Is Burnout Hurting Your Team Performance?

Are you leading a team that's struggling? 

Burnout is on the rise. Team performance is slipping. Is there a connection? 

The World Health Organization defines burnout as an occupational phenomenon resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. 

As the pace of change accelerates across so many aspects - technology, finance, and politics - the intensity of chronic workplace stress grows, and as a result, burnout is on the rise. 

People who burn out exhibit a combination of burnout's three dimensions: 

• Exhaustion - you've given everything you can and have nothing left to give
• Cynicism - a natural protective mechanism distancing yourself from your job, boss, coworkers, or clients
• Inefficacy - that gnawing sense that no matter how hard you try, you are not making a difference. 

It's pretty hard for a team to perform effectively when the team members are exhausted, cynical, and ineffective. 

So if you are trying to turnaround an underperforming team, what should you do? Is there a way to reduce burnout, improve performance, and improve the bottom line? 

The answer is YES! 

You can't do so simply by investing in resilience training. Bolstering resilience can help people cope in the short run, but long term performance improvement depends on fixing the drivers of burnout. 

There are six drivers of burnout. I'll name them here in this post, and go into detail on each in blog posts to follow. 

The first is work overload, which drives exhaustion. No surprise there. We can usually reduce overload by redesigning workflow processes. 

The other five drivers of burnout -- Lack of Control, Insufficient Reward, Breakdown of Community, Absence of Fairness, and Values Conflict -- drive cynicism. These have to do with how you lead your team. 

Stay tuned if you are committed to turning around your team, as we describe how addressing each of these drivers of burnout make a big difference for your team members AND your team's performance. 

Because, everyone deserves a great place to work.

Let’s work together! Book a call today to explore how we can help you lead with impact and achieve your goals.