Progress: The Missing Piece in the Burnout Puzzle
Even though most people don't know that one of the drivers of burnout is feeling a lack of progress in your work; when you think about it, it’s obvious. Feeling like you're not getting anywhere or achieving anything is an energy zapping mood killer that would tip even the most positive person into a feeling of hopelessness.
A number of years ago, a group of researchers from Harvard did an experiment where they asked the leaders of teams what engaged and motivated their team the most. The typical answer from leaders was “praise and recognition is the key to engagement and motivation.” So, the scientists promptly wrote up the paper. Then one of them thought, “maybe we should have asked the teams what motivates them the most?” When they spoke to the teams, they said “yeah praise is nice but what really keeps me engaged and motivated at work is having a sense of progress. When I see that I am improving and evolving and that what I do matters, that's when I'm most absorbed and enjoying my work most”.
This is the thing about human beings - we come alive when we see ourselves evolving and moving forward. Collectively, humans all over the world spend an obscene number of hours every week playing video games. What keeps us so engaged in video games? They are designed around progress. Video games are made up of levels, stages and tangible achievements. They constantly show us progress, and we love them for it.
The e-lab, the research arm of our corporate business, was asked by a large telco to conduct a piece of research looking at what were the characteristics of their most high performing teams. What was fascinating is that the most prominent attribute across all the teams was they regularly took the time to reflect on the progress that they were making. What was also interesting is that they talked about progress in two specific areas. The first was what did we ‘do’? This revolved around the tasks completed and the deliverables achieved. Basically, what stuff they got done. The second area was how did we ‘be’. This focused on character, values, and culture. They reflected on how they became better human beings, looking at things like did they collaborate better; did they support each other; and did they show integrity.
Sounds simple, right? But nothing is simple when it comes to human beings. What blocks our ability to do this in the workplace, is the fact that human beings have a strong bias towards pessimism. A friend of mine, Milo Wilkinson a behavioural scientist, told me that her research showed that 72% of the thoughts we have in a day tend to be negative. What this means is that as an individual and as a team member we are strongly drawn to what we need to fix, what was bad about that, what wasn't good enough and how do we need to get better. Disinherit negative bias means we rarely get to spend time reflecting on our progress and how we're getting better.
In fact, we saw this following COVID lockdowns. We worked with a number of companies over this period. And the vast majority said “when we first went into lockdown, I don't think we've seen our culture be so effective. Everyone just got on board, took action, did what needed to be done. People weren't complaining, they weren't competitive, and they were sharing resources. I pressed them to take some time to analyse the specifics of why their culture was so good in those moments. What struck me was how long it took them and how difficult it was to identify these constructive actions that had such a profound impact on the culture of the team. Even though they all agreed that it was when their culture was at its best, it didn't occur to anyone to take the time to learn from that period and bring those insights into normal ways of working.
Here is my advice to any individual or team that wants to feel a sense of progress.
Make it a priority and operationalise it into your team dynamics. As I said, we don't have a natural bias to reflect on this area of performance, so we have to remind ourselves that we need to set up systems and structures to make it happen.
Make sure it's genuine and authentic. Look for real tangible things to reflect on. Don't make up something for the sake of celebration - don't celebrate things that aren't that worthy. Having said that, it doesn't mean you have to celebrate massive milestones. Any sort of genuine progress can be learned from and celebrated.
Ask questions that make people reflect and think. When people are talking about their progress, ask questions that allow you and them to learn about the specific behaviours they did and what were the circumstances that lead up to that and enabled it to happen.
Learn from the progress. Don't just have the nice conversation. Take time to record the insights and learnings so those strategies can be applied in other situations and contexts.
Do it publicly. If you've seen someone really progress and evolve, feel free to recognise that in a group situation. By acknowledging the progress that you have seen in a specific individual in front of their team, you’ll make them feel good and that also allows the team to learn from the actions of that individual.
So, when you think about burnout in your workplace or your team, don’t just think people need a rest or a holiday. Consider the importance of progress and how both you and them can identify and share it.