Why Burnout Happens — and How Bosses Can Help

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Business, Hbr, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Strategy, Business/management, Management, Communication, Harvard, Entrepreneurship, Business/marketing, Leadership, Marketing, Finance, Economics, Teams

4.3 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 15 December 2020

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Christina Maslach, professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, has been studying the causes of burnout, and its impact, for decades. She says that, in a year when everyone feels overwhelmed and exhausted, it's more important than ever for managers to recognize when and why employees are suffering and take steps to solve those problems. In her framework, burnout stems from not only large workloads but also lack of control, community, and/or reward and values mismatches. She notes that leaders have the ability to pull many of those levers to help their workers. Maslach is the author of "The Truth About Burnout" and a forthcoming book on the topic.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	How do you navigate gender in your workplace?
0:04.0	HBR's fan favorite podcast Women at Work is back with personal stories, the newest research,
0:09.6	and practical advice on navigating divorce, disability, and career failures.
0:14.0	Listen for free to H.B.
0:16.0	Women at Work wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the HBRIDICAST from Harvard Business Review. I'm Allison Beard. I don't know about you guys but I am exhausted. Anytime I think I have a handle on
0:49.6	everything that I'm
0:55.0	need to do for my work and my family and friends it all ramps up again. There's always more to do and if I'm honest I don't always feel up to the task.
1:00.0	And I get that I'm much more fortunate than most.
1:03.0	I can only imagine what it's like for people working more stressful jobs,
1:07.0	health care, education, retail, or manufacturing,
1:10.0	and also balancing child or parent care right now.
1:13.0	2020 has been a ridiculously tough year.
1:17.0	But those feelings I'm describing of overwhelmed, frustration, ineptitude,
1:21.0	sometimes apathy, they aren't new.
1:24.0	There's signs of something our guest today has studied for decades,
1:27.0	burnout.
1:28.0	She says it's a problem that organizations and individual managers need to be working much harder to identify and fix, or better yet preempt.
1:36.0	She's with us to talk about the many causes of Burnout and how to protect against them.
1:41.0	Christina Maslach is a professor of psychology and a core
1:44.3	researcher at the Healthy Workplaces Center at the University of California
1:47.9	Berkeley. She joins me now. Christina, thanks so much for being on the show.
1:52.0	Thank you for inviting me. Christina, thanks so much for being on the show.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Harvard Business Review, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Harvard Business Review and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.