UnLeadership Love

It’s Valentine's Day, so we thought we’d share a chapter from UnLeadership that's close to our hearts.?

Burnout is work-related stress, and it seems to be everywhere - no matter the industry. Burnout isn’t a simple problem, and it won’t have a simple solution; it requires awareness and connection, communication and flexibility; leadership that understands companies are made up of people, and people thrive in environments where they can create meaning, experience belonging, and are given opportunities for leadership and collaboration.

To learn more about burnout prevention, we spoke to expert and leader Dr. Susan Biali Haas. We encourage you to read her story and consider the impact burnout is having on you, your leadership, and your workplace.?

What follows is UnLeadership Chapter 51, “Leadership’s Greatest Challenge.”

Dr. Susan Biali Haas MD is a medical doctor and passionate mental health educator with a focus on burnout prevention. Her work aims to reduce stigma around mental health, encourage conversation, and change the way we think about work and life.

(Highlights from our interview, recorded June 29, 2023.)

Over the last few years, it has been heartening to see the explosion of interest from organizations in mental health and, particularly, the well-being of their employees. Today, neuroscience, physiology, and the science of high performance teach us that our best performance, our greatest impact, comes from a balance—of strategically pacing ourselves and taking care of ourselves in intentional ways. As a student and doctor, I slogged and worked hard my entire life. I got away with it through school, university, and even medical school. However, when I got to residency training, with 36-hour shifts, sleep deprivation, and untreated trauma, I had no tools or support. My emergency medicine residency left me with burnout, depression, and trauma. Although I practiced primary care medicine for 20 years, I wanted to educate and empower people around preventative medicine, mental health, well-being, and work.

I was frustrated with only being able to spend 10 or 15 minutes with each patient. I wanted to make a bigger impact—I had all the knowledge and training but needed more time. I knew if I had time to talk with patients about their whole lives, their health problems would improve. Coaching represented a way for me to work with people deeply in their lives. At the time, life coaching was emerging, and I saw this as a construct within which I could have more time than medicine. Today, there are courses at Harvard Medical School around lifestyle medicine and coaching, which is wonderful to see.

Often, when I share my burnout experience, people have a moment of awakening and realization of how lost they’ve gotten in the pursuit of success. I share clinical symptoms of burnout, and they realize what they’ve been doing isn’t sustainable. Once that realization happens, I work to equip them with insights, tools, and strategies related to their work, body, mind, and psychology. My three-part transformation model implements insights, tools, and strategies related to work, psychology, and evidence-based medical science/neuroscience. The work piece is central to the process; we work at transforming their choices, and they completely transform their lives.

Foundational research on workplace mental health and burnout outlines six areas that drive burnout in an organization. Burnout is a considerable risk if these challenges are left unaddressed and unacknowledged:

Work overload: Leaders need to understand processes and workflow issues and work to ensure we aren’t demanding unreasonable things.

Lack of control: Workers lack control and agency; the more control and agency you give creatively, the more resilient your organization will be against burnout.

Insufficient rewards: Lack of recognition, lack of feeling valued or appreciated; this begins with fairness around pay and then showing appreciation and communicating value. Simply thanking people for work well done and recognizing contributions profoundly shapes people’s resilience and prevents burnout. I encourage leaders to build meaningful recognition, which is about two-way conversation; you must understand what meaningful rewards are to your team.

Workplace community issues: Lack of psychological safety and belonging. Toxic workplace practices such as bullying cannot be tolerated. Belonging is a huge part of our resilience as human beings and burnout prevention. Again, this has to be intentional and meaningful to the team.

Values conflicts: Lastly, there needs to be more understanding; workers must feel heard and supported through challenging times. In health care, for example, we often witness suffering and are powerless to help because of systemic issues.

As my career has morphed through medicine, coaching, and now big-picture mental health and burnout work with organizations and leaders, the responsibility of that platform is not lost on me. There is a balance between honoring those who hired me and supporting the people who trust me with their experiences; real sobriety comes with that. When I wrote my first book in 2008, an advisor told me no one would ever want to read a book about depression. It was probably the worst advice I’ve ever taken. While I included my depression story, I ignored my instincts and made it more upbeat and less authentic. Looking back, it highlights how little people talked about mental health then. But also, it’s been a good lesson for me in trusting my instincts. It takes guts to be vulnerable and ahead of the curve, and I’m working to return to that.?

First and foremost, I practice everything I teach, so it comes from a deep personal experience. I love a challenge, and my ultimate challenge was against burnout, depression, and trauma. I focus on what gives me life and helps me show up best for what I’ve been called to do. I have a mindfulness or spiritual prayer practice. I do a lot of journaling. I’m intentional about maintaining my close relationships. I have my own coach and often also get counselling. I’m aware of my weaknesses and am always working on my boundaries. I’m also very introverted, and introverts are at increased risk for burnout compared to extroverts; they also make up about 20%–30% of high-level business leaders. For those who want to do big things and are introverts, it’s important to understand those parts of yourself and find ways for solo time. This isn’t being selfish—it’s essential if you want to have a sustainable impact on the world. One of the best things a leader can do is allow flexibility so people can have space to protect their energy. Imagine a space in which you can bring out the best for your company. How can we create environments that bring out the best in everybody?

Excerpted with permission from the publisher, Wiley, from UnLeadership by Scott & Alison Stratten. Copyright ? 2024 by Scott Stratten. All rights reserved. This book is available wherever books and eBooks are sold.

Learn more and pre-order here www.UnLeadershipBook.com