I hate my job
January 20, 2009
Burnout used to be so much easier to handle. Getting things done, meeting deadlines, juggling a hundred different conversations, everything that is involved in navigating the modern workplace. It was stressful yes, and we would complain. But it is different now.
The GFC knocked the economic world off its axis and has taken us with it. The office now seems gripped by a collective shock-induced psychosis. It seems every conversation is infused with a frantic exploration of each persons depth of fear: What now? How bad will it be? How are things at your place?
To add to all this, it the work itself has turned from positive, productive future building to anxious, defensive plays: postponing projects, checking balance sheets, calling creditors, shoring up what might be left of the strategies that were going to take the company to the next level but are now full of holes.
It is, in short, depressing. Literally.
Personal discontent can be disguised in the good times. But the downturn can fill the workplace with dread – the firings, the loss of control, survival guilt – all of these things can build on each other to create an almost insurmountable personal wall to climb. In these circumstances, depression can be an escape valve, a personal protective mechanism that envelops the individual and colours everything in their lives.
The constant pressure changes people.
In Freud in the City, David Freud, former vice chairman of UBS Investment Banking tells of the weird environment that engulfed SG Warburg when that organisation collapsed over a period of months in the mid-1990s.
“The behaviour of directors and employees became increasingly bizarre as leadership collapsed,” he says. “My mentor, the chairman of the securities division of the bank, soaked up his share of the blame for the fiasco. Nine months later he collapsed with leukaemia and died within the year. I was, and remain, convinced that the illness had been stress-induced by the events of the previous year.”
Few would say that any job is worth that price, but many feel they don’t have a choice. Wrapped up in the trials of everyday, the longer-term perspective is out of reach. Psychologists are warning that an increase in negative stress in the workplace is likely to mean an increase in the incidence of workplace depression – the symptoms of which are eerily similar to those of burnout: feelings of powerlessness, hopelessness, emotional exhaustion, detachment, isolation, irritability, frustration, cynicism and apathy. Sound like anyone you know?
Leading the despondent
And what of the leaders, the people who are supposed to motivate their workforce to build the future, to lend their discretionary effort to the vision?
Management literature is strangely silent about motivating people when times are bad. The gurus with their Fish! formulas of fun, engagement and incentives have a lot less to say when there just simply isn’t the time or the money. But there are a few brave souls out there who are saying what needs to be said.
Tom Peters, the guru of Good to Great, puts his finger on the button when he says: “It doesn’t get any better than this. There is no such thing as a good-great leader who has not confronted, been battered by, and stumbled through-overcome a catastrophe. The upside for the resilient and gutsy and creative is as high as the downside is low for those who attempt to hide in the closet until the fur stops flying.”
This is an opportunity, in other words, for those who can dig deep, do what needs to be done, and come out the other side.
Peters has no less than 26 ideas for getting through the downturn, a mixture of personal and organisational strategy tips. They include things such as working out more, in order to “get high or less low on chemical cocktails generated by killer workouts”. They also include taking advantage of the opportunities that will inevitably arise from the turmoil: “Take advantage of others timidity: tighten the belt with a mighty tug, but in a key area or two, double the strategic project budget rather than halve it.”
All good advice for those in a position to take it. The broader question is whether leading in bad times takes substantially different skills to leading in good times. The difference is surely in the ability to connect – to communicate with people who are suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and crack through the shell created by the mass psychosis and hysteria of the last few months. For that, it seems, leaders won’t be able to turn to the usual mix of trite formula and motivational mulch. Instead, they’ll need to fight their own demons and manage their own burnout – digging deeper perhaps then they have ever had to before.
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