Happy November. We’ve got sixty days left this year to make a difference. What are your commitments?
Time Passes By
As my kids get older, time seems to be moving by more quickly. In what feels like an overnight change, we’ve left the diaper stage and are six months away from our first teenager. Even our children are starting to notice. Recently, my oldest son said, “Dad, I can’t believe it’s the end of July already. Kind of feel like summer’s over and we should start planning for Christmas.”
Does anyone else feel like that? The passage of time marches on, whether or not we’re ready for it. More than seasons, dates, and calendars, I’m sure you also notice changes in your own life. All of a sudden you look up and realize that there are only sixty days left in this year.
2022 is knocking on the door. We all know how quickly the holiday season flies by so it will be here before you know it. What’s your plan?
60 Days
2021 only has 60 days left.
9 weeks.
1440 hours
86,400 minutes.
In an instant, it will all be over and you’ll be wanting to set new years goals.
Why wait?
You have 9 Monday’s left to make progress on your goals.
9 Mondays left to do something of significance.
9 Mondays left to radically shape and influence your future.
If you’re sitting around waiting for something, conisder this your wake up call.
Over the next several weeks, I want to provide an overview and examination of leadership burnout. With the world quickly changing in 2020 and 2021, burnout has unsurprisingly been on the rise. Here are some things you need to know.
A Basic Understanding of Burnout
In May of 2014, with the last speaker winding up his talk in the main auditorium, I sat just outside the building in tears.
The past week had been eye-opening. As I sat with my wife trying to process everything, I came to a realization: I was all alone.
At the time, I was serving as the pastor of a small church in a large city. The past year-and-a-half had seen me transition from a one-year contracted associate to the lead person when the other pastor stepped down. The church was dying, marred by years of unhealthy leadership and unsustainable practices.
I had reached out to other leaders and superiors at other churches and was told there wasn’t much they could do. Their resources and energy was going to be spent elsewhere.
I started doctoral school to try to find answers. What I found, were more questions. The passion in my soul to help others was not happening. Instead, I seemed to be facing mounting frustration, fear, and failure.
Is this how all leaders feel? I wondered.
Discovering Burnout
Burnout, at least in the course of my own educational journey, was never talked about. I took classes in dynamic leadership, speaking, counseling, Greek, Hebrew, and social justice. Never once was burnout mentioned.
In May of 2014, I wasn’t burnt out … yet … but I also knew I couldn’t continue with “business as usual.”
I reached out to a professional counselor I knew. He was a professor at the school where I did my master’s program.
“How do you all avoid burnout?” I asked.
His response changed my life.
“We talk about it. We talk about it a lot. From early on and throughout the program we frame it as an ethical mandate and don’t give people a choice. We tell them from day one that they have an ethical mandate and responsibility to themselves, their clients, and to God to be healthy in all areas of their life.”
What is burnout?
Burnout is a psychological condition resulting from chronic work-related stress and has three central factors: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and lack of personal accomplishment.1
The trouble with burnout is not only the personal aspect of damage it can cause but the relational and financial aspects as well. Burnout is difficult to pin down because it can occur at any time and with little warning.
There are two primary foci that need to be addressed to create a long-term sustainable solution to burnout in leadership. One focus is the personal sphere, something that encompasses the totality of our humanity. Later in the series, we’ll talk about the pictured pyramid (pictured below) and how we can use it to effectively fight against burnout.
The second area affected by burnout is the cultural dimension of work. This is what is so often overlooked.
Maslach and Leiter in their book The Truth About Burnout highlight the great disservice that is done when burnout is discussed only in terms of the personal sphere:
“The conventional wisdom is that burnout is primarily a problem of the individual. That is, people burnout out because of flaws in their characters, behavior, or productivity. According to this perspective, people are the problem, and the solution is to change them or get rid of them. But our research argues most emphatically otherwise. As a result of extensive study, we believe that burnout is not a problem of the people themselves but of the social environment in which people work. The structure and functioning of the workplace shape how people interact with one another and how they carry out their jobs. When the workplace does not recognize the human side of work, then the risk of burnout grows, carrying a high price with it.”2 (Emphasis retained)
The Wrap-Up
To effectively address burnout, we must talk about both the cultural and personal aspects it entails. We will do this in future blog posts.
1: Miner, M. H. (2007). Burnout in the first year of ministry: Personality and belief style as important predictors. Mental Health, Religion & Culture,10(1), 17-29. doi:10.1080/13694670500378017
2: Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (1997). The truth about burnout: How organizations cause personal stress and what to do about it. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
All of us have a superpower that when unleashed have the capacity to change the world. Think Marvel, but much more incredibly powerful (and totally real!).
Here are some of the amazing things that your superpower can do:
Increase Optimism.
Raise self-confidence.
Create greater levels of connection with others.
It provides the largest effect on trust. This is especially when it is tangible, personal, and public.
Activates your medial prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that experiences pleasure in things like drugs and alcohol. Meaning using this superpower gets you high like a drug. That’s right YOU feel better when using your superpower.
Using your superpower makes others more innovative, creative, collaborative, results, and productivity.
It increases longevity in the workforce. People stay longer where this superpower is used.
Any clue what it is?
Gratitude
Gratitude is your key superpower and it gives you the capacity to change the world. Expressing gratitude has been shown to not only bring value and service to others but to you as well. You get a chemical high, it blesses your employees and coworkers, increases your self-confidence, builds trust, and generates positivity.
Not bad, eh?
Expressing gratitude is a small thing that makes a big difference. Here are a few ways for you to express gratitude today:
Publicly praise a coworker or employee with words of affirmation and a job well done.
Write a note of thanks to a customer.
Create a social media post on your company page that honors an extraordinary effort or job well done by someone in your company.
Write a positive review of a business, server, or other public servant giving them praise and honor for their commitment.
Your Capacity To Change the World
There are thousands of ways to express gratitude. The important thing is to express it. Being thankful without expressing it is like not being thankful at all.
In our current world, this is important now more than ever. The world is longing for superheroes. You have the ability to be one. Your capacity to change the world lies in activating your superpower: gratitude.
