Episode Description
This week, Dan Neumann is joined by his friend and co-worker Ola Tunde.
In this episode, Dan and Ola Tunde are exploring the matter of burnout, which sometimes is not that noticeable, and as a consequence, can pass unnoticed among co-workers. Burnout can result from many personal issues combined with the pressure of working in a small or big organization, and it can translate into a general loss of interest and motivation. Listen to this episode to find the difference between stress and burnout, and how to invest in yourself in order to rescue yourself from burnout.
Key Takeaways
How can you tell if you are feeling burnout?
Burnout is physical, emotional, or mental exhaustion, accompanied by decreased motivation, lower performance, and a bad attitude towards oneself and others.
Burnout is different from depression.
Burnout results from prolonged exposure to stress. It is a chronic state, a place of exhaustion.
There are three negative psychological impacts that burnout has on a person’s life:
There is a close relationship between stress and burnout.
When you are under stress you can still control the situation, but when you experience burnout you don’t have the energy to even address certain circumstances.
There is a healthy type of stress that promotes getting closer to solving a situation.
Leaders need to identify and understand those employees who are feeling burnout.
We are our worst critics, we need to learn to prioritize our needs, and take care of ourselves.
Stop for a moment and set the goal of being kind to yourself, shift your mindset.
Take care of yourself: workout, take a break to go for a walk, take two days out of work, and take more time off!.
Do what relaxes you.
Seek help.
Leadership needs to create autonomy and empowerment; that is the reason why leaders need to encourage Team members to let their voices be heard.
Transcript [This transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate in its depiction of the English language or rules of grammar.]
Intro [00:03]:
Welcome to agile coaches corner by agile thought the podcast for practitioners and leaders seeking advice to refine the way they work band pave the path to better outcomes. Now here’s your host coach band agile expert. Dan Neumann.
Dan Neumann [00:17]:
Welcome to this episode of the agile coach’s corner podcast. I’m your host Dan Neumann. And today I’m joined by friend and coworker Tuneday Atley, who has been on several of our episodes in the past, probably five or six of them. And Tuneday wanna appreciate that. You’re taking time to join me again today.
Ola Tunde [00:35]:
Thank you so much. Dan’s good to be here again.
Dan Neumann [00:38]:
The topic that we’re going to explore I realized as I looked back past some of our previous episodes we talked about psychological safety and danger, and we’ve talked about some mindset things and, and we find ourselves with another mental related topic, which I thought was, was kind of interesting. So I think it’s a subject that is near and dear to your heart. If I’m not mistaken.
Ola Tunde [01:01]:
Yes, yes it is.
Dan Neumann [01:03]:
That’s perfect. Well, today we’re going to be exploring the topic of burnout and as we get into it, I do want to make sure that we remind people that these are our thoughts and opinions based on doing some research. We’re not clinical professionals in psychology or, or doctors. And so I wanna appropriately disclaim the conversation we’re about to have, if people need professional help, please seek that out.
Ola Tunde [01:29]:
Absolutely.
Dan Neumann [01:30]:
So why, why the topic of burnout? Why is it important?
Ola Tunde [01:33]:
You know, then, you know, burnout is important because, you know, there are so many factors in life that cause burnout sometimes, you know, just because people are smiling at work, doesn’t mean that they’re smiling inside. Sometimes this stuff going on in their life, sometimes it’s personal situation, marriage, divorce, children personal goal health issues. And then, you know, add all of that, you know, to someone who’s working in a, or in a large organization or small organization, then all of those emotions that they they are feeling they are going through, they start feeling burnout, lose interest for life, lose interest for work, lose interest about passion, all of this matches. They are not burnout. And it’s only one that’s burnout. Why this represent human being, imagine working with a large organization and you are feeling burnout, you feel like you need help. You feel like you can do everything all by yourself and then you start questioning yourself. Am I the only one within my team? Am I the only one within my organization? That’s actually feeling burnout. If I am, maybe I’m not burnout only. I’m now depression comes to pass because you feel alone.
Dan Neumann [02:58]:
Mm. And, and I think that’s an important topic to, to start to, to maybe define a little bit about burnout and, and to differentiate from depression. So two days you, you talk about the term burnout. I think it’s pretty common for folks to have a pop psychology or just a general concept of what burnout might be. The American psychological association says it’s, you know, physical, emotional, or mental exhaustion accompanied by decreased motivation, lowered performance, negative attitudes towards oneself or other. So different from, from depression, which can be diagnosed. And so I just wanted to, to maybe take a beat and highlight the burnout thing and brought on by stressful times, right? We’re in a pandemic, people are doing work from home. Their families might or might not be there. There’s the great resignation that’s happening, which can lead to things like fear of missing out. Should I be looking for that next big paycheck at the same time you’ve got Facebook, Amazon and Netflix who are pulling back on their hiring. So people who maybe have done the leap to another job are wondering, are they, do they price themselves outta the market? So lots of uncertainty going on in the world right now.
Ola Tunde [04:16]:
Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. You know, the uncertainties that are going on in the world are real. People are feeling it, their, their body is feeling it, their mind is feeling it. When you think about stress, you know, a buddy of mine came to me and say, Hey, I am stressed. Well, stress is referred to as a mental, emotional state, you know, in where a person encounter a whole lot of tension due to adverse condition, whatever condition that they’re in, that’s stress. But when you look at meaning of burnout, burnout result from a prolonged exposure to, to stress. So stress needs to burnout. Burnout is a byproduct of stress. And, you know, it comes from, you know, adding on expected expectations to what you wanna do for someone is adding, you know, the responsibility that, that, that you have as a son, as a father, as an uncle, as a dad, you know, is adding more stress of external people that is coming in your life, or even stress from work unexpected on planned stress from work. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> all of all leads to strong burnouts.
Dan Neumann [05:32]:
Yeah. And, and you talk about stress. And I think it’s, it’s interesting to figure out what good stress looks like or what the right amount is. So before I injured my back stresses of exercise were good. They lead to growth stresses at work can lead to skill building and acknowledge acquisition into, to future opportunities taking on something. Maybe that’s new to you. But what we’re talking about here with the level of stress that leads to burnout is an unhealthy type of stress stresses that, you know, in a physical sense, lead to injury or stress is in a psychological sense that lead to effectively an inability to perform, which is essentially an injury as well.
Ola Tunde [06:18]:
Yes, absolutely. When you look at, you know stress, stress that leads to burnout, there are three negative psychological impact that happens in a person’s life. The first one is the personalization. You lose who you are. The second is emotional exhaustion. You go to sleep, you wake up, you still feel tired. You go to work, you feel tired. You’re driving home from work. You feel tired. You’re talking to your family. You feel tired. That is emotional exhaustion. And third, and last one is lack of personal achievement. You are always striving, just like you said, to get the next best thing so that you can achieve more in my, in my country, in my, in, in a Euro language we have a, a, a adage. We said, mafia, Gogo. She said, that means that do not use someone else watch or season to judge yourself. If somebody’s experiencing a summer season and you are experiencing winter season, don’t compare your winter season till their summer season. You know why? Because that will give you Dures and stress mentally, emotionally, physically. But when you wait and continue to do what you do, surely your summer season will
Dan Neumann [07:38]:
Arrive. Mm-Hmm well, and, and again, playing psychologists that that’s a theme that we hear with a lot of the social media, and especially with teenagers and young, young people trying to form their own identity, but even with adults as well, people are on they’re, they’re posting their, their season, right. Their summer posts. And you start looking, you’re like, man, what am I doing wrong? You see the size of that RV. They took on vacation. You see that boat, you see. Yeah. And it’s, it’s it happens in, in work life too.
Ola Tunde [08:10]:
This is a true story. It’s personal. I remember 10 years ago I was talking to my wife and I had a, a BU a buddy, a distance buddy that just everything, it touched turns to gold. Every single thing he touched turns to gold. My wife said to me that, Hey me, I wonder what he’s doing that is so successful more than you now. She didn’t mean, you know, in a negative way. But success is relative, you know, based on what you see. And, you know, honestly, that, that weighed, that was so much weight on me, that it took me a year to get it off. And guess what? On with that year, I kept on improving myself, whether from a technical perspective, whether from a process perspective, whether it’s educational perspective, I keep educating myself until I got to the destination. I, I I’ve gotten now, the person that my wife was talking about back then is now in the winter season. And I am in my summer season. And you know what I am enjoying it. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>
Dan Neumann [09:17]:
Yeah, that it’s it’s right. And it’s it’s that balance, right? What, what, what is a good stress? What, what can lead to, to burnout? What’s a bad stress. So you talked about some of the physical manifestations of, of burnout, right? So, so fatigue or apathy, losing one’s self you know, that can manifest itself in changes to diet or sleep patterns. Yes. Let’s, let’s explore some of those symptoms and, and I wanna encourage listeners bear with us. It’s not all, it’s not all bad. We’re gonna get to some notions of what you can do and for leaders, what they can do to, to help address the challenges within their world and organizations. So, yeah, let’s, let’s explore some of these differences.
Ola Tunde [10:01]:
So when, when you look at stress, stress can cause activity, burnout can cause helplessness feelings, stress can cause less energy and fatigue. Burnout will, you know, will cause lack of motivation, no hope chronic exhaustion stress can lead to anxiety and psychological changes. Burnouts can lead to depression and psycho complaints or behavior. Stress can lead to heart issue. Burnout can give you a heart attack and burnouts will make you feel as though you don’t wanna be alive. I spoke to a friend of mine about six months ago that experienced burnout, the burnout in his mind, due to work due to stress unexpected, you know you know, family need occur. This guy had a heart attack. My friend, young guy had a heart attack and now all those people, he helped. They are nowhere to be found. So sometimes for you to be stressed is better than burnout because if you’re stressed, you can control the situation and reprioritize your agenda your life. But when you have burnout, most of the time physically, you don’t have the energy to even correct certain situations.
Dan Neumann [11:27]:
Mm yeah. That, that’s a good point. You talking about that, that loss of energy or that loss of impetus to get up and, and do do something different about the situation. Whereas hopefully if it’s a healthy kind of stress, it’s like, oh, I’m going to make a change. I was I was in a, a work situation and, you know, I just, I had it, like, it was a project management type of role. And I had a particularly interesting need to explain every little time sheet thing. Why did we pay for 15 minutes of project management on Wednesday? What did you do for this hour and a quarter that we got on the invoice over here. And I’m like, you know, I don’t bleep and need this. <Laugh> just, we’re on a, we’re on a PG podcast here, but you know, life’s too short for this crap. I’m not gonna go to work every freaking day to defend myself and what I’m doing to provide value. And I did what I, when I’d finally cleared myself of that particular environment my wife was like, yeah, you never came home and said, you know, today was a really good day. <Laugh> was always like, man, I just got my teeth kicked in for nine hours. What’s next.
Ola Tunde [12:50]:
So when you’re dealing with leaders leaders needs to understand in a corporation, in a company, in an organization to understand those employees that are filling burnout. Because just because I am there physically at work working doesn’t mean I am there emotionally. This is with good leadership, not managers, good leadership will come and say, Hey, I see you. You, you feel you’re not yourself lately. Do you need to take a break, always encourage them to take a break. The person that’s feeling stressed, the person that’s feeling burnout. They never feel as though they need to take a break. Sometimes someone needs to take them off the edge and help them take the break. If we don’t do that, that organization, we have a revolving door revolving door of new employees going back and forth and they will be losing talents.
Dan Neumann [13:46]:
Mm mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah. Right. And it’s, it’s a, it’s a terrible way to treat humans and B it’s expensive,
Ola Tunde [13:52]:
Absolutely
Speaker 1 [13:55]:
Habits topic. You want us to tackle, send an email to podcast agile thought.com or tweet it with a hashtag agile thought podcast cast.
Dan Neumann [14:05]:
You talked about some of the, the possible causes. I think you were alluding to one, at least in my mind what thinking of kind of the dysfunctional workplace. So effect like bullying could be a, a type of behavior that, that emerges there. And I don’t know if it really counted as bullying, but it, it kind of felt that way. Like every, every day I have to like explain like every, every little bit on the time sheet really
Ola Tunde [14:31]:
Pro professional what do you call it? Peer pressure. Yeah.
Dan Neumann [14:35]:
Yep. For sure.
Ola Tunde [14:37]:
So when, when you’re thinking about that, you know, some of the opportunity as leaders, I mean, that, that we have to capture is to get to the symptoms of burnout. We have to understand that the inability to successfully function on a personal and a professional level can lead to burnout. It’s a, it’s a chronic state. It’s a place of exhaust exhaustion. It’s a place of emotional, you know, criticism. I mean, sometimes I live in my head. I have to remember daily to write a note to your, to myself and say, Hey, tune, I know you live in your head, but today be kind to yourself. Sometimes we are our own, you know, critic. We criticize ourselves, you know, you have this expectation and your job is to make sure mentally, emotionally, and physically that you meet and surpass that expectation. But when you don’t that you start criticizing yourself, do of leads to emotional burnout, it’s affect marriages. It it’s affect being a parent. It affects being an employee or an employer. It affects you being a human being mm-hmm <affirmative> burnout.
Dan Neumann [15:54]:
And, and you were talking about something that people can do to control their, their mindset a little bit, but you know, the be kind to yourself, it makes me think of the, the umbrella of, of mindfulness taking a little bit to, yes. Refocus, recenter yourself. I think of the Saturday night live the Stuart som like I’m good enough, I’m smart enough and dog on it. People like me. And like that personal affirmation was, was kind of funny. It was literally a joke, but, you know, taking that time to, to really try to evaluate the situation in which you find yourself in, is it really that bad? Are you really doing that? No, you, but it, it, again, if you’re in a burnout state, it’s hard to pull out of that. But there are some tactics that can help
Ola Tunde [16:38]:
Absolutely tactics such as, you know making sure that you workouts take a break, go walking, go ride a bike. For me, what I’ve learned to do is, you know, get out and walk with my wife, get out and, and go shoot basketball with my son. This kind of stuff is therapeutic for me so that I will not continue to feel better. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> imagine other people that don’t have that option. Imagine that single woman that is working, you know, you know, 10 to 12 hours a day, imagine that single father, that single man that’s working 12 to 10, 10 to 12 hours a day, and they have no support, no friend, they become introverted. When you look at suicide rates, suicide rates in the world, the main cause is because they’re burnout and they don’t know how to express it. And then they feel alone.
Ola Tunde [17:39]:
Now can someone get help to, to, to, you know, to not be burned out? Absolutely psychology today says, where do you fall on the burnout? Continue the first one, take a relaxing and, and stress free. Two days out of work. My father told me that he said too, why don’t you learn to adopt longer weekends work Monday through Thursday and have Friday, Saturday, Sunday off so that you can be fresh and ready to go. You know, on Monday, the second one is take two weeks. Sometimes take time. As you feel to apply yourself to a new skill set, to stretch yourself and be with friends and family that doesn’t add unexpected expectation to your life. The third is taking time off. Again, take more time off, take vacations go to places that you only dream of. For me, I don’t dream of anywhere other than, you know, driving and, and getting lost in the country and breathe the fresh hair and, and, you know, eat some rice that is relaxation for me. You know, sometimes it’s just sitting in my backyard. Sometimes it’s just shooting basketball with my son. Sometimes it’s just driving and getting lost and coming back home. I love it. That’s my therapy for
Dan Neumann [18:59]:
Bernie. No, that’s awesome. I grew up in the country. So country drives. Don’t do it for me. That’s just called growing up <laugh> but, but you’re like to your point, everybody’s something is going to be a, a different type of something. And really absolutely taking some time to be intentional about separating from those, those work stresses is, is important. And we’ll put a link to that psychology today, article into the show notes that people can find at com slash podcast.
Ola Tunde [19:29]:
Fantastic.
Dan Neumann [19:30]:
So let’s talk about some of the solutions that that might be employed. You you talked a little bit about exercise, relaxing activity. We, we touched on mindfulness the opportunity there to, to take some breaks. What other, what other concepts come to mind?
Ola Tunde [19:50]:
Leadership needs to create autonomy, empowerment and leadership needs to encourage employees that are feeling burnout to, you know, let their voice be heard whenever you are working as part of an organization. I remember in 2008, I was working for a large credit burial organization. And the team that I was part of my voice was not even welcome, let alone be heard, you know, and I started feeling emotionally depressed, emotionally stressed, physically drained. And I hated every hour I was there. However, I learned something critical from there. I learned that, you know what, not everybody is like you and you are not like everybody along with that, not every organization is for me. There are some organizations that want my skillset. They talk to me and because of their culture, as I decline now, I’m here because the culture fits my personality, the culture enabled me for success. And let me do what I do best, which is mentoring, developing, and coaching people, transforming leadership organization. When I’m doing that, I don’t feel stressed when I’m doing that. I don’t feel burnout. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, I’m also feel, I feel, you know, invigorated. I feel empowered because I’m doing what I love to do.
Dan Neumann [21:14]:
Yeah, definitely. And that’s consistent with something that I found in a, a article from the Mayo clinic about job burnout, how to spot it and take action. That lack of control that they indicate is one of those possible sources of, of burnout. And so as a leader, then finding ways to give an appropriate level of control to the people that are you are working with and for, and who are working for you in that, in that relationship, mm-hmm <affirmative>, we, people don’t wanna be micromanaged for the most part. They also don’t necessarily want to have a lack of direction or lack of clarity on the objectives that they’re trying to achieve either. That’s also something else that would be a a stressor and potentially burnout inducing.
Ola Tunde [22:02]:
I agree with you. So now, if we will ask or talk to those people that are feeling burnout, ladies and gentlemen, if you’re feeling burnout I want to encourage you to seek help find someone you want to talk to someone that you can trust, someone that you know, that you can be transparent with someone that can also be transparent with you. That’s the first thing, the second thing, if you were to die today, the job that you are trust about by tomorrow, the job that you are giving all you can for by tomorrow, if you die today, they will have to add to interview other people. So don’t give your life up or don’t stress yourself over you performing, or you’re not performing. Perhaps the culture is not for you. The third thing, if you are feeling burnout, if you’re feeling stressed, ask to take a vacation, take extensive break, you need to be able to understand yourself and why you yourself are, why you feeling this way and what can you do to make yourself happy? I’m proud of you. I celebrate you during this burnout time. I want to encourage you to keep keeping on, stay focused and also take a lot of breaks for yourself.
Dan Neumann [23:25]:
Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. That’s super important. Before we close up, we are getting towards the back part. Some of what we’ve talked about is kinda workplace dynamic types of challenges. So we’ve talked about wanting to have a clear objective, you know, knowing am I doing the job well? What about eliminating kind of the extremes jobs that are continually monotonous, right? Blah, boring jobs that are always chaotic. Like life seems to have rhythms. Okay. I could use a little chaos. I could use a little quiet time. Some chaos would be nice right now. I think that’s something leaders can keep an eye towards as well. Is, are we creating an environment that has chances to like really get excited and really dig in and then chances to go, okay, got a nice couple hours of quiet time here. Yep. Or a day of quiet time or a week or whatever, whatever that cadence might look like in for, for that work environment.
Ola Tunde [24:33]:
Yeah. You know, life is all about cadence. Then when you look at the, the earth, you have a time that you reign that’s, it has a kidney time. And also you have the time when the sun sets, you have the time when the sun go down the mood shine, we need to understand that as a human being, all of this seasons in life, help us and help shape us. You might be working at an environment that that environment is not really suitable. You are always burn. You always feeling tired. It’s okay. That shows me that that’s a GE your alarm GE your clock and where your time is up in that organization. It’s like being married to the wrong person. When you discover that you guys are no longer aligned, that means your time is up. No, no, no. I’m not asking people to, to go through a divorce. I’ve been through a divorce. I will not wish you nobody. Now my second marriage, she’s my friend. So I’m not thinking about that. But every marriage have this challenge, those, those challenges, you know, that you carry mentally, that you carry emotionally affect your performance at work, affect your social life, affect your people skill, be encouraged, seek, help, talk to someone and take a break. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> for yourself on that apologetically.
Dan Neumann [25:51]:
Yeah. No, that that’s fair. And so hopefully to, to you, the listeners, right? Hopefully there are some, some tips in here. Some techniques, whether you are looking at it from your own perspective, if you’re looking at, at burnout, from the possibility that it’s affecting other people around you and then certainly there’s some tactics you might take on with yourself, with your work group. And, and of course not ruling out, you know, seeking outside counsel, whether it’s a, a professional psychologist, there was a there was an episode of family guy where one of the characters he’s like, oh, we don’t believe in psychologists. We go to the minister, right. Party on, go to the minister, you know, do, do whatever. Do whatever works for you for your own self care. So tune day, thank you very much for joining and exploring an important topic with me and with our listeners.
Ola Tunde [26:42]:
Dan, it’s been a, I’m looking forward to more sessions.
Dan Neumann [26:45]:
I want to ask you what’s on your continuous learning journey. Cause I, and, and if it’s nothing, because you’re avoiding, like, if you’re like, I’ve, I’ve taken a learning journey break, that’s an acceptable answer. Especially given the topic of today’s podcast.
Ola Tunde [26:58]:
Yeah. So I like to read one book, a quarter, there’s a book called leaders with a leaders, leadership with no name, with no title leadership, with no title. As a servant leader, I have people that report onto me. I have people on my account for, I’m also accountable to other people and those people also have accountability to others. So it’s a, it is a, it’s a function. The way, you know, this system is set up, I’m always challenging myself or to me, what can you do to be a better servant leader to the people that are accountable to you? So I’m reading that
Dan Neumann [27:40]:
Book. That’s perfect. I believe that will go into the podcast backlog for a future episode because we talk about scrum teams and how I, I won’t even get right. Who set up, but somebody kind of mentioned the other day. Well, scrum teams don’t have leaders. I’m like, oh, but they do. Yes. In fact, they might have lots of leaders given the context of the team is trying to deal with at the time. So they might not have a title that says leader, SVP, VP manager, director, whatever, but boy, they, they sure do have leaders. So let’s talk about that. We’ll throw that on the backlog, maybe R another colleague or two into that conversation and we’ll do it tune day.
Ola Tunde [28:19]:
Awesome. Thank you, Dan.
Outro [28:22]:
This has been the agile coaches corner podcast brought to you by agile thought. The views, opinions and information expressed in this podcast are solely those of the hosts and the guests, and do not necessarily represent those of agile thought. Get the show notes and other helpful tips from this episode and other episodes@agilethought.com slash podcast.
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“When you are under stress you can still control the situation, but when you experience burnout you don’t have the energy to even address certain circumstances.” — Ola Tunde
“We are our worst critics.” — Ola Tunde
“Leadership needs to create autonomy and empowerment; that is the reason why leaders need to encourage Team members to let their voices be heard.” — Ola Tunde
