Workplace Stress:Why Individual Capacity Matters More Than Fairness
Caring for staff well-being is a tension for radically kind leaders. They want to prioritise and care for staff well-being but are also aware of having to balance this with organisational priorities, the work that must be done, and fairness to all team members. These are difficult challenges to balance, yet successfully supporting staff to manage the stresses and strains of work is key to burnout prevention.
Burnout is the result of chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.
But what does “successfully managing stress” actually mean?
It might help to think of the workplace as going on a tramp (hike). In this multi day expedition we are all carrying big tramping backpacks. We come in different sizes, and have variations in strength. Some have old backpacks that are worn and shabby, getting a bit thin in places; others have the latest brand new backpacks. Some team members already carry a few old rocks from their lives or previous jobs. We all need to carry equipment and supplies for our journey.
The backpacks represent our capacity to manage (or cope with) stress. Our workloads and work demands are like all the equipment and supplies we need to carry. The amount we can carry depends on how big and strong we are, the condition of our backpack, and how many tramps we have completed back to back.
Stress is a highly individual experience, we all have different capacities and skills for handling it, and what stresses some people may not stress others. Thats why knowing your team well is such an important factor for kind leaders who want to prevent burnout. When leaders know their team, they can better understand the condition of each member’s backpack and size and strength. In other words their individual capacity for workload and stressful situations.
Kind leaders consider the following as they evaluate what they are asking their team to carry:
A realistic workload. If the load is bigger than the team member’s backpack it is unrealistic. They can’t carry more than what fits.
Control. Team members should have some say about what is in their backpack, and how it is packed. No one wants to discover a suprise rock.
Reward. Staff want some treats in their backpack, but mainly they want their work to be noticed, valued and acknowledged (not necessarily with monetary reward).
Expressed Values. Staff want to carry what is important to them, aligned with their values. They want to see the organisation’s values expressed in daily actions.
We are not tramping alone, but as part of a community. In today’s disconnected and individualistic society, it can be challenging to establish a sense of team. When we tramp as part of a group we look out for one another, and encourage one another on places of the trail or times of the day that are difficult. On a tramp with good friends, the stronger members might even carry more equipment than those who are smaller, or not as strong. This can be challenging when thinking about fairness in contrast to individual capacity. Tensions often arise if people feel they are carrying more than others. Creating a true culture of care within a team helps negotiate these tensions around fairness and capacity. People are more willing to help each other if they feel connected and see themselves as working towards a common shared goal (rather than the many individual goals teams often have).
As we explore managing stress using the backpack analogy, we see several ways for kind leaders to help staff manage stress:
Helping team members get stronger, for example, sending them on a workplace stress management or resilience course.
Ensuring that our team members aren’t carrying too much, by making sure their workloads are realistic.
Supporting staff to put down their backpacks regularly, making sure they are taking holidays and encouraging them not to answer work emails after hours.
Understanding what rocks team members may be carrying from previous experiences, and helping them leave them behind.
Individuals are complex, with different capacities reactions and responses. A common misconception is that kindness is treating people fairly, but true kindness is seeing people as individuals, recognising their unique needs and responding well to those needs. Kind leaders understand that stress and our ability to manage it is experienced uniquely and requires individual responses.
Stay Kind
Christina
Nourish to Flourish: Self-Care Strategies for Visionary Leaders
For renegades, visionary idealists and changemakers, all those who advocate on behalf of others, being ambitious about wellbeing is essential. Kindly radical Leadership begins with ourselves. Like a tree trunk that must be strong and well rooted with the right nourishment to withstand the weather and bear fruit, our efforts to create radical change are strengthened when we nourish and tend to ourselves. We need a strong, well-rooted core to advocate for others in our workplaces and bring about the transformative changes we dream of. One thing I have learnt over the years is that the bigger the change you are advocating for, and the stronger your conviction to stand for your values, the more disciplined you need to be about nourishing yourself.
Here are four practical tips for nurturing your resilient core
Change: Start Small and Be Intentional
Change happens in small intentional moments of moving towards a new direction. It is rarely as black and white as we often represent it as especially in today’s world of valuing transformation.
Where you are trying to priortise yourself and your own needs, instead of making grand, idealistic plans, focus on small, actionable moments throughout the day that align with nurturing yourself. (This applies to the organisational changes you envision also).
As an example at the moment I am trying to become fitter, by exercising more and we know this is beneficial for our whole being so its an important if challenging part of nurturing ourselves. I have been focussed on looking for opportunities to generally add more movement into my day. Things like standing up and doing one lap of the office, or doing 2 pilates moves every hour. Small moves can be effective if you are going in the right direction.
Reflection: Tune Into Yourself
The answers for nurturing yourself are not ‘out there’ or even here in this blog. They are within you. We are so accustomed to seeking information externally that we often forget to explore the wealth of information that comes from within us. This type of self awareness or attunement is is crucial in sustaining our wellbeing. If we we are aware of our own bodies, minds and spirits and able to observe well our own reactions, responses and activity give us the insight needed to identify what feeds our energy and well-being and what diminishes it. For example I recently read an article that demonstrated that participants opinions about their sleep quality had more impact on their mood during the day than the objective data given by sleep trackers. How you think and feel in your mind, body and spirit is more important than some of the information that we now have available to us. Tuning into ourselves requires us to tune out from all that is around us so take some pauses during the day to check in with yourself.
Self-Compassion: Practice Tenderness
Self-compassion is a vital skill for protecting against burnout and nurturing well-being. However its not something that comes naturally to many of us who tend to focus our compassion towards others. Self-compassion is a learnable skill but it takes time and practice (and it is easy to criticise yourself for not being compassionate enough).
You may like to try this exercise:
Imagine how you would hold a little kitten. Most of us hold a kitten tenderly, with care and soothing words.
Now think about how you hold your own thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations. If you are like most of us there is probably some judgment, criticism, or resistance. Thats ok, but now we are going to try something different.
Imagine that your thoughts, feelings, and sensations are little kittens. Try holding them gently, with compassion and soothing words.
Self-Care: Focus on the Basics
You need care too. Advertising can have us believing that self-care is indulgent tretats, However real self-care is not indulgent, in fact its often hard work. Treats and things that we enjoy are important too but self-care is broader than that. It involves actively taking care of yourself in all the ways that keep your body, mind, and spirit healthy. Boring but essential things like brushing our teeth, health check ups and doing our posture exercises are mundane, essential and often hard for those of us that are busy caring for others to priortise.
Identify two things you need to do to keep yourself well—and book them into your calendar this week.
Conclusion
To continue to be kindly radical leaders well we need to nourish ourselves so that we have a solid foundation for standing up for our values and bringing our visions of a better future to life.
If you need help caring for yourself you may like to come to my workshop in February: Lead with Resilience in 2025
Stay Kind
Christina
Kindness is the Antidote to Burnout (Part 2)
The antidote to burnout, if released in individuals, organisations and societies is kindness.
Where Kindness Flourishes And Flows Burnout Will Not Occur.
Burnout isn’t an individual problem; rather it is caused by a complex interaction between workplace conditions, individual preferences and characteristics, and societal expectations.
Effective prevention needs to address all these layers. Workplace well-being programmes that focus solely on the individual will remain largely ineffective in preventing burnout because they are only addressing one layer of the problem. It is a bit like making a diary free trifle by changing the custard type but neglecting to substitute the cream on top.
Once we start digging into the layers and interactions required for a comprehensive burnout prevention strategy it can become overwhelmingly complex. This is where kindness is so powerful. Kindness is a foundational attitude that can cut through this complexity.
The Strength Of Kindness
Kindness at work is not simply being nice, soft or trying to make everyone happy. Kindness has strength, It doesn’t shy away from honesty, discomfort or hard conversations. Kindness is a sense of warmth and care towards others well-being, it involves considering other people’s perspectives, connecting meaningfully with them and making space for our own and others feelings. Kindness is a blend of attitudes, motivations, feelings and actions.
As an example my physiotherapist is warm and kind, but to treat my frozen shoulder effectively he needs to stretch my frozen muscles, creating a little pain to restore movement. He observes carefully, assessing how much I can handle, using his expertise to guide each stretch, and he offers reassurance through his tone. Sometimes pushing until it hurts is the kindest thing to do, but it can be done with warmth and compassion.
Pro-Sociality In The Workplace
In psychology kindness is part of the theory of “pro-sociality.” Pro-sociality “refers to a broad set of behavioral, motivational, cognitive, affective, and social processes that contribute to, and/or are focused on, the welfare of others” (Hart & Hart, 2023). Pro-sociality includes the study of a diverse range of motivations and behaviour such as why people volunteer, empathy, sympathy, social support and financial donating.
An organisation that has kindness as its foundational value will intentionally create a culture where kindness permeates all levels and corners of an organisation. This is a bit like how the layers of a trifle eventually drip through to the next layer down. So conditions are created in which people can flourish rather than burnout. A kind organisation will strive to develop kind individuals, foster kind interactions, promotes kind leadership, and establishes systems, and structures that support kindness. This foundational framework of kindness within a workplace is then free to flow outward, enhancing client and service-user experiences.
Kind People
In healthcare and social services, staff are generally orientated towards care and kindness. But for these individuals to flourish at work they need to be treated with care and kindness. They need leadership that recognises and supports the emotional complexity of their work and deeply understands the impact of their connection to other’ suffering. Kind staff expect a safe place to express their emotions and to show up authentically with whatever they are carrying from the challenges of their work.
Kind people often need support and training to turn their kindness towards themselves. Their drive to care can lead to self-sacrifice, so they benefit from a solid framework of self-care, self-awareness, and clear boundaries to protect their well-being. Self-kindness is a vital antidote to the weight of their own expectations, which can be a significant source of stress in many in the helping professions.
Kind Interactions
Kindness is expressed in the space between people, whether they’re colleagues or managers and their teams, or a group of senior leaders. Kind workplaces recognise that relationships are essential for both employee well-being and effective work. They allow time and space for interacting, connecting and befriending seeing it as a vital part of employees working life. Kind organisations encourage and support staff to tend to their own stress, understanding that stress can be a source of unkind interactions. They can support kind interactions by providing training and coaching in communication, positive interactions, repairing minor grievances, conflict resolution, diversity and self-awareness. These skills can no longer be taken for granted but must be actively and intentionally cultivated.
Kind Leadership
Kind people and kind interactions need the support of kind leadership. I am convinced that to create a flow of kindness that sustains and protects staff, this flow must start at the governance level and extend throughout the organisation. Imagine if every leader in your organisation committed to creating a kind, healthy workplace that actively prevents burnout. Kind leaders understand that burnout prevention starts with eliminating the conditions that foster it, such as unrealistic workloads and unclear role expectations. This must of course include for the senior leaders themselves who are often facing unmanageable or unachievable workloads. Leader workloads are often exacerbated by the way that leaders tend to have high standards and a deep desire to do an excellent job. Leaders need just as much support as their staff if they’re to lead with kindness.
Staff now expect their leaders to be empathetic and trustworthy, and to support their career growth and well-being. Kindness can be thought of as a bit soft, and misinterpreted as going easy on people or being unfailingly positive. Kindness is not that fluffy. Honesty, integrity and being invested in peoples growth are all part of being a kind leader. This means that having high standards, having boundaries, providing discpline or feedback are all part of kind leadership.
Yet training and support for leaders to develop their human or soft skills and to balance empathy and kindness with clear boundaries and honest feedback are often lacking.
One of the sources of stress for middle managers and team leaders is being caught caught in between competing demands. On one hand they’re pressured by senior management to ensure high-quality service despite fewer resources, and on the other they’re expected to support their team’s well-being. Burnout is not just an issue for frontline staff. A report from DDI earlier this year reported that 72% of leaders often feel used up at the end of the day. They also discovered that leaders were deeply concerned about burnout on their teams but only 15% felt prepared to prevent employee burnout.
Kind Systems
Kind people, kind interactions and kind leadership are supported by kind systems. Organisations aren’t entities in themselves even though we talk about them that way, they’re made of people. These people are often following rules, regulations and guidelines that constrain their value based decision making. A kind organisation has clearly articulated values that are overtly expressed in behaviour. Values go beyond posters on the wall; they’re “live”, enacted and demonstrated in daily actions and interactions creating a feel of the ‘way things are done around here.”
These live values are like the heartbeat of the organisation, enhancing connections between people and providing a cohesion of vision, and guidleines for decision making that enable creativity. Policies and procedures often have a rigidity to them that blocks people who want to be kind. People are individuals with a variety of experiences, constraints and needs. Kindness requires flexibility to meet people’s different needs in different ways this helps establish and maintain equity.
Jason Fried claimed that “policies are organizational scar tissue. They are codified overreactions to unlikely-to-happen-again situations.” In health and social services, organisations are dealing with people in challenging situations, it is essential that leaders understand how trauma and pain can influence organisational decision making. In addition many workplaces are still integrating the impact of covid and recent funding and/or staffing cuts. The emotional impact influences peoples ability to make strategy and decisions. Policies should be created with input from those who understand the impact of vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue and the emotional complexity of care work.
Future Ready Workplaces Must Be Shaped By Kindness
Kindness is a core competency for the workplaces of the future. It’s not just a “nice to have”, it will soon be something employees actively demand, becoming a key element for those who want to be an employer of choice. These workplaces will have kindness deeply embedded in ineractions, actions, leadership and systems, it will flow through every level. By doing so, organisations will eliminate, or mitigate the personal, societal and systemic conditions that lead to burnout, allowing all employees to flourish - and that’s what employees want.
Stay Kind,
Christina
Kindness is the Antithesis of Burnout - Part One
Can you imagine what the world would be like if everyone could turn up to work we love, bringing our full selves, expressing our values, feeling like we belong and are contributing to the world? That’s the world I dream of, personally I love working, when its the right work and workplace for me. I believe that engaging in meaningful work is good for our well-being, it allows us to use our strengths, express our passions and satisfy our achievement striving (of course all these things can be found outside of paid work too).
But this isn’t the world we live in. Work (or perhaps workplaces) aren’t always good for us. Something that should be satisfying and life-giving turns, it becomes the opposite, depleting and heartbreaking. Social progress, global pandemics and events of our time have made work something we have to do rather than something we delight to do. Many years ago after I had been studying workplace wellbeing and stress for a number of years, I added to my understanding by getting an insider experience of burnout. I remember trying to share with a family member why I had resigned my job and was taking a break and they were completely unfamiliar with the term, and had no understanding of it at all. That is in sharp contrast to 2023 when it seems like everyone is talking about burnout. It has almost become a catch-all phrase for any experience of stress while working. In spite of all the webinars, information and conversation about burnout; sources of stress, workplace demands and the numbers of unhappy, depleted employees are continuing to rise. The current dialogue isn’t actually helping reduce experiences of workplace stress and burnout. We need to deepen our understanding of burnout, its causes and how we can prevent it, so that more employees can enjoy their work and are liberated to do their best work.
What is Burnout
Christina Maslach had just finished her PhD, and before she settled into her next role she volunteered to help out her colleagues with what was to become the influential Stanford Prison Experiment. This was an experiment conducted in 1971 using US College students to study the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. What she saw when she paid the researchers a visit disturbed her so much that she was influential in halting the experiment early. This experiment also influenced the trajectory of her career, as she became interested in the impact of the work environment, workplace culture and demands on the well-being of workers. As she researched and talked to workers such as prison staff and other human services workers, she realised that there was a repeating pattern of reaction to occupational stressors that she began to measure and research as burnout.
Maslach defines burnout as “a psychological syndrome emerging as a prolonged response to chronic interpersonal stressors on the job” (Maslach and Leiter, 2016).
Maslach and her colleagues have identified three main dimensions of burnout:
Feelings of overwhelming exhaustion.
Growing cynicism and a sense of detachment from clients and the job.
A sense of ineffectiveness or feeling that nothing was being accomplished.
The World Health Organisation has drawn on Maslach’s work for their own definition of burnout which is “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed, characterised by feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from ones job, or feelings of negativism and cynicism related to one’s job and reduced professional efficacy”. (ICD-11). Recent researchers (Parker, Tavella, Eyers, 2022) discovered and emphasised a fourth significant dimension of burnout and that is cognitive issues, such as struggles concentrating and difficulties remembering. Maslach’s original research was very focussed on identifying the organisational factors that created burnout. The more recent WHO definition has been criticised, as it does not make it clear that burnout is primarily a reaction to workplace conditions, rather it can make it seem like it is the employees responsibility to manage workplace stress.
What causes burnout
From the beginning of burnout research it has been emphasised that there are particular characteristics of the workplace that increase the likelihood of staff experiencing burnout. The impetus is on businesses and organisations to engage carefully in preventing burnout by considering these aspects of work that make burnout more likely.
Too much work and unclear role expectations.
Not enough control over the work and resources needed to do the work.
Insufficient reward for the work done.
A lack of a sense of connection to other people in the workplace.
An absence of fairness.
Conflicts in values between the individual and the organisation.
Work that involves emotional complexity and a deep sense of connection to the work.
A few years ago when we had a summer drought I planted some drought resistant plants - unfortunately they are not thriving under the current conditions of heavy persistent rain. Plants have different needs, some cope well with drought, others cope well with having wet feet. The characteristics of the plant interact with the conditions in which it is growing, for the plant to thrive and throw off aphids and other pests there needs to be a good match between the conditions and its characteristics. People are like plants, our individual characteristics, needs and sensitivities interact with our workplace conditions. An organisation can be high in all those characteristics and not everyone in the organisation will experience burnout. Burnout isn’t simple or linear. Burnout is created in the interaction between an individual (with their preferences, values, history, personality and skills), the job role (what is required of them) the organisation (with its history, values, systems, management structures and policies) and the society and culture within which they are placed. Research shows some individual characteristics make someone sensitive to burnout. This doesn’t mean that they will develop burnout but like plants they will be more sensitive to workplace conditions. These individual characteristics include:
A tendency towards high expectations and perfectionism.
Emotional reactivity and high degrees of empathy.
Sensitivity to judgement.
Intraversion.
A high sensitivity to stress.
Burnout Prevention
Burnout is top of mind for many professions at the moment, often burnout is presented with a degree of urgency and fear. Most studies show that burnout feelings are common for those in healthcare and social services, it may be that we just didn’t talk about it as much before so a lot of those feelings went unacknowledged. Taking away the fear and normalising these burnout feelings as part of our experience as people helpers can help people to talk more openly with their team leaders and colleagues about their feelings of burnout. Burnout feelings after all are signals that things are not good with our environment and ourselves (or the interaction between), they are signs that restorative actions need to be taken. Burnout feelings become harder to manage the longer they are ignored or suppressed and when no action is taken in response to them. If people begin to fear burnout it becomes harder to discuss openly and to take restorative action.
The current public dialogue about burnout tends to fall into two extreme positions. On the one hand it is all the fault of our current work environment, work is then the enemy and is bad for us and we should spend our days working in the garden, surfing, knitting or some other extreme opt out measure. This position tends to obscure and suppress the delight and joy that work can and does bring us (when we are not burned out). The other extreme focuses on the individual and can have a blaming or shaming tone, these are the articles or opinions that suggest that those people that burnout are unable to manage their own stress - they just need a bit more resilience training and to attend better to their self-care. This neglects the complex interaction between individuals and the work conditions and often results in organisations not making the structural changes they need to ensure their staff are valued and supported and that workplaces conditions are not those that cause burnout.
It is challenging to understand the complexity of the interaction that occurs between an individual, their social environment, and their workplace. It is clear that just as recovery from burnout involves a multi-dimensional approach so too must burnout prevention. It is much more complex than simply providing resilience training.
The Opposite of Burnout
Not burned out is hardly something to aspire too, its a little like saying you no longer want to be unfit. If we want to aspire to the other end of the continuum, we need a definition and understanding of what that positive state is. Engagement has been proposed as the positive pole to burnout (Schaufeli,W., Salanova, M., Gonzalez-Roma, V., & Bakker, A. 2002). Engagement is a persistent “positive fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption”. I can remember times in my working life, where everything seems to fit together, experience, expertise and the needs of the people I am working with - They can be heady and energising days when you think you have found the exact right role for you - that feeling could be described as engagement. Workplace engagement is a huge topic, and one that has generated a lot of theorising and research. While holding an idea of what the positive aspects of not-burned out might look like is helpful it doesn’t give the whole picture for those of us who are seeking to work to prevent burnout. Engagement is an outcome of great workplace conditions (the opposite of whose as identified as contributing to burnout) and great role, person fit, but that still doesn’t necessarily create the whole picture of how to prevent burnout.
Parker, Tavella, and Eyers (2022) found that ‘burnout rates appear lowest in those whose work is simply a job, higher in those who view their work as a career and highest in those whose work is at the level of a 'calling.' Those who consider their work a calling are often highly engaged, but in my experience that high sense of engagement and emotional connection to their work and clients leaves them more open to burnout not less. If we are going to build a society, workplaces and individuals who are resistant to burnout we need to move up a level, from engagement and burnout to a higher principle.
The antidote to burnout, if released in organisations, societies and individuals is kindness.
Where kindness flourishes and flows burnout will not occur.
Do you make sense?
I was definitely not making sense today. It took me three goes to write my email address down correctly on a form. Twice I made a start and got confused between my work and personal addresses. Twice I wrote nonsense. But even when we state that we are not making sense, actually we are always making sense all the time (except maybe for Talking Heads (excuse the 80’s joke :-) ).
Humans are designed as sense-making beings. Although we often hail objectivity as something to be aspired to and attempted we can never be truly objective rather we have woven together a screen of sense-making through which we experience our world.
Our brains are busy and lazy, dealing with a vast amount of information having to sort and prioritise in the blink of an eye. Our brains quickly prioritise safety and belonging, and so often our sense-making thoughts will be focussed on those priorities. This sense-making is about categorising, generalising, grouping and making connections, and of course, we prefer things that connect with what we know already. As we are out and about in our world, seeing, experiencing, thinking and feeling, our mind is interpreting, explaining and simplifying. From very early in our life we are making sense of our experiences. This sense making helps us develop ideas and beliefs around our own identity, how the world works and consequently how we relate to others.
Throughout our life we keep adding experiences, events, thoughts, feelings, we keep weaving and developing the screen of interpretation through which we see the world. We are making sense of things, but often that is through the screen of the sense that we have already made. We explain things in ways that support the sense we have already made. When I wrote a nonsense email address I found myself trying to explain why that might have happened, I hadn’t slept well, I was stressed, I have peri-menopausal brain fog. There was dissonance between my idea of who I am (a competent, intelligent, ‘get-it-right’ type person) and my forgetfulness that had to be explained in a way that left me still feeling competent. We can continue like this building screens of identity, beliefs about the world and how we relate to others looking at the world from the ideas we have built up and explaining away things that don’t fit.
Until something big happens that doesn’t fit into the ideas and beliefs that have served us all these years.
The reality of the world bursts through the screen that we have woven. Positive or negative events or experiences are suddenly too big, too bright and too overwhelming to be contained by our existing ideas and beliefs. The dissonance is too great to just be excused away. This reality that we couldn’t imagine or explain demands a rethink of our ideas about the world, ourselves or others. For many our experiences during the global pandemic have had this effect. We begin to feel lost and unsettled, we don’t know what’s what anymore. When the harsh reality of the world challenges our ability to make sense of everything through our existing screen, we need to bring sense-making from our unconscious automatic processes and into our active awareness. We need to actively and creatively decide how we are going to make meaning out of what occurs. We get to decide the pattern that we are going to weave in our screen. As Victor Frankl says “Individuals are free to choose the meaning they ascribe to a situation, including the most tragic.”
Christina