Adam Grant On What The Holidays Can Tell You About Burnout

We have all been there before. As the Holidays or a vacation approaches, your energy reserves are low. You are running on fumes. You struggle to get across the finish line, pulled by the promise of time to rest and recover on the other side.

Wharton School professor Adam Grant suggests this may not be the best way to head into the Holidays:

"The holidays shouldn't be a time to recharge. They should be a time to celebrate. If work is exhausting people to the point that they're using their time off to recover, you might have a burnout culture. A healthy organization doesn't leave people drained in the first place."

Grant has a point. Any challenging job will test and tire us at times. But if exhaustion is a pattern, you may want to look at how you are managing your energy. And if you see your employees limping to the finish line before the Holidays, you may have a burnout problem in your organization. 

Make recovery a regular practice

Allowing time for rest, recovery, and recreation should be a part of your daily and weekly routine—not an indulgence reserved for time off. I regularly encourage my executive coaching clients to take inventory of what activities fuel their energy and feed their morale. You should prioritize these activities and schedule them into your calendar just as you would an important business meeting.

Research has established that we perform at our best when we alternate intervals of intense effort with periods of rest and recovery. Elite athletes have found they make more progress through "interval training," in which they break up a workout into stretches where they go all out, with plenty of time for rest and recovery in between. Similarly, the behavioral scientist Anders Ericsson (best known for the "10,000-hour rule") discovered that top performers in various other fields followed a similar pattern: working with high focus for 60 to 90 minutes and then taking a break.

You will have to find a rhythm that works best for you and the realities of your job. But try experimenting with ways of breaking your day up into high-focus "chunks" and periods of recovery. That recovery might be a short walk, fifteen minutes of meditation, or just switching to an enjoyable, less taxing activity. Approach your day with the mindset that you are managing your energy, not your time.

How leaders can prevent employee burnout

Leading by example and building recovery into your own routine is one of the most fundamental ways to model healthy behavior and avoid a culture of burnout in your organization. There are some other specific steps you can take to prevent employee burnout:

1. Pay attention to employee workload. My clients consistently report having too much to do and not enough time to do it—both for themselves and their employees. I encourage them to check in regularly with their direct reports to see if too much is on their plate. They should only be concerned with top priorities; other tasks are secondary or can be delegated. Err on the side of over-communicating. A constant feedback loop about employee workload goes a long way toward mitigating overwhelm and stress.
2. Be generous with time off when needed. One of the silver linings of the pandemic is that business leaders are generally more attuned to how an employee's personal concerns might be affecting them at work. Be proactive, check-in frequently, and make your employees feel comfortable asking for time off.
3. Be flexible with work hours if possible. This is not always feasible in every role or industry. But when you can, allow employees to choose when and where they can be most productive. 
4. Provide coaching and workshops. Focus on stress management, resilience, and mindfulness.
5. Have fun and celebrate with your team. Celebrating wins and the camaraderie of your team is a great antidote to burnout. Create team-building events and things like happy hours (even if they have to be virtual) to build morale and relationships.

Performance incentives and burnout

Business leaders should also be aware of how their organization's pay structure might inadvertently encourage burnout. Ashley Whillans of the Harvard Business School has found that employees whose pay structures includes bonuses and performance incentives are more likely to choose work over friends and family. They are 66% more likely to choose time with co-workers, 23% more likely to spend extra time on work projects, and willing to give up happiness to spend time with colleagues. 

"Our results suggest that how you start to view the world when you're paid under performance incentives is that any moment you are not working is a moment that's wasted," says Whillans. "The negative effects of constantly choosing work over personal relationships appear to accumulate over time and in turn contribute to negative mental health outcomes."

It is important to point out that performance incentives are not inherently bad. In some industries and roles, they may be optimal or even necessary. But in such organizations, managers should be mindful of how those same incentives might also incentivize behavior that leads to burnout. If this applies to you and your industry, take extra care to counter burnout with the strategies discussed above proactively. 

Beyond the question of performance incentives, Whillans's research reminds us that we should not equate high performance with long hours. Squeezing out a few extra hours of your employees' time will only backfire in the long run. Although we worked longer hours during the pandemic, abundant research indicates we are better off working smarter, not harder.

The days just before the Holidays are a perfect time to take stock of what is typically talked about as "work-life balance." I think of it more in terms of work-life engagement. We should seek to be engaged and energized in all areas of our lives. Your work life and the rest of your life should complement one another. Your time off should be more than a break from work, and your work should be more than just "work."