Avoiding the Burnout Zone with Dr. Ana Melikian

if you have an organization that people are proud oh I put 60 hours 80 hours you have a burnout culture almost for sure it's just a question of time to start to see the turnover [Music] rise andna thank you so much for joining me for the let's talk business podcast it's wonderful to be here so today's topic is I think we have spoken once or twice on the topic but I think get on the mind of every entrepreneur every leader at one point in their career in their lifespan which is the topic of burnout so I'm very happy we we have you on the show and there's a lot of questions I have prepared so hopefully we'll see how fast time flies in this episode so thank you so much for joining me I guess I'll start off with since people don't know you just give us a little bit of brief understanding of how you got to be an expert in the burnout topic so my background is psychology I have a pH enged in Psychology and I was in Academia about 20 years ago and in the last 10 years I'm being working as a business coach with loads of business owners so that is always my frame of reference is trying to understand the human being why we behave in the way that we behave and the even in terms of marketing and business and business development and I really have this believe there is so much evidence to put it out there that we can make a bigger impact if we avoid and we prevent burnout if we take care of ourselves and the people that work for us and our customers and everybody involved so I'm really in this mission to try to help individuals and organizations to how can we do our Mission as businesses that we have that is the prophets but also the people involved and I will also throw the planet there taking care of the planet that is the only one that we have to live and how can we do this in a way that is a win-win for everybody got it got it so I want to start with the fundamental question about burnout so burnout is something that I find in the business Community not from a psychology perspective but just more in in the habits or in the conversation which became like a very casual phrase yes rather than a technical term that means something specific we open up a conversation oh I feel burnout and sometimes it's very confusing to see to draw the line what is burnout versus what is just stress and you know yesterday was a great day you didn't have burnout all of a sudden today you have some stress and you you're questioning everything you're doing so could you shed some light as far as the overall difference between stress and burnout and what are the symptoms and and then we'll go into even deeper yeah and you are totally right burnout has become this catchall phrase or word that people just throw it around like is the the fashion word nowadays and I think that happens because there is really truly burnout but I think we are in a burnout culture and using that word as a catch phrase is a reflection of it but then becomes a disservice because we don't know what is really burned out from other things like you're saying stress a bad day and so forth so in Psychology since the 1970s burnout is being something that has been studied so we have more if in the 70s we are speaking 40 50 years of research behind burnout and the World Health Organization has a very specific definition of burnout uh that is seeing three Dimensions enter into play in the workforce that creates in the individual the sense of exhaustion physically emotionally people feel totally drained and then there is another dimension that they call it cynicism they feel disconnected from their purpose why bother why doing this and then a third dimension of a feeling of lack of efficiency professional efficiency so technically burnout happens when people are exhausted totally disconnected to the point of being cynical and feeling lack of efficiency but in practice we want to prevent this to ween because it takes time to recover of being fully burned out and is really important to see that most people are in a continue and not totally burnout this make sense yeah absolutely so how do you define the part of like when somebody could be totally not in the burnout Zone and still have stress yes while be fully burnt out and not even have stress it's a totally different symptom Bas what you're saying correct okay so I think it's better to see this as and we have instruments we can assess this very easily in a 10-minute survey we can have a a feeling where people so you have imagine you have a company with 50 people and the people are speaking about burnout and they are and some people are even doing some sick leave and you your turnover numbers are getting a little bit worrisome you can in 10 minutes do a survey and then know where everybody or you say have like a snapshot of where everybody maybe you have like 10% burnout but most of the people I will bet will be in the overextended profile the disengaged profile and the percentage in the engage so people are in this see this as a Continuum so if I describe the burnout as the lower extreme in The Other Extreme of these will be people in the engaged profile that is where we want to have most of our Workforce they are productive they are on purpose with their own values and the values of the company there is where we want to have in that full engagement on their optimal engagement where we want to have most people but the reality is that people are not all there and you will have the overextended that the overextended is like people that they are still on purpose but they are exhausted so they have one of the elements of burnout but they are still on purpose but if we don't take care of them they will eventually burn out it's a little bit like many leaders are in this position they are totally connected with their purpose but they are so pushing pushing drilling drilling that is a little bit like that image of the the frog in the pot with boiling water they don't realize that water is increasing in temperature going higher and higher and suddenly they wake up one day that is not just one bad day they feel I cannot do this anymore and we want to avoid this yeah so interesting thing that I've realized that you know the tendency of people would say that you know burnout is something that somebody is not successful and therefore the lack of success is turning them into a burnout on what they're doing interestingly enough that I have found leaders that maybe be very successful even over successful and they also achieve the same level of burnouts what could you share on that yeah because that has to do with the the causes of burnout so let me just conclude one thought and then let's go that because the root causes of burnout sure so I spoke about if we see this the burnout as a continue in the two extremes we have burned out in that extreme we have the engage of the optimal engagement then I was describing the overextended profile that we have to pay a lot of attention to it and then there is another profile that we have also to put a light on that is the disengaged profile that is somebody that still can be productive they are not exhausted they have the energy but they are disconnected they are cynical so why bother think about the quiet quitting but if we know how many people we have in these different kind think about a a matrix with four quadrants if we know where people the percentage of people in each of these quad quadrants then we can do something about to bring for instance more of the engaged more of the disengaged people will relieve the workload of the overextended and bring more people to the engaged that is always the goal and what you are referring to that I think is very important is burnout is a symptom or something that we see in an individual level the person gets burned out but usually is the result of some dynamics that are in the background the root causes are in the background and yes one of the root causes can be the lack of success in the terms of I don't have control over the situation I'm not getting the reward That I Want from this and that can be one of the root causes of burnout but it's just one of for many people mainly for leaders the main root cause of burnout out is the workload they have more on that plight that is humanly possible to deal with and maybe they are struggling with delegation of that to their teams so you're saying that just to makeing sure that I got this correctly so burnout is something that the individual feels but the the root cause of it could be something external that's actually okay so let me ask you this so could a person have a personal challenges that will cause a burnout in what they do on in the business oh yes I say if you think about so many demens but imagine that you have somebody on your family that is sick um the that is demanding a lot of your time and effort you have less capacity to put on your work or you are spending nights without sleeping because you are worry about stuff all of that takes a tool and we should take that in consideration absolutely okay now is burnout something that obviously this is what you do is help people with burnout but is burnout something that could be basically you know felt in the earlier stages prior to a fullblown burnout and that is my mission I think in organizations we should be focused on burnout prevention okay that I think and there is a t that we can do to prevent the full burnout and one of the things is assessing where people are it's like if you are driving if your business is a car and imagine that in the dashboard you only have the speedometer MH you need more information than that you need to be able to have some indications to see if things are starting to the engine is starting to overheat you need to have that information you need to know what is the gas in your car if you have enough for the next trip that you are going to make so there we have the instruments to assess where people are in these four quadrants so that gives you really a picture it's like able again with a car to look under the wood of the car and see what is really happening and do something about before you see the car exploding so to speak in smokes and stop so there is a t that you can do to assess and even to know what are the root causes it's just a workload problem is people feeling that there is a lack of fairness in the workplace a misalignment in values not having a sense of community and not feeling that is the rewards are fair so there is a t of dynamics that we can have an idea and then we can do things to intervene on them and also just realizing and about the cost of burnout because mainly when we are speaking about companies that are growing very fast sometimes I say imagine a company that you start the core team you were four or five people in the beginning and things are going really well and you start to add stuff and maybe you are not even measuring uh your turnover rate and that is really important to know of course turnover is not just because of burnout but it's an indication something that a company should know their percentage of turnover and now how it matches with the industry average and so forth so there is a 10 when we have the information so first is be able to have the information to know what to look to design a dashboard that is really meaningful and then there are simple things that can have an incredible impact in preventing burnout MH so what would you say are the he symptoms let's say as a leader if they start seeing to say you know this might be a beginning of a burnout with an employee the number of hours that people are working that gives and of course there is a loue there is a big thing everybody can push in a certain direction and we want to have a team that really puts their all in the lounge but you cannot expect that that will be their new normal because eventually they will burn out so it's okay to push for a certain amount of time it's like a compe thing you are preparing to a competition there is the game day or the game season you want to go there with all the force but then give space for people to recover got it so if you have an organization that people are proud oh I put 60 hours 80 hours you have a burnout culture almost for sure it's just a question of time to start to see the turnover rise and of course if it's easy to bring more people in if you are in economical situation on an industry that is easy to bring new blood in maybe it's not a big problem but I think we are not I think people are realizing that is better for the business and to the grow of the business to keep the good people in the team and creating the work conditions for them to stay there at long term so let me ask you the same question a little different which is sometimes a employer would have a great employee and they start seeing a slacking in productivity and sometimes you don't know what it is is it a burnout is it just a person lost interest in the business in general or maybe they have something going on in their personal life what are the advice you would give a leader how to approach that in the right way that it should do more good than harm yeah and of course there is the basic things that keeping the communications open between and trying to see what is going on in the person lives that is always a manager making sure that you are training your managers to be able to have those conversations all those things are important but sometimes really is important to bring somebody from the outside because even if you are already a company that has an HR department and H Char will be aware and creating these Avenues of communication and all of that but if when you have an HR department if you can bring once in a while somebody from the outside allows your Workforce to be a little bit more honest and not be afraid of if I admit this what will happen to my career or I don't feel so it's it's like many times you can have the more efficient even in a family you can have somebody in the family that is a doctor and they know their stuff but if we heard the same information from from an outsider doctor we are going to take it with a different angle and pay more attention probably to that so that is one of the things that we have to create of course a culture within of open communication as much as possible but also understanding that there will be always limits of that open communication internally and in that case an external element of a coach of a consultant can be very helpful got it now let me ask you something else let's say somebody has developed a burnout either an employee or the leader you know business owner themselves what are some of the Practical advice you could give people listening to this that they could start easing the burnout or maybe even getting out of that burnout phase yeah and I really really underline that the best strategy is preventing the burnout sure so when things are starting and the the way that we Define is that one of the questions in the questionnaire is like is in terms of frequency a bad day is going to happen all the time a day that you feel exhausted a day that you feel disconnected if it's once a month okay pay attention to it see something that you can do but when it starts to be once a week and almost more days than not that is a big big red flag and give yourself some time so give yourself some time to take a weekend off or even a three days off and really create some time of reflection where you are if you are a leader and what you can be doing different is better to press the pause button and to take that three days off and put even a week leave and do something about it preventing you to go to the full burnout than when you are in full burnout because usually when people really getting for Burnout is when they just they check out they pass okay the they say I'm going out to start a new thing or they present their resignation and we want to avoid that in our key players but if a person already is in that situation it's absolutely possible to recover from burnout but please ask for professional help for it because really accelerates the recovery let me ask you also overarching question on this topic based on your experience so burnout is something that usually gets developed over time with as you said something is is is some something is happening externally or internally that's causing that we live in a world with a very fast phase world with social media and things happening so quickly have you seen based on the research and based on the clients you work with that burnout is happening sooner thday day and age than maybe 10 years ago or 20 years ago yes the celeration and if we think about I you say the covid-19 was a great example in certain industries to see that in the elare was like all the conditions for Burnout was there highly demand of their time there were not enough people to rotate they didn't knew exactly they didn't have control over the circumstance so was like the perfect conditions for Burnout and we are paying the price of it in terms of the number of health professionals that left the profession and even knowing that takes time to recover from burnout takes more time to train a doctor or a nurse than to recover on burnout so that we also have to put that in perspective but absolutely we live in a a society that the acceleration of change is here and is here to stay now with the artificial intelligence so if we don't change the Dynamics we are going to see more burnout than less is a little bit you were we were speaking a little bit before about the burnout being felt at the level of the individual and one image that we use a lot when we speak about the burnout is like the canary in the coal mine uh in the old times when they were in the coal mine they will bring the little Canary in there in with this is really true they had a little thing that they brought the canaries down and when the canary Flip or start not to behave normally they knew that there were loads of toxic gases that were not healthy for people and they will Evacuate the mine somebody that really gets the full burnout is like this Canary you know that something is wrong we can help the individual to be more resilient absolutely to develop self- leadership self Mastery be more productive absolutely but doesn't make logical sense to bring that more stronger Canary back to a CO mine full of toxic fumes we also have to create a better work environment yeah so it's both things taking care of the individual but improving the system so when we speak about the pathway that we can take more people from burnout to Optimal engagement yes assessment know where we are and have an idea of that and is easy to do and not expensive to do then so consider a BC practical things a assessment you have to have the dashboard that you know where people are in that burnout engage Continuum and what are the root causes and how much is costing the company not doing something about the cost of inaction now that you have have that picture that assessment you can do things the B is a lot about boosting Choice opportunities it's a lot about self-development leadership training um helping people be more in a proactive than a reactive State this we can go back to Steve cavy the seven habits of highly effective people at the core is about how can we help people to be more proactive than reactive and there's a lot of self-development work there but then the C is cultivate work sustainability we speak a lot about environment sustainability that as companies we have to take care of it of the planet but we also have to be speaking about what is sustainable in terms of workloads in terms of the pace of change and how can we create a profitable business taking care of our Workforce got it got it let me let me ask you another question on this which is do you see a difference on the characteristic of a person who is more prone to get you know to get burnout versus other or doesn't discriminate everybody doesn't discriminate can be a question of time I you say without any doubt a younger person has a little bit more leeway and resistant to pull all night to work more hours and sometimes they don't have the responsibilities of the family that's somebody in their 40s and 50 as absolutely as we are young we we can push more our body we will pay it later the our body keep a score but everybody if all of us have limits got it now let's speak to the leaders that are listening to this what are some very good habits a leader could start doing on a daily basis that will just help them on the prevention we spoke so much about prevention yeah just basic habits we spoke about you know the long hours or all nighters other than that what else could a person do for their health in order to make sure that they stay healthy and they control they not un unfortunately fall into a burnout mode yeah so let me give you a couple of signs that they really as a leader they should pay a lot of attention to for instance if they always were very mtiv or in general are motivate about what they do and they start to wake up in the morning and feel oh my gosh fighting with the with the snooze button and oh what feeling really things that they used to feel energized about doing now is a drug that is a big sign that they themselves can getting into the burnout thing so I want to put that out there as one of the things that I see that is one of the signs that people have to pay attention in terms of what they can do a simple thing and this I I teach a lot in many of my speaking when I I speak about this I call it the pi method so just three things p i e that you have to remember P is for pause all of us need to press the pause button there are many types of pauses that we can do we can do like going to a retreat going to a conference it's like a micro pause that is great but our day today we are having to be able to do what I call schedule pauses so one thing that every leader should be doing is make sure that in their schedule they have schedule pauses in the morning to look to their day at the end of the day to look back and look forward to the next day and ideal also reset pause in the middle of the day just that creating that Pro practice can make a huge difference what you do in that pause a moment depending of person to person for some people can be the journaling can be the planning can be meditation combination of these is different from person to person that creating that schedule pause is like essential for our well-being and that is what allow people to be ready to practice what I call the micro pauses that is seeing the space between the stimulus and response that allow us to be proactive and not reactive so P start with a P for developing pauses pausing essential simple even one minute and if you tell me I don't have one minute red flag we have a problem if you don't have a minute as a leader you have a huge problem in front of you means that you are just reacting reacting reacting and you are not and if you are reacting you your Workforce will be in the same doing the same and not good big big alarm Bell there then the the I of the pi so Pi the I is all about increasing our self-awareness one of the core things of personal development self-development increase our self-awareness accelerates everything and understanding just thinking very simple yes we can work our mindset is really really important but it's not that alone is not enough okay mindset the mindset work alone is not enough we have to work our thoughts our beliefs but that will have a reflection in the way that we feel and what we do in our day-to-day and the be behave the way that we behave so at least think about these three dimensions think the thoughts our emotions and feelings second dimension and then our actions and behavior here's the third dimensions and don't see this that because some people is are okay we change our thoughts that will change our feelings and they change what we do and the results we get it's totally true but for some people is easier to start with changing something that they are doing so for instance if you are stuck in a situation you are bunging your head against the wall the best thing that you can doing that maybe it's going out for a walk in nature or walking around the block just to to move your body and suddenly things start to fall into place and you start to understand and they having a breakthrough so don't see I I always like to use the image of a triangle see thing the thoughts the feelings and the behaviors as three sides of triangle if you lose one of the sides You Cee to have a triangle you need all the three sides and for some people is easier to enter with their thinking and with their mindset but some people are more connected with their feelings so you start there for some people is the doing you start there and then ask yourself in terms of increasing your self-awareness how this reflects in the other sides of the triangle and just by doing this you can increase usually your selfawareness and then finally the E of the pi so P for pause I for increasing the self-awareness and the E is for embracing experimentation because anything that you decide doing are going sometimes to work very well other times not work very well but the thing about considered as an experiment is that even when it doesn't work you have a lot of data to learn from so there is no failures just new information from learn from and this is in anything of personal development that you do self-development and professional development you have to if you embrace the this experimentation mindset you are much more resilient and able to learn from whatever is the program that you are doing got it let me ask you a final question on this is there's a increasing uh level of awareness towards breath work yes have you seen a a correlation a connection between somebody doing breath work to help them with solve or prevent burnout oh yes bread work is one of the easiest ways to start to do that even for the pause something to experiment with because it can be very simple and very quickly and being aware of our bread is one of the things we know that if our breathing rhythm is very quick like two seconds in 2 second inhalation and two seconds exhalation that means that our body in a stress level so just by observing another person breath you know if they are in stress mode or not just by looking to yourself and being self-aware of your own breathing counting your bread in and out you can know if you are in a stress state or not so think about the power of that and if we spend all the day like that we are going to pay the price and just amplifying the exhalation and the inhalation just there to more 4 seconds in 4 seconds out for one minute we are resetting our bodies the sympathetic the parasympathetic the stress system to the relax system in a simple way we are resetting our body to be in a more relaxed State and there are exercises that are very easy to learn that in one minute you can do the reset so you you highly encourage people to do some level of breath work in order to a use it for the pause as you mentioned before or even just general to clear their mind and have a more clear State of Mind absolutely and if you think about most meditation methods mod mindfulness methods they start with the breath MH even if we think about the first breath Last Breath there is from the spiritual element to the Practical element if we are in a place with lots of toxin fumes the first thing we we cannot breathe here we need to breathe and we can learn to breathe better and we can control is one of the keys to control our physiology is to learn how to breathe wow that's that's great how could people find out more about what you do and and a little bit more about what you do and can I tell a tip for somebody that is in a stress situation a very very practical tip because about breathing because usually when we are very under stress in a very demense situation and think about a leader going to a highly stressful meeting and he starts to get the that very shallow bread at the top one of the usual advice is how breathe deep and they try to breathe deep and they cannot do it and they get even more stress or more even panicky I always tell people to imagine that their length is like a glass a glass of water cup of water and when we are breathing very shallow the water so literally our lenss have a lot of residual air within it so we only have the capacity to breath shallow at the top of our lenses like if you have a glass of water it's full of water there is only very limited space for putting more water so the first thing that we have to do is empty the glass to be able to fill it out again so we have first to empty our lungs as much as we can expel as much air as we can until we feel engaging the muscles in our belly then the lungs are empty of residual air and we can inhale M easily so start with the exhalation first and then breathe deep just that change can make a huge yeah I think this is one of the biggest mistakes people do even they want to start breeding better but they just do it the reverse so just that breathe out first as much as you can literally like you are blowing a balloon or trying to blow out all the birthday candles of a cake and then naturally you are going to inel so our listeners two things for for sure that you could take away from our conversation today first of all we spoke about the pause and for those people that have you said they don't have time to pause pause you got to breathe and if you breathe well at least that's going to be the pause thank you so much for that so how could people find out more about what you do so the best way is my website that is my name Anna f with one n and my last name malikan m e l i k i n.com from there you can see all the other things that I'm doing including my podcast mindset Zone very cool for the links resources mentioned this episode check out the show notes at www.p group.com podcast where we'll link up to your website and to your podcast let's close with a four rapid fire questions are you ready okay number one a book that changed your life oo so many B men search for meaning number two a piece of advice you got that you never forget it takes three years to learn how to speak and a lifetime to learn when to stay quiet oh this is so good thank you number three anything you wish you could go back and do it differently I'm not one of regrets but I don't know egging my dead more and tell him that I love before he had passed away oh wow and last and final question what's still on your bucket list to achieve be more in the present moment and keep walking my talk that's cool the last guest I interviewed said my bucket list is to live tomorrow and I I like it it's very similar sometimes you have these very huge bucket lists and there's a place for that and sometimes we just want to be present today or tomorrow and do what we love doing Anna thank you so much for joining us I know your time is valuable that is why in the name of our listeners we'll forever be grateful for sharing some of your time with us today it's been a blast my pleasure thank [Music] you