Strategy #6: Avoid Burn Out Or Fade Away

Doing the wrong work manifests itself in many different ways but the root causes essentially boil down to choosing a job that doesn’t align with your core values, practical needs or individual skillsets. Doing the wrong work is bad for you at every level and can easily lead to burn out, one of the most damaging effects of making a poor work choice.

In this strategy article I want to think about the nature of burn out, plus the associated ailment of fade away, a lighter version of burn out to put it simply. I’ll assess their effects before drawing some conclusions about the serious problems associated with doing the wrong kind of work which often becomes apparent if burn out or fade away affect you.

To start with, what is burn out? Many people are painfully and very personally familiar with this debilitating condition. Others band the phrase around, using it to loosely describe their reactions to stressful experiences at work or general difficulties in life. After all, who hasn’t got embroiled in an arduous work project or been consumed by a tricky personal situation and exclaimed, “I’m totally burned out!” We might know what we mean by this throw-away line but, without wishing to trivialise anyone’s reactions to necessarily subjective experiences, it’s worth thinking about the expert’s line on burn out.

Let’s begin with a few definitions, so that we’re all on the same page. A good place to start is with the Maslach Burnout Inventory, a measure of workplace burn out which is widely used in research studies around the world. It was devised by Christina Maslach, a psychologist at University of California, Berkeley who’s gone on to become an acknowledged authority on the subject.

The inventory identifies three components of burn out. First, feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion. Second, increased mental distance from one’s job or feelings of negativity or cynicism about work. Third, reduced professional efficacy. Importantly, burn out is recognised as an occupational phenomenon rather than being classified as a medical condition. Personal burn out, a form of mental breakdown, is one thing but my interest is with the professional variety, as I’m sure you understand.

The World Health Organisation recognises burn out as a symptom of chronic workplace stress that hasn’t been successfully managed. Note use of the word “chronic”, indicating that the stressful situation is persistent, rather than acute stress which is short-lived. Everyone experiences spikes of stress, during especially busy times at work or because of a highly pressured yet temporary part of most jobs. This is not what I’m talking about here so remember that I’m only focusing on chronic and unmanaged workplace stress in this tutorial.

The Maslach Burnout Inventory indicates that burn out is at one end of a range of experiences, the opposing pole being categorised as engagement. You might recall that latter word from an earlier article when I spoke about workplace disengagement as identified by the Gallup State of the Global Workplace survey. I should emphasise that engagement within the context of burn out is used slightly differently to the Gallup one, particularly with regard to definitions and research methodologies. I’ll be giving you some statistics in a moment and this explains differences in engagement data.

What’s clear, without any reasonable doubt, is that burn out is directly correlated to workplace disengagement. Burned-out workers score highly on this measure, as you might imagine. On the other hand, you’re much more likely to be positively engaged with your work if you’re not feeling burned out. No surprises there.

Burn out and positive engagement sit at opposite ends of a sliding scale and you may shift one way or another from time to time, depending on your circumstances at work or outside it. Most people occupy the central ground which brings me to the concept of fade away. This isn’t an official MBI term but one that I think is useful as a broad term to describe a middle position between the polarities of burn out and engagement.

According to Maslach Burnout Inventory research metrics, it’s estimated that 10% - 15% of workers slot into the full-on burn out category at any given time. 20% - 30% are reckoned to be engaged in the sense that they don’t exhibit significant evidence of burn out. Over half of all workers lie somewhere in the middle. They’re not burned out, but they’re possibly heading in that direction unless they take decisive steps to create a workplace safety zone. This is what I mean by fade away.

Anyone who’s interested in delving deep into this subject will find plenty of online resources to investigate but, for the sake of simplicity, just think in terms of three stages of workplace experience: engaged with work – fading away – burned out. In summary, the more acutely you feel exhaustion, cynicism or reduced efficacy at work, the greater the chances you’re sliding towards burn out.

This is a serious condition. If it hits you hard, your options essentially boil down to altering the way you do your job, taking time away from your responsibilities or even removing yourself totally from a toxic work environment. I truly sympathise with anyone who finds themselves in this grim situation. The silver lining to the black cloud is that burn out is frequently the catalyst for major changes in the way you deal with work issues, and that’s where my job-search strategy is heading.

Fade away is in a different category to full-on burn out because it doesn’t usually trigger the same chronic responses. It may be less urgent to deal with due to the fact that it tends to creep up on you which often makes it easier to live with, but this makes it no less dangerous. Fade away is given far too little attention in my opinion, particularly when you consider that, statistically, the majority of workers are at risk of slipping into this negative state.

It’s a crucial aspect of workplace experience, not only because of the major impact upon many people’s effectiveness in their jobs but also because it’s much easier to make changes to your working situation if you sense fade away encroaching, rather than when full-blown burn out hits you like a train.    

Let’s consider what fade away looks and feels like, so that you can judge for yourself whether you’re a sufferer or not. It’s tempting to use the Maslach Burnout Inventory as a reference point, given its authoritative position on the issue, but we need to be careful not to jump to conclusions too quickly. Fade away isn’t simply a mild version of burnout, although there are clearly common traits.

Fade away is one of those things that we all label in our own way. It’s that Monday morning feeling. Thank goodness it’s Friday. Too much month left until the end of the money. We’re all working for an incompetent boss. I’m sure you’ve come across many more maxims which all describe pretty much the same thing.

Fade away is typically characterised by a general dissatisfaction with your lot, a frustration about the way things are done in your workplace or an unspecific yet insidious feeling that things aren’t quite right with some aspect of your job. If you commonly feel these sorts of nagging doubts, that you know that you’re only going to work for the money or you lack the sort of enthusiasm that you felt when you started out, you’re almost certainly fading away.

As a companion piece to the Maslach Burnout Inventory, the eponymous Christina Maslach whom I mentioned earlier, in conjunction with Michael Leiter of Acadia University, conducted research into ancillary aspects of burn out which closely reflect my idea of fade away. The Areas of Worklife Model identifies six aspects of workplace experience which sit squarely in the pre-burn out danger zone.

Several of these might best be blamed on the way your employer chooses to organise their workflows and workspaces. Workload is the first of the model’s items. Community is the next, describing the way you engage with your colleagues and clients. Fairness is another, reflecting the equitable treatment you should expect to receive.

Too much work on your plate, disagreeable associates and not getting a fair rub of the green are all understandable factors in feeling despondent about your job. But it’s the next three aspects of work that are the most intriguing ones in the context of fade away.  

A perceived lack of control comes at the top of the pile. If you feel that other people are pulling the strings, that you’re not being given enough autonomy over your work decisions or that you’re forced to react to events that are outside your control, it can quickly grind you down. This is the essence of fade away.

Next up comes insufficient reward for what you do. You may or may not be paid well, or otherwise extrinsically rewarded in a reasonable way, but if you feel that you aren’t intrinsically appreciated for your efforts and contributions you’ll rapidly get demotivated. Failure to be rewarded at a core level is another major contributor to fade away.

The final item on the Areas of Worklife model is a mismatch of values. Some organisations have a formal mission statement which declares their grand purpose. Even if they don’t, every business displays their ideals through actions and policies. If you’re in conflict with these aims, particularly if the top managers espouse ideals that you disagree with, you’ll possibly be heading for a fade-away situation.

You’re significantly more likely to suffer from fade away if you work for a bad employer, in the sense that they impose excessive workload targets, do too little to mitigate internal conflicts and allow a culture of unfairness to fester. You can multiply the likelihood of fade-away if incompatible values, poor rewards or an absence of acceptable control are also involved. Good employers aren’t exempt but, if they engender humane work practices which counter these various failings, they make fade away much less prevalent amongst their workforces.

The solution is to create a kind of safety belt, a protective force field surrounding your work, which all but eliminates the possibility of burning out or fading away, let alone slipping into disengagement of any kind. The best way of doing this is twofold.

First and foremost, and this is at a primal level, you must know that you’re in control of every choice you make about your work. You have to identify and join employers who reflect both your world view and your work view. You need to be the driver of your career and not the passenger who’s along for the ride, the traveller who decides the route, any deviations along the way and, of course, chooses the final destination. This is the foundation of agency over your working life and a pillar of everything I do with Vocation Master. 

Second, and at a practical level, you should take every effort to find a job in which your day-to-day activities reflect your core values and allow you to do meaningful, fulfilling work. It must also exploit your highest-level skills and let you work to your strengths as comprehensively as possible. Your perfect choice of work should offer you, in theory at least, the potential to become an authority or expert within your field and, ideally, allow you to mentor others who follow in your footsteps.

There’s much more about implementing these things coming up in forthcoming episodes. Before I go, a mention for the next strategy article, number 7 in this series, which looks at the reasons that work is getting worse for most of us, and this includes things that go a lot further than burn out or fade away. It’s a challenging idea for some people but one I think you should think about and could be the motivating factor you need to reappraise your career planning.

Neil Grant, Vocation Master

If you have any comments, suggestions or questions about the issues I raise here, I invite you to contact me personally. Please get in touch via LinkedIn;

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