8/ But it's not enough to have an assessment model of burnout.
If you want to prevent it, you must also have a *developmental* model — that is, some idea of how it develops in the first place.
These models are where things get really interesting!
Conversation
9/ There are two well established developmental models:
- The Jobs-Demands Resources model (JD-R)
- The Conservation of Resources model (COR)
Why are these interesting? Because — well, they tell you how to run high performance, high stress workplaces WITHOUT burnout.
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10/ The JD-R model basically says: "ok, you can have high job demands, but if you balance that out with good 'job resources', then you can ameliorate the effects of burnout.
Job resources can take on many forms! See:
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11/ To sort of drive that home, take as an example Bakker et al, 2006. The researchers looked at home care workers and found they were more resilient to burnout if they had good feedback and good autonomy.
You CAN arrest burnout if you are willing to provide good support.
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12/ The COR model takes a slightly different tack. It observes that people feel stress when they lose 'resources' — which in this case is loosely defined and can include time, energy, status, or even things.
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13/ The COR model is useful because it takes into account the salience of loss. This is different from JD-R!
So: if you have a lot invested in a project and management decides to kill the project, you are likely going to need a period of recovery in order to offset that loss.
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14/ Where does this leave us?
Well — now that you have these ideas, you can take any story of burnout and read them through the lens of JD-R or COR.
I'm willing to bet that in most cases, the demands of the work environment outstrips the 'resources' or the 'loss'.
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15/ If you want to prevent burnout, the research argues that you need to change the work environment.
And I think this is where things become the most surprising.
Burnout prevention really boils down to: do you have autonomy? Do you have control over your work?
Wait ... what?
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16/ But this makes sense! If you have autonomy, then you can CHANGE YOUR WORK ENVIRONMENT! You can increase resources by changing culture, or providing support systems, or giving feedback, or creating pockets of recovery from 'loss'.
OR you can reduce demand on your team. 😉
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17/ In fact, Maslach came up with a model for org change in the mid 2000s that is built around exactly this insight.
She calls it the 'Area of Worklife Scale' and it tells you which factor to tackle in which order.
Read left to right:
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18/ Ok, time to wrap up.
How do you recover from burnout? The research on this is spotty, but there is one big recommendation:
Quit.
Leave. Change teams.
Leave the work environment that caused the burnout.
Recovery is guaranteed if you do.
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19/ Remember, burnout is a stress experience in a SOCIAL context.
If you can't change the social context, you can't stop burnout.
And you can recover ... but only if you leave.
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20/ If you'd like to dig into this in any more detail, click here: commoncog.com/g/burnout/
Or follow me or , who wrote most of this guide.
Research DOES have useful things to say about burnout.
Who knew?
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I think this is why I have never burned out of a job - I always end up leaving instead. Whether my own startup, a job, something else. I've sense diminishing returns that will be near-impossible to reverse and just move on.
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Guaranteed if you don't go immediately to another teams where the conditions are the same or even worse. This is the tricky part. How can you know with any certainty what you're getting into?
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Funny story -
Before I left my last job, my best work friend told me that she works in order to have money to help her church out. She suggested that I try going to church.
My thought -
"If I find God, it's not in order to work at XYZ"
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