Episode 124: Burnout - How to Recognize and Deal With at Work and Home

Welcome to another edition of "Around with Randall" your weekly podcast for making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here is your host, the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett. I appreciate your time in joining me here on "Around with Randall". And of course, I'm Randall.

I'm hoping today I can help myself maybe as much as help you because the topic of the day for the podcast is about emotional burnout stress, just the challenge of our life in figuring out how to deal with it. Burnout is a real thing. As I've gotten older now, 25 plus years in a, as a professional, you realize the further you go the more complicated it gets. And in my case at least I, with having younger kids a little bit older than the norm, there's added pressures. The reason I'm hoping today is as helpful for me as it is for you is because I have no expertise at talking about burnout and how to avoid it because, it's not that I'm burned out, but I don't exhibit most of the things that any great expert would tell you. So I'm gonna walk you through some thoughts and then hopefully try to execute them in my own life.

What we know is that when we talk about burnout and we talk about the stress, and just the world that we live in, and how people deal with it, it's in part one of the reasons we've seen the conversation, the data, the articles around the great resignation or the great reshuffling. People got burned out and covid caused all kinds of stress, and then you add into that not being able to go to work. That's good for some, but not for others. The financial challenges, things of that nature, burnout causes problems for people. Let me give you some of the physical manifestations.

So if you think well you know I can handle this and, I'm kind of one of those people that tends to think I can, we know that it leads to things like insomnia and logic kind of disappears at times because we're D, we can't get our mind around where we're at or the challenge we're dealing with. We kind of go into a negative mood, and I'll talk about that here in a few minutes around cynicism, but from a medical perspective burnout leads to things like heart disease and can deal with exhaustion, and depression, and actual pain - knees, back, hips can actually hurt. There's no denying as we become more aware of the physical manifestations of burnout that it isn't a real thing it is the question is what we do with it. The first thing is to realize is burnout is kind of like the mythology of the boiling frog. There's this mythology that because of the way the frog is designed, built, evolved, is you put them in boiling water and it's not till the last minute, last second when it's too late that they realize they're actually the one boiling. And that mythology is kind of like burnout. There are things that are happening that we don't even know or aware that are leading to it. So you think about people who, and I would throw me into this category, are maybe a little bit burnout denial deniers. They're usually a personalities, they're multitaskers, they think they can handle a lot of stuff, and as things go what you find is that things add up and they add up more quickly, leading to the beginning signs of a burnout, of distress. Things like you getting tired and exhaustion, like I can't get up or I, in some ways insomnia I can't go to sleep, you become helpless a little bit, not quite sure what to do, lethargic, feeling trapped. You might even feel a little bit of out of control like I can't control all of these symptoms. And the things that we have in our our business, professional life lead us to these moments.

I'm going to spend a lot more time over the next year talking about the way in which we have transactionally incentivized all the positives in life, professionally, that are causing us to lose transformational relationship opportunities. But these transactional things are driving burnout as well. There's to me an interconnection, we think about travel, and I used to travel an immense more before the pandemic. From a business model perspective I've kind of created a way in which I can reduce my travel because I don't like to travel. I don't like airplanes, which is kind of surprising for a consultant to travel a lot, but it caused a lot of stress. It became part of, in weeks where I'd be gone or a month where I'd be gone three weeks or four weeks in a row, lead to burnout. Metrics always trying to grind to get those metrics, certainly the financial stress of our nonprofits even if you're not the CEO, if you're in philanthropy or fundraising, there's a lot of pressure in that area. There's power plays in the chaos. A lot of conversations around well we need to cut here and here and I don't have any control of that. But I know that's bad and that's going to cause us issues. What it leads to is this concept that we're not able to make the decisions to control the environment in which we live. Interesting study recently done about burnout that actually burnout is more, in terms of growth, worse for women and people of color. They, they're dealing with more issues than, let's say someone like me who's a white male but in addition there's more and more nonprofits that the mission of the nonprofit is to rise up raise up women, or the mission is to help those who have been disenfranchised over the years and so their identity, if they work in that mission it actually exponentially creates even more challenge foreign to realize that is, I think, really evident when someone's heading towards burnout or is on that path, we don't talk about it a lot.

Is this idea of cynicism which I mentioned a few minutes ago, that we think everything is wrong, and that they're wrong, but I'm right, that they're not in it for me, everybody's against me. Nothing works because you get jaded as you head towards burnout. It becomes challenging, and there's a lack of a clear view in what's happening in front of us, and around us, and that murky cloudy misty view creates an internal maybe process to think about, to understand what's actually happening right now. The real challenge with burnout and trying to figure out the details is, and then we'll get to the Tactical as we always try to, is everybody's different. Everybody's at different points. Everybody has different support systems. Everybody has different, which we'll talk about here in a moment, people that can see it. Some people have a lot of people around them and say hey man you need a break. And some people don't have as many. The other thing is everybody's breaking points are different. Nobody's the same and so while you think well in those circumstances I might be able to handle it, that might be true. But the point is you're not in those circumstances, and they have to handle it. That brings issues when for leadership and understanding and trying to figure out where people are, as well as a realization that what your boss does if you're a gift officer or you're not the CEO or the or the head of the of the philanthropy office that they may deal with it differently than you do, they work differently, all of this comes to an understanding when we talk about how we look at not only ourselves, but if we're a leader or how we, how it's relative to someone else is an understanding and appreciation that everybody's a little bit different, and finding people that are okay with that.

So what am I going to recommend? So what can you do about burnout that's going to help you? I think there are six major things that you can do to help. It doesn't mean I, and I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not advocating any medical intervention, not my place. But these things you can control that might help you work through the challenge. So the first thing is and this is kind of a global, it's really not one of the six, the first thing is the realization you have a problem. Own it. You have to be willing to say this isn't working

and don't blame others for it. I have a client who's going through some challenging situations because the organization's really not as supportive as it should be towards philanthropy, which is unfortunately not unusual. But it's a little extreme in this case and what I keep trying to tell him or her is you can only control the things you can control. And every time your cynicism that they're against you rises it makes you look bad, and by the way increases your stress. And so what we have to do is to look in the mirror and say what I'm dealing with sucks but I can own it. And I'm going to do something about it, and I'm going to change what I am doing that isn't working. I'm going to make adjustments in my life.

So the six. Number one, and this is of no surprise and we won't spend a great deal of time on it, but is work-life balance. If you go back to podcast 33 you can hear a full 20-minute segment on, of "Around with Randall" about work-life balance, technical, tactical things you can do that's work-life balance and that's podcast 33 to go back and see. But really at the end of the day it's about creating boundaries and barriers. I'm really bad with this. I just am just terrible. I view my responsibility rightly or wrongly that I am available to my clients all the time and I feel the stress. I think one of the reasons I think I'm a good consultant is is that I'm incredibly empathetic. I almost can vision myself sitting next to the client in the situation, the engagement, walking with them as we go and I lose sleep like my clients when they have problems and challenges. In one way I think that makes me a good consultant. In another way it means I can't turn it off, and that's bad for me. Doesn't mean I shouldn't care but how do I get away from it? There's so much more detail about about work-life balance, we'd spent a whole podcast on it. That's the first thing you have to begin to figure out, how do we balance this and create space for yourself.

Number two is to eat better. Seems simple. It's taken me a lot of years so I mentioned a few moments ago that I don't like to travel. I mean I don't mind driving but flying is a problem. Flying is just something I just don't like to do, but I get through it. I kind of have my routines and my talismans and you know, hey, I gotta have my movies and so I'm, I think I'm more likely to be watching my iPad. I don't really work on planes because that gets me to think about where we are and I don't like being up that high. The reason I bring that up about eating and connecting is taking me years to figure out that because of that stress, that burnout, that I mean particularly if I'm on a series of multi-day trips or multi-day flights there's kind of an added tension to the burnout where I'm headed that I tend to overeat, and I eat really bad things because I think that's going to help. What I've learned is if I eat healthier and I eat less I actually do better. So be cognizant of what you're putting in your body, and food certainly is necessary for endurance for, you know, the ability to function. But too much food, too much contemplation of how food can help you may cause you to overeat or eat badly, which can lead to all kinds of other things.

Three, find that special spot. Where is it that you can go to unplug? Some common ones are meditation, are yoga, reading, daydreaming, there's some great great research on daydreaming that says that your ability to daydream and then re-entering a problem-laden situation actually clears the mist, so to speak, of that problem. So do you see it more clearly? Come up with more vibrant answers. Where is it that you can turn your mind off? One thing that I think of is hobbies, and again another thing I'm terrible at don't have a lot. I'm reminded of Admiral Yamamoto, Japanese Admiral, who was kind of the genius of their military until he was killed in guatem at Guadalcanal by the Americans. I'm not here to judge the Japanese or the or the war within the United States in World War II, but about Yamamoto is every day he would isolate himself to do the ancient art of gardening and particularly a pruning of many pine trees. I always was, thought it was remarkable that in the middle of the war he would find time where he would tell his aides don't bother me I'm doing this. When another World War II reference, when George Marshall who was became the head of basically all military operations across the United States during World War II, from Washington to the war department, before it was a pentagon, he was riding his horse at Fort Myers when Pearl Harbor happened, because that's what he did on the weekends. If they can do it, we can do it. Where is it you can go that's your place? I would tell you the other thing is where do you go and who do you do that with? The fact that that it's my wife that can figure me out better than anybody else and more quickly than anybody else is a piece of that for me. I want her to see me so that she can help me. You need a break. Who do you trust that can tell you you gotta unplug? Who can help you in this process?

Number four is to have fun. Those hobbies, those things. So I've got a couple things coming up. I block my calendar and depending on when this drops you might be listening to it afterwards, but like the NCAA tournament comes up. I blocked that first Thursday and Friday. I, they are the... they, I got three televisions out for the NCAA tournament. I'm sitting on the couch. I got snacks galore and I'm locked in because this is my thing. The same is true of our family movie night. On Friday nights, we don't negotiate it, we watch I'm not saying the movies are all that great with a nine and a six-year-old but it's our time. We have dinner sitting on the floor and then we clean up and we all sit on the big couch in the basement all huddled together the four of us, family movie night. that's our thing. What is it that you do that's your fun time?

Number five is exercise. I get more value and I'm blocking more and more time, and more probably in the spring, summer, and fall with walking. And I may be listening to Clark Howard, one of my favorite podcasts, or a local radio station talking about Nebraska or just listen to music, and I'm an eclectic music from George Gershwin to blink 182. I'm all over the place. It's just my way of daydreaming and kind of walking. What kind of exercise can you do? And by the way, keep in mind that you think well I got all this stuff. It can wait for 30 or 40 minutes. Nothing, unless you are a healthcare worker and someone's on a table in front of you, is that important in that moment. Yes, what you do is important. But it can take a break if you allows you to get up and walk between meetings, down the street, around the block, formal exercise program, whatever.

The last one is to make a plan. Sometimes our environments aren't fixable. We can't control them and I think that's a concern for many, so you got to manage in two forms. Number one, what do I have to do to take care of me now, but more importantly, what's the plan? Do I need to get out? Do I need to do something else? Do I need to go somewhere else? And be willing to have conversations with people to say I'm struggling. Help me. And realize that their advice may not be what you want to hear but it's for your best interest. So whether it's creating those boundaries, it's eating better, it's the exercise, it's finding that thing you love, that spot, it's having fun, or it's making a plan, hopefully more hands than ORS this might give you some tools to handle some of the challenges we're dealing with right now. I'm going to use these for me because I need as much help as anybody, probably more. I'm hoping they'll help you figure out where you are and what you need to do so that you can be all that you can be for yourself, for the people you love, for the organization you work for, and for the things you believe in, because that's value of life and life is short. How do you do that to maximize every personal and professional opportunity?

Check out the blogs at HallettPhilanthropy.com. Those are just 90 second reads, not advertising, they're different things I run into in life that aren't quite the podcast but maybe something to be thinking about. 90 seconds. You can do an RS feed and they'll come right to you every Tuesday, Thursday. And if you want to reach out to me that's podcast. Glad to chat with you, maybe suggestion for a topic or two. Don't forget, while challenging what we do in the nonprofit world has never been more important. My favorite saying, some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, then there are those who wondered what happened. At the end of the day we fall into one of those three categories. In today's idea about burnout is really about people who are wondering what happened, and what I'm hoping these days podcast might move you back into if you need it into people who make things happen for people who are wondering, and people, things that we appreciate in our community that are most important. I look forward to seeing you next time right back here on the 20 minutes of "Around with Randall". Don't forget, make it a great day.