[HN Gopher] Emotional resilience and burnout in leadership
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Emotional resilience and burnout in leadership
Author : jonnymiller
Score : 122 points
Date : 2020-08-24 15:26 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (docs.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (docs.google.com)
| lemonlizzie wrote:
| good read!
| Whitespace wrote:
| Here's a handy link to the PDF, which is easier on the eyes than
| google docs: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KaPv-
| yVxjLb8b4WlF0nsAA5b6ft...
|
| This was a phenomenal read and led me to ask my own question:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24265697
| bistro17 wrote:
| cold showers - recommend Wimhoff
| davesque wrote:
| While I see that this research is aimed at leadership positions
| and this must surely be a problem, I feel obligated to point out
| that the issue of burnout could be an _even worse_ problem in
| non-leadership positions.
|
| It seems that a lot of the suggested solutions (take time off, be
| more honest about your emotions, etc.) are necessarily things
| that are difficult to do for people who are not in management
| positions. Requesting long blocks of time off or being
| forthcoming about your emotions are easily things that can be
| used against you in employee reviews and other similar
| situations.
|
| In cases of _severe_ burnout, the situation is more dire since
| people earning a lower salary might simply not be able to step
| back from work to take a year off, for example (something that
| was suggested by another poster here).
| Aqua wrote:
| While I understand the intention to highlight the other side of
| the problem, all these issues are significantly more severe for
| people in leadership positions.
|
| I can't imagine taking more than 2 weeks off from work. These
| solutions aren't really solutions unless the person in question
| decides to quit their job. There is no snowballs chance in hell
| that a company will tolerate absence of their management staff
| that is longer than 4 weeks. A replacement or substituion would
| be required fairly soon.
|
| Being open about one's emotion in a leadership position is a
| ridiculous advice, it's obvious that the authors have no idea
| what they're recommending.
| outworlder wrote:
| > There is no snowballs chance in hell that a company will
| tolerate absence of their management staff that is longer
| than 4 weeks
|
| That's a very US-centric view.
|
| In some countries, people get 4 weeks vacations yearly, and
| can take them all in one block. Yes. A full month outside
| work. Fully outside, not this "I'm away but will be available
| by mail" BS.
|
| If this is expected, companies will plan for it and will
| survive just fine. Normalizing the non-stop grind should not
| be acceptable.
| alxlaz wrote:
| > There is no snowballs chance in hell that a company will
| tolerate absence of their management staff that is longer
| than 4 weeks.
|
| I've worked in places where, at any given time, at least one
| something-something manager was on a one- _year_ sabbatical.
| One of them literally requested it -- and got it -- in order
| to spend more time with their daughter, who was going to
| college the following year, since that was their last chance
| to spend quality time with her for a few years. Lots of
| people in a non-management positions have trouble attending
| their kids ' graduation ceremonies if they're out of state --
| getting a whole year off to see them off to college is pretty
| much science fiction.
|
| Yes, they generally didn't leave smack in the middle of a
| project, but there's a lot of no man's land in-between
| projects.
|
| I don't understand how any of this is surprising. Justifiably
| or not, benefits and perks are clustered around leadership
| positions, that's literally one of the reasons why people are
| seeking them.
|
| Plus, in many large companies, it can easily take 6-12 months
| to recruit someone for a leadership position. Granting three-
| month vacations to the people you already have is a really
| good idea.
| hammock wrote:
| Manager? How high up were they?
| alxlaz wrote:
| Way closer to a junior dev than a C-level position ;-).
|
| Edit: one-year sabbaticals aside, which aren't that
| common outside large companies, longer vacations are
| normal simply because extra paid vacation days are a
| standard benefit you get with a promotion.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| of course! however, this demographic most likely doesn't have
| as much disposable income and thus is not the target audience
| of the authors coaching program.
| LeonW wrote:
| I wish every leader gets access to these frameworks and
| takeaways. The #1 issue I face with every single client I've
| worked with over the years as an executive coach is exactly what
| they are pointing out here: that dealing with our emotions and
| inner worlds is the biggest challenge of all. Learning to deal
| with that has the highest ROI on both success and
| fulfillment/happiness compared to any other activity for a leader
| imo.
| jonnymiller wrote:
| Thanks Leo, we have you to thank for introducing us to the
| concept of 'emotional debt'. I totally agree that for the
| majority of us, navigating the inner-world + increasing self-
| awareness has an absurdly high ROI on success/fulfillment.
|
| What I also find fascinating is how running a company or
| leading a team appear to be an incredibly efficient vehicle for
| surfacing one's own sh*t--and once this new perspective is
| adopted--it becomes more potent than any self-help program out
| there for one's own personal growth.
| alexanderdou wrote:
| I'm very early in my career, but I've noticed that being able
| to sense, reflect on, and grapple with one's emotions to be so
| lacking at work.
|
| It's also been one of the biggest invisible skills in my own
| career: it helps me navigate disagreements
| with colleagues by "getting us on the same side of the problem,
| rather than on opposite sides"; it helps me avoid self-
| sabotage by creating narratives in my head and falling into the
| cognitive distortions of mind reading and fortune telling that
| I know I'm particularly prone to; it helps me interface
| with customers and graciously accept feedback, even if it's not
| delivered in the kindest way
|
| But nobody teaches it. It was never in a training. I never
| learned it in school. It's almost like nobody knows it exists!
|
| Anyway, btw, thanks for your work. I recently signed up for
| your newsletter and it's been really wonderful. I really enjoy
| the kindness you bring to your writing.
| KennyHanson wrote:
| This is really insightful, thanks for sharing.
|
| I've had my own challenges with burnout. It's why I ended up
| leaving the corporate world. I've been working on a startup for
| about a year and while I feel a lot better, I have noticed that
| I'm not taking any time off. I fortunately have a good group of
| coaches & mentors around me now that are looking out for me,
| which has been life saving. I will definitely dive deeper into
| the report and use some of these tools to build resilience for
| myself and my team.
| haswell wrote:
| As someone who has just started a 4 week break spurred on by a
| burnout-induced breakdown at work, this is very timely. I do
| wonder if it's reasonable to think that 4 weeks is enough.
|
| I've struggled with mental health issues for most of my life due
| to complex developmental trauma during childhood, and in 2020,
| I've found that it's very difficult to tell the difference
| between work burnout, residual issues due to my trauma history,
| impact of world events, etc.
|
| One thing I do know for sure: research like this is so
| encouraging. Normalizing the conversation about mental health is
| so important.
| zackmorris wrote:
| Ya I had burnout so bad 2 years ago that it cost me my job.
| Your comment about burnout spanning multiple causes and
| contexts resonates with me. I reached a point where everything
| felt like work (even recreation), and the news on my social
| media feed in these times just dragged me down further. Just to
| warn you, 4 weeks will probably not be enough time to climb out
| of burnout (it took me more like 6 months), but you can
| certainly hone your coping skills enough to have a healthy
| strategy in place going forward. Here's what worked for me:
|
| * Finding and treating health problems you might not have known
| about (ADHD, sleep apnea, IBS, hypothyroidism from low iodine,
| low serotonin due to age or not eating enough meat/tryptophan)
|
| * Using positive self-talk (see cognitive behavioral therapy or
| CBT)
|
| * Separating planning from execution (keeping temporary todo
| lists and using https://www.depression-chat-rooms.org for
| tasking sessions with others)
|
| * Eliminating technical debt outside of work (picking the low-
| hanging fruit of cleaning up your surroundings, your finances
| and your relationships)
|
| My working theory right now for how burnout works is that it's
| about a rift between your subconscious and conscious mind. In
| my case, I had come to rely upon my subconscious to do most of
| the heavy lifting. So I'd think about a problem and sleep on
| it, then write the code that came to me in the morning. I took
| being a lazy programmer to the absolute limit and avoided
| consciously working through the crux of problems. Basically I
| mistook going with the flow for being in the zone.
|
| My struggles started when my ADHD issues (which I thought I
| kicked as a teen) crept up and when I lost interest in my work,
| my subconscious mind refused to solve problems it wasn't
| passionate about. I found that tasks that previously happened
| through muscle memory had to be done by my conscious mind. So I
| started noticing every single little step. Not just brushing my
| teeth, but opening the drawer, getting out the toothbrush,
| opening the toothpaste, squeezing it out, and so on. Working
| through a day in my home life became almost insurmountable as I
| was faced with 10,000 grueling steps.
|
| Anyway, that was the year before COVID-19. I survived on my
| savings and by donating plasma. Luckily I met someone who hired
| me to do handyman work, and the physical labor was a godsend
| since I haven't been able to go to the gym.
|
| My health began recovering around Thanksgiving of last year,
| and I would say I was 85% recovered by around May. The last few
| months have been great, and I've been able to start programming
| again in recent weeks. Thankfully the brain circuits that had
| shut down have reawakened so I don't have to relearn how to
| code. My mood has risen from a 2-4 out of 10 last year, to a
| consistent 7-9 the last few months, without medication. When I
| start slipping down the road towards negative self-talk and
| darkness, I take time to breathe, slow down, and ask if I'm
| respecting myself in the situation. I've learned that a big
| part of my burnout was bad communication and spending too much
| time dwelling on other people's expectations and my own past
| mistakes.
|
| Hope this helps someone.
| haswell wrote:
| Just wanted to thank you for sharing details about your
| personal experience.
|
| > _So I started noticing every single little step. Not just
| brushing my teeth, but opening the drawer, getting out the
| toothbrush, opening the toothpaste, squeezing it out, and so
| on. Working through a day in my home life became almost
| insurmountable as I was faced with 10,000 grueling steps._
|
| This really resonated with me. The 10,000 grueling steps
| thing hits close to home.
|
| My difficulty dealing with such mundane things - things that
| I told myself should be trivial for a "functioning adult"
| (some negative self-judgement, but that's another topic) -
| was a big part of my realization that I had to take more
| active steps to address the issue.
|
| It's really great to hear things are looking up.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| Hey, I've gone through a very similar situation recently, and
| my history is similar to what you describe here, as well. My
| email is in my profile, and I'd love to chat with you about it
| -- just put something in the subject to identify that you're
| haswell@HN.
| haswell wrote:
| Thank you for the reply and offer to chat! I'm also very
| interested in chatting about this and I sent an email.
| x87678r wrote:
| If you are recovering from burnout wtf are you reading HN? Take
| a break already.
| vadansky wrote:
| One thing that bothers me, is that research (as skeptical as I
| am of social sciences right now) seems to suggest that "ego
| resources" don't exist. However burn out does exist.
|
| Therefore it's hard to reconcile and find a balance between "I
| can push myself a little more, I'm just unmotivated" and "I
| need to switch off right now or I'll burn out"
| jonnymiller wrote:
| There is a delicate balance between what the author of Reboot
| Jerry Colonna describes as 'Foolish Grit' vs. 'Healthy Drive
| + Ambition'. In my own experience I find it helpful to
| enquire into the underlying motivations for the work.
|
| i.e am I driving myself from a place of fear? How does my
| body feel when I begin working on this? What is the source of
| the resistance? Whilst fear can certainly be a powerful
| motivator in the short term, it is not a sustainable fuel
| source.
| malux85 wrote:
| I have had burnout in the past, and I'm sorry to say 4 weeks is
| likely not enough.
|
| For me it was about 1 year to recover.
|
| Sure I could have returned to work after a month or two,
| because I would no longer have been "exhausted" physically, but
| going straight back into it would have burnt off that top layer
| of rest, and still revealed the ruined core within, to truly
| heal it took a year, then my excitement for programming came
| back, the excitement about not being able to sleep because
| there's so much to enjoy, and the pure joy of creation
|
| I hate that it took a year to come back, being hyper
| industrious this long period killed me. But I am grateful that
| it came back.
|
| I appreciate not everyone has the financial ability to take a
| year off. I didn't either, but I was lucky that I could adapt a
| simple, frugal existence to survive. I support UBI or whatever
| form of support anyone can give people who burnout because it's
| real and it's painful.
|
| I wish you all the best in your recovery, and wrote this to
| tell you there is light at the end of the tunnel
| rhombocombus wrote:
| I took 6 months off after a bad case of burnout and I think
| you are spot on at 1 year. About 6 months after going back to
| work (and clearing my plate of a lot of superfluous BS) I
| finally felt like I was beginning to hit my stride again. It
| was a big financial hit, but in the grand scheme of things it
| would have been far worse on my long term career prospects
| had I not taken that time away. Six months was, in my
| opinion, the bare minimum for the kind of burnout I was
| experiencing.
| jonnymiller wrote:
| Jonny (one of the report co-authors) here, thanks for sharing
| this--I entirely agree that normalising this conversation
| around mental health is essential, yet often requires courage
| to do so, especially in a work context. Yet, as our research
| illustrated, you are very much not alone in experiencing pre-
| existing mental health challenges that were amplified by the
| events of 2020.
|
| re: 'telling the difference between work burnout vs. residual
| issues from a traumatic history', this is a nuanced topic but
| from the perspective of your nervous system, there really isn't
| a difference--the emotional debt (which could also be labelled
| as 'micro-trauma') that accumulates doesn't neatly distinguish
| between work + life as we have a tendency to do (the RED
| framework in the report was our attempt to describe this
| process in more detail).
|
| Taking an initial 4-week break is really important step--I
| would encourage you not to commit (at this point) with a date
| for when you will return but see how the coming weeks unfold.
| It's also critical to seek help during the recovery process,
| ideally from someone trained in a form of therapy that
| addresses the body (Somatic Experiencing Therapy being a good
| example). Did you notice the [Resilience
| Wiki](http://resilient.wiki/) that we've started towards the
| end of the report? Hopefully some of those resources are
| useful. Also, please feel free to get in touch directly:
| jonnymiller[at]mac.com
| haswell wrote:
| Thank you so much for the thoughtful reply. I had not noticed
| the Resilience Wiki. This looks excellent, and I will be
| exploring it thoroughly.
|
| > _I entirely agree that normalising this conversation around
| mental health is essential, yet often requires courage to do
| so, especially in a work context_
|
| Broaching this topic and some of the reasons behind the
| extended break were terrifying in the work context. I've
| grown into a leadership role after many successful years with
| the company, and the thought of "admitting" to my mental
| health issues was daunting at first. Like it would somehow
| undo my years of professional progress. I'm grateful that my
| upper leadership was actually quite receptive, and others
| have shared that they feel more empowered to address their
| own issues when they see other people willing to share more
| about their own struggles.
|
| But even with that, there's still incredible pressure to rise
| above it and lead the product.
|
| I've been working with a trauma-aware therapist for a few
| years now (amazingly helpful), and they provided input as I
| planned the 4 week break. I do plan to explore some of these
| topics more explicitly in upcoming sessions.
| jonnymiller wrote:
| > " _Like it would somehow undo my years of professional
| progress. I 'm grateful that my upper leadership was
| actually quite receptive, and others have shared that they
| feel more empowered to address their own issues when they
| see other people willing to share more about their own
| struggles._"
|
| This is a powerful reflection. Vulnerability often feels
| like weakness to us but looks like courage to others. IMO
| real change is contingent on a deeper cultural shift that
| begins with leaders like yourself being willing to step
| into honest conversations about their inner + outer
| struggles.
|
| And really great to hear that you have someone experienced
| working with you to help navigate the coming weeks. Please
| do reach out if you have curiosities or further questions
| about any of the emotional regulation activities listed in
| the wiki (or wish to contribute suggestions of your own).
| comprev wrote:
| I know a handful of people who needed time off to recover from
| burnout - it ranged between 8 weeks to 2 years - depending on
| if they could convince their Doctor to officially recognise it
| for government support.
| treeman79 wrote:
| This is key. I was all but completely blind, in bed 18 hours
| a day in extreme pain, recovering from stokes and various
| clots. Doctor absolutely would not feel out any paperwork.
| Claimed that was for specialist. Specialist all claim that
| was a job for primary.
|
| Disability straight up laughed at me.
|
| Eventful worked through the worst of it, but wow, it's
| shocking how bad doctors can be.
| afpx wrote:
| For me (who succumbed to some alcohol and amphetamine abuse to
| keep working), it took 3 years, and I still get anxiety when I
| code. But, I also have a history of trauma, so YMMV.
| lighttower wrote:
| There are 13 responses from Canada, but _89_ from Toronto. Did
| the author intend to write _9_ ?
| jonnymiller wrote:
| The author did indeed (fixed) thanks for catching that (it
| slipped by us & our proof-reader)
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