Overcoming Burnout and Change Fatigue

STEVE HENDERSHOT

How much change is too much? It’s a high-stakes question for organizations and teams because those who force too much change—or do it the wrong way—risk their employees feeling burned out.

Today we’re looking at the emerging scourge called change fatigue and how project professionals can help their teams avoid it.

NARRATOR

The world is changing fast. And every day, project professionals are turning ideas into reality—delivering value to their organizations and society as a whole. On Projectified^®, we’ll help you stay on top of the trends and see what’s ahead for The Project Economy—and your career.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

This is Projectified^®. I’m Steve Hendershot.

The urge to refine, innovate and improve can lead to a lot of great business and project outcomes. But constant change can lead to some downsides as well. And right now, that’s the situation where many organizations and teams find themselves.

The average worker experienced 10 planned enterprise changes in 2022, according to new Gartner research—that’s a fivefold increase since 2016. And those workers are signaling that they’ve had enough: The same survey indicates that employee support for enterprise change has fallen dramatically, from 74% to 43%, over the same period.

The phenomenon is called change fatigue, and leaders are scrambling to mitigate it. After all, you want to be able to capture the value of a positive change or innovation, but not at the expense of burnout. Besides, when employees don’t buy into a new initiative, they can sink its chances before it starts.

So today we’re speaking to a couple of leaders who are helping organizations and teams find a healthier way to process change. We begin in Houston where Rose James, a program leader at the investment company Edward Jones, told me there are ways to approach change that are less fatiguing than others.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Rose, let’s start with a definition around the topic of burnout, when it exceeds the standard Friday afternoon or late Tuesday night frustration that we can all feel on a week-to-week basis. What is burnout, and what does it look like when it reaches something more serious that influences someone’s broader well-being and ability to do their job?

ROSE JAMES

So, Steve, burnout is a work-related stress syndrome resulting from chronic exposure to job stress. But, to your question, how do you find it different from regular exhaustion? It’s interesting that you’d ask the question that way because Psychology Today defines burnout as the state of chronic stress that leads to exhaustion and also detachment and feelings of ineffectiveness. You can have burnout after the chronic exposure to stress, and it leads to exhaustion. But if you’re constantly exhausted, you will then end up being burned out.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

What are the symptoms, like what does that look like? Is it when I show up first thing in the morning, I’m already exhausted and don’t want to be there? When do I know that I’m in danger of this, not just momentary thing, but the syndrome?

ROSE JAMES

What a great question, and the reason I like that question is when I talk to people about burnout, I often ask the question, “Could you be burned out?” Since most people are not even aware that they may be burned out. So then I start to talk about what it looks and feels like.

So it feels, one, you named it earlier, which was exhaustion, that feeling of depleted energy, both emotionally and physically. You feel tired, you feel drained and maybe lowered concentration, or sometimes it may manifest as being forgetful. It can also look like cynicism, like a loss of enjoyment of work, so you’re coming into work on a Monday morning—where you probably should have used the weekend to rest and be rejuvenated coming to work, you know, first day of the week—but that loss of enjoyment of work. Sometimes project managers may have a tendency to want to avoid projects or other team members may just want to avoid work altogether.

Another way that you may think of what burnout looks and feels like may be detachment or alienation, so a desire to avoid social situations or social interactions. Your project team member may present as being pessimistic. So there’s the negative self-talk, there’s negative attitude. There’s reduced performance and productivity. There’s irritability towards your team members or stakeholders, a reduction in health, a change in appetite, or a change in sleep. So when someone starts to hear those, they start to think back, “Oh, yeah. I’ve had those feelings, or I’ve experienced those symptoms.” And that’s when we start to hone in on that burnout realization.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Let’s now talk about burnout in the context of change fatigue. What does that look like? Why is change particularly draining? Some of what you just spoke about in terms of cynicism, I can see there being an attitude of, “Oh no, not this again.” And burnout can be related to it.

ROSE JAMES

Change fatigue is resistance or passive resignation to organizational change, and how it would show up would be when there is constant change or you as an employee may feel bombarded with constant change, right? Like, one change after another. You nailed it when you said, “Oh, not change again.” It’s stressful. There’s the exhaustion that comes with too much change, or too frequent change, and there’s resistance to want to engage or adopt the change, or a decreased organizational commitment. So you’re like, “I don’t want to be a part of it.” And then there’s apathy as well.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

So we’ve talked about symptoms and warning signs—now let’s walk through a hypothetical, like a merger and acquisition. Employees face a lot of change in this scenario. What are the keys to opening the door to someone saying, “All right. This is going to be hard, and I’m not excited about it, but I’m willing,” versus “I can’t deal with this anymore”?

ROSE JAMES

You make a great point. So process change would be embedded in an M&A change. Absorbing another company, you’re absorbing assets, that’s one. But two, you’re absorbing new processes, right? Because you may have duplication of process, you may have duplication of duties, so now identifying which of these processes do we need to retain? You want to either craft a new process or hold onto one process, and then you have system changes. You’re right. M&A is a perfect example of change that can be overwhelming.

You make a great point. So process change would be embedded in an M&A change. Absorbing another company, you’re absorbing assets, that’s one. But two, you’re absorbing new processes, right? Because you may have duplication of process, you may have duplication of duties, so now identifying which of these processes do we need to retain? You want to either craft a new process or hold onto one process, and then you have system changes. You’re right. M&A is a perfect example of change that can be overwhelming.

But how do you effectively ensure that the change is managed well? There’s a body called Mind Tools, and they talk about change management. If you apply these four principles that we’re about to talk about, you can at least ensure the right path to successful adoption of change, and the organization as well not experiencing fatigue or burnout.

The first one is understanding the change: the why the change is happening, the benefits of the change, the who is involved in the change, the ramifications if the change is not implemented and how the change will be achieved. This clarity helps to put the team in the right mindset and raises their confidence level in absorbing and adopting the change. The second one is planning the change. Now implementing the change, so going back to doing what we planned or said we were going to do. And the last piece is communicating the change. I’m sure you probably guessed it already that communication is critical, or lack thereof, right, which can make or break the success of change. Effectively communicating the change is a critical component, as the intended change needs to be clear so the people who are involved in the change can easily visualize it, understand, and there [are] no open questions in their minds about what’s happening.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

How long does this process take? Is there a magic number?

ROSE JAMES

I would say it’s both an art and a science. There’s no magic number. I think every organization is different, and every change that you’re trying to implement is different. The change that you’re trying to implement this time may be different from the previous change, so I think what’s critical is to really do an assessment of the organization to come up with the right levers to pull.

Okay, the team is overly fatigued because they have been working nonstop on a system implementation. They were burning the candles at both ends, which I highly don’t recommend. They were working nights to push a new system into prod, or a new change into prod. Yeah, give them some time off, right? And then have them come back. You can inform that there’s a change coming, but not make it complicated. That’s where the roadmap comes into play, having that forward outlook of what are we looking to accomplish in the next six months, the next year, or two years? And it is helpful if that is communicated and made visible to the entire organization so they can wrap their minds around it. Thinking about when to activate the next body of work is important by looking at the current situation of the team. That is, I would say, the best way of leveraging that art and science to know exactly when to communicate the next body of work that needs to take place.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

That was great advice for how to best manage this in a team or organizational situation that is not already ripe with change fatigue. What do you do if you’re trying to move forward with a team that is already suffering from past change?

ROSE JAMES

That’s a toughie, right? In my career, I’ve often walked into an organization, from [a] consulting perspective, to implement new change when the team is already burned out. The interesting thing is trying to figure out what has happened in the past, right? Sitting down with the leaders, and I would often kind of walk through this interview: Tell me where your organization has been in the past year, past six months. That way I can understand the mindset of the team.

Based on that, I can tell if the team is likely to be in a state of burnout or not, and I’ll ask the question, “Do you think your team might be burned out?” Obviously, most people don’t even know what burnout is, right? So it’s hard for leaders to be able to effectively and accurately answer that question. But then when I meet with the team, I’m also able to assess if they’re burned out or not. And if they are in a state of burnout, I kind of take [a] two-step approach in combating and helping them recover from burnout as much as I can.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Okay, walk me through that process. What do those steps include?

ROSE JAMES

So I break it into two sets: There’s the mindset piece, and then there’s the behavioral piece. From a mindset piece, one, it’s making sure that they take frequent breaks from their work just to help the mind relax. And then two, it’s allowing them to reframe threats as challenges, because when you are in a burnout state, your mind tends to see challenges as threats, or little mishaps as huge threats. And then from the leadership perspective, I try to work with the leaders to reset their own thinking. There’s a phrase I like that says pressure doesn’t always create diamonds. Stress cracks. If you put too much pressure on the team to achieve the goal too fast or to implement the change too fast, or frequent changes, your team is going to crack. So both from a leadership and employee perspective, that’s how I work on the mindset piece.

And then from the behavior piece, I know this is going to be hard, but teaching the team how to learn to say no tactfully, right? How do you do that? Bringing your current list of initiatives and presenting that to the leaders and expressing that if we add more to this to-do board, our output is going to suffer. The quality of our output is going to be diminished. Another way that I’ve done this on the behavior side is really teaching both leaders and the team members how to identify stressors that they can or cannot control because we have both external and internal factors that cause stress that leads to burnout and fatigue. Those elements in the external column are things that we cannot control. But the high demands for change, or time pressure—so a leader can control that, but maybe a team member, an employee cannot control that. Now, the internal factor that a team member can control is a high need for perfectionism or a strong need for recognition or wanting to please others. Those you can control. Teaching the two groups how to change behavior by identifying stressors they can or cannot control. And most importantly, leading by example. As a leader, taking time out so you can relax your mind, rejuvenate, and come back nonstressed, but also practicing what you preach, so allowing your team the time [to] just take a step away from work as well.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Most of what we’ve covered so far is how can you as a project leader help your team avoid change fatigue, but you as a leader might also feel this coming down from the C-suite or from department leaders. Knowing that, some of what you just said I think still applies here, but anything else that you would advise project leaders who are beginning to feel a bit change fatigued themselves?

ROSE JAMES

I think the biggest piece of it is learning to recognize the signs of burnout by practicing self-awareness. Because sometimes as project leaders we just go, go, go, right? And I think the hidden expectation is that you have to be able to keep going and taking on all the stress on your shoulders, that we become numb to it sometimes. So being able to practice self-awareness and also minding our mindset. We don’t have to do it all. The world literally can still go on if you took a break.

The second piece is also being a servant leader, being there for your project team to help them navigate those challenging waters. You can do that by helping them to practice workload management. You can do that by helping them remove roadblocks, impediments, building a safe environment where they can have a support system. They can talk about how they’re feeling. It has a huge impact on the team.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Change isn’t just going to stop. But project leaders and their organizations can take steps to better support teams during times of transition. Projectified^®’s Hannah LaBelle spoke about that with Mary Tresa Gabriel in Bengaluru, where Mary works at Dell as a project manager through the software and IT services company SP Software.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

HANNAH LABELLE

Okay, Mary, so this episode is all about burnout and change fatigue. Let’s start with talking about what’s at stake. How can having team members or even project leaders who are burned out on change affect the team, as well as the projects that they’re working on?

MARY TRESA GABRIEL

That’s a great question to start with, Hannah. So as managers, we all want to do the right thing for our team. Let’s imagine a game of Jenga. So each team member represents a block in the tower, and the project itself is like an entire Jenga tower. When one block gets burnout, that means one team member gets burnout. It becomes wobbly and shaky. And it risks collapsing the entire tower, taking the whole tower down, which means taking the whole project down with it.

So, as managers, we come up like the steady hand to try to make sure that we carefully remove and replace all those little shaky blocks so that our tower remains stable. But what if our hands are also very shaky due to the burnout that we face? It becomes very challenging for us to keep the tower stable. The more burned-out blocks that we have in our team, the more uncertain the tower becomes, which actually leads the project to maybe become unsuccessful, too.

HANNAH LABELLE

That’s a great analogy, so let’s stick with it—what can cause those blocks or hands to get shaky? What are some of the typical causes of burnout or change fatigue?

MARY TRESA GABRIEL

Change burnout is a complex issue which can be influenced by a combination of factors. So, first things first, we are not having a clear direction. So when a change happens at a team level or an organization level, the team members are not very sure about the goal or the purpose or vision of the change that is being implemented, which can actually lead out to burnout. So without a clear direction, they may feel a little lost, confused, and struggle to find the real meaning of what they are doing.

Another cause that I would actually say is inadequate training and development. When team members are expected to adapt to a new process, or let’s say a technology, if they don’t have the necessary knowledge or training on how it’s being implemented, they may struggle to meet the expectations of what the project sponsors are [expecting] from the team.

And another thing would be excessive workload. If team members are expected to handle a significant increase in tasks or responsibility without having support or resources, this can also create excessive stress and fatigue for them. If they are constantly faced with unclear expectations and shifting priorities or lack of proper information about the changes, this itself can cause a lot of uncertainty within the team, which can cause burnout in [the] team as well as for the project leaders.

HANNAH LABELLE

Can you share an example where you were leading a team that was burned out because of constant change? Tell me about the project, and how did you motivate team members and get everybody back on track?

MARY TRESA GABRIEL

In one of my previous organizations, Muraai Information Technologies, I experienced a situation where constant changes from the client’s organization were impacting the project that I was leading. We encountered a significant challenge when the client’s team, which we had initially signed off with the project, underwent substantial changes; the team that I [had] signed off with the project is not the team that I have during the execution and not the team that I have delivered the project [to].

The change in the client team had a ripple effect on our team as well because we had to quickly adapt to the new dynamics, and we had to establish a rapport with the new team members in the client’s side, and also we had to align our work processes accordingly. So even though it was something that was beyond our control, the burnout was actually affecting the overall performance.

What I did was treat my team more with empathy. I try to prioritize transparent communication, so I ensured my team understood the reason behind the changes that were happening and the importance of adapting to these new changes, which actually helped us to work better towards completing the project. And I also encouraged our team to share their concerns, their frustrations, so that there is an open communication that is going on, which created a sense of unity within the team. And also, we celebrated small wins. During the entire project, when we hit each milestone, I made sure to send out a personal appreciation mail, or a little short shout-out during our weekly calls. This also helped to maintain a positive atmosphere during the project progress.

HANNAH LABELLE

Looking at that example, how do you discuss burnout and change fatigue with team members as they might be experiencing this? And what role does psychological safety play in that?

MARY TRESA GABRIEL

That’s a really great question, Hannah. When we say burnout in [the] corporate world, it’s actually a very sensitive issue. So when you want to discuss it in your workplace, you need to make sure that you create a space where team members feel comfortable about expressing their thoughts, concerns and experiences without the fear of judgment.

One effective way to discuss burnout is through storytelling. What I do is share my personal experiences of overcoming some challenges so that it creates a relatability for them to understand: “Oh yeah. Even she has gone through the same scenario or situation.” This actually helps them to connect emotionally with us, and also understand they are not alone in their journey, or they’re not going alone in their struggles. Everyone has gone through it.

Another thing which I want to specifically say is try to normalize burnout and change fatigue at our workplace. Don’t treat it as a sign of weakness. Burnout is something that is more of how our body and mind respond to the stress that we go through [in] our day-to-day life. Just try to normalize it, and I really think the psychological safety [does] play a role. Because when our team members approach us when they want to talk about burnout, it is more likely they are okay to show their vulnerable side, which actually comes only when they trust you and when they are open to share with you.

HANNAH LABELLE

Change is a constant, especially in today’s world of work, and so thinking about that, how can project managers build resilience to that change fatigue, either for themselves or their teams? What are some steps project managers can take to better prepare their teams for change or lead them through it while trying to really keep that burnout at bay?

MARY TRESA GABRIEL

When we say change, adaptability goes with it. You need to make sure your team members have adaptability in their DNA when you are going through a change. Try to encourage flexibility, embrace new ideas that come as part of the change, and then celebrate when your team adapts to the change. Because these all make them feel valued within the team.

Another actionable step that a project manager can take is [to] prioritize skill development for your team to equip them with necessary tools that they require to navigate this new change effectively. It can be training opportunities or maybe mentorship programs or even cross-functional projects.

And last but not least, practice what you preach, lead by example. Show them that you have adapted to the change. You are also embracing the challenges that are coming on the way with respect to change. You are openly sharing your experience on the change, which actually makes your team also to follow the same and develop their own resilience.

HANNAH LABELLE

How can project managers support team members who are feeling burned out on change?

MARY TRESA GABRIEL

Just be empathetic. When they approach you, understand what they are experiencing. Take the time out to listen to them, validate what they’re feeling, and as I mentioned earlier, offer a safe space for them to come and express their feelings. That open communication helps them also to come and share, which helps them to reduce their burnout.

HANNAH LABELLE

Mary, thank you so much for giving me some of your time today. I really appreciate it, and I really enjoyed this discussion.

MARY TRESA GABRIEL

Same here, Hannah. Thank you so much for having me here.

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