Burnout is usually discussed as something that happens to an individual.
Someone becomes exhausted. Motivation drops. Work feels
harder. Patience wears thin. Eventually, something has to give.
But there is another side to the conversation.
What happens to the people around us when sustained pressure changes the way we behave?
Under pressure, most of us shift in some way.
- We may become more controlling, less patient or harder to please.
- We may withdraw.
- We may stop listening as carefully.
- We may become more rigid, push harder, communicate less well or expect other people to absorb the same pressure we are carrying.
So perhaps there are two questions we need to ask when thinking about burnout at work:
Am I burning out? and Could my behaviour be contributing to strain for someone else?
What is burnout at work?
The World Health Organization describes burnout as an occupational phenomenon resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.
It identifies three broad characteristics:
- exhaustion or depleted energy
- growing distance, negativity or cynicism towards work
- reduced professional effectiveness
Burnout is not classified by the WHO as a medical condition and flowprofiler® does not diagnose burnout either.
What behavioural information can do is help people notice changes in the way they are responding to pressure, consider the impact of those changes, and identify where something may need to change.
10 signs of burnout at work worth noticing
No single behaviour tells us that somebody is experiencing burnout. People become tired, frustrated, distracted or disengaged for all sorts of reasons.
Patterns of behaviour are more useful than one-off moments, particularly when several changes appear together or continue over time.
1. Persistent exhaustion
This is more than being tired after a difficult week.
Someone who was previously able to manage their workload may begin to look consistently depleted. Ordinary tasks require more effort and recovery takes longer.
2. Growing cynicism
Conversations become more negative. Problems are expected.
Work that once felt worthwhile begins to feel irritating, pointless or disconnected from any useful outcome.
3. A reduced sense of effectiveness
Capable people can begin to feel that nothing they do makes much difference. Confidence falls and progress becomes harder to see, even when they are still contributing.
4. Working harder but achieving less
More effort does not always produce more output. Longer hours, constant activity and an inability to switch off can sit alongside poorer prioritisation, reduced focus and slower decision making.
5. Less patience with other people
Small frustrations begin to generate bigger reactions. Questions feel irritating.
Mistakes become harder to tolerate. Communication can become abrupt or overly transactional.
6. Becoming more rigid
Pressure can narrow our behavioural range.
We fall back on familiar approaches and become less willing to adapt, reconsider or explore alternatives. Consistency is useful. Rigidity is less so.
7. Pushing through everything
Perseverance is one of the behaviours we measure within resilienceflow®.
Used well, it helps people keep going when work is difficult.
Overused, it can become an unwillingness to stop, reassess or acknowledge that the current approach is no longer sustainable. A person can be highly resilient and still push too far.
8. Withdrawing
Not everybody becomes louder under pressure. Some people become quieter.
They participate less, share fewer concerns, ask for less help and gradually disconnect from colleagues. That can make a problem much harder to see.
9. Paying less attention to other people
When our own resources are stretched, our field of attention can narrow.
We may stop noticing how somebody else is coping. Communication becomes more task focused. We assume that other people can tolerate the same pressure we can.
Often, they cannot!
10. Behaving very differently under pressure
This is one of the reasons flowprofiler® measures behaviour in two states. Someone’s day-to-day behaviour gives us useful information.
What changes under pressure can be even more revealing.
- A collaborative leader may become controlling.
- A confident leader may become hesitant.
- A highly adaptable person may suddenly resist change.
- A persistent person may simply push harder.
The change itself is worth noticing.
Are you burning out?
Burnout is sometimes framed primarily as a personal resilience problem. That is a simplistic approach.
Resilience can help us manage pressure, recover from setbacks and adapt to difficulty. It cannot make an unreasonable work system reasonable.
Workload matters. Job control matters. Support matters. Role clarity matters. Resources matter. Relationships matter. Leadership behaviour matters.
Safe Work Australia identifies high job demands, low job control, poor support, lack of role clarity, inadequate recognition, poor organisational change management and workplace conflict among psychosocial hazards that organisations need to manage.
So when somebody is struggling, asking:
“How can this person cope better?” may be useful.
It should not be the only question. We also need to ask: “What is happening in the work?”
Are you burning out other people?
This is a less comfortable question. It may also be a more useful one for leaders. Pressure rarely stays neatly contained within the person experiencing it.
Research has found evidence of burnout and exhaustion crossing over between colleagues, with coworker burnout affecting the experience and performance of others.
That does not mean that one person simply causes another person’s burnout. Work is rarely that tidy.
It does mean that behaviour has consequences. A leader operating under sustained pressure may unintentionally increase the pressure experienced by everyone around them.
When perseverance becomes relentless
A leader may pride themselves on pushing through. The team keeps going. Deadlines remain fixed. Recovery gets postponed.
Every challenge is something to overcome rather than information to reconsider. The behaviour that once created momentum begins creating strain.
When assertiveness becomes pressure
Clear direction is useful, constant challenge is different. Urgency can become intimidation. Decisiveness can become an unwillingness to hear another view.
The leader may believe they are simply maintaining standards while the team experiences relentless pressure.
When optimism dismisses reality
Optimism can help people see possibility during difficult periods.
It can also be overused. If every concern is met with reassurance, valid risks can be minimised.
Eventually people stop raising them.
When adaptability disappears
Pressure often makes familiar routines feel safer. But circumstances change.
Holding tightly to an approach that no longer works can increase workload, frustration and delay.
When regard for others reduces
People do not need to stop caring about colleagues in order to have a negative impact on them. A leader can care deeply about their team and still become so task focused that the way they communicate begins creating strain.
Intent and impact are not always aligned.
When useful behaviour becomes too much
One of the foundations of flowprofiler® is that more of a behaviour is not automatically better.
We look at four zones:
Underusing – Solid Base – Flow Zone – Overusing
A behaviour can be genuinely valuable and still become less effective when it is used too intensely, too rigidly or in the wrong situation.
Pressure can increase that risk.
The question shifts from: “Is this one of my strengths?” And becomes: “Is this behaviour helping here?”
- A highly persistent leader may need to stop.
- A highly autonomous leader may need to involve other people.
- An assertive leader may need to create more space.
- A highly regulated leader may need to communicate what they are experiencing rather than appearing unaffected.
- An optimistic leader may need to spend longer acknowledging the reality of the problem.
Behaviour works best when it remains responsive to the situation.
Your pressure pattern matters
flowprofiler® measures behaviour day to day and under pressure. That gives us a practical comparison.
What stays relatively stable? What increases? What drops away?
- Someone may normally collaborate well but become more controlling when pressure rises.
- Another person may stop asking for help.
- Someone else becomes more forceful, less flexible or increasingly focused on getting the task finished at any cost.
None of those behaviours automatically means somebody is burning out. They do give us useful information about what pressure may be doing to their behaviour.
Four questions can start a useful conversation:
- What do I do more of under pressure?
- What do I do less of?
- What does that do to me?
- What does it do to the people around me?
People cannot resilience their way out of every problem
There is a risk in workplace well-being programmes.
Someone struggles. We give them resilience training. Sometimes that is useful. Sometimes the work needs fixing.
An employee cannot resilience their way out of permanently unrealistic demands. A manager cannot positively think their way through unclear responsibilities.A team cannot compensate indefinitely for inadequate resources.
Giving somebody accountability without sufficient authority will eventually create frustration.Developing people is part of the solution.
Creating conditions in which they can perform is another part.
Look at the work system
Our Enabling Four provides a straightforward way to examine some of those conditions.
Rules
Are expectations, processes and boundaries clear? Or are people constantly working around ambiguity and conflicting priorities?
Roles
Do people know what their role is? Do they understand where it begins, where it ends and how it connects with others?
Responsibilities
Is accountability clear? Does responsibility come with enough authority to act?
Resources
Do people have the time, capability, information, systems and support required to deliver? If those conditions are weak, telling people to manage their stress better is unlikely to solve much.
Attitude, Aptitude and Approach
Our Triple A model adds another lens.
Attitude
- How am I interpreting what is happening?
- Am I making everything a crisis?
- Am I assuming there is nothing I can influence?
- Am I dismissing concerns too quickly?
Aptitude
Do I have the capability required to respond well? Can I prioritise, delegate, set boundaries, give feedback, resolve conflict and make decisions under pressure?
Approach
- What am I actually doing?
- What behaviour am I choosing?
- What is the effect?
- How we think matters.
- What we are capable of matters.
- What we actually do with both is where other people experience us.
What can leaders do?
If burnout is becoming part of the conversation in a team, start with the work rather than immediately reaching for individual coping strategies.
1) Check the workload
Is the work genuinely achievable with the time and resources available? If not, something has to move.
2) Clarify priorities
If everything is urgent, people are not being prioritised. They are being overloaded. Make the trade-offs clear.
3) Strengthen role clarity
People should know what they own, what somebody else owns and where decisions sit.
4) Give people appropriate control
Responsibility without authority creates frustration. Where possible, give people meaningful discretion over how work is delivered.
5) Check the resources
Time, capability, information, systems, staffing and support all affect sustainable performance.
6) Look at leadership behaviour
Do not only ask how the team is coping. Ask: What are we doing as leaders that may be making the pressure worse?
7) Notice behavioural changes
Pressure shifts behaviour. Those shifts can be useful early information if we are paying attention.
8) Make challenge safe
People need to be able to say:
- “This is not sustainable.”
- “We cannot deliver all of this at once.”
- “We do not have the resources.”
- “I need help.”
If those statements are interpreted as weakness, negativity or lack of commitment, people learn to stay quiet. The problem does not disappear.
A burnout conversation for leaders and teams
These questions are not a diagnostic tool.
They are a way to have a better workplace conversation.
- What is creating the most pressure at the moment?
- How long has it been happening?
- What changes are we seeing in our behaviour?
- What are we doing more of under pressure?
- What are we doing less of?
- What effect is our behaviour having on other people?
- Are roles, responsibilities and priorities clear?
- Do people have enough control and resources to do the work?
- What needs to change in the work system?
- What might we need to change in our own behaviour?
Burnout needs a wider conversation
Burnout is experienced by individuals, but it does not exist independently of the work around them.
Behaviour is part of that picture. So are relationships. So are leadership and working conditions. People can build their capacity to manage pressure, communicate well, set boundaries and adapt.
Leaders can become more aware of the effect their behaviour has on other people. Organisations can improve the conditions in which people are expected to perform.
At flowprofiler®, our contribution sits in behavioural intelligence.
We help people understand how they behave day to day, what changes when pressure increases, and what effect those behaviours may have.
We do not diagnose burnout. We help to create a much more useful conversation about behaviour under pressure.
And that conversation may need to start with two questions:
- Am I burning out?
- Am I burning out other people?
For more on workplace behaviour under pressure, explore the flowprofiler® behavioural assessment, our workplace resilience assessment or measurable leadership development.
You may also find Emotional Wellbeing at Work: 7 Behaviours That Support It useful.
References
Bakker, A. B., Le Blanc, P. M., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2005). Burnout contagion among intensive care nurses. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 51(3), 276–287. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2005.03494.x
Shahidi, F. V., Smith, P. M., Oudyk, J., & Gignac, M. A. M. (2022). Longitudinal reciprocal relationships between the psychosocial work environment and burnout. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 64(3), 226–235. https://doi.org/10.1097/JOM.0000000000002396
Safe Work Australia. (n.d.). Psychosocial hazards. https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/safety-topic/managing-health-and-safety/mental-health/psychosocial-hazards
World Health Organization. (2019). Burn-out an “occupational phenomenon”: International Classification of Diseases. https://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupational-phenomenon-international-classification-of-diseases
