatethejourney.com.
Rob:
Yeah. That's exactly right. And I think it's important to talk about, at least in my experience, having gone through some burnout in a previous life as an individual contributor working on projects and doing all of that and how that felt. In my experience, that was more due to overworking, due to not turning it off, due to too many hours to the point of waking up in the middle night thinking about work and stressed about work and all of that versus the very different way it feels like—and I've seen it manifest itself into leaders, which isn't always about too much work necessarily, but it's about the accumulated stress from all of the things going on.
I think this gets back to some of the things we've talked about a lot, is what good delegation looks like and what trusting other people to do what you've hired and paid them to do and let them own the stress and that part of what you've hired them to do. That's part of the job that you are employing them for. If you are hiring somebody to do a job but you're still internalizing all that stress, doesn't matter how many hours you're working, you can burn yourself out in a hurry as a leader by carrying all that around, especially as your organization scales. There's just too many humans involved.
Traci:
Yeah. And you have to give them that responsibility and authority, is really what you're saying here. It's like, don't give them the responsibility and then take it back. Don't give them the responsibility, then ultimately make the decisions. It's giving them that responsibility and trusting them with that responsibility.
And I think at the same time understanding what your role as a leader is, especially in times like this, we became a bit untethered and just worried about survival. Now, we need to make sure that our companies are re-tethered back to our purpose and mission and vision and core values, and we need to make sure that those employees that we're entrusting see the purpose in it all, see the meaning in it all, because that's the other thing that's been heightened during the pandemic, is, "What's this all for? Who am I? What's it for? Am I in the right place? Do we have a mission? Do I have a direction? Where are we going? What's the vision?”
And I think if as leaders we reestablish that, repaint the picture, push out the vision beyond surviving and push it to thriving and what that looks like as we entrust our employees, as we give them responsibility and authority over the business, I think that's the one-two punch of really pushing us out of this universe of burnout and fatigue into this new, brighter, more optimistic 2022 that we're hoping for.
Rob:
Yeah. I think that's a really interesting point because I think and I felt that it was really easy with our teams and our communication from leadership to communicate about the things about surviving which took us away from over-communicating and communicating about those mission, vision, core values piece of things. If you live in that world long enough, then you accumulate almost debt in that area where you've not communicated that in such a long time and where it becomes normal again to not have those things front and center.
Traci:
Yeah. And I've been talking to so many of my clients about that, is now it's like, "Okay, what are our goals for this year?" And it is this shift from the survival mentality and the, “We're going to get through this” speeches and, “We're going to come out the other side” and focusing on remote working and all of those conversations to now saying, "Okay, like you're saying, let's give back to who we are, why we exist, what our mission is, what our values are, having fun, celebrating who we are, praising each other organically in the moment for the accomplishments” and starting to feel like a company again. “Do we look differently for a lot of people?” “Yes, because we are not in office spaces anymore” or maybe, “We're hybrid” or maybe, “We've had a lot of turnover and we have new faces.”
So we may look and feel a little different, but we need to get back to those key pillars that make us who we are as a company, as a brand, and really get that compass back of our core values and mission and vision and recalibrate so that we can feel like a real company again.
A lot of employees have been saying, "Things don't feel real because we're all scattered or we're doing business in a different way or it just doesn't feel like it used to feel." And that's okay, we can recognize that, but how can we pivot now and make it feel real again? Those are big, lofty philosophical questions, but they're good ones to ask yourself and your leadership team, is how can we make sure we haven't lost who we are and how can we reconnect to that center, that core?
Rob:
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense for organizations to help lead that way.
Announcer:
Do you wish we would share about something you are struggling with? Reach out and we might just make a future episode on that topic. Contact us through overlyhuman.com.
Rob:
Let's talk a little bit about what the individuals can do though if you find yourself in this place. I think one of the hard parts about this particular topic, about burnout, is I've been through this, I think twice. My professional career is I'm pretty sure that I never recognized what it was until I was on the other side of it. I think that it took so much effort and wandering around because I couldn't recognize it when I was in it because of that all-encompassing, that exhaustion, that thinking things don't matter, that negative outlook on things.
So I think that the first step one for all of this has to be is ask yourself the hard questions, right? I mean, self-diagnosing these things is really hard. But when we talk about the balance between the three phases of the individual: the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual is making sure that you're investing in each of those. In a way, that's one of the ways that I see people be able to work themselves out of this.
Traci:
Yeah. I think it is taking a pause and asking yourself, “What do I want? What is it that I want? Who am I? And what is my own mission, vision, and values for my life?” I think a lot of people have been wrestling through that. Maybe you don't have the right tools to answer those questions. It's something that we do at Navigate the Journey often, is helping people craft a life map to answer these questions and their deep, big questions, understanding who you are and what you want out of life.
And it doesn't necessarily mean a big shift. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to shift jobs or you have to move or you have to do anything, but it does mean a big shift in your perception, your perspective of your life, looking at yourself through the lens of your purpose and your unique giftings and how you want those to play out day-to-day. It's back to that re-tethering yourself to who you are.
For us, that's physically getting yourself in the right kind of shape, mentally, intellectually, spiritually getting yourself recentered. And then you're able to turn outward.
So it's the relationship you have with yourself and the understanding and the self-awareness you have with yourself and then turning that knowledge and understanding outward to the relationships in your life. And that's going to be your relationship with work, how you show up, your relationship with your family and your friends and your loved ones and your community around you. I think those are big questions, but you don't have to recreate the wheel.
Once you answer them and you have those core tenants in your life, you're able with more ease and more intentionality, live your life and find that joy that you're looking for. You want your life to be an interesting story. You don't want to get bored, you don't want to get complacent, you don't want to wake up one day and be like, "What just happened? Where did it all go?" Right?
So this is a great time, and of course the beginning of the year are always great times, to take a pause and say, "All right, who am I? What do I want, where am I going? And how can I answer these big questions for myself so I can pull myself out of whether it's burnout, complacency, going through the motions? How can I pull myself out of that, wake myself up, and to be sure that I'm entering into this new year focused and intentioned and interesting and interested in what's going on around me?"
Rob:
Yeah. And I think we would be remiss if we didn't talk a little bit about this isn't a quick process usually. This is something that you didn't get into overnight and you're not going to get out of overnight. This usually involves changing some habits and some learned things about making some intentional choices, about living differently, and investing in those three phases of your life, and making sure that you're making more deposits than you are withdrawals.
And if there's debt, which that's what burnout is, is almost like life, emotional, physical stress debt, you have to pay a lot of it back. I know from personal experience, it can feel a little bit like... When you start doing these things, it isn't immediate. It's something you got to stick with a little while to get those results. And it's worth it and I think that... all of those fun things, but it's not easy.
Traci:
Yeah. And I think… when I am coaching people who are in the midst of burnout, one of the exercises I do with them is... we call it the oxygen mask. Is really figuring out what is the oxygen mask you need to put on yourself first before you start worrying about other people in your life? Just like you do on a plane, right? You have to put it on first and then you can help those around you. And I think asking yourself some of these questions, but also examining how your personal health is.
We're talking about this intellectual, mental, spiritual, physical health, and analyzing that and figuring out how you can refuel yourself to get past the burnout, because it's hard to answer big questions like, “Who am I? And what do I want to do? And what's my purpose?” When you're spread eagle, face down in your bed, exhausted, you're not going to wrestle through those big questions. So you have to peel yourself up, dust yourself off, and figure out how to get yourself to a healthy place and then you can start looking towards the future.
Rob:
Yeah. What's your big takeaway today, Traci?
Traci:
Well, I like holding onto the idea, even though I've read a million memes, about don't anybody say that 2022 is going to be a great year, like we're going to jinx it or something. But I'm going to throw all that silly logic away and say I want to be optimistic about the coming year. I think the self-examination is key, taking a pulse on, how do you feel? Are you burnt out? Are you dealing with exhaustion?
I need to do that for myself as well as I kick off this new year. How do I need to refuel and how does my oxygen mask look right now before I jump in the deep end once again and kick off this year?
How about for you?
Rob:
One of the things that I've been thinking a lot about with this topic and with some of the other things going on is, what is the work before the work? What do we have to do as individuals to stop and recognize where we are, provide that honest assessment, and prepare to do improvement? Right?
The trainers that I work with has been talking a lot about this, but I've been thinking about it like, "Okay, well, why doesn't this apply to everything that we do, not just the physical, but getting ready to be a better human, to analyze misconceptions that we carry with us?"
I think that if we want to believe that either humans can stay the same and are just always going to be broken or that we can improve and change of overtime, I want to believe the second. I believe that these are all learned skills and that we can self-identify and help ourselves in a lot of cases because no one should care more about some of this stuff than we do, then I want to live in that world.
So what is that work to prepare us to do the work that's necessary to develop these skills to get better at what we need to do?
Traci:
We could be answering those in the coming weeks, I think.
Rob:
Yeah. All right. Well, thanks, Traci.
Traci:
Thank you.
Announcer:
The Overly Human podcast is brought to you by Navigate the Journey and Sparkbox. For more information on this podcast, or to get in touch with Traci or Rob, go to overlyhuman.com. If you like what you've heard, subscribe and tell your friends to listen. Thanks.
