The Role of Trauma-Informed Leadership in Preventing Burnout

Last week, we talked about some immediate steps that you can take when you are feeling stressed or personally triggered during a specific situation at work. While these immediate steps are helpful, what happens when the stress is pervasive? What happens when you experience general overwhelm at work that is unrelenting?

Imagine the following. It’s been a long day and it’s just the middle of a long week. You just finished meeting with a staff member who spent the last hour talking about how stressful their job is, and they made comments about how they don’t receive enough support from their leader to do it. You believe that they are referring to you – insinuating that they don’t receive enough support from you. They don’t know the number of hours behind the scenes that you have worked to support them and to ensure that your organization stays afloat. And what about you? Who can you go to if you feel like you’re not getting enough support as a leader? The more you have these conversations, the more you start to wonder if it’s all worth it. You scroll through your Instagram? feed, and you see all of these “influencers” who are getting paid to travel to amazing places, eat at good restaurants, and generally just “vacation” for a living. They don’t have to deal with everything that you have on your plate. What gives?

That’s when you realize it. You’re burnt out. Your enthusiasm and excitement for your job has waned. You don’t really know how it happened; you only know that you wake up every Sunday with a sense of dread in your gut. You must go into the office and do it all again this week and you’re not sure you have the energy for it. What happens now?

The International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) describes burnout as, “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” It has three dimensions: (1) Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; (2) Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and (3) Reduced professional efficacy. If you’ve experienced burnout, you’re not alone. Nearly two-thirds of employees have indicated that they have experienced burnout at least once in their career.

Burnout is not something that just happens overnight. It’s one of those things that seeps into you over time. It’s the idea of progressive overload – you think that you can keep managing the stress that comes with your job and push down feelings of exhaustion and overwhelm. However, at some point, you cannot push it down anymore and it begins to come out into your daily life.

Burnout occurs for many different reasons. For some, burnout occurs when we feel like our workload is endless and we don’t feel appreciated. For others, it occurs when we don’t feel like we can control specific situations at work. For still others, burnout occurs when you work for an organization whose values don’t resonate with your own, or you feel like there’s a lack of equity or fairness in your work.

In their book, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, the Nagoski sisters talk about burnout from a physiological perspective, highlighting ways in which we can move through the stress response and achieve closure to the cycle. This means that if you get anxious or ramped up over a stressful event, you can’t just “will” yourself to calm down. Your body is engaging in the stress-response cycle that it needs to complete. Therefore, letting out the emotion, moving your body, having the conversations, allows you to complete the cycle. If you don’t manage the stress responses as they come, it just stays pent up inside of you.

Let’s think about this from a trauma-informed perspective.? Last week, we talked about how certain situations at work can trigger our stress response. This is the exact same response that is at play when we experience triggers that remind us of an unpleasant experience in our own life. It doesn’t need to only occur when you are in real threat. In fact, it mostly occurs during instances of perceived threat, or when you are re-experiencing, or actively reminded about a scary event that has happened to you. Unfortunately, as leaders, we often dismiss these experiences or are unable to fully connect with them, “I don’t know why this annoys me so much” or “I don’t know why I’m so bothered by this situation” or “I know why I’m so bothered by this situation, it’s because X is to blame. If they were gone, my life would be better.” I’ve seen many exceptionally skilled leaders fall into the trap of finding the cause of their distress to be a specific person or a specific situation. They hope that once that person leaves, everything will be calm again. Unfortunately, they find out that once that person leaves the organization or the immediate stressor is resolved, they are triggered again by someone else who brings up a similar situation and the cycle repeats.

Thus, the unfortunate truth is that checking in with ourselves and managing your own responses is critical to preventing burnout. It is never just about someone else – usually we are playing a role in causing the dynamic and we can play a role in addressing it. ?

How to Prevent and Intervene when Experiencing Burnout as a Trauma-Informed Leader

While it’s easier to prevent burnout than intervene once it’s occurred, it’s not impossible. The following are some strategies that you can use to prevent and intervene in burnout:

·???????? Identify what burnout looks like for you. Identify how burnout may (or is) showing up for you. Is there something that really resonated with you – such as working on weekends, or feeling like your organization is inequitable? If so, that’s probably a good place to start.

·???????? Acknowledge the things that you find challenging or triggering. This doesn’t mean that you need to perseverate on them or try to find a solution. Just give a name to them and tie them to how it feels. For example, “I get really angry/sad when my organization requires that I work on weekends because I feel like I’m giving more than I have to give.”

·???????? Identify what needs to be done. It turns out that avoiding difficult things also contributes to burnout. Complete the cycle, do what needs to be done or else it will be lording over you. This might mean having the long overdue conversation with your leader that you have been dreading, discussing how working weekends is not feasible for you.

·???????? Identify, state, and maintain your own boundaries. Once you have identified your cause of burnout and what needs to be done, firmly state your boundary around the situation. In the example above, this might mean that you have the conversation with your boss that you will no longer work weekends going forward. Once it is stated, stick to the boundary. It turns out that taking care of yourself by setting a healthy boundary (and knowing that you can do it) is as helpful in addressing burnout as the boundary itself.

As trauma-informed leaders, we set an example for our staff members when we can effectively identify where we might be burnt out and take the steps needed to correct the situation. When we can address our own burnout, we give permission to our staff members to do the same.

Of course, it might be the case that you are already quite burned out and that the intervention described above is not feasible for you. Your boss might indicate that working weekends is a necessary part of the job. In that case, it might be time to move on. I’ve seen organizational cultures destroyed by individuals who denied their level of burnout and brought all their apathy and frustration into the workplace. I’ve also experienced it myself – staying too long in situations that I knew were draining for me and not good for those around me. If that’s the case, it’s okay to take care of yourself and make the decision to leave when the time is right for you. That’s a courageous decision that might be best for everyone. However, before you get to that, I hope that you can get in front of burnout. What you can give is too unique and important to be ruined by burnout.?

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Have you experienced burnout as a leader? What are some ways you’ve managed feelings of burnout in your role?

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Bio: Lisa Conradi is a licensed clinical psychologist, trauma expert and former Executive Director of a large non-profit that provides trauma-focused treatment and training and technical assistance to organizations across the US on becoming trauma-informed. She is an author, speaker, trainer and leadership consultant with more than 20 years in the field of child trauma and trauma-informed care.? She does not currently provide any clinical or treatment services to clients.