Learning from Burnout

Tim Casserley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781136346415
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Burnout is a taboo subject. Admitting you are burning out in your job is tantamount to career suicide for some employees; for their organizations it is like raising a white flag in the war for talent. But suppose that preventing burnout is the worst thing you can do. Suppose for some people, particularly high fliers, it represents a call to deep and urgent learning about themselves and how they relate to the world. Suppose that we need instead to learn to manage burnout and harness the powerful learning potential of the experience, and in so doing build careers aligned with individual meaning and purpose, sustainable in the long term. What would organizations and their people need to do to achieve this?This book:
* Explains what burnout is, how it is becoming the 21st-century business equivalent of the 'black death', and how it can derail your career
* Highlights the financial, reputational and personal costs to organizations and people
* Details how burnout can deliver a killer punch to talent management and the development of the leaders of tomorrow, and risk the retention, growth and productivity of high fliers
* Explores why some of us develop a strong sense of our own, personal identity at work, while others find it more difficult
* Presents a coaching process to manage burnout and harness its learning potential
* Provides a framework for individuals to build careers aligned with individual meaning and purpose.

1

Sitting at the Ashes of the Fire

It’s like being lonely … like you know … sitting at the fire … sitting at the ashes.

RESEARCH PARTICIPANT

If you want to know me, then you must know my story, for my story defines who I am. And if I want to know myself, to gain insight into the meaning of my own life, then I, too, must come to know my own story.

DAN MCADAMS

Holger – A Story of Crashing and Burning

Holger’s story is an example of a ‘crash and burn’ experience because he comes to a point after one series of events following close on to each other where he ends up derailing his career and spending a long time being not employed.

Last autumn, I made the decision to go for manager. I started to make a plan to delegate more, but it wasn’t easy because everybody in our group had too much to do. I didn’t want to end up doing all the work myself, but I was too nice and I ended up doing most of the work myself. Maybe I should have been stronger but it didn’t make me feel good thinking of one of my colleagues working from eight in the morning to three o’clock at night to finish something, when I could do it in two or three hours.

I normally go for a medical check up every two years. My last check up was the beginning of December last year. The doctor asked me some questions about my working hours and I said, ‘Yes, I work a lot, I know I do’. Suddenly he said ‘Stop! You need to take it easy because what you’re telling me now is crazy!’. I had told him that in two weeks I was working about 250 hours. He said, ‘Even if you go on holiday, forget it, because the holiday won’t be long enough. You need to stress down. This is not good’.

It’s easy when you have no girlfriend living here. It’s easy to say ‘Hey I can work until 8’ and when it’s 8 o’clock ‘Oh I can work until 12 because nothing’s happening tonight – I’m not going training, not until tomorrow’, and then suddenly you’ll be sitting in the office until two o’clock at night and then you’re back again at seven the next morning.

After seeing the doctor I took a long Christmas holiday and went to see my family. I started to think maybe the Doc was crazy! I’m a healthy 33-year-old, so what’s the problem? But then I talked to a good friend, who said maybe he was right. He’s a very clever guy, this friend of mine, I always go to him when I have problems. I think this was the first time I ever thought I might be working too much.

I didn’t learn anything because I got back to work in January and started working a lot again. The first two weeks I said ‘No, I don’t want to work too much’, but after that I forgot what I was thinking about at Christmas. I was working on a client’s financial statements, nothing new, but I was working a hundred hours a week, maybe more. Some weekends too. Sometimes I would take work home with me and watch a little bit of sport on TV and work at the same time.

Everything was fine and then after two or three months I started to get a lot of headaches. At first I thought it was because I was only sleeping a couple of hours every night. I thought it would be OK if I could get enough sleep at the weekend. But these headaches got stronger and stronger and stronger and by the end of March it was impossible to work.

One day just before Easter I was playing bridge with a friend of mine and I found I couldn’t remember the cards anymore. It was such a shock not remembering something so basic.

I went to see the doctor again, and he told me that I needed to take a rest. I took a long Easter holiday for two weeks. I wasn’t sleeping a lot and I was very tired all the time so he gave me some tablets.

After that I wanted to get back to work because I knew my colleague had a lot of things to do and the office was very busy. I asked my doctor and he told me I could go back to work but I must not work overtime. The quality of the work I was turning out was really bad because I kept forgetting things from the headaches. It was crazy for me to go back to work after being sick like that. I feel my boss should have told me to go home but instead he gave me more and more and more work. He knew I was doing really poor work because he was reviewing it and the client was calling him to complain.

When I got back to the office from my Easter vacation I met with my boss and told him about what the doctor had said about no overtime and that I could only work eight hours a day. I started work at eight and needed to go home at four. At three-thirty my boss sends me an email giving me a new piece of work and tells me the deadline is tomorrow morning. It was about three or four hours’ work. I was angry but I thought, OK I’ll do it. It was very, very important for the client because they were going to raise their stock portfolio, and it was a lot of money for them. I guess I didn’t do it for my boss but for the client. But I should never have done it.

I don’t think my boss cared, it’s that simple, he just didn’t care. There’s always someone else who can do your work. If you quit, there isn’t a problem, they’ll just find a new one. Somebody should have told me to go home, because the work I was doing was so bad. They knew about my situation and they should have seen that.

I don’t remember much of the weeks after that. I was doing stuff but I was doing it badly. Clients would call to say I had to fix something, so I’d fix it. Then they called back and told me I had forgotten a whole load of stuff. I was physically at work but I wasn’t really there at all. Then one day I thought, no, this is no good! Even for me it’s no good! It’s no good for my boss because it’s a client and I’m not doing my work properly. So I got up from my desk and said ‘Sorry, you have to do this. I have to go. I can’t be here anymore’. I called my doctor. He said to me, ‘OK if you feel like this, quit today, stop working right now’ and I did stop. I stopped working two or three days before a lot of deadlines. I had to apologise to colleagues, ‘Sorry it’s too much, I’m not here anyway really …’.

I went for a lot of tests and the doctor told me not to go back to work for six weeks. I started to feel really good again and by the beginning of September I had a lot of new energy. I met up with my boss in the office who asked how I was. I said I hoped to be starting work again after this break. He said, ‘Maybe it’s better for you and for us, when you’re healthy again, that you quit’. At the time I thought it was OK for him to say that, but later I realised it was about them protecting their reputation by making sure I was healthy before I found a new employer. So first they wanted to build me up and then they wanted to break me down.

But I did go back to work, and everything was OK for two or three weeks. I wasn’t working much overtime, but during the third week the headaches came back. I started to feel frightened again that I wasn’t going to be able to deliver my work. Anyway, the doctor put me on cortisone and I’ve been off work ever since.

I’ve tried to analyse what went wrong. Was it the kind of work I was doing or was it that things were wrong in my work? I’m starting to think maybe I burnt out or maybe I was just very, very tired of the work and I needed to change it. I just couldn’t go back to working for those guys anymore because they didn’t support me when I needed them.

Sometimes I feel as if I’m not here anymore. It’s really hard for me to get out of this downward spiral. I really want to find a new job as soon as possible because I’m thinking the longer I stay here, the more difficult it’s going to become.

I’ve learnt that work is not everything, and that I’m never going to work a hundred and twenty hours a week again. I’d rather have less salary and a good life. I think money is not everything and work is not everything. The most important thing is feeling good about yourself. Maybe the thing I’ve learnt most this last year is that friends mean more than anything else ….

Tim – A Story of Chronic Self-Destruction

Tim’s story is a case of chronic self-destruction in that it takes place over a 10 year period and has episodes of extreme symptoms interspersed with times when he was able to cope with, at least, the work aspects of his life.

If only I had burnt out. I mean really burnt out. Maybe I would have become a goat herder or the owner of a beach bar or, even, a psychotherapist. Maybe I would have found the real, integrated me a lot quicker. Maybe my life would have been a lot happier and freer. Maybe. I’ll never know. I crashed but I didn’t burn. I crashed without realising it, destined to walk through life for the next 10 years repeating the same self-destructive pattern, time after time. Until finally I did burn. And then things changed forever ….

We spill out of the basement restaurant in Mala Strana and weave our way down the precipitous cobbled streets towards the Charles Bridge and our hotel in Wenceslas Square. I savour the feeling of exhilaration as the wintery Eastern European air mixes with the alcohol in my bloodstream and works its magic. I feel like there’s never been a more beautiful night than the one I am experiencing right now. Although barely known to me, my companions now seem like old friends who I should gift with my insights about the beauty of this night. I do so and they laugh like drains. I feel like I’m floating over the cobblestones, like I could leap into the night sky and – like Neo from the Matrix – fly up amongst the stars. Maybe my personal life is in ruins, but here, at work, I am someone. I have more than 30 people reporting to me in 15 different countries, I have a multi-million dollar budget and I’m a respected member of the leadership team. I’ve earned that respect by working 70-hour weeks and delivering on 10 different projects at any one time. And I’ve done all that with inadequate resources and against a background of constant backstabbing and dirty politics. I’m a one hundred per cent, genuine corporate hero and they ought to give me a bloody medal!

We enter Town Square. In the corner is a bar playing loud dance music, young people spilling out onto the street. I immediately make towards it, urging my friends to join me. They hesitate then politely demur, using the excuse of needing to be on the ball for tomorrow’s conference. I try to persuade them but they refuse. Finally, I shrug, bid my goodnights and make my way into the melee.

I wake the next morning to discover myself fully clothed and booted, lying face down on my hotel bed. I have no recollection of how I got there. I have only very vague and shadowy recollections of the moments immediately after I walked into the bar the previous night. I move my head and realise to my surprise I do not have the usual symptoms of headache and nausea that I associate with a bad hangover. A series of confused and disconnected thoughts pass through my mind. Maybe this has something to do with being on antidepressants? What happened last night anyway? Think I made a pass at some girl. Can’t remember. Did she hit me? How did I get here? I look at my watch. I am over an hour late for the conference which I should be facilitating. I undress and walk into the shower feeling like the world is made of cotton wool.

I arrive at the conference room. My colleague, Sue, has started proceedings and now the delegates are working in small teams on separate projects. I apologize to her profusely. She asks me what happened and I explain, as best I can. She fixes me with a steely glare. I apologize again. She says something about looking so unprofessional. I agree. I realize I am still drunk. I also realize I am feeling very attracted to Sue. I make a mental note to act on this at a suitable moment.

We reach the point in the conference when the teams report back their findings. One or two of the senior players have decided to take over the orchestration of proceedings, reducing Sue and my role to that of mere spectators. They choose to ignore both the process and the outcomes we have mapped out for them. I sit writing notes, unable to disguise my utter contempt for the way in which the event has been sabotaged by the incompetence of these over-paid buffoons. I begin to realise how much I hate these people. They’re emotional eunuchs that are incapable of self-examination. And they obviously dislike me. More than that, they’re ridiculing me by screwing up this process by reducing it to an intellectually moribund debate. I realize I have to leave before I explode. I stand up, walk over to Sue and explain – in less than sotto voce – that I have to go and walk out of the room.

‘What have you done?’ These words, spoken by my boss, echo the voice inside my head. He appears more despairing than angry. Close to tears, I pour out the events of the last year, grinding to a halt every now and then to control the spasms of emotion running through me. I tell him about the job, being consumed with the work and what that’s meant for my personal life. I tell him about my girlfriend leaving me and how the only place I find peace right now is at the bottom of a bottle. I tell him about the antidepressants. I don’t tell him about the talking therapy or the promiscuity or the drugs. Kind and fair man that he is, he tells me my reputation may never survive this, that I am going to have to start over, that things will never be the same again. But he doesn’t fire me. He wants me to see a psychiatrist.

I see the shrink; am terrified by the experience. The assessment of my mental health becomes the responsibility of another person. I no longer have influence on what is judged to be normal, sane behaviour. I lie in bed that night and every night for the next six months, repeating the Lord’s Prayer over and over again, pleading with God to save me, the tears rolling down my cheeks as I realize what I have become. The lowest point comes one quiet Sunday afternoon when I come close to suicide, but after several hours realise I do not have the courage to end my life.

Twelve months later …

– ‘I feel like I’m in uncharted territory at the moment …’

– ‘Yes, I think that’s a good description of where you are right now …’

– ‘Everything is so uncertain for me. I really have no idea, not the slightest, what the future will bring. I’m fumbling my way along in the dark here. I am filled with the sadness of the life I have been living. I haven’t had the warm glow of someone who is happy to be himself for so long. I’ve had more a sense of identity and purpose in my professional life than anywhere else. I’ve bottled up my true feelings and my needs. I lost a sense of joy in my life; lost a sense of my heart’s desires. Until now. 10 years later, I wake up … All this time. Working like a dog to cover up my real needs, masking my feelings, using it as an addiction. I’ve got to the point where I can spend a whole year, where only 15% of my working life gives me an experience of being alive.’

Ten years earlier …

Midnight on a damp Sunday night in the middle of spring. I am cocooned in intense silence, interrupted only by the muffled footsteps of passers-by on the pavement outside our North London flat. On the dining room table in front of me reams of notes written in my own hand to prepare me for tomorrow’s workshop. The words swim in front of my eyes as I attempt to learn my opening lines for the next day. My head feels as if it has been put in a vice which is steadily being tightened. I have never in my life felt under so much pressure as at this precise moment. I keep telling myself this is an easy thing to do and yet somehow the words don’t penetrate. I am left with feelings of panic and loneliness. I feel abandoned. Abandoned by a bullying, mean-spirited boss whose idea of supporting me is making me feel I am not up to the job. Abandoned by my girlfriend, who now, when I most need her, is cold and distant. And in the midst of this turmoil, this sense of being utterly and completely out of my depth in a way I can’t even try to explain, I wearily turn off the lights and make my way to bed, dreading another sleepless night and what the next day will bring.

My career had been slow to take off. I had hardly ever been given the space to demonstrate my true capabilities and on the few occasions when I did my efforts were flattened by jealous and unsupportive superiors. But the last two years had been good to me. My boss was very much ‘old school’ – a socially gifted gentleman whose laid back style allowed his subordinates a considerable amount of autonomy. Under his arm’s length but nurturing tutelage I had proven myself a hard working and talented HR professional. I was promoted not once but twice, first to a larger generalist role, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Sitting at the ashes of the fire
• 2. The edge and how to explain it
• 3. On committing corporate suicide
• 4. How to burn out
• 5. The hero’s journey
• 6. A ledge beyond the edge
• 7. Developing leaders with purpose
• Appendix 1: The physiological basis for burnout
• Appendix 2: Moment of truth conversations
• Bibliography
• Index