Workload and Burnout

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currently the deputy director for information Warfare but and for my Pence I was the director of psychology running
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the team of roughly about 30 psychologists across the Army na Air Force to help support operations and do
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selection and stuff uh and while I was in that role I very nearly burnt out uh
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it was a pretty challenging time because like many of you here I'm sure people tuned up to this Workshop or are uh
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coming in online uh we were under resource we lost some people from attrition we also lost people to um
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parental leave and the like and work just seemed to keep incasing so we had less staff but more demand uh in the
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role of director I had quite a big perview uh and I had a lot of
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responsibilities uh and on top of that I had two children at home uh and a very
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demanding f baby who when I would get home would need all of my love so that was also uh kind of part of my whole uh
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being so I just wanted to share with you some of my personal experiences because burnout is can feel like quite a
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personal experience I didn't quite get to the point where I did burnout all the
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way to a crisp but I was teetering on the edge and I'll talk to you a little bit about that however as my time of
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director I I did deal with a lot of clients who did burn all the way out some personal friends in this
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organization and some clients who just saw me as a psychologist client so it was something that I was dealing a lot
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with and as a result I put together this presentation for my team because a lot of our psychologists were buring out as
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well uh and then was asked to share up for wellbeing week so that is the origin of this presentation now uh I'm going to start
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with uh the bottom line up front a really great technique which I call the
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Scotty technique now I'm looking around the room uh and thankfully there are enough people in the room who probably know who this is this is mon Montgomery
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Scott from the original Star Trek series now uh I am a Sci-Fi geek I'll admit
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that up front I do love Star Trek and Star Wars and with my kids I'm just watching the new Prodigy series on
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Netflix which is really cool so I'm really kind of trying to inculcate my children into the Sci-Fi world right now
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but uh this is a particular role model of mine why because Scotty was known for his particular technique of under
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promising so if you did watch the old Star Trek series you would have heard him say I come I'll do it Captain I
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don't have the power and that was a common refrain when asked to get the um
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Starship Enterprise out of trouble or fix what was broken in engineering he always said he couldn't Now by and large
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Scotty usually delivered and so he looked like some kind of magician but he never ever said that he could do it and
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he could do it quickly he always overestimated how long it would take and then he would come in under what imp
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right so I want to start by under promising with this Workshop you're here probably because you have a high
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workloads Lots going on your life maybe you're feeling stressed or maybe someone in your life is feeling stressed and
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you're hoping that I will give you some kind of magic solution in a oneh hour seminar weinar I'm not going to do that
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I'm really sorry that's probably impossible you can't solve burnout in a 1H hour lesson right so I'm going to
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under promise what I can promise you is some soak soap Bo preaching I'm very
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good at getting on my soap box and preaching so I will do a bit of that and I can promise you a lot of sort of uh
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sci-fi references as well that will definitely be coming your way I will talk through um what burnout is uh some
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signs what to do with it and I am going to focus in the second half about
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leadership and our responsibilities because burnout is not an individual problem it's an organizational problem
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so we're going to go into a little bit about that but because I know you're all very diligent but you're also very
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exhausted you don't want to take notes everything I say in this session I put into a resource so all the activities
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all the references everything you need to know about what's in here uh is in this and you will have access to this
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after the women are and you are free to do with it what you will I will say that this is the words of carollyn pizar and
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not the Defense Force um I will prepose that because this is a touchy subject
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which is something we should get into from the GetGo I'm going to be very careful not to throw anyone under the
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bus but we all know that because of the current situation with under staing we
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kind of feel like lobbing the blame somewhere right uh and so I'm going to try not to do that I'm going to try and
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think about us all as members of the nzdf and all as part of the solution as well as being part little
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problem right so the hero's journey uh if you are a Star Wars fan or any kind
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of sci-fi or fantasy buff you will probably see this common story arc of most of the um most of the fiction
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material yeah even in the so the hero's journey is this concept where you have
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the hero which is you you get called to Adventure uh and let's just say that's called to roll in N with the Defense
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Force a lot of people join this place because they actually are connected to a greater Mission they want to do
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something good for this country potentially for the world definitely for their Community uh but then they get
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into the situation of challenges and temptations and the hero generally comes up with some kind of um major sort of
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derailing in their life if you think about Star Wars and Luke Skywalker and
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Luke had to face killing his father um and the Captain Cook was usually
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sleeping with theong wrong person they get themselves in trouble right for us when we're talking about
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burnout in this organization we come in here really uh optimistic and engaged
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and we want to do amazing things then we get overwhelmed with a lack of resource a lack of time a lack of staff and we
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start to kind of Teeter into the abyss well my job here is to be this helper
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usually what happens is some kind of guide appears to to give you some words
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of wisdom and stop you plunging into the vest now because that probably looks too much strikingly like I'm going to decide
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that for this presentation I'll be baby Yoda which is much more visually appealing and doesn't make me feel quite so old but I want to be a little that
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voice of wisdom for you uh but I'll say that because
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anything I say you can take a leave right so my word is not lore my word is um put together a compil
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of resources that I've taken from across the the health sector to try and give you some insight into how to deal with
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burnout but you can take or leave what you like so if you might hear something I say you love it take that you might
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think that doesn't apply to me leave that so I'm not saying that everything I have is going to be relevant to you
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because I don't know your situation so take what you can leave what you don't need right so let's get into this
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burnout well we can't talk about burnout without talking about stress now uh you
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probably have heard of stress as an evolutionary feature who would have heard of flight or bite yeah so back
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when we were a little bit more Cy probably around about year we evolved the Spight or fight response to get us
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out of danger so it would be the Caveman with a spear on the Savannah you see the
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rustle in the leaves a pair of golden Amber eyes uh and if we didn't have this
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flight or fight response we probably wouldn't be here today in our glorious buildings with our glorious Wars of
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Defense Forces but essentially what the flight of fight response was was when you sensed danger then your body would
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put a Cascade of chemicals through your system cortisol adrenaline all the things it would speed up your heart rate
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speed up your breathing uh it would slow down your um it sorry it would uh
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produce blood clotting Factor because somewhere in your brain it was saying I may be likely to bleed in the near
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future um and it would also shut down non-essential systems so when you go into a stress response a flight or fight
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your immune system system shuts down your digestive system s shuts down because you don't need energy for that
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you need energy to either fight off what is threatening you or uh run away or a
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Jurassic Park could tell us or some giant cre creatures freezing does work right but not the rapor I think only the
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T-Rex right so that's the Bly response now this is a little bit too small to
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see uh but essentially what happens is but different people will perceive different things as the stressor so one
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man's lion is another man's KY cat so there's a perceptual process that goes
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on where you will decide is this thing threatening to me now nowadays this
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evolutionary response is actually not very adaptive if the threatening respon
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the threatening thing in our environment is an email for example or an angry boss or a screaming toddlet in the
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supermarket running away or beating your child to death is not socially acceptable unfortunately uh so what do
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we do right well we look at the situation and very instantaneously our
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brain will decide is this situation A threats me the email comes up we need to
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have a conversation from your boss immediately you may feel your your blood pressure rise your heartbeat faster oh
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no what does the boss wanted to talk to me about some people might see that and go oh great really meaning to talk to
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the boss so it's not seen as a threat right so we perceive things differently
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the next thing that will happen is do I have the resources to cope with this so say your boss does send you an email and
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says hey I need to catch up with you we need to talk about your performance immediately heart rate starts pounding
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starts sweating a little bit getting a bit nervous PR of you may go you know what I've been smashing it I I know what
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I need to talk to the boss about I need extra resources I need to do this training course and so you tell yourself
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yeah totally got the resources to C alternatively somebody else might go oh my God I'm going to be I'm going to be
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fired I don't I don't know what I'm doing on my job everything's I there and that person might have much more of a
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stronger stress reaction so there's that second phase firstly this a situation of
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threat yes or no secondly do I have the resources to cope with this yes or no
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and then we get the immediate rush of emotion Panic fear excitement
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Elation after that we've got to figure out how to cope with it the reason I talk you through this it's a pretty
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complicated model it's called the um the Lazarus and fan model of stress is
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because everybody experiences stress differently and I say that because I know people in this organization who say
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things like I don't understand why people are burning out we're not at War why are people getting so stressed right
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so there are people who walk through the organization who don't have staff in their team don't have the resources and
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it's like water off a duck back for them and then there's other people who walk through this organization and they see
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things differently and they experience stress differently so everybody has a different reaction if you're a leader
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you need to understand why people respond differently to different situations you need to develop a little
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bit of empathy what people are going through right so move too much further
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on I want to talk a little bit about the upside of stress now we tend to demonize stress a little bit we think stress is
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bad we think being in that super market with the crying toddler when people are looking at us and we have a bit of a
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stress reaction we think people think we're not coping stress is kind of given a really bad R but actually this flight
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or fight response is adaptive it gets us out of danger experiencing things that
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are tough and hard is actually very good for us we want to experience stress just
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for a second think about doing a job that has no stress in it at all it's not
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stressful at all would you actually want that job now immediately if you are
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experiencing a lot of stress you might think oh that' be great but actually what we're talking about here is boredom
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we're talking about having no challenges not having to rise to any occasions people join the Defense Force
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because they thrive on adventure and stress they know this environment is going to be tough and they want to go
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out there and they want to do good things now when you get on operations you need those heightened senses you
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need that Beating Heart you need to be attuned to what's in the environment so you know what's around you and you can
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act and react so we need the stress response and everyday life when we're in
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defense house when we're on the basis and we're not on operations we need stress to keep us motivated to make us
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feel like we're done doing something real and our young people growing up they need that stress too when we put
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people on recruit course on officer training we put them under pressure so that they learn that they do have the
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resources to cope and when they learn that they get stronger and they get more resilient so stress is a good thing and
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I don't want to demonize it and if you're feeling stress right now that is normal that is an everyday part of The
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Human Experience stress right but sometimes we do stress really
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badly right so stress is something that all humans have to experience to have a
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productive and fulfilling life but some of us find that we're not doing it particularly well so this is the stress
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cycle what's supposed to happen is you have the stress or whether that is a challenging project you know coaching
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your son's socker team or uh you know answering the boss's email that it needs
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to come out straight away we get stressed we have this cocktail of chemicals cortisol adrenaline all these
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things rushing through our body that make us kind of gear it up make us tense then we have our reaction right so
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if we're on operations if we're in a situation of real threat and danger we fight or we run away the caveman would
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fight the lion or run for his life he would climb up a tree jump over a river get back to his cave where he was
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safe and then he would have used up all that pent up chemical energy energ then what he does is he sits down by the fire
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while his mate Cooks him a fish and he tells the story he gets him that rest and recovered Bas so in our lives to get
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through the stress cycle we are supposed to have a period of rest and recovery so if you're in a very busy job at work
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here in defense house or out on the bases when you get home if it's been a
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big day you need that rest and recover period but a lot of us don't walk into
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rest and recover a lot of us will walk into having to pick up the kids having to cook dinner
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having to go walk out very demanding for through babies which is actually pretty good but we do have responsibilities in
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our personal lives which can feel like there is no opportunity to rest and recover and then a lot of us are tuning
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to really what we call um not helpful recovery methods like Doom scrolling on
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the phone right so you you get into that phase where you finally have five minutes to yourself and what do you do
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you get on some kind of social media app and you start Doom scrolling so you're not actually giving your your brain the
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rest and Recovery it needs so we're doing it badly but the reality is we're
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supposed to experience stress the cocktail of uh chemicals that runs through our body is normal we've been
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designed that way we're supposed to react to stress and then we're supposed to risk and recover and this is supposed
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to happen daily how do we complete that stress
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cycle this is the Magic Bullet all been waiting for I studied five years at
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University to come to the conclusion of which you can Google in 3 seconds to complete that stress cycle it's exercise
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it's eating well it's sleeping well and it's good deep social connection which
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is probably the most important out all of them these are the things that help us complete that stress cycle every day
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right but a lot of us aren't doing that and you know you didn't need to come to this webinar to find that out did you
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you knew that already you're all very smart people so you kind of have to ask your question why are you not doing this
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why are we not doing this daily when we know that it's right for us when we get into the situation of
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burnout if you can imagine your life is like a a river right so who who has been white waterer rting I did it for a b
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training many many moons ago when we were allowed to do a b training and you'd be on the river and you'd go
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through your grade four Rapids be very exciting you would think you were going to die and you would ped your way
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through and then you would get to that bit of rest and Recovery right the Glide down the river for the next bit you kind
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of settle down get ready for the next rapid but what happens when the river is
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just all Rapids there is no rest and Recovery well that is where we get into
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this phase of burnout right burnout is a sense of the stress being relentless
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without that opportunity for recovery so there are three components
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of burnout the first is emotional exhaustion this is emotional physical
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cognitive deep exhaustion you feel tired to your core and tired to your bones but
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not just physically tired like you've just r a great Marathon but your whole body just feels very very tired this is
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what I saw and experienced myself and that director of pychology role this is what I saw at my work colleagues last
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year and you know let's be honest defense went through a massive period of attrition that meant that the rest of us
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who were left behind were picking up double triple heading I know that I was Triple heading at one point and so there
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are people in this organization that are carrying a lot of load and it's not just the work itself it's the emotional load
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of the work it's the fact that some of our training systems are broken or our policies aren't right or the projects
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aren't getting funded you know so you're doing the work but then you've got this emotional burden of wanting to do the
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best for the Defense Force of the people in it but the system is like bogging you down and you're not making progress and
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you feel exhausted by it and you're not getting that rest and Recovery period then the next symptom that you
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will see from burnout is cynicism so this is kind of where you get to the point where you like bleep bleep bleep
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into exlusive here you just get over it you you can't see the point anymore you
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start to lose complete faith and trust in both the system and the senior leaders of this organization and you
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start to get that sense of kind of depersonalizing yourself and distancing
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yourself and disengaging from work from a cynical
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perspective and the third symptom and these are all by the way the burnout is a recognized condition with the World
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Health Organization and these are the three symptoms that the World Health Organization has characterized burnout
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as feelings of incompetence now I certainly had the first and the third
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when I was to Brink to that Abyss where I felt like was burning out I was physically and emotionally exhausted and
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I felt completely incompetent I would get word salad where I would say a sentence that it would make sense to
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myself or anyone I couldn't find words to speak and my just felt like I was
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work walking around in a brain F I didn't get to the point where I gave up
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though so I felt like I was almost on the brink but I didn't quite go into that cynicism now don't get me wrong I'm
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still an officer in the military so there was a base level of cynicism that we all kind of issued when we join but I
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didn't get to the point where I just wanted to give up still believed in what we had to do but if you do get to that
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point right where it's just hard to do anything that is complete burnout
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now what I saw in the people that I worked with is they would actually just had to stop work so people would be put
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on stress leave some people took leave without pay and others just quit and
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what they saw after covid-19 and that period of languishing across the world is they saw a lot of people resigning
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without jobs to go to and in defense we saw it we saw huge rates of attrition
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people were just giving up and leaving this tool here which is in the handout
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that if you want to get access to um you can contact our well-being people and they will send it out this is an
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assessment tool that you can go to to just kind of do it to conflict now it doesn't give you a diagnosis of burnout
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but it does give you indications that you might be experiencing symptoms and if you score higher on that then my
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recommendation is that you book in with your GP and get some health right so I I
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feel mentally exhausted I struggle to find any enthusiasm for work I have trouble staying focused I feel unable to
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control my emotions now if we think about this from an organization perspective putting people in a
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situation where they're getting to the point where they can't focus and concentrate is a safety issue right it's
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not just a well-being issue it's a safety issue getting people to the point of burnout does nobody any good it
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doesn't serve this organization and it doesn't serve the people organization so I would encourage you if
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you're thinking someone you know is burning out then connect them to help but if it's you book him with your GP
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book him with the psych if your military don't and see the padr get some actual support for that but I also do have some
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things for you here today what I want you to do though because we talking about you as an
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individual because you're here to learn what you can do for yourself and others is I want you to VI burn out uh within a
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system so we have the individual and we have individual factors I talked earlier
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about whether we see things as a challenge or a threat and whether we feel like we have the resources to cope
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those are kind of individual features now the research shows that individual features do play a part in Burnout but
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actually only small part of that and unfortunately for all work organizations
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who do we think are the people most likely to burn out what would be the individual characteristics that would
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lead someone to burn out the reality is it's conscientiousness people who work really
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hard tend to overwork themselves and get burnt out so the people that get stuff
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done they're the people that are going to burn out unfortunately so that's a bit of a
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challenge because we select for those people we want people to work hard
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but burnout is not an individual problem it's an organizational one so the individuals sit inside the
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nzdf which will have create a environment for which people work and
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that environment might be resource Poe time poor not have the right amount of
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people or might have too many outputs required of it and if nzdf creates that
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system for the individual you cannot place the responsibility on the individual to fix Bo now because it is
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the system that's broken but the nzdf is not an isolation it's in this wied
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government system and the government is putting massive budget constraints on our organization and all other
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organizations which mean we can't get the resources we need and we can't get the STA that we need but the government
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isn't in isolation either the government is in a situation where Co almost tanked
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our economy and we had to save money right so the government's been put pressure by this wider societal system
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right so that's where it comes into a bit of a challenge to because we always want to find somebody to blame burn the
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witch at the stake but actually there's a lot of factors in here that are contributing to overall
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burnout that doesn't absolve the nzdf or the government of its responsibilities
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it just explains them what are the causes of burn out the
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main causes are overwork right overwork and when you're in that work work if you
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don't feel like you're making any progress that can really contribute to feeling burnt out having a lack of
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control which is problematic for the military where we have a hierarchical system that can reduce the levels of
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control people have in their roles so if you don't feel like you have control of your work on a day-to-day
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basis it can contribute to burnout a sense of isolation now we saw a real Spike and
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burnout after Co it and that may be related to the fact that a lot of us
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were working from home working online so we were losing that sense of community and comradery but there is a
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relationship between isolation lack of community and burnout where when you start to feel burnt out you you often
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quite withdraw right because you're feeling incompetent you're feeling like you're not coping you don't want to be that to be seen by others sometimes you
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withdraw that creates a bigger sense of isolation which can contributes to that more of a feeling of
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burnout insufficient rewards uh is something that we looked at when people with double and triple
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heading where people are being paid a certain amount of money but they are
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working well above what they've been paid to do and we're not recognizing them that that lack of equity and
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fairness that can contribute I'm not being rewarded well I'm working harder than others this isn't fear that
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contributes to a sense of burnout and a values conflict right working in a
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situation where you feel your compromising your values that cont contributes toout all of these things
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are work related they all about your environment at work because I have to
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keep reinforcing this because a lot of our Solutions around burnout like this workshop for example is me trying to fix
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you the individual well I don't want to do that because that's not actually going to do anything if you are burning
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out right now or experiencing high levels of stress coming to a great and entertaining uh Workshop might be good
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for five minutes but it's not going to fix this problem just like like on a way
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weekend to the C Coast isn't going to fix this problem either what we need to do is stop
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talking about work life balance and saying hey you're just exercised more
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you would fix this problem if you just you know took up meditation and Yoda
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yog so for you now I'm going to get up on my soap box and I'm going to give you
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a challenge right this organization I'm going to give a challenge in a minute but I'm going to give you a challenge
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now instead of talking about that balance in Act of working life making sure you've got time for your family as
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well as time for your work I want you to try and think about work line like a
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stove top now this model I've stolen from a guy called James CLE and it really resonated with me and I hope it
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resonates with you but essentially if you think about your life like a guest stove top you've got a guest burner for
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health family work and friends now friends might be something different to
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you it might be sports or that sort of thing um you know you might not have family you might have B babies I don't
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know you can put your own sort of thing in there FS but essentially we've got these elements in our life and we have a
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gas pipe that leads to that and we've got a find amount of gas right and the
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four burners theory is this in order to be successful in any one of these areas you
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need to cut off the gas to one of the others or at least turn it
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down right so this isn't about work life balance this is about that drive for
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Success how do you measure your success because that's what's pushing us right so I might say that it's really
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important for me to be successful at work if it is if I want to be truly successful in the Defense Force if I
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want to go all the way to the top right and it's possible for a psychologist I'm sure but I want to go all the way to
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that top I'm going to have to turn down my family burner because I'm going to have to go away I'm G to have to put my
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hand ups for deployments I'm going to have to work longer hours I'm going to have to do lots of Engagement I'm going
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to have to volunteer for things which is going to mean that I'm away from home a lot and when I do get home I might have
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to go on emails not give my kids the attention they need not give my husband the attention I need he needs and you
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know he doesn't get to have as much of a career as me because if I'm going to go all the way to the top he needs to be
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the one kind of holding down the foot at home right so you know for me I'm turning that burner down for him the
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other thing I might realize is especially when you get to these senior levels is I don't really have time for
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PT in my workday now so I might just have to turn down that Health burner a little bit and it takes a while to cook
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a nice meal and I don't really like all the packaging that comes with those you know my food back boxes so I'm just
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going to I'm just going to like eat two minute noodles or something like that I'm turning my he burner right down that
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is to be really really successful at work now just want to point this out you
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don't have to be really successful at work you could be quite mediocre at work you know you could have your work burner
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turned to half and you can put more effort into your family if I'm going to be the best mom there is or the best
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wife there is or the best you know dog owner there is and just to be clear I think my dog does think I am the best
31:05
I'm saying but I'm going to have to turn the burner down somewhere else so working from home is great because my
31:10
dog loves that he hates when I put my uniform on or put fancy clothes on because he knows I'm going to work from
31:15
home which means he's going to get the walk and I'm going to give him the love and attention so but I also know that
31:21
being at work means meeting people face to face and getting stuff done but if I'm going to put e into my family have
31:28
to turn that work buringer down so I can be mediocre in all areas and have them
31:33
all just a little bit down or I can be very good in one area I could be an
31:38
adventure race athlete and then I've turn my work down and I've turn my family down and I'm focusing on training
31:44
for three or four hours a day or I could be super social could turn my social burner right
31:52
up but we have a finite amount of energy and we actually can't have them all
31:58
burning and a lot of people are trying to have that really really high right so
32:05
how much do you actually have in the bank in terms of your time your energy
32:11
and your focus the reality is you can't have it all right and if
32:20
you think now currently about those four burners what is burning hot for you
32:25
right now and what have you turned down what are you neglecting are you neglecting your family right now A lot
32:31
of people are are you neglecting your health right now A lot of people are doing that or are you neglecting work
32:38
right now think about it and ask yourself this is my current status by Design or has it
32:47
just worked out this way because a lot of people are throwing effort into work without thinking about
32:54
if that is what they really want out of life or they're putting stuff into social
33:00
without really thinking about what they're sacrificing this is a quote that I put
33:05
up here I don't want to preface what your values should be but it is the case
33:12
that when we drop our health all when we turn that Health burner right down it can have very
33:20
significant consequences for us when we turn our family burn right down we can lose our partner we can become a strange
33:27
our children our F babies can look at us in ways they never used to before disappointed
33:34
faes but this is my SOB preach to you you can't actually have it all not here
33:41
not in the Defense Force and why do I say not here and not in the Defense Force because we don't really pay you enough to we don't pay you enough but
33:49
even if you think about the celebrities and politicians that are getting paid Uber Uber amounts of money they don't
33:56
have it all either they off putting everything into their careers at the expense of their family and you can see
34:01
that by reading the tabloids right you can't actually have it all what is the price that you want to
34:09
pay and that is your choice not mine because I'm not going to tell you that
34:14
family should be more important than work because for some people it isn't and I'm not going to tell you that work
34:20
should be more important than family what needs to happen is you need to
34:25
decide for you and it's about value vales so in the workbook there is
34:31
exercises for deciding your values and that is you sitting down and having a
34:36
really good heart to heart heart with yourself about what the life is that you
34:41
want it's not about work life balance it's about work life design what will
34:47
make me content what will give me meaning and purpose who is the person
34:52
that I want to be you need to decide on these and don't don't create too many values yourself
34:58
because you'll just end up in the same kind of situation you are now all these conflicts I I really value being Uber
35:04
successful at work and also being the best M ever those two values are going to come into conflict so once you've got the value
35:12
and a lot of people have done this they've got yeah I know what my values are I value people I value Adventure I
35:18
value the outdoors well then you need to operationalize it I've got an exercise for how to do this what you can access
35:25
but essentially in short what do you do you mean when you say you value people what do you mean when you say you value
35:31
successful work what does it mean to you to be really good at your job what does that actually mean come up with some
35:36
principles around that and then put some goals underneath that this is kind of the next step to using your values to
35:44
create work life design and we do know that when you are in a place where you're acting in alignment with your
35:51
values it is protective when it comes to stress and burnout so people who feel
35:57
like their work is Meaningful and purposeful to them are way less likely to burn
36:03
out that might have been by chance they just happen to get into a a role in their life where they're doing what they
36:09
really love or they might have designed it that way but you get to do that now you get to sit down and think is this
36:15
what I want for me I've got some examples of how I did this for me balance and simplicity right I have two
36:22
things in my life that is work family I do not have sports or Hobbies
36:28
I know to some people that's crazy especially in the Defense Force with sports mad but that's too much for me I
36:33
actually value a little bit of simplicity so I created some goals around that turning down the noise
36:40
noticing what is burning hot and what is neglected and prioritizing R family so when I go home from work I have nothing
36:47
but my kids and my family I don't have any requirements and anything that feels
36:52
hard I don't do that's my that's my personal policy for example end of family I don't
36:58
do too hard going to all those things for family I thank
37:03
you so it's some individual Solutions be clear on boundaries right
37:10
and those are your boundaries right if you love your work you can avoid burnout
37:17
by creating boundaries around that so that other things don't impinge on it
37:23
but if you love your family and I know you can love both you got to decide where the balance is and
37:29
create those boundaries it might be the case that you want to prioritize work and Outsource
37:36
some of the family care which is okay and everybody does that by the way which is getting child carees or opers or that
37:43
sort of thing I even know people that get dog walkers don't know what my dog would
37:49
think about that but that's okay that's Outsourcing right that's creating boundaries where you know I've got so
37:54
much time in my life I might need to Outsource creating boundaries at work means that
38:01
you want to turn your work burner down that means you don't work at home that means you become okay with not being
38:09
fabulous at your job that's the kind of mental shift you need to make the boundary is I don't
38:16
have to be awesome all the time at work which means I don't have to respond to that email straight away I don't have to
38:22
respond to all emails there I say it as I know that's getting a lot of people
38:28
when they open their email inbox and they see a 100 emails there and they feel overwhelmed the boundary is I can skim
38:34
through that and answer what's important now what happens then is people will get annoyed and upset at you but the
38:42
boundary is you just make space for that because you can't be
38:48
perfect under promise now people do this by putting it out of office on that song all the time and it says something like
38:56
I'm sorry if I don't respond respond to your email in a timely manner or at all I have so many emails I cannot respond
39:02
to them all that is under promising now you're going to still respond to some people when they get a response from you
39:07
they're going to be like yes I'm important to that person but for those you don't respond to you've actually set up their expectations correctly so
39:14
having an out of office that says you probably won't reply is a an example of
39:20
that knowing your values and being in alignment with them that might mean
39:25
changing the way you're doing things right now now uh there's an exercise in here to help you just do a bit of a self
39:31
assessment of where what's burning hot and what's not and where you would like it to be and noticing the changes and
39:38
the difference do you want to spend more time at home do you want to spend more time running do you want to spend more
39:43
time at work and less time stressing about home you get to decide it is your life finding a small winds so we talked
39:51
about a cause of burnout being that kind of lack of making progress so if you can look for small ons and focus on that
39:58
that can be protective and interesting the research says when you're at the point of stress overwhelm helping
40:05
somebody else can actually relieve your stress a little bit can make you feel like you're doing something valuable and
40:11
meaningful now I've talked to a few of my colleagues about this when they got to that point where things were really
40:17
weighing them down and at my level the best thing to do is to find a junior
40:22
person and go have a coffee with them and talk about them talk about their career their life do a little bit of
40:30
mentoring if you can it's a real shot in the arm going and talking to people who are enthusiastic and passionate can
40:37
really give you that uplift and for them having a senior person invest time in them is actually wonderful and they feel
40:44
like they get something out of it as well so it's kind of a win-win if you are a junior person and you're burning
40:50
out book a coffee with a senior person that you respect that you just want to have a chat to they will feel good there
40:57
as well right so let's talk about the systems and the context I want to just
41:03
sort of take a little bit of a shift here to talk about you as a leader and you as somebody with staff and you as a
41:10
colleague caring for other people now the context in which we live and this is something that I have briefed out in
41:16
your leadership they are aware of it's hard for them to kind of step back and look at because they're in the weeds in
41:22
the same way we're in the weeds but if we just get bed right we are in this new
41:28
era where the family system has completely evolved parents both parents are working
41:34
a lot of the kids that are coming into the workforce now I had two parents working the role of the man and the
41:39
woman has completely changed uh not entirely but we're on the
41:45
right track but it is the case that men have way more household responsibilities than they ever had yeah um but it
41:52
doesn't mean that women don't have any less because now women are in the workplace right so everybody's got a lot more on their plates we've got this
41:58
chanting relationship with technology and it is kind of ruining us at the same
42:04
time is saving us right so we're using it in a way that isn't helpful for us then we've got the aftermath of covid-19
42:12
and we can't underestimate the long tale that that will have a lot of people in this organization are suffering from
42:18
long covid which by the way has some very similar symptoms to burnout exhaustion tiredness issues like that in
42:27
the financial climate cost of living very high mortgage rates very high pay is not keeping track with that we've got
42:34
resilience and mental health issues which we know are on the increase in highest levels have been in some time
42:41
and then we've got our NZ workplace which we cannot deny we are Hollow we
42:47
had huge period of attrition that attrition has kind of now back down to
42:53
normal but not because we did anything because the economy got terrible and National has come in and is laying off
43:00
people all over the show so now unemployment's On The Rise people aren't going to leave that doesn't mean it's
43:06
going to stay like that forever but it does mean that we are Hollow and we are
43:12
under resource and we're about to cut lots of budgets because we have to because that's the financial climate
43:17
we're in this is the context in which people are in if you don't have empathy
43:22
for people experiencing stress and Bo out you are not paying attention this is a pretty challenging time feels very
43:28
dagl and I'm sorry for that but what I want to do is just build that level of understanding that you know that you
43:35
know this is not just some individual who can't cope this is the whole system in which we live is a little bit
43:42
challenging right now when somebody in your unit or you gets burned out you are the Canary and
43:49
the C right and it's a signal that there's some kind of toxic gas in the M
43:56
it's not a signal that the canary is the problem and another analogy is the fish and the Fish Bowl when somebody gets
44:03
burn out what we tend to do is take that fish out of that dirty bowl and go and put it on a yoga retreat or send it to
44:10
the doctor or give it therapy we don't actually change the water or the bowl that the fish is in
44:17
and that's really problematic thinking we need to think about somebody with burnout is the fish the Fishbowl that
44:24
needs add dressing or the canaran in the coal mine that's indicating something's going wrong with the work
44:30
environment so a model to help us understand this uh is called the job control the Dem sorry the job demand
44:37
control and support model so this is a well researched model that looks at the conditions for Burnout in organizations
44:44
not specifically defense first drawn a lot of research from the teaching Community the health sector the
44:50
Emergency Services sector and essentially it's it's very simple do the demands of our job exceed our ability to
44:58
cope now we talked at the start about individual coping when it comes to stress but we have jobs that are too big
45:05
for one person we have people sitting in positions that haven't been sized well
45:11
and their responsibilities are so broad that essentially more than one person can physically do and that's even when
45:17
they're just not double pting but then we have a situation where people are doing two jobs and they're just one
45:23
person so we can create a situation where the demands our two bags for person then control what control do we
45:31
have over how we spend our time and how we do our job if you're in a situation
45:37
with the leader who is micromanaging you and taking all that control off you that can contribute to feelings of burnout
45:43
because you feel like you are not in control of what you do and support do we have support from
45:50
our boss our co-workers and our family to meet these demands of work and life
45:56
the research is shown that people who have supportive bosses supportive leaders are way less likely to
46:02
experience burnout I'll leave that with you a
46:09
supportive boss is protective Factor even when the demands are high so these
46:15
are the three factors that we need to think about what we can do the government the New Zealand
46:20
government talks about managing psychosocial risk so there's a health and safety legislation which says that
46:27
we can't put People In Harm's Way and that often makes people think of things like working at Heights and driving
46:34
fatigued but we can also think about burnout as a psychosocial Hazard that is
46:40
where we put somebody in a situation where their work overloads or their lack of resources to do their job is
46:47
contributing to their inability to cope with the stresses of their job now the
46:52
model that they have is prevention promotion and support and what does that
46:58
mean well preventative initiatives for something like burnout would be to
47:03
redesign the workplace that people have the right level of work control over what they do to the
47:10
right degree and support to do that work which is a supportive leader or
47:16
resources good it systems that kind of thing to do their to do their role so
47:22
you design the workplace up front that will prevent burnout the next one is
47:27
promotion of well-being and building resilience that's what we're doing kind of right now we're promoting wellbeing
47:32
telling you to go for runs and sleep well and get rest that doesn't stop you from feeling
47:39
burnt out but it might help you from getting over the brink right you go you
47:45
know what caros says I need to make some hard choices about my life and I need to really dig into what my values are and
47:51
you know what this is what I value so I'm going to pull back on work and I'm going to do more of that and I'm going to beat okay with being mediocre at work
47:59
so that I can focus on what I really care about or I'm going to be okay at giving my order work and I'm going to be
48:06
a mediocre dog owner and the final one is Support Recovery right so that's the
48:12
interventions where somebody has broken and we put them in therapy or we
48:17
give them three or four months stress leave now I I've worked with people who've had burnout and the people that I
48:25
know have taken months off months off so burnout is not
48:31
a weekend away people who truly burn out take a very long time to recover so as
48:37
Leaders as organizational leaders we really should be motivated to prevent it
48:42
from happening in the first place because people who burn out can often be on stress seve from anywhere to four
48:48
weeks to six months sometimes they never fully recover that that exhaustion and
48:54
emotional exhaustion stays with them and we but we do this well right we have a
49:00
system for military people where we can put them on stress leave and we can give
49:06
them therapy we have less good initiatives for civilians by the way but
49:12
we do have EAP so you can can access counseling however that's kind of a
49:18
after the fact what I want people to do think about how they can move into these are kind of the leaders
49:27
reduce workload increase the control or agency that your employee has and increase the
49:33
support they have this means making hard choices about out outputs right from CDF down to
49:43
your manager and I've heard this since I joined the Defense Force which was
49:49
nearly 20 years ago we need to get better at saying no we haven't got better at saying no in 20 years
49:55
something actually needs to change we are breaking people in some Corners
50:00
now I know not everyone in the fence is experiencing burnout not the fence has resourcing issues but I have seen it
50:08
myself I've seen people working themselves to exhaustion and there are areas where we could get
50:13
better at reducing whip load reducing outputs saying no to things not
50:21
delivering that's the best Li we have to go because on top of reducing workload
50:28
you could increase staff you could increase staff and you can increase resources but that costs
50:34
money so in a fiscally constrained environment the only option we have is to reduce
50:39
outputs so how do we prevent if you can't reduce outposts
50:46
increase timelines if your staff have to get a project done this kind of it's a
50:51
deal breaker there's no other choice give them more time to do it we are going to have to use contractors to fill
50:58
gaps where we where we can using reservice essentially is how do you
51:03
reduce workload you either stop things or you increase
51:10
staff these are things you can do for your staff making sure they are putting
51:15
physical training into their calendars in their work days giving them time to socialize all those kind of things that
51:21
we tend to let Fall Away uh but my observation of the people who burn out
51:28
is that they're actually usually the more senior people who are really happy to let their staff do pt or go and have
51:35
social occasions while they kind of stay working working really hard so in terms
51:41
of prevention senior leaders this is the catch senior leaders need to get better at being less great
51:48
at work and giving more time to the things that will create kind of less
51:54
workload more wellbeing but that for them may feel like it will penalize them
51:59
in their career because if I'm not seen as awesome then I'm not going to progress and that's when you have to go
52:06
back to values and under promise
52:12
them promotion uh if you you know attend well-being workshops
52:19
like this that's kind of what you got you've got lots of resources out there the nzdf health website has a ton of
52:25
resources for you but you can also if you had money get contractors in to run workshops and stuff like this I can't do
52:31
it for you I'm not a psychologist anymore I'm just here out of the goodness of my heart uh and I know the psychologists are really busy so there's
52:38
not a lot of resource internally to run these workshops but you can pay for them but once again it's a Band-Aid uh and
52:46
the social support uh nde um for you the
52:51
helpline you can call that anytime the EAP system T social workers
52:57
doctors reach out to them those are the people that you need to go to for help um so these are the takeaways and
53:04
we're heading the 12:00 man one of the things I would just reinforce reinforce
53:09
reinforce is under promise set everyone's expectations lower including your own if you are
53:17
burning out just know this it's okay to be mediocre it is okay to be
53:23
mediocre it's fine I would rather be mediocre healthy and well with great
53:31
social relationships then super awesome and die young or nobody likes me or I
53:38
burn out to a Crist those are kind of the choices you're weighing up those are the individual choices you're wearing at
53:44
the organization will take everything you have to give if you leave that work
53:49
life design to the nzdf or into any organization in here they will take
53:55
everything even those ones that advertised that they've got great well-being policies it's all it's all
54:00
smok and mirrors that organizations are entities they are designed to extract
54:06
work from you you are the one who knows you best and knows what you need and knows what you want you have to decide
54:14
you have to decide what you want out of this life and design your life around it if you leave it up to the nzdf it will
54:19
take everything you have to give everything that would be my final
54:26
takeway for that if you want to do some values exercises for those who uh don't
54:31
like cutting things out is it values exercise at the back here but I pre-cut some values cards that you can go to a value sort first and first served um but
54:39
finding out what is really important to you and knowing you have a finite amount of time a finite amount of energy and a
54:47
finite amount of money right you wouldn't spend your money Willy Nelly you'd probably be more careful with your
54:53
money than you are with your time how are you spending your time how are you spending your time
54:59
right now do you get home from work and you spent all your energy and time on work and you've got nothing left to give
55:06
give to your kids or your partner is that you intentionally designing your life like that or is that just what's
55:12
happening so take some control of how you spend your time
55:19
in from an organizational level let's get to prevention instead of Band-Aids
55:25
and supporting people people with therapy after the event and that means reducing workload increasing control and
55:32
increasing support and by support I don't mean doctors and Chapin I mean
55:38
good leadership resources to do your job that's what I mean by
55:43
support right that was my preaching I did promise I would preach to you but we do have like a minute uh so but for as
55:51
long as you like anyone wants to ask any questions I'm happy to take questions
56:03
any questions from online okay great well I will let you go and M over your life choices um but this resource is
56:11
available it's got everything in here about all of those models uh it's got values exercises but I do have some
56:17
paper ones up here if you're like I don't know what my values are I want to decide come and grab some and do that
56:23
and have a go at it figure out what you want out of your life make good choices
56:30
cool resources they'll be on the um Health
56:35
Website we can give you details thank thanks everyone thank you so much