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How to Avoid Business Burnout: An interview with Dr. Andy Core by Kristina Kelly

Whether you are an owner or in a leadership role, business burnout can negatively impact you, your team and the overall health of your business. We enlisted the help of a burnout expert, Dr. Andy Core, to aid you in recognizing the symptoms, impacts, and tactics to conquer it. Dr. Core is a Performance Psychologist, Resiliency Expert, and AwardWinning Speaker.

We’re so excited to have your insight and expertise. Tell us, how do you define business burnout?

Burnout in a business context consists of three things: emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and lack of professional accomplishment.

What are some burnout signs that owners / managers may miss or simply write off as stress?

Emotional exhaustion is when a person is so tired that they lose motivation, and their attitude begins to become more negative. Businesspeople will know they are emotionally exhausted when they start to let things slide that they normally wouldn't. There is a social media meme that says, “I'm at the stage of life where when someone says the sky is green, I just say OK.” It is healthy and a sign of maturity to pick your battles, but resigning yourself from being passionate about your work and standing up for your beliefs is a red flag that you may be experiencing emotional exhaustion and potentially on your way to burnout.

Cynicism is the state of mind where a person focuses on the negative aspects of their work, customers, personal relationships, and potentially most dangerous, themselves. Businesspeople know they are becoming more cynical and at risk for burnout when they stop seeing the potential benefits of their work, the good and other people, and just generally become more nihilistic. An easy way to diagnose yourself is to ask yourself the question, “Am I seeing things more negatively than I usually do?” Essentially, businesspeople will see minor inconveniences as a real pain in the backside, or even a threat to their standing.

Professional accomplishment is essentially feeling that if you work at something, you can be successful. One of the fastest ways to increase the risk for burnout is to believe that your work, your effort does not amount to much. That even if you try, you will not be successful.

What are some common causes of business burnout?

The most common burnout trap for most businesspeople is based on a concept called the human performance curve. Essentially, you have to push yourself to be successful and to grow. And, for a while, the harder you push yourself the faster you progress. But everyone has a point where if they keep pushing themselves their progress not only slows, but starts to decline as do their attitudes and emotional energy level. Being able to identify when you start to become emotionally exhausted, a bit more cynical, or start to lose a sense of accomplishment even though you were trying, is a powerful skill in preventing and addressing symptoms.

You've talked about mindset as a top challenge in your research. Can you elaborate on that?

In resiliency research, one of the top three most resilient mindsets is called a challenge mindset. This mindset is based on the belief that change, challenges, difficult situations, are normal, and just part of life, and when you really think about it, is when you've grown the most as a person. Therefore, a resilient person looks at difficulties as, "This is not great, but challenges are normal, and I'm likely to learn or grow as a result.” This may seem like common sense, but when a person is under significant stress, their mindset is impaired and results in focusing on the threats they face or inconveniences they don't want to deal with versus the challenge and opportunity to grow.

What is the impact of unchecked burnout?

The impact or consequences of experiencing burnout symptoms is often nothing at first. Businesspeople are usually pretty tough and can withstand a lot. However, everyone has that inflection point where if they continue to push, their mindset and their bodies start to deteriorate. If left unchecked past this point, mental, physical, and emotional health start to degrade rapidly. Once a person reaches actual burnout, there is not a short-term fix; they need significant time off to recuperate and repair their body and their outlook on the world.

What are your favorite tactics for overcoming this challenge?

My favorite strategies for not only minimizing your risk for burnout, but also maximizing your ability to perform at your best and live a very high-quality of life, personally are based on three methods. First is control. Most people think of control as focusing on the things that you can control, which, while helpful, is not what that means in resiliency science. In resiliency research, control is the belief that if you work at something you can be successful; therefore, one of my favorite strategies is to ask yourself the question, "If I work at this and I try hard, do I have a reasonable chance to be successful?” The best way to ask yourself this question is to use it as a journal prompt. Additionally, this is a great question to ask other people when you want to increase their resiliency and motivation at work and in life.

Second is curiosity. In resiliency science, commitment is defined as believing that your goals, or work is meaningful, interesting, and worth your full investment. In business, most people believe that their work is meaningful and worth their investment. However, what I've noticed is often missing in people who are struggling to maintain their motivation and resiliency to stress is a sense of curiosity about their work tasks, challenges, teammates, customers, etc. I found that the most successful people are often the most curious. They look at each challenge, opportunity, or teammate as something interesting. In contrast, people who struggle with challenges are more focused on the fear of what may happen versus being interested in finding solutions, workarounds, additional resources, etc.

The third is challenge. A challenge mindset means choosing to see difficulties as normal, interesting, and a way to grow. People who struggle under stress have conditioned themselves to have difficulty seeing past the potential threat or inconvenience of their situation. My favorite mantra to use the challenge mindset is to ask, "OK, this may be a bummer, but what is the challenge here?” Another great reframing question is, “OK, there may be some real pitfalls to this situation, but what do we have control over in this situation?”

The bottom line for business professionals to mitigate the risk for burnout and manage burnout symptoms is threefold. First, they probably need a break. Taking even a little time off and setting yourself up for a couple of good nights' sleep can often take the edge off and recenter your thinking so that you can see your situation in a more accurate and productive light and develop more productive mindsets. Second, learning how to think when you feel stressed or challenged is not something most businesspeople are taught. Resiliency is likely the most important skill for business success in today's rapidly changing and uncertain conditions, the most important Brazilian mindset: control, curiosity, and challenge. It is worth taking the time to learn about these mindsets and practice them so that they become automatic whenever a flush of stress hits. Third, and likely the most overlooked in our virtual world, is peer support. There is significant research to show that the more frequently you connect with other people who know what your work, stressors, and wins are, the more resilient you are to stress, the fewer depressive symptoms you feel, and the more motivated and determined you are to reach your goals.

Once you conquer burnout, what advice do you have for sustaining it?

My core mantra, and the title of my latest book, is Change Your Day, Not Your Life. The underlying thesis of this book is that success is based on patterns and motivation is just momentum in disguise. Basically, if you want to be sustainably motivated and successful, improve your daily patterns. Success is most often based on skill, so it makes sense to make how you live your daily life a skill that you've honed to maximize your focus, energy, and results.

Thank you so much Dr. Core for this interesting and insightful look at business burnout. We think we can all relate to many aspects of this throughout our careers. For more amazing research and education from Dr. Core or to purchase his book, please visit: www.andycore.com