Episode 24: Talking about burnout is not a hard conversation, it’s a caring one, with Mark Butler

Leadership Amplified by Dr Karen Morley

My guest Mark Butler is an accredited clinical psychotherapist with 14 years’ experience in the field. He focuses on mindset and mental wellbeing at work, mentoring people through adverse issues around workplace burnout, stress, anxiety and related unhealthy coping strategies. Mark understands burnout and executive exhaustion so well because he’s been there and those experiences inform his work with individuals, teams and organisations. He’s keen to develop sustainable and effective work practices, and we spent some discussing both the importance of this as the focus for burnout management, as well some practices. It was lovely chatting with Mark about how he came to his current role as a thought leader in mental health and wellbeing at work, as well as discussing his advice on burnout and how to reduce it. His analogy that most organisational responses to burnout are more like the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff waiting for things to happen than the fence around the top of the cliff will, unfortunately, ring true to too many. To fix burnout we have to: Focus on the organisation, its people, systems and processes – we need to look at the dance as well as the dancers. Leaders need to know what to look for and how to respond, but don’t need to ‘treat’ - 70% of improvement comes from support and a safe space. Provide reasonable autonomy over work, as well as a sense of purpose in it. Get the foundations right - sleep, diet and exercise. Using the canary in the coalmine analogy, Mark asks ‘what's your carbon monoxide, what makes your workplace toxic?’ The usual answer is stress/workload, it’s never about being a strong-enough canary. Each person needs to have their own canary: it's about identifying when you're reaching YOUR point of overwhelm. That makes sense. Unfortunately, he also says, ‘𝐓𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐰𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐞 𝐚 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐩𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐝𝐨 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐥 𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐩𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐰𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐲 𝐰𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬. 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧.’ Mark, being the optimist that he is, even sees some positives to burnout: when we recognise it, it encourages us to be introspective and to reprioritise what's important to us.