Riskex Reflections on a Friday #26: How to have a conversation about Burnout
Time to Talk Day 2024 took place last week, 1st February 2024. It’s run by Mind and Rethink Mental Illness and was delivered in partnership with Co-op for the third year running. Across the UK, it’s delivered by See Me in Scotland, Inspire in Northern Ireland and Time to Change Wales.
1 in 4 of us will experience a mental health problem in any given year. And “Burnout” is fast becoming a Significant contributor to poor mental health – In 2019, the World Health Organisation added burn-out to their international classification of diseases as an ‘occupational phenomenon’ rather than a medical condition. A 2022 survey of 15,000 workers across 15 countries by McKinsey Health found that a quarter of employees experienced burnout symptoms.
Conversations start at the top
Despite a growing awareness of burnout and other mental health issues, it’s still hard to talk about. Creating a sense of psychological safety starts at the very top, with senior managers talking openly about their own experiences in an effort to show that its okay not to be Okay.
Establishing a safe environment where people can talk about burnout must be something the company’s leadership team is a part of—they have a key role in leading by example to normalize the discussion.
Take a “listen to learn” approach.
As busy professionals, it can be tempting to offer quick solutions to the problem of stress – to jump in and fix the problem. Yet, burnout is rarely solved with quick fixes, and when misapplied, can even do more harm than good. Talking about stress and burnout should be a two-way conversation. Leaders really need to understand team members’ perspectives without defensiveness. Team members really need to understand that there may be limits to the ways in which leaders can help. Here are a few sentence starters that can help all parties approach a conversation in a way that encourages open dialogue.
- “Help me understand…”
- “Walk me through that…”
- “Tell me more/say more about that…”
- “I’m wondering…”
- “What signs of burnout are you seeing in yourself? In others?”
- “On a scale from 1-5 where 1 is not at all and 5 is a lot how would you rate your burnout?”
- “How you would you rate the burnout of the team?”
- “Do we need to make changes? What kind of changes can we make?”
All of these phrases invite a deeper conversation and help limit defensiveness.
Final thoughts…
Normalizing talking about mental health issues like burnout starts with remembering that your team members are people, too. They’ve got lives and families and responsibilities that have nothing to do with work, just like you do.
The more we all start to talk about managing our workloads in a healthy way, creating a stronger sense of work-life balance, showing up to work as authentically as we can, and importantly, recognizing signs of stress in ourselves and others, the better off we’ll all be.
