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Author: George Pitagorsky

George Pitagorsky, integrates core disciplines and applies people centric systems and process thinking to achieve sustainable optimal performance. He is a coach, teacher and consultant. George authored The Zen Approach to Project Management, Managing Conflict and Managing Expectations and IIL’s PM Fundamentals™. He taught meditation at NY Insight Meditation Center for twenty-plus years and created the Conscious Living/Conscious Working and Wisdom in Relationships courses. Until recently, he worked as a CIO at the NYC Department of Education.
PMTimes_Oct10_2023

Learn from the Past to Perfect Performance

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles.

To optimize performance, learn from experience. Set aside time for reflection, learning, and making the intention to perfect the way you live and work.

Hopefully, we are always reflecting and paying attention to intentions, performance, and goals. Though it is skillful to give full attention regularly and intentionally to deep introspection, both as an individual and team.

It might be during a retreat, retrospectives, or lessons learned activities, and performance reviews. It might be for an hour, a day, or longer.

As individuals, we can use meditation and contemplation techniques to cultivate self-awareness, reflect on past errors and successes, and to identify values and commit to positive action going forward. As teams, we can come together to review performance and find ways to improve – candidly and meaningfully.

Acknowledge errors, celebrate successes, and commit to skillful behavior going forward into the next cycle, phase, or project. Keep in mind that imperfections and uncertainty are facts of life. How we handle them makes all the difference.

 

Simple But Not Easy

So simple and logical. Reflect and learn. But we find that it is not that easy. Egos get in the way.

Egos get in the way when there is a criticism-averse mindset. Fear of being fired or disrespected and the need to be perfect lead to avoiding candid feedback from others and even from oneself. Without open self-awareness and intention to continuously improve, to optimize performance, there is a common tendency to avoid criticism, particularly negative feedback.

In a 2016 article on project performance review[1] and in my new book, The Warrior’s Path[2], I refer to warriorship and the need to confront resistance to looking at yourself and your team candidly and compassionately.

 

Warriors

“Warriorship here does not refer to making war on others. Aggression is the source of our problems, not the solution. Here the word “warrior” … literally means, “one who is brave.”[3]

A warrior is dedicated to a cause, a struggle. The peaceful warrior is dedicated to the cultivation of clarity and compassion, with the goal of personal wellness, group wellness, effective performance, and being of service.

It takes courage and skill to confront one’s own and one’s team process and behavior, particularly the imperfections. It takes more than a formal performance review procedure.

 

In one case a software development organization “lost” the video recording of a project performance review that became too “negative” with some members of the team “attacking” members of a functional group who “defended” themselves.

This is not the kind of struggle the Peaceful warrior engages in. Seeking optimal performance is not about attacking and defending. It is about bringing issues to light and discovering causes by confronting the issues collaboratively.

Doing that requires disengaging from one’s identification with one’s role to take on the role of an objective assessor.

 

Not Easy

Taking on the role of objective assessor of your own performance is not so easy. Aversion to negative criticism is deeply embedded in culture and psychology.

To first acknowledge and then do something about the resistance to confrontation begins with oneself as an individual.  If you can’t face your own shortfalls, how can you expect others to face theirs? When you identify with your team and its performance you transfer your resistance to criticism to the team. Criticism of the team becomes personal. If you are on the attack or are defensive, you are not being objective.

But not all aversion to criticism is based on mental habits. Much of it comes from organizational cultures that seek to blame rather than understand and improve. It comes from leadership that is conflict averse, often because they don’t know how to handle conflict or have their own personal issues with criticism.

 

Emotional intelligence

Can you simply be present with the uncomfortable emotions you feel when confronted with your shortfalls? Being present with emotions means feeling them fully without reacting to them by trying to throw them off through ignoring, making excuses, blaming others, or disparaging yourself and your own competencies. This is emotional intelligence in action.

You and the team get nowhere without objectively addressing issues and their causes. Unmanaged emotions get in the way.

 

Facilitating Organizational Awareness

Facilitating the quest for optimal performance starts with self-aware individuals who can manage their emotions and who value criticism of any kind to avoid repeating unskillful behavior while promoting effective performance and healthy relationships.

Not everyone is self-aware and motivated. Embedding performance improvement in the organization or the team is enhanced by training individuals to recognize their aversion to criticism and value the opportunity to improve. At the same time, regular anonymous micro-assessments provide objective data to cut through subjective opinions.

Effective facilitation is another vital factor. The facilitator promotes objectivity and awareness of participants’ ability to give and take feedback in a positive, non-attacking and non-defensive way.

 

The facilitator prepares the team by promoting the understanding that:

  • Negative criticism is valuable to the end of improvement
  • It is normal to be averse to it
  • Whether averse to it or not, it is necessary to invite, accept and thrive on criticism
  • In most cases, the process and not the individual performer is at the root of errors and omissions. Take performance seriously but not personally.
  • Blaming and defensiveness are emotional reactions that get in the way of cause analysis and improvement.

 

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Next Steps

Assess where you, your team, and your organization are when it comes to using critical analysis in performance review to improve performance.

At what level of the organization does aversion to criticism exist? Is there lip service but no follow-through? Are training and facilitation needed?

How can you best promote candid useful reviews of team and individual performance so you and your team can learn from experience?

 

Related articles:

https://www.projecttimes.com/articles/the-key-to-performance-improvement-candid-perfromance-assessment/

https://www.projecttimes.com/articles/project-performance-review-the-power-of-recognizing-what-s-going-on/

https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/lessons-learned-process-thinking-review-3169

https://www.projecttimes.com/author/george-pitagorsky/page/7/#:~:text=Performance%2C%20Attention%20and%20Focus

https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/managing-virtual-teams-high-performance-7310

 

 

[1] Pitagorsky, George, Project Performance Review: The Power of Recognizing What’s Going On https://www.projecttimes.com/articles/project-performance-review-the-power-of-recognizing-what-s-going-on/
[2] Pitagorsky, George, The Peaceful Warrior’s Path: Optimal Wellness through Self-Aware Living, to be available in late October 2023
[3] Trungpa, Chogyam, True Perception: The Path of Dharma Art, Shambhala, November 11, 2008, ISBN 1-59030-588-4 [3]

 

PMTimes_Sep27_2023

Manage Your Opinions for Optimal Decisions

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles.

If you are ready to improve your team decision making “Do not search for the truth; only cease to cherish opinions.”[1]

When you cease to cherish opinions you avoid unnecessary conflict and achieve optimal decisions by allowing the “truth” to reveal itself through analysis, intuition, and dialog.

There is nothing wrong with opinions. Just don’t cherish them. To cherish them is to be attached to and identified with your opinions. Avoid this because it gets in the way of finding optimal decisions and it fuels unnecessary conflict and division.

 

What are opinions?

Everyone has opinions. They are the result of our experience, beliefs, knowledge, and training. They express our intelligence. They can be useful, and they can also get in the way.

Opinions are beliefs, points of view, assumptions, or judgements. They are not conclusive, not facts.

Often, we do not have the luxury of making fact-based decisions. Our issues may be too complex. Data may not be available. We may act on an opinion and gut feel, but if we do, it is best to do it with objectivity and self-awareness.

 

Objectivity and Self-awareness

Objectivity knows the difference between fact, certainty, and opinion. It values facts and realizes that subjectivity is also valuable. Self-awareness tells you when your attachment to your opinion is causing emotions to surface and you to resist questioning your opinion.

Together these two, objectivity and self-awareness, are key to effective relationships. And effective relationships are critical success factors. They are displayed in decision making, conflict management, planning, problem solving, change management – just about every aspect of project work or any kind of collaborative effort.

 

Managing Opinions

We are living in a time when beliefs and opinions are confused with facts and reality. People have lost the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity.

Are you willing to question and validate your beliefs and assumptions?

 

“When you see …, how belief, prejudice, conclusions, and ideals divide people and therefore breed conflict, you see that such activity is obviously not intelligence.

  Will you drop all your prejudices, all your opinions … so that you have a free, uncluttered mind?

If you say it is impossible, you will never find out for yourself what it is to be intelligent.” — J. Krishnamurti Excerpt from Can Conflict End?

 

Opinions Drive Action

Manage opinions well because they drive action. We hold opinions about team values, what vendor to use, how best to perform some tasks, who to hire, promote, or fire, and more. Opinions directly affect performance because they influence decisions.

Clearly, we want to make sure we understand the need to put opinions under the microscope and see their source and why we have them. Our approach is to balance opinions and fact-based analysis to make decisions that consider opinions and seek optimal results.

 

Attached

Being attached to and identified with opinions gets in the way. What does it mean to be attached to and identified with your opinions?

It means that you are so convinced that your opinion is “right” that you reject or suppress alternative opinions and refuse to question and validate your own. You are cherishing your opinion as if it were a part of your body. When you see it as an idea, a concept, you can value your opinion without being attached to it. This allows you to be open and respectful of other opinions.

Valuing is different than cherishing. You value your opinion because you think it is well founded on a strong belief, experience, data, theory, etc. You value it enough to state it and argue for it. And you also value the learning you get from exploring and validating your opinion.

 

Learning

Learning may strengthen your conviction that your opinion is worthy of being acted upon. Or it may show you that your opinion is not worth holding onto.

Learning comes out of dialog with opinions being shared and supported by the reasoning behind them. Be open to changing opinions to reach win-win outcomes and the actionable decisions that resolve issues most effectively.

 

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Beliefs

When opinions are based on strong beliefs, for example the belief that agile project management is always better than alternatives, there is a need to explore and question the underlying belief.

Fortunately, in project work we are less likely to find strong underlying beliefs driving decisions. When they do present themselves, we can justify confronting them because it is part of our best practices.

With beliefs regarding social and political issues it is not so easy. While these beliefs and the opinions that grow out of them is important, it is best to address them outside of business decision making.

 

Exploring Opinions

Should the sponsor of a project express her opinion, for example, “AI is too immature to waste our time looking at it”? Even if she isn’t convinced about her opinion, it will influence the team. As a leader, it is wise to hold back and open the space for opinions to be shared easily.

Other team members may have the opinion that there is something to be gained and that it won’t take much to explore how an available tool might be used to make the project go more smoothly with less effort and higher quality.

Wise leaders ask questions that lead the team (including the leader) to identify opinions and explore them to find the best outcome.

Are assertions backed by facts? For example, is AI not mature enough? Would it be too costly to explore? What biases are at work? What does ‘too costly’ mean?

 

Decision Making

Managing opinions is one part of decision making — the process that settles conflicts, underpins planning, vendor selection, and every aspect of team performance. It is a mission critical capability, no matter what the mission.

 

In the following articles I have explored decision-making from different perspectives:

 

[1] Seng-ts’an The Third Zen Patriarch,  Hsin Hsin Ming (Verses on Faith in Mind).
PMTimes_Sep19_2023

‘Delay Thinking’ Is a Project Success Factor

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles.

Often, it is better to spend more time than it is to speed to meet a deadline. Fast is good but not always. When rushing to get something done the probability of causing damage is high.

 

Delay Thinking

Delay thinking recognizes that there is a delay or lag between an action and its effect. Peter Senge in The Fifth Discipline says that “Delays can make you badly overshoot your mark, or they can have a positive effect if you recognize them and work with them.”

Figure 1 below is a diagram that explains the delay phenomena, he gives the example of the delay between the time you adjust the water temperature in the shower and the time the water reaches the desired temperature. If you understand the delay, you will make sure you don’t get doused in cold water or make the mistake of further turning up the hot.

Figure 1: Delayed Results[1]

What Does This Have to Do with Projects?

In both projects and operations, we make and act upon decisions. We set expectations among stakeholders about outcomes. We are expected to fix problems and do it fast.

Faced with problems we may seek quick fixes by applying solutions that worked in the past or in other organizations. We can be pressured into rushing ahead without doing the due diligence of assessing causes, multiple scenarios, and the impact of differences between the current situation and the ones in which a solution worked in the past.

In time bound projects, there is a tendency to overlook likely delays. For example, underestimating the time it takes to perform predecessor tasks when scheduling resources. The result is the cost of resources sitting idle while waiting for the results they need to proceed.

When we take delays into consideration expectations are realistic and problem resolutions end up making things better rather than worse.

 

Learning Curves and Change Management

For example, when a large organization implemented a system to reduce the effort of field managers by applying AI to automate their ordering process, they failed to recognize the delay caused by a combination of learning curves, manager resistance to a perceived loss of authority and autonomy, and the need to fine-tune the algorithm used to make ordering decisions. The result was avoidable chaos, supply chain disruption, and degraded performance. The new system was rejected.

The outcome would have been a far happier one had the project plan included a robust training process, “marketing,” and a calibration period with an incremental system rollout rather than a “big bang” implementation. All of these are “delays” that on the surface cause the project to run longer. Though more often than not, when looking below the surface these so-called delays save time, effort, money and reduce unnecessary stress.

 

Causes

What might cause failure to include delays in plans?

Everything has a cause and when we discover causes, we can better avoid repeating failures and making poor choices.

One predominant cause of this failure to consider delays is rushing to get a project completed in a certain time frame. The pressure to get your project done by a fixed date may be driven by many things – the whim of a senior stakeholder, funding availability, the need for resources on other planned projects, legal restrictions, seasonal weather conditions, etc.

 

When a “get it done by” mandate is in play, pressure, and the anxiety it brings leads decision makers to cut corners, perhaps forgetting that spending more time planning can result in exponentially less time during the rest of the project. Pressure and anxiety also lead to applying quick fixes which overlook long term consequences.

Expediency bias operates even when there is no major pressure to hit a deadline. It is the tendency to prefer quick action over taking the time to make sure there is clarity and understanding about short and longer-term results.

During planning, rushing and expediency bias leads to only looking at one scenario instead of a few. Assessing multiple scenarios opens the decision to useful analysis. But this takes time. When rushing, talk about lags or delays is impatiently squelched. The risk of making a poor decision based on limited information is high.

 

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Quick Fixes – Short Term thinking

Another dimension of delay thinking is the recognition that when resolving a problem, while short-term fixes might remove symptoms there is a delay before the nature of longer-term consequences are experienced.

We are often blind to the long-term effects of short-term decisions and actions. When there is a lag between our action and its effect, we are easily driven by the satisfaction of short-term pleasure and immediate gratification.

Take the decision between eating a bowl of ice cream and a salad. If you are like me, the ice cream is far more pleasing than the salad. And, at the end of the day, you’d look and feel the same regardless of your choice. So why not go for the ice cream.

 

But factor in delay thinking and you get to see that if you repeatedly opt for the ice cream over the salad the delayed longer-term effects start to show – weight gain, digestive issues, increased blood sugar levels, etc.

Looking at the short and long-term effects makes your decision making more effective. You know what you are gaining and giving up when you make your choice. You can opt for ice cream sometimes, but you are more likely to moderate, assuming your goal is good health. You can remove symptoms with a quick fix, but you had better consider the longer term impact and plan for it.

 

Awareness

Awareness is the key.

 

Being aware that delays are normal parts of experience makes it likely that we will consider them when making decisions and planning projects. Knowledge of the specific delays in your project comes from analysis and experience, your own and your institution’s.

Be aware of rushing and expediency bias and the power of spending more time in planning to playout various scenarios, consider delays and delayed effects, and cause removal vs. symptom removal options and their effects.

Think of what happens when you drop a stone into a pond of still water. Be aware that every action you take has a ripple effect and that the ripples appear over time, radiating in all directions.

 

[1] Senge, Peter, The Fifth Discipline, Doubleday, NY, 1990 p. 90
PMTimes_Sep6_2023

Managing Stress in Projects

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles.

Projects are work. There are expectations and complex relationships. There is stress.

Stress in projects is inevitable. Manage it both personally and organizationally to make the best of it. Do not let yourself or your team be damaged by it. Unmanaged, excessive, and unnecessary stress degrades wellness and performance, well managed stress stimulates and strengthens.

 

What Stress Is

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, stress is “any physical, chemical, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension and may be a factor in disease causation.” There are four major types of stress: psychological, cognitive, physical, and environmental.

The World Health Organization narrows the definition down to define stress “as a state of worry or mental tension caused by a difficult situation.”[1] Worry and mental tension are psychological stress.

 

Psychological Stress

Chronic worry and tension add unnecessary stress. Unnecessary because, with training and effort, it, unlike other kinds of stress, is avoidable. Though avoiding it takes skill and patient effort.

Worry and mental tension are self-imposed reactions to a difficult situation. They are self-imposed because they are produced by our internal mental process. And, that process can be managed. The more aware of our inner process, the more likely we are to avoid psychological stress.

Worry and tension lead to errors of judgement, outbursts, withdrawal, fatigue, and even disease. They waste energy. They get in the way of healthy relationships. They detract from optimal performance.

 

Stress is a Wakeup Call

Greeting worry and tension with self-awareness, right attitude, and skillful technique, lets psychological stress trigger the effort to accept and let go into responsive action.

The felt sense of stress is a wakeup call to address challenges and threats. With effort we can stop obsessing about the future and acting out past patterns that get in the way of healthy relationships. It takes time and patient persistence, accepting that we are imperfect, and working towards perfection without expecting to achieve it.

Transform worry into risk management and mental tension to analysis, concentration, and relaxation.

 

What Triggers Psychological Stress?

Psychological stress is linked to emotions and how and why we react to our current situation.

Psychological stress is triggered when we are faced with uncertainty, change, and perceived threats to our wellbeing. Worry is focused on a future outcome and how to make it happen, or not happen. It is a response to fear. Mental tension is emotional strain – anxiety, sadness, anger, grief. It is caused by worry, past conditioning, and wanting things to be different than they can be.

 

External stressors like tight deadlines and hyper-critical clients and sponsors cause project managers and performers to worry that deliverables will be late, they will fail to meet acceptance standards, there will be changes in staff, conflicts, weather events, delays that are out of the control of the PM, and more. Some may worry about getting fired or the next promotion, whether they said the right thing or made the right decision, how others perceive them, whether they will get what they want.

 

Cognitive Stress

We differentiate psychological stress from cognitive stress. Cognitive stress relates to the use of the intellect to perform analytical tasks, use information, plan, make decisions, and concentrate. In excess, over taxing the intellect is a cause of psychological stress. Psychological, physical, and environmental stress multiply cognitive stress.

At some point tiredness sets in, you hit a wall, logical thinking slows and stops, minor distractions become major obstacles. It is time to stop and take a break from the mental effort. Make the break long enough for you to rest and recover. It can be an hour, an evening, or a day or two.

Interestingly, it is often during these breaks that cognitive barriers disappear and there are breakthroughs.

 

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Physical and Environmental Stress

Physical stress is the pressure of doing. Muscles are exercised to accomplish work. Even sitting at a desk and working on a computer are stressful physical activities.

Environmental stress is caused by factors like noise, odors, crowding, and vibrations. It results in physical and psychological stress. When the work environment does not support the kind of work being done, performers and performance suffer.

When we moderate effort to avoid overwork, physical stress is healthy and invigorating. When we overdo it, we pull muscles and burn out. Psychological stress increases as we become physically less comfortable and capable.

For example, faced with a tight deadline, when the back starts to ache, and you can’t work without strain you might fail to take a needed stretch-and-move break. Your aches become a distraction and you become more prone to anxiety, aggression, error, and injury. Performance suffers.

 

As with cognitive stress, watch for signs like strain and discomfort. Take a break to rest and recover.

 

The Stress Response

Stress can be harmful or helpful.

Stress has a felt-sense, a bodily experience, a knowing. Symptoms are tension, rapid heartbeat, a need for help, faster breathing. Take these as wakeup signals, and you can accept and let go into optimal performance. Take them as dangerous and harmful and they become so.

Transform worry into a search for all the threats to meeting your objectives, likelihood of their occurrence and what you might do about them. Worry allowed to obsessively continue without addressing it strains the body and mind. It makes getting things done well more difficult. It is unpleasant, and when it is expressed in conversation it affects others.

 

A study cited in a TED talk by Dr Kelly McGonigal[2] found that people who did not view stress as harmful were healthier than those who viewed it as harmful. It seems logical to infer that they were better able to make the best of stressful situations and were less affected physically. Working comfortably promotes optimal performance.

 

Manage Stress

Stress is necessary and unavoidable. Manage it well and it is useful, manage it poorly or not at all and it is harmful. Becoming aware of their symptoms and impacts on performance and wellness, overstress and self-imposed stress are avoidable by matching expectations to capacity, eliminating environmental stressors, and managing the internal conditions that create worry and mental tension. Each of us can learn and use self-awareness, and breath and concentration techniques to manage our stress.

 

 

There are many techniques for managing stress. You can visit www.self-awareliving.com for some ideas. Also check out the following PM Times articles for more on this subject:

[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/stress
[2] TED Talk How to Make Stress Your Friend, McGonigal, Kelly, https://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare
PMTimes_Aug29_2023

Burnout: What It Is and How to Avoid It

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles.

Burnout impacts personal, project, and organizational performance. Therefor it is important for project managers, performers, and executives to understand what it is and how to manage and avoid it.

 

What Burnout Is

Burnout is “a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.”[1]

 

On a personal level, chronic stress and overwork leads to relationship problems, illness, a lack of motivation, disengagement, low energy, and suboptimal performance. Personal well-being impacts project performance and organizational health. When performers are suffering from burnout symptoms, they are less productive, more prone to leaving, less creative, withdrawn, more likely to become frustrated and angry and to engage in unnecessary and poorly managed conflict.

 

Burnout is not just being tired and needing a vacation. Studies have defined it more precisely, provided measurements, and have identified factors that contribute to it. The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) was developed by Christina Maslach in 1981 to evaluate and measure burnout. In her 2016 study[2] she makes it clear that, as with all aspects of wellness there are degrees of symptoms on a continuum.

 

Symptoms

Research identified three interrelated symptoms – exhaustion, disengagement, and reduced effectiveness.

  • Exhaustion is loss of energy and fatigue. It occurs when there is too much stress caused by unhealthy performance demands (chronic overwork). It can be a short-term experience following an intensive physical, emotional, or mental activity. Short-term exhaustion can be treated by moderating performance demands and taking rest and recovery time. If it goes untreated and becomes chronic, burnout follows.
  • Disengagement is affected by a sense of not being cared for by leadership and of the futility of the work. People lose a psychological connection to their work. Involvement and enthusiasm suffer. Performers, whether executives, managers, or staff, just put in their time instead of being actively engaged in their work. self-worth suffers. They become cynical and either engage in unnecessary conflict or withdraw to avoid engaging in meaningful debates.
  • Reduced effectiveness is tied to both exhaustion and lack of engagement. With tiredness, less involvement and enthusiasm, performers become less productive and less effective. That results in greater stress as performance goals become more difficult to achieve. Greater stress feeds exhaustion and lack of engagement.

 

Causes

Symptoms have causes. Identifying the causes helps us find the most effective treatment.

Burnout is the result of poorly managed chronic workplace stress. Workplace stress is inevitable, not enough stress and performance suffers, overstress and performance suffers. Managing workplace stress is maintaining the dynamic balance among personal non-workplace stress, individual psychologies, the pressure of workplace and cultural performance expectations, and physical and mental effort.

Address poorly managed workplace stress by exploring its causes.

 

  • Ignorance and not caring are the main culprits. Ignoring, denying, or underestimating the impact of overwork and chronic stress enables burnout to sneak up on you. Unlike a broken bone that results from a specific incident, it emerges overtime as exhaustion, disengagement, and reduced effectiveness interact. Without mindfulness and self-awareness, one becomes burned out without realizing that it is happening.
  • Workaholism and fear of failure are compulsions to work excessively hard and for overly long hours. This feeds the tendency to underestimate the effects of overwork as well as the stress that comes with not being able to achieve personal and organizational goals. The compulsion to work overtaxes the mind and body. It is emotional stress multiplying physical stress.
  • High-intensity workplaces. Some organization cultures reward workaholism while stoking the fear of getting fired or not getting ahead. Imagine the impact of an attitude that sees performers, including project and functional managers, as being easily replaced. Like slaves on an ancient galley, when an oarsman is burned out, they are tossed overboard and replaced.

 

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Some professional service and consulting firms bring in waves of highly motivated and capable associates and put them in a position where they must choose to devote themselves to work to get ahead or be gone. Those who manage their stress well can succeed, some realize they do not want to pay the cost for success, others keep at it and burn out.

  • Management issues. Some managers do not recognize that there are differences in people’s capacity for demanding work and stress. They may drive performance and create unnecessary stress on performers who are valuable contributors but cannot live up to unrealistic expectations. Setting irrational objectives and not providing necessary resources is a management issue that causes unnecessary stress.
  • Stress management skills are used to avoid burnout and improve performance when under stress. These skills work to relax, recover, and direct effort. They support the self-awareness needed to avoid burn out.

 

Project Work

Beware, project performance is the kind of work that can easily lead to burnout. Projects often have tight deadlines and budgets along with expectations for quality performance. If these are not managed well, project managers and performers become stressed. If they move from high intensity project to high-intensity project without a break, burnout is inevitable.

 

Treatment

Awareness of the nature and impact of burnout is the principal means for avoiding and treating it. There are two treatment dimensions, personal and organizational.

  • Personal – Everyone, regardless of their role, has the responsibility to manage their wellness. Cultivate the mindful self-awareness that gives you the ability to recognize when you are getting tired, losing your enthusiasm, and becoming less effective and efficient. Recognize it before it becomes overwhelming. Act.

Take a break or a vacation, ask for help, get some physical exercise, learn and use stress management techniques to make yourself more responsive, resilient and better able to thrive in the midst of stress. Assess your reasons for being stressed to the point of burnout. Is your stress self-imposed or driven by your work situation?

What can you do about it? Cultivate mindful self-awareness to enable you to look within and cut through whatever is driving you to overachieve. Push back to negotiate rational and reasonable demands and work schedules. Consider leaving a toxic environment.

  • Organizational – Leadership is responsible for creating an environment that supports organizational success. Success is accomplished, at least in part, by promoting individual wellness. That means to regularly assess attitudes, set reasonable demands and methods to avoid burnout. Wellness programs such as mindfulness meditation, stress management techniques, and opportunities for physical exercise and ‘being heard’ are great. They are most effective when they are integrated in a business process that promotes rational expectations and practical work-life balance and includes awareness of the impact of burnout on the business.

 

Find Dynamic Balance

Avoid burnout by managing your own stress and then use your influence to help your team find the right balance by assessing both individual and organizational goals and needs.

 

[1] How To Measure Burnout Across A Global Organisation https://lattice.com/library/how-to-measure-burnout-across-a-global-organisation#:~:text=The%20Maslach%20Burnout%20Inventory%20(MBI,the%20University%20of%20California%2C%20Berkeley
[2] Latent burnout profiles: A new approach to understanding the burnout experience https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213058615300188