With workers across the U.S. experiencing burnout, psychologists Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter share what they've discovered over decades of research in their new book 'The Burnout Challenge.' Turns out, the best way to fight burnout isn't for individuals to practice self care, but for employers to reimagine the way they approach workplace culture. 

With workers across the U.S. experiencing burnout, psychologists Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter share what they've discovered over decades of research in their new book 'The Burnout Challenge.' Turns out, the best way to fight burnout isn't for individuals to practice self care, but for employers to reimagine the way they approach workplace culture.&nbsp;

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The Majority of U.S. Workers Are Burned Out – This Book Explains How to Fix It

So if you're feeling exhausted with your job, it might be more than just stress, psychologists and researchers Christina, mazelike and Michael, pete lighter have been studying burnout for years and now the new book you see right there. The burnout challenge is hoping to change how we work guys. Great to have both of you here with us. We've heard a lot about burnout since the pandemic started, but it has a much longer history than that Christina. What are sort of the origins of burnout? Well, it's interesting because the term has been used for many, many, many years to mean a lot of different things. And so part of the problem is how do we distinguish what we're talking about in terms of workplace stress? Um, I think a lot of it has to do. We're from Silicon Valley, the burnout shops that came around in the 50s and the 60s. And we're talking about uh, startups where 24 7 we own you you're gonna work hard, you burn out and then stock options, whatever and and moving on. Uh and I'm the daughter of an engineer who did work with Nasa and we would hear about rocket boosters burning out and light bulbs burn out. I mean they stop functioning and doing what they need to do. And I think that's got, you know, the word stress and everything got incorporated into interesting, you know, Michael in the book. I know that you identify six things that distinguished burnout from regular workplace stress. And some of those things include, you know, lack of control and sufficient wars. Social area. We're putting up a list right here, socially toxic workplace community, absence of fairness and values conflict. Why are these factors so key the key? Because they give you a basis for action in order to prevent burnout from developing in the first place. And that's what we talk about in the book quite a bit. Is that it isn't just I mean, if you can reduce workload, well, that would be a good thing. But also often that's not the possibility for you. So, people having a greater sense of control, but a sense of decision making when they're making their job. If they're around people who are really appreciating them and supporting them is going to push away from burnout. Whereas really bad conflict uh and and and selfishness sort of pushes people towards burnout. So, those kinds of other areas are action points for preventing burnout from happening in the first place. Christina. Let's talk about the costs here of burnout, not just for employees, but let's talk about that too, but also for workplaces here, because you would think workplaces are like, oh, we're probably saving money because we're pushing you more and more and more. But at the end of the day, they're probably actually losing money from you. It's it's a shortsighted kind of thing because they're assuming that people can just rise to the occasion and if we just say more, you know, but you've heard that mantra do more with less. Okay, well, people are having to take more hours out of what out of sleep and out of their personal life and the more you put into the one basket of work, you know of doing your job if that's not going well and it's going beyond your capability as a human being to actually live and function and be healthy, you're gonna have a lot of problems. So it's it's first and foremost at some point a management problem to manage those chronic job stressors. If you don't manage that well you're gonna have productivity problems, you're gonna have health problems. It's gonna be very costly. Well I don't think anybody wants to be burned out. So what are some of the things we can do to prevent burnout? Um I think what we're trying to argue is that if I can just turn it around a little bit. The problem is that people tend to focus on the individual. What can you do about it and you should do something because you know it's your problem, why can't you keep up with it? It's a really blaming the victim sort of thing. It's a response to chronic stressors. Job stressors so we've got to fix those if we just help you cope, that doesn't change the job stress. You know that that's coming at you. So really trying to change this from a me problem into a wee problem which says okay we could do our team could be doing, how can we get rid of some of those pebbles in our shoes, which are driving us crazy? How could we redesign the job so that there's a better support for this kind of thing? Well, I hope all the bosses are listening out there again. We gotta thank again, Christine and Michael, thank you so much for bringing in the book the Burnout challenge. Make sure you read it so we can change some of this culture surrounding burnout. Alright, thank you guys so much for joining us.