Did I do that?

Could your burnout (or mine) be my fault?

Let's rephrase that question.

As a strengths focused coach, have I done you as much harm as I have done you good?

Coaches are trained to work with clients' strengths to help build, amongst other things, engagement. We focus on what is strong and sometimes downplay what is wrong. And we journey with clients to that place where they feel committed to their work and are willing to give discretionary effort - often beyond what they are paid for - to "get the job done".

As I continue to research the topic of burnout, I come across more and more studies that show an interesting link or overlap between engagement - that much sort after attribute in workplaces - and burnout the bane of workplace and personal health.

Some researchers have suggested that engagement and burnout are actually two ends of the same spectrum, with something like languishing living in the middle. For example, in their paper, Burnout and Engagement: Identical Twins or Just Close Relatives?, authors, Taris, Ybema and van Beek conclude, based on their research, that "burnout and engagement are overlapping concepts and that the conceptual and empirical differences should not be overestimated." [1]

But I have been wondering if it goes further than that...

Am I, and coaches like me, creating or at least contributing to burnout?

Case study of a burnout journey

A few years ago Maggie, a project manager started studying Positive Psychology and she loved it. She found it scientific, well-researched, empowering and ...engaging. One of her favorite topics was character strengths and how strengths can be used to build engagement in the workplace. She enthusiastically took what she was learning back to the office, and didn't look back. Her productivity increased, she was excited to go to work, she was enthusiastic about her role. She felt, well, engaged...

She used the same tools to build engagement in the team. And it worked.

A year later, she burned out and left the field of project management forever. She had followed the recommended path of focusing on character strengths, building on those strengths that were identified as her signature strengths (those that feel essential, effortless and energizing). She had built on what is strong rather than what is wrong, and she had relentlessly steered her focus and mood toward "the good", practicing gratitude, appreciation and forgiveness to make every day as good as possible.

She cultivated her already high levels of curiosity. She really worked on being even-handed and creating "equivalency of voice" as a reflection of her third strength, fairness. She used her bravery to stand up to unreasonable management demands and to raise the profile and role of her team (all with the help of her team colleagues). And she was grateful. So grateful.

Maggie could not have been happier with the opportunity to put what she was learning into practice. And her top strength of Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence was in overdrive. It became a signature behavior of hers to call out high performance, recognize people who went the extra mile and more. Many of her colleagues remarked on her expressions of appreciation and gratitude - you can still see some of them in her LinkedIn profile recommendations.

She later described curiosity as exhausting - as though her brain never shut down. She described fairness as debilitating because in her search to create equality, she often got stuck in analysis paralysis. She found gratitude and appreciation draining, because constantly giving out to others left her little for herself.

In pursuit of engagement

In workplaces across the globe, but especially in the US, there has been an almost relentless chase after this illusive quality. Gallup polls tells us that very few people are engaged at work. Gallup studies confirm that engaged employees are more productive, more profitable and make less errors [2].

Study after study has shown that a strengths focus creates greater engagement [3]. And so that is where we as coaches have been going - to the top strengths-based interventions.

Focusing on applying top strengths in new ways, seeing role models of our top strengths and really getting to know our strengths well is empowering and engaging. Groups of people from workers, to students, to people in nursing homes have felt the benefit of cultivating their top strengths.

But like anything else, too much of a good thing can become a not so good thing.

What engagement gives us, burnout takes away

Burnout is characterized by exhaustion, cynicism, and feelings of lack of efficacy - we just cannot seem to get things done any more. [4]

And at that point all the wins of engagement building go away, and employees become less productive, less interested, are more prone to mistakes and feel physical, cognitive and emotional overload that renders them ineffective. Absenteeism increases, or as one paper described it, "negative presence" being there but not contributing, increases

In the book The Upside of Your Dark Side, authors, Todd Kashdan and Robert Biswas-Diener remind us that we are not all about the positive and there is good reason for that [5]. Being in touch with negative emotions, thinking about our limitations and opportunities for growth, embracing the good, the bad and the ugly, is actually what balance is all about. And without balance, we burnout. So called negative feelings can also create the incentive to change, and lead us to modify our behavior.

It is great to be engaged at work, but we also need to be engaged in other things to recover from work. AND we need to rest and recuperate. We need to disengage.

So it is not enough to coach people to build on their top strengths, I believe we need to include explorations of when to dial them back. We want to explore what we can do with other strengths that are lower in our profile and how we can buffer ourselves by cultivating those more elusive attributes.

Coaches let's explore what helps the person recover and regenerate; let's encourage clients to enjoy variety. Indeed I am noticing that one of the most effective ways to kick-start recovery from burnout is to go and do something wildly different than usual. Novelty creates new neural pathways and rests the ones we are overusing.

My mother WAS right - a change is as good as a rest!

Balance & Moderation

My father used to say, "moderation in all things" and then he would add with a grin, "including moderation". Too much of anything - even something positive, empowering and reinforcing - can become harmful. The same is true for workplace engagement. Some good, more not necessarily better. Without the ability to turn off the engagement or refocus it, burnout seems inevitable.

Recommendations for coaches

• Explore with clients how they will engage AND disengage.
• Encourage clients to be deliberate about their focus - one thing at a time, limit multi-tasking.
• Explore when and how they will experiment with something different. We all need to give our brain a break and try something new!
• And embrace ALL aspects of our personality - even the not so pretty and productive ones! They all have their part to play.

Employers: engage your employees AND create an environment where periods of disengagement is the norm.

Employees: remember downtime is not just OK it is desirable. Changing focus, trying new things, sleeping (!) are good things. When someone encourages you to create a pause, don't shoot them down!

Coaches: what suggestions do you have?

The best coaches seem to challenge clients to consider all facets of who they are, what they want and what they need. They probe for the incentives to drive change, and co-create plans with small goals repeated over time rather than overwhelming sea changes overnight.

And let's engage in disengagement!

References

[1] Taris, T. W., Ybema, J. F., & Beek, I. van. (2017). Burnout and engagement: Identical twins or just close relatives? Burnout Research, 5, 3–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.burn.2017.05.002?

[2] Gallup, I. (2022, July 26). State of the global workplace report. Gallup.com. Retrieved July 30, 2022, from https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace-2022-report.aspx?

[3] For examples, see: https://www.viacharacter.org/research/findings/character-strengths-in-the-workplace-and-organizations

[4] Maslach, C., Schaufeli, W. B., & Leiter, M. P. (2001). Job burnout. Annual Review of Psychology, 52(1), 397–422. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.397?

[5] Kashdan, T. B., & Biswas-Diener, R. (2015). Upside of your dark side: Why being your whole self--not just your "good" self--drives success and fulfillment. Plume, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.?