Burned-Out Or Bored? Get Over It!

Burnout is not necessarily caused by excessive stress. On the contrary, it is often the result of boredom due to a paucity of challenges that test your mettle. According to research, work that has stopped engaging you can be harmful to your wellbeing. But it is possible to insulate yourself from the phenomenon that affects millions of unsuspecting executives 

- Steven Berglas

If an executive laments, “I am so burnedout,” he is conveying li le useful information. Like all psychological constructs that make their way into popular parlance, burnout is ill-defined and regularly misused. Most people believe that the statement “I’m burned-out” conveys the fact that they are six-sigma more stressed than they have ever been or should ever be. Not true. In the same vein, most people believe that CEOs do not suffer burnout owing to the commonly held belief that those who sit at the top corporate hierarchies give stress; they don’t get stressed. If stress and burnout are close cousins, then CEOs are, logically, burnout-proof.

Sadly, just the opposite is true. 75 per cent of my coaching clients are CEOs, and my practice has been that way for decades. As for “giving rather than getting stressed,” who cares? Burnout, particularly among C-level executives, has little if anything to do with stress. I should say, more accurately, that burnout has virtually nothing to do with distress, the noxious psychological state that occurs when a person is forced to cope with demands that exceed his capabilities.

Here’s an example of stress: You’re the CEO of a company that is bleeding red ink and your star salesperson tells you, “I need a raise or I’ll be forced to leave.” With no money to pay this peak performer and the awareness that without her you’ll never be able to stay in business, the circumstance you are in is prototypically stressful. You’ll do all you can to save your saleslady and your business, work round the clock to fi nd a way to keep her, but unless you fi nd the resources for that raise or reach a rapprochement with your invaluable employee, you will experience unabated stress.