For some people it seems that, until you’ve experienced job burnout, you haven’t made it to “The Top”. After all, if you’re not overly stressed and running ragged due to your responsibilities at work, can you say you’ve really made it?
Of course, we jest; but, feeling burned out at work is becoming more commonplace and job stress is the main culprit. The good news is, there are things you can do to cope and emotional intelligence exercises are very helpful in dealing with both burnout and overwhelm.
First, let’s define our terms. According to the Mayo Clinic website, while not a recognized medical condition or diagnosis, “Job burnout is a special type of work-related stress – a state of physical or emotional exhaustion that also involves a sense of reduced accomplishment and loss of personal identity.”
However, that may be too simplistic. An article at Forbes.com, titled, Is Burnout Real? The Answer Is Yes, describes job burnout this way:
“Burnout is a workplace issue – a chronic process of exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy caused by a disconnect or an imbalance between key job demands, job resources, and your ability to recover both at work and outside of work. Burnout doesn’t just spring up overnight – it simmers over a period of time, for many people, over the course of years. More importantly, burnout is mainly a systemic problem caused by systemic issues within organizations, not just individuals and their ability (or inability) to respond to stress.” (emphasis included)
For author Paula Davis-Laack, “The most important part of this definition is the word ‘chronic’.”
What Are the Signs of Burnout?
Ms. Davis-Laack offers evidence of the areas that have the greatest influence on job burnout, based on research from Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter’s Areas of Worklife model, which indicates that the greater the mismatch between the person and each of these specific job areas, the greater the likelihood of burnout:
- Workload (You have enough time to do what’s important in your job)
- Control/Autonomy (You have influence in the decisions affecting your work)
- Reward (Your work is appreciated)
- Community (You are a member of a supportive work group)
- Fairness (Opportunities are decided solely on merit)
- Values (Your values and the organization’s values are alike)
This imbalance or mismatch creates the conditions that are likely for burnout to flourish. This is reinforced by the Mayo Clinic article, which describes burnout symptoms as:
- Have you become cynical or critical at work?
- Do you drag yourself to work and have trouble getting started?
- Have you become irritable or impatient with co-workers, customers or clients?
- Do you lack the energy to be consistently productive?
- Do you find it hard to concentrate?
- Do you lack satisfaction from your achievements?
- Do you feel disillusioned about your job?
- Are you using food, drugs or alcohol to feel better or to simply not feel?
- Have your sleep habits changed?
- Are you troubled by unexplained headaches, stomach or bowel problems, or other physical complaints?
Emotional Intelligence Exercises for Coping with Stress
If stress is the driving force behind job burnout, it makes sense then to earn how to better cope with stress. Unfortunately, according to many emotional intelligence experts, stress is a generalized condition. It can be used as shorthand for a sense of imbalance and impending chaos. In other words, it’s an emotional signal of danger.
This can make the causes of stress difficult to nail down but, like many conditions that afflict human beings, knowing the exact cause is not always necessary to identifying what we might label a “cure”. There are three areas of emotional intelligence that can help you cope with stress more effectively, which will also help you avoid burnout.
- Know Yourself – Accurately identifying and interpreting both simple and compound feelings while acknowledging frequently recurring reactions and behaviors.
- Choose Yourself – Evaluating the costs and benefits of your choices while assessing, harnessing, and transforming emotions as a strategic resource.
- Give Yourself – Recognizing and appropriately responding to others’ emotions while connecting your daily choices with your overarching sense of purpose.
If you find yourself trying to cope with burnout, and failing, I can help you with emotional intelligence exercises designed to reduce stress and feel more balance between work and life.
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