What *is* Burnout, Really?
By now I would be absolutely surprised if you didn't know the term workplace burnout. But do you know the standard definition of burnout and the three dimensions that are within that standard definition? Are you aware there are five profiles you might match to when you assess yourself for burnout?
It's important that you know these things because burnout, although it is widespread, it isn't a one size fits all experience. It is personal and recovery from burnout is also personal.
So you are in the right place. We are talking to you today on this, the very first edition of The Podgress Report. We are going deep today on workplace burnout, the definition of it, how to assess yourself for it, and what to do. What you can do to help people that you know who may be experiencing burnout.
I'm Jen Phillips, Recovering Burnout
But first I want to share with you a little bit about me. You don't probably know who I am and you probably can't be sure at this point whether or not you want to subscribe to The Podgress Report. So I'm going to share with you the mission of the Podgress report. It is broader than just burnout and at the end of the podcast I will be sharing with you how you can get in touch.
Stay in touch and share your feedback with me. So we together can make the Podgress report something that is really, really useful, helpful, and great.
I'm a longtime marketer and a first time podcaster. So please go gently on me today. I Have no Doubt that if you would have told me a year ago, I would be sitting here with you today talking about this. I would not have believed you. But here we sit.
Long Time Marketer, First Time Podcaster. It Got Dark, Ya'all.
After a long career in marketing, I've been a marketing practitioner.
A marketing consultant. A systems integrator where I built systems. Built and architected systems and solutions for marketers. And eventually, 10 years ago, I landed my dream job at a dream company, and that company was Salesforce.
I spent 10 years at Salesforce and I grew up. At salesforce, I entered the company as a director and I exited after 10 years as a senior vice president reporting to the CMO of the company. I held roles in product, customer success, and marketing. All of them centered around marketing, either directly working with customers directly working with products or working with the internal customers, the marketers, the incredibly talented marketers at salesforce.
But somewhere along the way. At Salesforce, I burned out, I entered the company as most of us do incredibly excited to be there. I have always considered myself to be a highly positive person. And I moved from someone who had energy to spare and a very positive spirit known, in fact, for being a bridge to getting things done from moving something that felt impossible to the done.
I found myself becoming negative, cynical, exhausted. I found myself waking up on a Monday morning saying, I don't think I can do it this week. I don't think I can do it today. And my health suffered. I was experiencing debilitating symptoms; migraines and pretty comprehensive insomnia. I didn't recognize those things as all being related. Really, honestly, I didn't really recognize what was happening to me as burnout, but I did recognize that I couldn't go on feeling that way and feeling so spent, so alone and so unsure of my way out.
I tried to change. I tried to "rally". That was the term I always found myself using. I tried to rally, but it didn't work. I was too far gone. So I sadly left amazing people at a terrific company burned out and I knew I was leaving to do something different. I had built some time in my plan for space to learn, to figure out what was happening to me and to do the research on the way I was feeling to see whether or not I could figure it out.
So I did what any self respecting data driven analytical minded person would do. And I started just scouring content. Research, books, podcasts, articles, YouTube, any, anything I could get my hands on, on the topics of workplace wellness, including burnout. Unexpected career progression, unexpected late stage career changes, and just essentially what would it be like to dip my toe into the solopreneur space or the entrepreneur space
and what I found was a ton of great content. But I also noticed that there were a lot of other people feeling the way I was feeling. People who were exhausted, who were feeling alone. People who were like me, considering or had already quit good jobs that they accepted with excitement, that they really, really cared about.
How The Podgress Report Was Born
And that's when I decided to do The Podgress Report, when I realized, together, having these conversations, celebrating the successes of the people that have already figured this out for themselves in their own personal way, learning from the researchers who put this data out there for us, we can be better.
And that brings me to the purpose and the mission of The Podgress Report. Why I'm here with you today. The purpose, and I'm going to read this because it really means something to me. The purpose of the Podgress report is to engage, to educate, to inspire, and to support you, me, the community of people who are not sure what their healthy next step career move is, but they are sure that they can't keep going like this.
People that don't know how to go from their right now to their what's next or people who are feeling like they aren't clear on what that what's next should be. This is a podcast that I would have listened to had I found it when I started recognizing something was really wrong with me.
I was finding content for people that were ready to take their side hustle to their main hustle or people that wanted to build on their productivity. But I wasn't finding a ton of Content for people that didn't have a side hustle, didn't have the energy to start building a side hustle, but knew that they had something really wrong, something new, something different going on in their work.
And they couldn't quite figure out what to do about it. So weekly episodes, and we're shooting for weekly episodes that will cover workplace wellness. And that includes recovering from burnout, being the CEO of you. com through effective. Accountable career development and conversations. With and for burgeoning entrepreneurs and solopreneurs state that don't exactly know what that might mean or how to start.
We'll have expert guests. We are going to bring in success stories to be inspired by. And before we go forward, I want to give you a little bit of a disclaimer. Today's episode is a bit weird. It's not the format that I expect for most of these shows, but. Burnout is what got me started and knowing the basics on burnout is what really helped me begin to recover.
And so today, just me and you, I want to talk to you about the basics of burnout. My hope is that by the end of this episode, you'll be maybe feeling a little bit seen that you'll learn something and that you'll have a little bit of hope that you know what your first step is and. Be absolutely willing to give me some feedback to help us keep growing together.
There's a Standard Burnout Definition, & it's 3-Dimensional
And with that preamble, I want to talk about burnout and its three dimensions. First of all, I'm going to do a teeny tiny history lesson and tell you that burnout is not a new term. Burnout was actually a term that was coined in the seventies in 1974 by American psychologist Herbert Freudenberger.
He was working in with his staff in free clinics for drug and alcohol recovery. And he noticed that the people that he was working with and himself were getting increasingly cynical and negative and feeling even senses of anger about the patients that they were there to serve. And so he dove in and he wrote and researched about this phenomenon.
This thing that these helping professionals were experiencing. And he started coining the term burnout to describe how people with burnout feel and what happens to people with burnout on their psychological and emotional front. He said that people with burnout feel overloaded, overwhelmed, negative and cynical about their work, may experience.
Physical complaints that seem unrelated. Things like sleeplessness and headaches and skin troubles and digestion problems. Today, the definition for burnout isn't limited to only the helping professions. It's also everywhere across all industries. It's workers at every level and across demographics
Burnout is included in the 11th edition of the ICD, the International Classification of Diseases. It's managed by the World Health Organization, the WHO, and they call burnout not a medical diagnosis or a disease, But an occupational phenomenon.
Well, what does that mean? What's an occupational phenomenon? I don't really understand the distinction. You may be thinking because that's what I thought what it means is, and I'm going to read this because it's really important this is the WHO ICD definition of burnout. Burnout results from chronic workplace stress that's unsuccessfully managed by the sufferer. Burnout has three dimensions.
- Dimension one, energy depletion or exhaustion.
- Dimension two, increased mental distancing from one's job. Feelings of negativism or cynicism related to your job.
- And dimension three, reduced professional efficacy. That's how well you think you do your job or how much you think your job or whether you think your job matters.
That's how the WHO defines the occupational phenomenon of burnout in the ICD, the standard definition of burnout. Why then is burnout not a disease, but an occupational phenomenon.
Well, it's because it's a circuit. It requires a worker to have an experience within the work. So not a disease, but rather a phenomenon that happens within the constraints of your occupation.
So in understanding, when I read that, my mind was blown. And when I understood the dimensions of burnout across each of them, I could see my own experience.
- Dimension one, my energy. I was exhausted. I was depleted. I couldn't rally. I didn't have the gas in the tank to do the job that I had, which was a job that I loved.
- Dimension two, my negativism, my mindset, my cynicism. I had never been that person, the Debbie Downer in the room or the person that was saying, it can't be done. It won't be done. Throughout my career, I really was a person that believed when we work together, we can get hard work done. I didn't have that anymore and I couldn't find it within myself.
- And on dimension three My professional efficacy. I was starting to doubt I was even good at this anymore. I couldn't find the level of the work that I was used to producing in the work that I produced. And I also had doubts about whether or not my work really, truly mattered.
So I saw myself in the dimensions of burnout. And I, at that point could give what I was experiencing a name. But in knowing this, I began to have a real deep desire to understand how many other people are there that are feeling this way.
Like, what is the data? Not just that I can see it on YouTube, but what does the research tell me about burnout?
Burnout by the Numbers
And when you look at burnout by the numbers, it's stunning. In another May 2024 fortune article us workers reported being so burned out that nearly 20 percent of us Think about quitting every single day. Another 19 percent think about quitting weekly. And another 22 percent think about quitting at least a few times a month.
For those of you doing the math, that brings us to 60 percent of the U. S. workforce that's thinking of quitting at least a few times a month. And. In the same report, 90 percent of workers polled reported that they have rage applied to at least one job in the last six months.
And just a word on that. I have never rage applied for a role, but as a person who has both applied for jobs and been a hiring manager. I can't imagine how hard that energy is to overcome in the hiring process, both to come into hiring that angry and also to have to sift through, candidates who are feeling that level of anger must be really, really difficult.
And, you know, burnout is seen as something that can be contagious. If you're bringing That energy, that exhaustion, that cynicism, that negativism into a team or a project or a work culture, it can leak out and staRt to spread.
And I'm not just talking about the tech industry. Burnout is broader than that. And the reason this is so important to me is because recently I updated my LinkedIn profile. I had to, it had been some time and it just felt like the time was right and I needed to let people know and make it official what I was doing with my time. And so I thought.
Probably because I'd been so radio silent, no one would even read the post. Well, it turns out, as of today, almost 17, 000 impressions have happened with that post and close to 2, 000 people have read the article and hundreds of people have engaged with it. Um, also I've had two meetings a day. Since that time with people who are experiencing burnout and those people are people I know and people I don't know from many, many industries, but don't just take it from me.
In 2022 Gallup did a panel workforce study that details industry burnout rates. The 15 industries with the highest burnout prevalence have more than 20 percent of their workers who are complaining of burnout either always or very often.
I've added the top 15 burnout industries and their burnout rates from that study to this transcript.
Top 15 Industries having workers who feel burned out "Always/Very Often" -- from the @gallup 2022 Panel Workforce Study
K-12 Education @ 44%
College/University @ 35%
Professional Services @ 33
Government/Public Policy @ 33
Retail @ 32%
Healthcare @ 31%
Law @ 31%
Entertainment @ 29%
Manufacturing @ 28%
Technology @ 25%
Utilities @ 25%
Construction @ 22%
Community/Social services @ 22%
Finance @ 21%
And if you think that if you just go off and become an entrepreneur, you're safe from burnout. That is not at all the case. QuickBooks did a study in 2023 and found that 29 percent Of entrepreneurs are constantly burned out.
And the future of our workforce, Gen Z, Gen Y, they are already sounding the alarm with 84 percent of Gen Zs reporting they are feeling burned out and 74 percent of millennials. And that's from Asana's 2023 Anatomy of Work special report. Women and men both experienced burnout, but women at a higher rate, 32 percent higher Complaint coming from women of burnout.
Why does that matter? Because as I shared with you, burnout happens at every level, but when women experience a higher rate of burnout and we already represent only 12 percent of the C-level or the board level, when we leave leadership at a higher rate than men, we are eroding those gender equality gains that we've made in recent years.
So this is important. It's important for all of us to understand how broad and widespread burnout is and what we can do about it. Also really compelling and something that I want to talk about is that 40 percent of workers believe that burnout is a requirement of success. And to me as a former people leader and leader of leaders, that to me is maybe the most scary because what we're saying is in the deepest DNA of our beliefs about our career, 40 percent of us think it is going to happen to me and it has to happen to me. Burnout does if I'm going to be a successful person.
So we have some work to do. That's the definition. That's how broad it is.
Recognizing Burnout (in Yourself and Others)
I hope you're still with me because now we're going to talk about how can we recognize burnout in ourselves and in others? Well, it's along those three dimensions. You check in with yourself along each of the dimensions of burnout.
- Dimension one, how is your energy level? Do you find yourself saying things like
- I feel used up at the end of the day.
- I don't feel ready to face the week on a Monday morning when I'm getting ready for work or
- working all day is an incredible strain for me and I don't believe I can pull it off.
Are you hearing that from yourself? Are you hearing that from people you care about?
- Dimension two, your mindset. Do you say or hear yourself saying things like
- I'm less interested in people since I took this job.
- I sometimes feel that I'm treating my colleagues, my customers, my students, my patients in an impersonal manner.
- I am more callous toward people since taking this job.
Are you hearing that from yourself?
- And dimension three, How effective do you believe you are in your job or how meaningful do you believe your job is? Do you hear yourself saying things like
- I don't think my work matters anymore.
- I don't even know if any of this makes sense
- I don't feel good at my job.
Chronic challenges that you may be experiencing across any, some, or all of those dimensions may indicate you're experiencing some level of burnout. Listening will go a long way if you have people on your team that you are concerned about. And by the numbers, you do have people on your team that you are, should be concerned about.
You can, if you're a leader, bring those three dimensions into your one on ones, into your skip levels. Just ask the questions across each of the three. How is your energy? How is your mindset? And how effective do you think you are in your work? It opens the conversation and it's responsible. So that's a low lift way that you can start to recognize burnout, but you can take it a step further.
And I. Really urge you to do just that. So how do you do that?
How To | Assessing Burnout with The MBI
Well, you assess yourself for burnout and the assessment. There are a number of assessments out there. I'm going to only talk about one of them. And the reason I'm going to talk about only one of them is because it is. Backed by 35 years of research, it is in line with the WHO ICD definition of burnout. And it is used in 88 percent of the burnout research that is done by experts out there. So you know, it's good, you know, it's trusted. It is the Maslach Burnout Inventory, or the M B I. The individual assessment is available to us online, costs $20 to take.
And it's not, it's not a heavy lift. It's not a huge deep dive into your personal pathos. It's easy. And it's so easy that I recommend you maybe even try it today. , there are six profiles within the MBI and they're used in helping to identify where you sit in the burnout.
There's the person with the engaged profile. This is a person who scores positively on all three burnout dimensions. They have sufficient energy. Their mindset is strong and they have strong professional efficacy. This is a person who is not burnt out.
And then you have the ineffective profile. This is a person with one dimension that's in trouble. The professional efficacy. dimension. This is the person who doesn't feel they're maybe good at their job, might not feel their work matters or is meaningful or delivers value. This person though has energy and they have an okay mindset. They're just not feeling as if they're doing a good job or a job that matters.
Then you have the person with the overextended profile and I maybe started here. It's a person with a high exhaustion score. Maybe this is the person that you know in your office that has their phone with them on vacations, brings their computer or their laptop everywhere they go so they don't miss a slack or a team's message.
This is the person that doesn't shut down on nights, weekends, holidays. This is a person who does have a good mindset, who believes their job is important and they're good at it, but they are just absolutely exhausted.
Then there's the disengaged profile. This is someone that has one dimension that's in trouble and it is the mindset dimension. This is a person that has those high negativity scores, high cynicism scores. They have energy. They believe they're good at their job, but they don't. Feel positive about the role. How does this happen? Potentially their values do not align with either the company or the team values. Potentially the workload mismatch makes them feel it's impossible to have success in the role. There are a number of reasons this can happen, but this is a person who knows who they are and knows they can deliver value. Just is disengaged. What do you sometimes hear this? It's called in other places, you might hear this called quiet quitting. Unengaged workers, loud quitting. This is the disengaged profile.
And then the burnout profile. This is a person who has two troubling dimensions. one, their energy. They are exhausted two; their mindset, their cynical, their negativity. They do not feel positive about the role that they are playing within the company. They may also. have lowered professional efficacy, but to match to the burnout profile, you simply must have those two low exhaustion, high cynicism to be considered burned out.
Full disclosure. I myself took the MBI and matched to the burnout profile. I scored in the. much higher than 90 percentile for exhaustion and for cynicism. Anything over 90 percent where you are in the 90 plus percent, scoring the recommendation from the MBI is that you are seeking professional help to recover from burnout, which I am. I had lowered efficacy scores, but not, not over 90%. By the way, again, not a heavy lift, not hard to take. And then what I felt after taking it and really reading through the output of the assessment was incredibly seen and a teeny, tiny bit of hope. Like, so you're saying there's a chance, uh, I could see and was recommended within the assessment the steps that I could take to begin my own path to recovery.
I want that for you. I want that for everyone that's listening. So whether you take the MBI or another assessment, what I would request of you is that you do understand where you are in the burnout spectrum, because again, it's personal and the recovery steps are really specific to your profile.
Christina Maslach, who is the M in MBI and Michael Leiter also published an amazing book, which is called The Burnout Challenge. It is linked in the episode notes. It's a great read. I highly recommend it. I listened to it as an audio book on walks, but you know, you can, if that's your jam, do it that way.
I just recommend this book.
Soul Erosion | A Burnout Accelerant
Couldn't recommend it more highly, but one of the concepts I wanted to pull forward out of that book today for you is the concept of a mismatch between the work and the workers that in the book is termed soul erosion. And the reason I want to talk about it is because soul erosion is actually what I would call an accelerant to burnout.
It is something that would throw fuel on the burnout fire. If you had a mismatch in say your values and the company or team values, it will erode your soul. If you had a work that. Every day you walked in and the workload was daunting and you understood there is no way you could do what was expected of you day in and day out.
It would erode your soul. If, for example, you did a great job or your team did a great job and the culture of your company was not to recognize, not to offer recognition for jobs well done. And that was important to you. Soul erosion. So it matters because it's an accelerant and because stress that is experienced because of that mismatch is the definition of burnout.
Stress that cannot be successfully managed by the worker.
Whew.
Up Next on The Podgress Report
Well, we covered a lot and we've gone through the basics of burnout, and it's a lot, but if you remember nothing else, nothing else that I've said today, remember this burnout is widespread, but you can, the people you care about can, we all can recover, but it takes.
Knowing where you stand in the arc of burnout to really craft a specific personal make sense plan for yourself. So it's good for everybody if we take those steps, assess ourselves so we can all become more healthy together. And I'm happy to report here on the first podcast report that you, you have already taken one of the most important first steps to understanding burnout.
Burnout and recovering from burnout, which is seeking first to understand. Congratulations. Take the win. You have done something important for yourself or your teammates today. And educating yourself is actually step one in a healthy. And in the very next podgress report, we're going to talk about five steps to recovery.
And that is available right now to you today. So I encourage you take a listen, go forward in your recovery by continuing to understand low lift. Yeah. Easy science back steps that you can take by listening to episode two. And if you like what you're hearing, please consider subscribing and also sharing this podcast with other people who may benefit from it.
Additionally, if you hate what you heard, if you hate what you heard, I want to know about it, share your feedback. If you have an idea or a guest I should know about, Please do share. There's a link to feedback is a gift that you can deliver. And it's in the show notes.
I want to thank you for being here with me on this. My very first podcast, my very first episode of this podcast, talking about this together and coming from a standard understanding of workplace wellness will help us create a really beautiful, healthy community that we can all lean on and a better place as we grow.
Until next time, here's to your progress.
The Fine Print
Hi, it's Jen with some very important, fine print. This podcast and its associated properties does not provide medical or mental health advice, the information including, but not limited to recorded in live episodes, text graphics, images, and any other material contained on the property or the podcast are for your informational purposes only. Nothing on the pod Gress report is intended to substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified provider with questions you may have. Regarding a medical condition or mental health or wellness concern, never disregard professional medical or mental wellness advice or delay in seeking it because of something you've heard or content you've read or reviewed. Via this podcast. And please, if you're under duress or considering suicide, please reach out right this very minute to the suicide and cRisis lifeline by dialing 9, 8, 8 in the U S.
Or searching for the helplines available to you in your country.