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What we can do as organizations to alleviate or prevent Burnout

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Resilience should not be a cover up for work that causes burnout.

Understanding burnout can teach us a lot about work.

Are your 7 needs at work being met?

The need for (1) autonomy (2) belonging (3) competence (4) positive emotions (5) psychological safety (6) fairness, and (7) meaning?

For over 36 years, I have appreciated and been influenced by the work and research of Christina Maslach on burnout. I credit her work, specifically her book – Burnout: The Cost of Caring – for keeping my love of work alive and preventing a permanent hardening of my human heart. Her presentation in 2018 on burnout may not be slick or even riveting but it is solid and certainly essential. Not everything we need for good work has to glitter and be under 2 minutes.

The presentation may help you prevent burnout, understand burnout if you have experienced it, or engage in small steps to co-create a better workplace for all.

 

Career Zingers #32: Whim

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I was listening to an interview of Jack Docherty with Stuart Goldsmith on The Comedian’s Comedian podcast. Near the end of the podcast Stuart asked Jack what his career plans were for the next 5 to 10 years. Jack responded, “I have no plan.” He said he operates more on a whim and was somewhat apologetic for this and openly wondered if this was the right way to go.

Bend in the path.

Whim can be defined as a sudden wish or idea, often one that cannot be easily explained. This seems to go against the grain of life and career planning — knowing your short and long term goals.

There are many paths to career development. I am not opposed to meticulous career planning with long term goals but I am opposed to people who tell you that there is the only one true path.

Jack, myself, and countless others navigate our careers on whims. We may improvise a life and possibly take the proverbial road less travelled but as Robert Frost so eloquently stated at the end of his poem The Road not Taken, “that has made all the difference.”

Work Engagement: How to Overcome Resource Myopia and Feel Like a Million Bucks

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The ability to marshall our resources for work has a huge impact on work engagement and managing stress. Yet many of us struggle to mobilize the wide variety of resources we have available to us.

Buckets of Pearls

For twenty years, I was a practicing counselling psychologist. My clients taught me much about navigating through their challenges but one thing that stood out for me during those years was how many clients suffered from, what I called, resource myopia.

Visual myopia is a type of near-sightedness where you have difficulty reading road signs and seeing distant objects clearly. Resource myopia is the failure to see personal, social, organizational, and structural resources available to you that seem distant in time, place or memory.

Clients would enter counselling with a problem or concern and fail to see the people, actions, attitudes, knowledge, and other resources that could help them endure, manage, master, or transform what brought them to counselling.

Many clients had used these resources in the past but were now failing to use them and even failing to see that they were even possibilities. My job was less about offering advice or solutions and more about helping them to see and use the resources they already had or could draw upon to deal with the current situation.

It seemed to me that resource myopia was similar to being unaware of our breathing. We are always breathing – it keeps us alive! Yet many of us just take it for granted. Meditators and mindfulness practitioners know the power of breathing to bring us into the moment and to contribute to our over all well-being. Yet many of us fail to see this resource – the ability to take a breather from work – that is literally right under our noses.

A game show example of resource myopia would be a contestant on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” experiencing the demands of a question they don’t have the answer for yet they fail to reach out for a lifeline by asking the audience, getting half the wrong answers eliminated, or phoning a friend.

I am 64 years of age but that does not stop me from being a fanboy of the Job Demand Resource (JD-R) model of work engagement.  I appreciate the rigour, the research, and the immediate relevancy of this approach advanced by a number of academics around the globe including Arnold Bakker and Wilmar Schaufeli.

Here is a brief explanation of the JD-R model from an interview I conducted with Arnold Bakker in 2016:

The JD–R model is a scientific model that can be used to predict employee well-being, including burnout and work engagement. Accordingly, although every job is different, each job has certain characteristics that can be categorized as job demands or job resources. Job demands (e.g., workload, emotional demands) are the drivers of a stress process undermining employee health, whereas job resources (e.g., autonomy, feedback, opportunities for growth) are the drivers of a motivational process in the workplace.

https://www.saba.com/blog/dr-arnold-bakker-on-employee-engagement-and-work-part-2

This brings us back to resource myopia. I believe many employees are myopic to the resources they have available to meet the demands, hassles, threats, and conflicts embedded in work. Perhaps they have forgotten about a powerful tool they could use, a co-worker who could help them, or the possibility to lessen the demands through conversation with their supervisor.

To overcome resource myopia get your “I-checked” with a reflective pause or a work based fine tuning that corrects your murky vision of the resources available to you for the work you do.

Remember job resources can be physical, psychological, social, or organizational factors that help you meet the demands of work, achieve goals, and reduce stress. For example, exercising autonomy, building strong work relationships, seeking opportunities for advancement, utilizing coaching, and learning are just some examples of job resources.

So here is my encouragement to you. To foster work engagement and lessen work stress, the next time you are experiencing work demands that you feel challenged to meet or are causing undue stress, pause and take time to identify, determine, gather, and utilize the resources you already have but are failing to see.

You just might feel like a million bucks after advocating to get your unrealistic work demands cut in half, spending some time on the phone with a friend for emotional support and practical advice, and tapping into the extensive social networks that can offer you the working wisdom of crowds. So what are you waiting for……go phone a friend.

Being Human

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Being human is our birthright not a skill.

My largest response over the summer from my writing was the following brief LinkedIn post with over 6,571 views of the  post 

My name is David Zinger, I am human.

The elephant in the room is that we are already human.

Imagine my confusion when I received an email from the Harvard Business Review with the title: “How to be Human at Work.” I did not think I needed how-to instructions on something I already am! 

The Economist 1843 had an article on how to edit a human. Do I now have to be wary of a biological misplaced comma?

I scanned an article on the 6 traits of human beings that began, “One of the most important – but often forgotten – elements of customer experience is that it’s all about human beings. Customers are human beings, employees are human beings, and executives are human beings.” Really? We have forgotten that we are human, this is sure news to me!

You see — I am human. I feel. I bleed. I blunder. I blush. I smile. I work. I play. I talk. I listen. I love. I laugh. I have not forgotten I am human. I do not need editing. Don’t you dare sell me manuals on how to be what I already am, a human.

George Kemish LLM MCMI MIC Director and Principal Consultant – HR Strategy & Workforce Planning – Adding Value Through Pro-Active Business Planning

I am not sure that it is a case of whether or not we are human.  When looking at areas such as Customer Service, the customer seems to have been left out of the loop on many occasions and yet it is the customer that is going to have the biggest effect on the ‘bottom line’ and on the return to investors. Everything that HR does, from workforce planning to attracting and retaining talent, should be undertaken to support the Value Chain and in determining the value chain you need to work from the customer back through the organization.  Unfortunately this has rarely been the case – hence the poor customer service that we experience in the UK.  One advert on television just about sums this up: ‘UK Car Hire with American Customer Service’

George Kemish LLM MCMI MIC Director and Principal Consultant – HR Strategy & Workforce Planning – Adding Value Through Pro-Active Business Planning

David Zinger.  You are correct.  However, it is the value chain that they should be supporting.  If they do not there will be no bottom line or ROI.  Nuria Rojo.  If poor customer service is a worldwide ‘accepted’ sickness, and a UK company feels that American Customer Service is better than that provided by most UK organizations, then I can only presume that customer service in the UK has reached rock bottom.  Sofia Reis.  I totally agree – organizational behaviour is nothing new – have we lost the ability to manage this important aspect?

Scott J. Simmerman, Ph.D. CPF, CPT Designer of tools for teambuilding and performance improvement, including Square Wheels and Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine

These days, I am thinking I would prefer a robot that is mildly intelligent. I literally have spent THREE YEARS trying to get information about my Mom’s Life Insurance policy from AIG. Mom still lives and is still paying away and they keep changing the demanded payment and, until maybe a month ago, would not ever explain why.  Calls now got to voicemail, always, because they do not want to talk with me. Not even the NJ Insurance Commission can get any reasonable response on all this. A robot would probably just give me the information.

Trevor Hubert Director, Talent & Organizational Development at Investors Group

Nice post David. You are one of my favorite humans. Love your posts and thought leadership.

David Zinger Employee Experience & Engagement Educator, Speaker, Consultant

Thank you Trevor. You have seen my fallible humanity and also trying to do the best I can. Nice to have you work up the street.

Ihsan Mert Employer Brander | Keynote Speaker | Award Winning Talent Recruiter | Digital HR Innovator | A Canadian in Istanbul

You are one of the best human beings David.

David Zinger Employee Experience & Engagement Educator, Speaker, Consultant

Ihsan, it would take one to know one!

Jordan Mulholland Senior Relationship Manager at Farm Credit Canada / Financement agricole Canada

You know, I couldn’t agree more. I to feel that there is a tendency to ‘dehumanize’ people in society and even in the work force. In the work force this leads to low morale, poor culture and constant churn of employees. At the risk of sounding old fashioned, can we not just treat others (coworkers, customers, executives) the way we would want to be treated if we were in their shoes? Perhaps it is idealistic of me. It would create stronger companies and relationships. 

David Zinger Employee Experience & Engagement Educator, Speaker, Consultant

I like the sound of “old fashioned.

Johanna Nelson Associate Director, Communications at Punter Southall Aspire

Hahahah and there we all were sat thinking we were aliens! Thank goodness for some clarity on the matter! 

David Zinger Employee Experience & Engagement Educator, Speaker, Consultant

I was torn between alien, robot, or perhaps I might awake as a Dung Beetle as salesman, Gregor Samsa, did in Kafka’s novella, Metamorphosis. 

Scott J. Simmerman, Ph.D. CPF, CPT Designer of tools for teambuilding and performance improvement, including Square Wheels and Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine

Let’s see the results of your Turing Test, David.

David Zinger Employee Experience & Engagement Educator, Speaker, Consultant

I guess I better get into a room and you fire questions. As a counselling psychologist I always liked the early computer counsellor ELIZA who did a good job of keeping clients going for a while.

Claude Silver Chief Heart Officer at VaynerMedia.

Mic drop! David I don’t know you but I want to. 

Kerry Brown VP User Adoption | Speaker, Thought Leader and Strategist passionate about making employees successful at their jobs

Ditto and well said.

Aga Bajer Culture Strategist • Author • #CultureLab Host • I help companies cultivate a culture that brings their vision to life

Brilliant, funny, a bit sad, very true! Thanks for sharing your human thoughts!

Faran Johnson Making Britain a great place to work.

David. Would love to chat with you! Have sent a LinkedIn request.

Mike (MJ) Vacanti • FollowingCxO Adviser. Team Performance. Leadership & Culture Transformation. Growth Catalyst. #HumansFirstClub. Speaker. Author.

David Zinger, you have a wonderful body of work helping people.

David Zinger Employee Experience & Engagement Educator, Speaker, Consultant

Thank you Mike, you are very kind. 

Lee Lester, Video Producer and Mindfulness AdvocateFacilitating positive communication through meditation, mindfulness and moving image.

Surely the point of all this is not to remind the customers, employees and executives that they are human – they’re often only too aware that their needs are not being met. It’s for those business leaders who choose or are pressured into forgetting that profit is driven by happy, imperfect humans, not just efficient ones? 

Career Zingers #30: Your Career is Never a Solo Endeavour

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Picturing Your Career – The Double Ensō and The Venn Diagram

I don’t believe that life is linear. I think of it as circles – concentric circles that connect. ~ Michelle Williams

While working at my desk today my ice water glass created a double ensō as it rested upon a piece of paper beside my computer. Ensō means circular form and may symbolize elegance and strength as well as the void. Rather than career as a linear progression or feeling we are “going around in hopeless circles at work” we can embrace the circular nature of our career.

If you have a mathematical mind you might see the same image as a Venn diagram, named after John Venn, with two overlapping circles indicating where items share something in common.

To be successful, view your career as circles of relationship. How well do you overlap what you love to do with what you need to do? How successful are you in joining your work contribution with what your organization or client needs? How united are you with others at work? And what other circles do you need to join to be successful at work?

When two circles merge into one we experience perfect engagement. This may be a fleeting career ideal but it can draw us forward to a greater feeling of belonging at work.