MANAGER’S PROFESSION AND OCCUPATIONAL BURNOUT 

“You can’t burn out if you have never been on fire...”- Jeff Schmidt

Nowadays, occupational burnout is becoming a more and more popular phenomenon. It’s not so hard to notice it once we take a look at our work environment. Employees often face excessive workload, a lack of support from their superiors and the company itself, as well as chronic stress and exhaustion, which nowadays seem to be a matter of one’s daily routine…

Each one of us needs to feel that their work makes sense, that it is somehow important and generally beneficial. We all put a lot of effort and time in our jobs… As long as we can… However, once we lose our drive, we start to ask ourselves questions such as: “How can one manage all those responsibilities? How can I find work-life balance? How can I possibly deal with chronic stress and finally feel that my life is in harmony?”…

When we can’t find the answers ourselves, we start to lose our sense of internal peace. As the frustration grows, our effectiveness at work gradually declines.

Quite ironically, people who are strongly motivated, driven, ambitious, and fully engaged in their work are more likely to experience occupational burnout. Among people who are at risk of facing this problem, managers seem to occupy the leading position.

OCCUPATIONAL BURNOUT is a term describing a state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion, signaled by chronic fatigue. Additionally, people experiencing burnout have a negative attitude towards work, people, and their overall life. They tend to feel helpless, finding themselves in a situation they can’t deal with themselves. Occupational burnout is also associated with the reluctance towards undertaking any new activities.

WHY MANAGERS?

It’s quite typical for a manager to feel that their workload has no end. All the time, they have something to do. They often feel that there’s always something they can do better and more effectively. What is particularly characteristic of managers is their dedication to work even after hours.

Constant race with competition, growing expectations of clients and shareholders, splitting time between building new strategies and managing everyday responsibilities and tasks, as well as being responsible for other employees add to the already challenging workload.

Surprisingly, most subordinate employees do not perceive managers’ work as something as stressful and exhausting as it really is. Unfortunately, the lack of credit for managers’ work is a very common phenomenon, which without a doubt does not motivate managers to continue their efforts.

Managers, bound to remain focused at all times, are busy with the constant flow of information and the need to make decisions, which puts them at a high risk of developing various illnesses. Due to the nature of this profession, managers are prone to experiencing cardiac diseases as well as severe problems with the circulatory system.

In addition to that, managers, being extremely ambitious individuals, set extremely high, often unrealistic standards for their work themselves. Those high expectations are also often enforced by their environment. On the one hand, pressure comes from superiors and shareholders, on the other hand, from subordinates.

It seems that everyone knows what a “perfect manager” should look like. They ought to exceed expectations in terms of strategic thinking and achieving goals, solve problems with other employees, educate them, train them, and be a great coach to their team. Managers should keep up with the newest information regarding the market and their field. They are expected to always give great advice, motivate their subordinates, guide them, and help them develop.

It’s not hard to believe that managers feel that they are on duty all the time and their work days have no end. Even during hours dedicated to resting and leisure, they use up their energy very fast, depriving themselves of overall joy and satisfaction from their hard work.

The above-mentioned causes why managers are prone to experiencing occupational burnout are just the tip of the iceberg. Not only that, but also those particular reasons are a solid proof that the phenomenon of occupational burnout must be taken care of, together with means of prevention.

While searching for possible solutions to this problem, it is worth taking into consideration the following aspects:

STRESS

Stress is nothing but the body’s reaction to the given expectations. Its formation is a dynamic process, in which the discrepancy between goals and achieved effects plays a crucial role.

When the results of our actions do not live up to the expectations, our dissatisfaction grows. We begin to feel uneasy, and we quickly find ourselves in a vicious cycle of negative feelings.

If we take into consideration the never ending list of requirements placed on managers, it becomes obvious that is it merely impossible to fulfill all those expectations at once. A manager who, against all odds, tries to live up to those unrealistic expectations is at a high risk of falling into a vicious cycle of negative emotions.

In a typical work day of a manager, there are often so many stressful situations, that the stress levels in their body are not able to self-regulate. As a result, one’s body is unable to get a proper rest and recover.

In such situations, it is crucial to make managers aware of how their typical work day really looks like and what they can do to minimize stress.

How to start your day peacefully, at the same time staying focused?

How to make a mini-break during your work day, allowing you to reset during work? (Here, knowledge of various relaxation techniques will be crucial. Those methods include: visualization, usage of auto-suggestion, and practicing the technique of the progressive release of muscle tension.)

How to approach daily planning and organizing mindfully and effectively?

How to finish your working day and how to get proper rest?

While searching for the right answers to these questions, we should also support managers by providing them with adequate knowledge and skills.

MY OWN 'SELF' AS THE SOURCE OF STRESS

Very often, we tend to enforce the tension that appears during work. We, ourselves, become an additional source of unnecessary stress, that can result from unrealistic desires and expectations aimed at ourselves and others.

Those requirements may sound like: “I want to be better than everyone else. I want to do everything perfectly. I want to be in control of everything. I want my coworkers to like and respect me. “ And so on… Such expectations, often hidden in our subconscious, can be very difficult to fulfill for both managers and their environment. As a result, more stress is generated.

Shareholders and superiors very often embrace that unrealistic idea of a perfect manager, who is capable of overcoming all challenges put before them. Well-known theories and concepts regarding management skills and competences often provide a clear list of requirements that “a perfect manager” should fulfill. However, all the expectations such as: “A good manager has no problems working with people. A good manager always has time to help their team improve. A team is always eager to work once a manager provides the right motivation.” are actually impossible to live up to.

Working mindfully, we can replace those claims with more realistic ideas, such as: “Even the most competent manager can sometimes face problems, that they cannot solve themselves.”

“Even a well-rounded manager, fulfilling their duties, faces the necessity of postponing team meetings in order to turn to specialists and get professional help,” and “There will always be employees who are not interested in given tasks and who will try to avoid them.”…

Working with managers in that aspect can be based on attempts to raise their awareness regarding the fact that fulfilling those expectations might not be possible. Also, this process should equip them with the ability to replace those negative and unrealistic standards with more positive and obtainable ones.

- Assertiveness skills might be very useful here. Looking at your rights as a person and a manager, and examining your inner monologue (thoughts, assumptions, and judgments you hold about yourself) will be especially crucial here, so that you don’t undermine yourself, but rather help yourself by using your own resources.

- It is also useful to utilize and develop the skills of setting goals and planning. Managers are usually familiar with the principles and characteristics of well-set goals (for example, the widely known SMART concept – meaning that goals should be Specific, Measurable, Ambitious, Realistic, Time-bound).

- Managers know the rules of planning, as they use this knowledge in their daily work. However, the truth is that they apply this knowledge to their personal life goals quite rarely. Courses and trainings that allow them to focus on their own life goals and their realization can help them regain work-life balance. They also help them concentrate on factors that we all truly influence over, while reducing efforts and energy spent on things beyond one’s control.

COGNITIVE PARALYSIS

Very often, people, who have spent years working in a given profession or position, start to experience the state which we call a “cognitive paralysis”. It is often signaled by thoughts such as “I can’t think of anything new, anything I could possibly do. I don’t know how to make my work better.”

When we are aware of our skills as well as of our weaker points, it seems to be quite easy to fill in those gaps by seeking adequate knowledge, developing one’s skills, as well as seeking professional advice and taking additional courses.

Individuals with broad experience often reach a point where it is really difficult for them to utilize the resources they have. Very often those people are not aware of what knowledge or skills they lack. As a result, they start acting as if they didn’t know what they know already!

In such situations the techniques of creatine problem-solving, together with the ability to use them, turn out to be extremely important. Those techniques can include various methods such as: different forms of brainstorming or visualization methods, allowing one to imagine what other people and organizations (people we admire, historical figures, or public personas) would do if they were in such a situation. Having provided knowledge and necessary skills to the managers, we can help them overcome the state of “cognitive paralysis.”

INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS

Due to the excessive number of purely professional contacts, managers often suffer from the sense of loneliness.

A manager spends their whole day with a huge number of people – subordinates, coworkers, superiors, clients, delivery workers, etc. Those are people with whom they need to maintain professional relationships. For a manager, is means that they are burdened with various, often negative emotions all day round. They often face different problems, accusations, or even conflicts. Such state of things causes one to think only of resting after work. What follows is that a manager’s personal relationships with family or with friends begin to suffer.

Instead of bringing the manager satisfaction, the excessive amount of professional contacts becomes a huge burden. In fact, the manager feels that they start to miss those real interpersonal relationships that can give them support.

In such situations, it is also crucial to strengthen one’s assertiveness skills. Managing negative emotions, accepting criticism, and saying “no” to people who somehow add to this everyday burden, are skills that allow one to take a closer look at their personal relationships, create a clear diagnosis, and introduce a proper balance into their life.

OCCUPATIONAL BURNOUT AND EMPLOYEES

This article focuses on the situation of managers and the problems they often face at work. However, as a matter of fact, every employee can experience an occupational burnout. This phenomenon applies to all professions, which include contacting a number of people. The more ambitious and engaged is a worker, the more they are at risk of getting burnt out.

Therefore, it is worth taking a closer look at your coworkers. Once you observe the first symptoms, it is most beneficial to counteract them immediately, as the costs of inaction can be truly enormous...

Author: Katarzyna Kloskowska- Kustosz – a psychologist, executive coach