Episode 202: Why Everyone Is Burned Out (And It’s Not What You Think)

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Today Counts Show Episode 202

Preview

Winston: Where we’re seeing burnout at rates we’ve never seen before. Around 45% of US employees report experiencing burnout, according to a 2024 survey. Another study found nearly 2/3, 66% of workers say they are actively burned out in 2025. 66%, more than half of anybody that you see working is considering themselves as burned out.

Jim: So they’re going to give pretty bad customer service.

Winston:  What did it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?

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Introducing Burnout and Personal Context

Have you ever asked yourself the question, “I’m not sure I can do this anymore”? Maybe specifically, “I’m not sure I can work here anymore.” Maybe you’re listening or watching this right now, and you find yourself questioning your current work responsibilities, and somehow you’ve arrived at the reality that maybe you’re burning out. This isn’t just for workplaces. This is just in life. You might be finding yourself burning out.

My name is Winston Harris, and I’m your co-host here at The Today Count Show. I’m joined by the man, the myth, the legend. I know him as Gamewinner Jim, but none other than Jim Piper. How are we doing today, Jim?

Jim: We’re doing pretty well. We’re hanging in there.

Recognizing the Breaking Point: When Burnout Becomes Real

Winston: We’re hanging in there. We’re not burning out.

Jim: We’re not burning out. I will not burn out again.

Winston: Speaking about burnout, Jim, have you ever experienced burnout? You just said, “I’m not going to burn out again.”

Jim: Yeah. Yeah, I have. Hopefully, we’ll get to get into that a little bit today.

Winston: Yeah. If you don’t mind, maybe just right off the top here, as we’re just talking about a reality that I think many people face in many different spaces and walks of life, and we kind of hear this, this is kind of a buzzword, so we’ll even touch on some of this. How real is burnout versus just life difficulties and challenges? What is real burnout? What’s been your experience with burnout?

Burnout in Hindsight: How We Miss It Until It’s Too Late

Jim: Well, I don’t think I was even aware of the term when I was younger. When I was younger, it was work hard, play hard, live for the weekend, and here comes Monday. But if it wasn’t for my youth, I bet you I would have discovered burnout pretty early and pretty often. The reasons for that, looking back, not to be rude or crude, really would not have been that hard to see or diagnose. But in the moment, I suppose, I just would say, man, I’m burned out and I’m beat up.

Signs of Burnout

Burnout Isn’t Just a Buzzword—It’s a Real Condition

Winston: Yeah, because people throw that term out kind of casually, but there are some significant things that come along with burnout. Just some signs of burnout here that we’ll mention. If you were to do a quick Google search or anything, something like this would come up, but constant exhaustion.

Jim: Yeah.

Winston: Trouble sleeping. Maybe even you’re getting rest, but you’re not rested.

Jim: Right.

Winston: There’s no amount of physical sleep that can help the type of tired you might be experiencing. There’s emotional numbness, just feeling detached, cynical, which a lot of people think is a personality trait, but that can definitely be an indicator that there is burnout happening. Irritable, being really short with people. A loss of joy, just normal activities and responsibilities become heavy. There’s this sense of dread, just not looking forward to the day.

Cognitive difficulties, really hard to focus. Once again, this can get misconstrued in our day and age because there’s a lot of distractions, but being able to lock in on something. Trouble making decisions, being really indecisive, can be a symptom of burnout. Stuff like headaches, loss of appetite, and once again, just poor sleep. Poor sleep. You just really can’t get into that deep sleep.

A Real-Life Story—Burnout in Customer Service

One thing personally I remember experiencing, I worked at J.Crew for a season of my life, and that customer service space is really difficult to work in. You have to have some tough skin in customer service, and specifically I was in a seat that would handle escalated phone calls. I’m getting the worst of humanity daily. I’m just getting-

Jim: Bring it on.

Winston: -unloaded on over what I would say is just silly stuff. I literally remember a phone call about socks. Somebody lost their socks, and they’re just railing me. They’re going off on me. People get really courageous over a phone, over long distances, and they can say all kinds of stuff. I just remember day after day experiencing that, and there was a specific day I remember. I got up.

Jim: You don’t get any good phone calls, do you?

Winston: No, there were no good phone calls.

Jim: That could be an ingredient right there for burnout.

‘Sunday Night Effect’

Winston: Yeah. Literally, the job title is essentially escalated phone calls. That’s like 90% of what we’re doing. I can just remember getting up, knowing that it was a work day, and I just sat at the edge of the bed and exhaled. I really had to get myself out of bed. It was really hard to just get off the edge of my bed. I literally remember thinking, I do not want to do this. This can’t be. This can’t be all there is.

Jim: Yeah. I call that the Sunday night effect.

Winston: Yeah. What do you mean?

Jim: A lot of times when I’m sensing burnout in one of my clients, I’ll say, “Hey, tell me what you’re thinking about around 6:00, 7:00 Sunday night.” Often they’ll say, “Well, what do you mean?” I say, “It’s an open question. What are you thinking about?” They’ll say, “I’m dreading tomorrow morning.” That’s a sign of burnout.

Winston: Yeah. I was there. In the pit of my stomach, there was a knot, and I really couldn’t think about anything that I was looking forward to. I do remember there were moments where I got to almost physically anxious. I just didn’t feel well. And I was like, I don’t know how long I can keep doing this. Ultimately, I ended up stepping out of that space and feeling a call to ministry. That was a whole God thing in and of itself. That’s another episode, another story for another day. But burnout’s real.

Jim: Burnout is real.

Winston: Burnout is real, and in your estimation, how do you think a lot of people, myself included, maybe yourself or even people you’ve been in proximity to, how do we get there?

Generational Gaps and the Search for Fulfillment

Jim: Well, whenever you ask me a question, my mind goes all over the place, so I have to try to organize my thoughts inside two seconds. At this table, I’m a baby boomer, and you’re a?

Winston: Millennial.

Jim: Millennial. That right there, there’s a gap there. I came from a generation, now granted I’m a younger baby boomer. Most baby boomers would see themselves in their 70s, and I’m in my mid-60s. In those days, back in the 1970s and early 1980s, when you joined an organization, generally your idea was that you were going to retire with that organization.

Inside that organization, those kinds of organizations were forward-leaning in the sense of understanding psychology, but also the culture was all about finishing what you start, being a loyal employee. You got your watch when you retired, you got a ring in 10 years. Everything was built into finishing this race.

When the baby boomers or even the generation earlier than that, the builders, sometimes when they look at the millennials or the Xers or even the Gen Zers, we have a misunderstanding. There is sometimes a judgment that is placed upon the younger generations by the older generation. But I do think there is something to that, which I’ll speak to in a minute. On the other side of it, we’ve learned a lot about ourselves over the years.

Realizing Burnout and the Need for Change

To answer your question, I think the place I experienced the most burnout was when I did not realize that the way that I am wired, I had already run my race, but there was more to do within this organization. As far as I as an individual was concerned, I had run my race, and I was probably five years past that time. But I did not understand myself well enough at that time to navigate the culture of the organization along with the way that I believe that God wires me and makes me most effective.

All those symptoms that you described in the front end of the episode, I didn’t check every one of them, but there were at least half of them where I was going, “Yep, I experienced that.” If I lived by the good old ways, tradition, I would still be there.

Winston: What do you mean?

Duty vs Calling: Moving On Before Burnout Deepens

Jim: I would not have moved on. I would not have come to realization that I was ready for a new challenge, a new hill, a new mountain to climb. I would be doing my duty, staying there, even if that meant I was completely miserable and could not get up in the morning to do what I needed to do.

That is one of the key things that I do think leads to burnout and is a credible argument for this thing called burnout. I do believe that some were made to start somewhere and end there, but others are starters, others are fixers. I can go through all kinds of different ideas. Does that make a little bit of sense what I’m saying?

Winston: Yeah.

Jim: I mean, I only covered a little bit.

Burnout Statistics and Workforce Trends

Winston: Yeah. When we’re talking about this idea of burnout, I think there was a major shift in 2020 in just the workforce, in the marketplace in general. Some things to consider here: we’re seeing burnout at rates we’ve never seen before. Around 45% of US employees report experiencing burnout, according to a 2024 survey. Another study found nearly 2/3, 66% of workers say they are actively burned out in 2025. 66%. More than half of anybody that you see working is considering themselves as burned out.

Jim: So they’re going to give pretty bad customer service.

Winston:  I mean, I’m sure I gave some pretty terrible customer service. That guy, whoever called about the socks, pretty sure he didn’t get the socks. He did not get the socks.

Some reports say 72% of US workers face a moderate to very high job stress, a strong precursor to burnout. Then watch this: 38% of employees are quitting within the first year of their job. Almost, once again, we’re getting close to half. People aren’t even making it 90 days, some reports say.

This just kind of begs the question and maybe frames the rest of this conversation: is today’s workforce more fragile than it’s ever been, or is there a broken system?

Adapting to New Work Culture

Jim: How about I go halfway and say that today’s workforce hasn’t adapted well to the new way that we go about work?

Winston: Talk to me about that.

Jim: I’m going to bring in another third party here, Patrick Lencioni. In his work, Working Genius, I think he makes—I’m not going to simplify it just to this point, but to oversimplify it, the way he describes it is there are six geniuses that we employ for every project, every business, anything that we do. To make it very simple, there’s a beginning and there’s a maintaining or ending to it. You can break up those six geniuses into three, if I remember right. There’s ideation, the first implementation, and I forget what the other one is—

Winston: Execution.

Jim: Maybe the other way around. The reason I always forget that third one is because I’m not in that one.

Winston: I’m in that one.

Working Genius, Frustrations, and Role Alignment

Jim: Okay. So watch this. Two of those are literally labeled as my frustrations, meaning I’m just not wired to do it. So if my work concentrates on something that I don’t like to do, I’m going to burn out.

Watch this. He says, “But for most people, they don’t end up in those roles. There’s just something about God’s design, something about the way life works where we know. We go, ‘I don’t like that. I’ll stay away from that.”

Winston: I’m not going to be a lumberjack anytime soon.

Jim: Right. There’s a lot of things that I see that I go, “Yeah, I’m out. I don’t want to do that.” But believe it or not, in his work, he says, “Okay,” he says, “you’ve got two geniuses.” It’s not an exact science, but it’s pretty good theory because it goes back into the mid-1900s. It was just different terminology. But generally speaking, we’re good at a couple of things.

Competency vs Fulfillment

Then there’s a couple of things that we’re competent in. You ready for this? We end up getting burned out a lot of times because a lot of our work is in our competencies, not in our geniuses, which fulfills us and encourages us.

Let me say it this way. The difference between working— You use the term stress. When someone says, “I’m stressed out,” here’s what’s really weird. What stresses you out may not stress somebody else out. But if we could flip them, if they could trade jobs, I know it’s an oversimplification, but if we could trade jobs, often that stress would be greatly reduced.

Winston: That’s a great point. That’s a great point because there are some things that require a lot of effort, but I’ll walk away with that thing that is in my competency, as you’re describing, and I’ll feel energized. Even though I exerted a lot of effort, it was in a place that I felt competent in or thoroughly enjoyed the challenge. Whether the outcome was or wasn’t what I wanted it to be, it wasn’t life-draining. It was life-giving.

Being Good at Something vs Being Fulfilled

Jim: But what you’ve got to be careful of is you could actually be good at something and not be fulfilled in it. You can get positive feedback from your community that says, “You’re so good at that. Will you do this? Will you do this?” If a lot of those things are in your competency area, not in your fulfillment area, that will burn you out. Now you’re performing for the wrong reasons. You’re performing to please others, not from that place of strength and fulfillment.

When people break down what I do for a living, a lot of them, as they’re listening to me explain it, it’s like they’re sucking on lemons with their facial expressions. It’s like, “You like doing that?” I go, “I never said it was easy work. I never said it was flippant or so easy I didn’t have to think about it. No, I never said that. But I am fulfilled doing that work. So no matter how hard it is, it doesn’t—”

Do I need rest? We’ll talk about all of that later, I assume. But I think that’s what we can easily misunderstand. What I’m good at does not necessarily equate to what fulfills me. I could have become good at it for a lot of different reasons. I could have learned it as a child. It could have been my upbringing. I could have learned something in school. Academically, I might know how to do this or do that. But it doesn’t—

I’ll give you an example. Back in the day, I would have been considered really proficient doing spreadsheets. If you ask me to do a spreadsheet, I probably can knock off the rust and create some nice spreadsheets for you, but I’m telling you right now, it would not fulfill me. By the time I get done with the project, I’m not going to be liking you very much. That would be an example.

Leadership, Offerings, and Burnout Risks

Winston: Yeah. And how often do you come across leaders or people that are operating in competencies but aren’t operating in fulfillment? How do you close that gap?

Jim: All the time. All the time. I did it when I started the Lead Today Community. People would ask, because I did not have a clear set of offerings, and when people said, “Hey, do you guys do this?” Well, I’m trying to put food on the table. What I heard is, “Can you do this?” My answer was yes, we can. So we did. But there wasn’t joy in it. There wasn’t fulfillment in it. There was a coming of burnout because now I’m trading my time for money to do something that I don’t really like doing.

Over time, I found that we had to narrow our menu of offerings and services to the things that I thoroughly believed we were called to do, and that brought me fulfillment.

Job Descriptions and Managing Burnout Awareness

A lot of job descriptions, to answer you question more specifically—at least in my opinion—people will read through them and go, “Yep, I can do that. I can do that. I can do that.” Every once in a while, if you get them and say, “Hey, I want you to read through this job description, but I want you to think out loud,” and then give them some phrases—I have actually done this—say, “Yeah, I can do that. I’ll need to learn how to do that. I like doing that. I’m really good at that. Man, I can’t wait to—”

It’s really interesting. I’ve never seen anyone go through a job description and say, “I love that. I love that. I love that. Can I do more of that? More of that?” No. It’s a mixed bag. Reality is that your job is a mixed bag. I don’t think the objective is to get away from not doing things that you may not be good at or may just be competent in. But I’m saying that the knowledge of how much of your job requires that is really important in order to navigate burnout.

The Problem with the 8-Hour Workday

Questioning the Modern Work Atmosphere

Winston: Something I want to shift gears on a little bit is the atmosphere in which people work and the dynamics in which we find the workplace today in 2026. One thought I’ve always had, just being in the workforce, is why do we still work eight-hour days? From a sociology standpoint, a modern-day society, we’ve had all these innovations and all these ways that we’ve moved forward as a society, yet seemingly the agricultural framework, the mid-19th century. I looked this up. Henry Ford implemented the eight-hour workday in-

Jim: Manufacturing.

Winston: -in 1914.

Jim: Yeah. That’s up to date.

The Eight-Hour Workday and Modern Reality

Winston: We’re still, for some reason, functioning in that way. To your point, you said earlier we’ve not adapted to what is actually happening, the way people are living.

There’s a leadership coach and consultant, Greg Bosch, that I follow, and he had some specific things to say that I loved, so I want to quote him here. He said, “Many studies have shown that the eight-hour workday, which is a relic of the 19th-century factory work, doesn’t actually work. We aren’t built to do creative, thoughtful, deep work for eight hours straight in one static environment with a lunch break wedged in the middle. Many of the same studies find that most of us are only actually productive for about three to four hours each day. The rest of the time spent in the office is a productivity charade.”

Pseudo-Productivity and the Illusion of Activity

I feel like I’ve seen that. I’ve experienced that. There’s this pseudo-productivity that’s happening, and there’s this weird need for the illusion of progress and the illusion of activity, that we have to at least seem busy to make sure that our employees feel like we’re paying them. Maybe even the metrics and the productivity that we’re seeing on spreadsheets isn’t quite matching the time invested in the office.

I think what 2020 did was really challenge this idea that, “Do I need to be in the office to get work done?”

Jim: Wow. Wow.

Winston: Did I just hit a nerve?

Jim: Man, you are a millennial. Just kidding. I actually—I’m just kidding.

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Reflecting on Work Models and Leadership Thinkers

Jim: You brought up so many really good points that are very difficult to argue with when you do your homework and reflect upon your own life, if you are self-aware.

Let’s go back to Peter Drucker. If we’re dropping names that you’re not familiar with, and you’re a learner and a leader, I would encourage you to write these names down to learn. We’ve thrown three names out already today: Patrick Lencioni—who did you say?

Winston: Greg Bosch.

Jim: And then Peter Drucker.

So Peter Drucker started separating hands-on work from a lot of mental work, people work, design work—that kind of work—abstract work versus concrete work as knowledge workers. Then, of course, we haven’t talked about introvert and extrovert, which plays a role.

So when I go into a really busy office, I’m more of an introvert than I am an extrovert. I’m right on the borderline, but when it comes to getting stuff done, I go into introverted mode. Because it’s a focus mode for me.

Winston: Same.

Jim: If I go into an office with all kinds of fun camaraderie, high-five, and singing “we love the world,” that is a drainer for me. That is very unproductive for me.

I’m not saying I don’t need people. I’m not saying I don’t need community, because that’s not true. What I usually do is get my stuff done, then I come disrupt your world, which can be a selfish thing to do. I just think about how well I work.

Morning Rhythm and Knowledge Work Energy Cycles

To your script that you were just talking about, I am best in the morning after I have my morning rhythm for what I need, which I know we’re going to get into because that comes back to adapting to what’s going on in our work world today.

There are days where I get a lot of really good stuff done in three to four hours, and frankly, I’m done. I’m done. Now, what do I do with the rest of that day? Well, it depends. Sometimes I can be domesticated and go out and run errands. Sometimes I can get a second workout in, sometimes I can read a book. And sometimes I can invest in relationships. I can call my brothers and my sister. I can call my mom and my dad. So I can do those quality things in life.

But your thinking machine is different than your physical working machine. I think you can work eight hours if you are a landscaper. You’re going to go do eight hours because your body is not yet tired, and your body will continue to go.

Physical Work vs Mental Work

Here’s the other thing I didn’t mention. If I’m working as a knowledge worker for a few hours, there’s something weird that calls my name in the garage, in my office, out back, or at the pickleball court. My body wants to do something physically.

Winston: That’s good.

Jim: I’m learning from that. Those that work with their hands day in and day out—I can’t speak for them—but I have found a lot of very well-informed people who work out in the field because they do hunger for some of that. They usually have what I call intellectual hobbies. They seem to know a lot about the Civil War. And they seem to know a lot about this or that, and that’s how they fill their knowledge bank.

Anyway, that’s something to think about.

Winston: Yeah. I’ve heard it said that some of the major medical issues that specifically Americans see can be directly correlated to the fact that we sit for so long.

Jim: Sitting is the new cancer.

Winston: Eight hours, ten hours, twelve hours at a desk. To your point of knowledge workers versus those who are active and the majority of people that we– Which is interesting enough, let’s take a little detous here. How many people do we feel talk about burnout who are physically working versus those who are at a desk?

Burnout Across Different Types of Work

Jim: That’s a good point. I don’t work with a lot of people who do that, but I’m around them because their supervisors are people that I work with. Sometimes I get in the field and meet linemen or boots on the ground. Landscapers come to mind because I have landscaping organizations where I get to meet some of these people.

You’re right. I don’t ever hear them. In fact, the weekend for them is different than the weekend for the knowledge worker. It’s interesting.

I do remember a boss telling me—and for the life of me I cannot remember what employer—but I remember the first time I heard this. I didn’t believe it. He said to me, “I really don’t care how many hours you work. What I’m looking for is the results.”

I was so programmed that I didn’t know what to do with that. I thought, is he joking? Is he serious? Because I do work fast. I get a lot of things done fast. The thought of going out and playing softball or golf would be great, or golf or whatever.

I do believe that in some environments you will hear that, and they really mean that. That usually tests, if you’re an executor, how fast you can get things done. If you’re a leader, how well you can get things done through others.

But I also wonder where the breakdown is there. If you’re a leader and you put in four hours a day but expect everybody else to put in eight or ten, then there’s a problem.

Your question is not a simple one.

Winston: It’s layered.

Jim: It’s layered.

Winston: It’s a systemic cultural issue that is bleeding into corporate America.

Systemic Issues: Trust and Communication Turbulence

Flexibility, Retention, and the Modern Work Framework

Some interesting stats around this idea of the eight-hour workday and why we’re still functioning in this framework versus why leaders and companies aren’t considering a different approach: some companies have, smaller companies usually–

Jim: Four-day work weeks.

Winston: Some stats say companies that offer more flexible schedules see 33% lower turnover rates. 97% of employees say they would stay at their company. Just like you’re talking about, this commitment to long-term, finishing what you started. 97% would stay if flexible work were available. Then 75% of remote workers feel as productive or more productive with flexible schedules.

So the question I often, when I have time, think about is why it appears that leaders or companies hire people they don’t trust.

Winston: Yeah. Trust was the word. You took it. Keep going.

Trust, Leadership, and Visibility in Work

Jim: That’s a Patrick Lencioni teaching, one of the five disfunctions of the team. It seems like I have to see somebody in the office to trust that they’re working.

Winston: You’re doing it more for yourself than you are for your team. If you’re sitting in front of a therapist as a leader and complaining to the therapist that gosh, so-and-so came in at such-and-such time and left at such-and-such time. A good therapist would say, “Talk to me about that. What are you feeling there?” Well, I’m feeling like I’m being cheated. That’s what would be said. What else would be said? If they don’t say that they’re feeling cheated, then what would they say? Something to think about.

Now, if they’re not working visually the way you think they should be and the results aren’t there, then you can say 1 plus 1 equals two. But if their work is being done, then what are we holding on to? Well, then it tells the other employees that they can leave whenever they want to leave, but they don’t get their work done. So which is it? Is it about their work, or is it about hours, or is it both?

So, if I got all my work done, do I just sit there? Can I pull out a chessboard and start working on my chess game? Would that be okay? There’s a lot of inconsistencies in what we do.

Leadership Weight and the Search for Validation

We want validation. I think sometimes, if leaders don’t think through it, they want some validation because being a leader, being a boss, being a business owner is a very stressful thing. I mean, you’ve got to make payroll. And so, sometimes, speaking–

Let me stick up for the leader for a minute. The heaviness and the weight of paying the bills, serving the customers, and providing the payroll for these people is heavy. If you’ve never done that, then you should be careful what you say because it is a heavy, heavy thing.

In fact, the thing we often teach about is you’re looking for employees that have an owner’s mindset. Well, think about it, though. So, an owner’s mindset is going to be they’re going to steward the resources of the organization. They’re going to steward their own time. And so you can trust them. If you do not see them there visually, you’re trusting them. If any of that trust breaks down, that’s the core issue right there, is that trust factor.

Performance Levels, Compensation, and Trust Adjustment

Now, I’ll ask you this, how you feel about it. You played basketball. That’s what you were really good at. I wrestled. That’s what I was really good at. I thought I was good at other things, but apparently not. On every wrestling team, there was definitely varsity wrestlers, JV wrestlers, less than, and then with every elevated group, there was another elevated group and an elevated group.

And so sometimes the expectation that we’re going to have all major contributors is probably not realistic. It’s probably not normal. You’re going to have your A++, your A, your A-, your B. Yeah. Let’s just talk. I mean, even in scripture, the parable of the talents talks about that. The giftedness that God gives to people is different. But you tend to also pay wages according to that.

So there’s your adjustable trust factor. You can actually adjust your trust toward compensation. But then that opens up other doors of all this other social socialism that will want to talk about fairness for everybody versus meritocracy. I mean, it’s pretty hard to isolate.

Team Dynamics and Trust in High Performance

Winston: Yeah. It’s very multifaceted situation. Even drilling back into that trust factor, being able to play on some very bad teams and being able to play on some very good teams, some championship teams in different spaces, trust was a core fundamental element in teams that won, in the teams that I experienced winning.

And it was to the point where I was willing to make sacrifices, whether it was less playing time or a different role or a different position, if I knew that my teammates or my coaching staff actually cared and that we’re all in alignment and we’re all going to the same goal.

But if it felt like we’re all out for ourselves, if I’m trying to score 40 and you’re trying to score 40, and I can’t trust you to cover my guy if I get beat, in basketball terms, once it got siloed, once it got to “I can’t trust you,” I need to focus on what’s best for me. I need to make sure that I get my highlight film package and I get to the next level.

Jim: We didn’t have those.

Winston: What did they have back then? Recorders?

Jim: Slides. The annual banquet.

Winston: Annual banquet. Those two words. But that trust was essential in just healthy team dynamics. I think we can’t miss that enough, that some of the burnout issues can stem from maybe this culture of distrust in workplaces and teams.

Leadership Development and Contribution Levels

Jim: Maybe the message is that, as a leader, you are looking for leaders who then lead their teams, recognizing that there’s going to be a variety of performances, and those performances be paid accordingly. It’s true in everything. It’s true in business. It is true in sports. You’re all-stars.

The thing about an all-star that we’ve learned in professional sports and college sports is that, what’s really weird about this conversation is that an all-star, when you do the homework, most of them, unless I’m wrong, they tend to put in more work.

But if you’re requiring somebody to put in the work, then what you might be doing is spending more energy on the wrong people.

Winston: Or the wrong things.

Jim: The wrong things, maybe.

Communication Overload and Meeting Culture

Winston: I want to kind of take this quick direction, but there is this corporate culture that seems to be almost swallowed by culture, societal culture. It’s the way that we communicate in the workplace. I think this is also contributing to burnout in that this what is seemingly lower friction communication, instant messaging, emails, even just the meeting culture, that there almost seems to be this phenomenon where we’re meeting about work more than we’re actually working.

Your eight-hour workday, six hours of that day is emailing about a project, and you’re meeting about the project, and you’re talking about the project. There’s a lot of collaboration, but you’re not actually working on the project. So people are having to find time to actually work on the project outside of work, which is adding more of this not just workload, but cognitive workload, this mental, psychological weight of this constant motion.

Spiritually that can’t end well if you’re constantly on. If there’s this kind of 24/7, you’re always on call. Even if you’re off the clock, to keep your job seemingly, you’re having to make up the deficit because the organizational culture is kind of drawing you into all these communications. How do you frame that? What do you think leaders or those who have the ability to influence organizational culture, what might they need to reconsider?

Inside-Out Organizational Thinking

Jim: My mind goes again back to both Peter Drucker and the contemporary Patrick Lencioni, because it seems like we’re attacking the subject from the outside in, whereas both of these guys are attacking the problem from the inside out. Meaning that Drucker made it really clear that you go inside to write the mission statement, and then everyone’s job within their context is to serve the mission. So it’s an inside-out process.

Meeting Purpose and Communication Turbulence

It sounds like what you’re saying is that, and then I’ll switch over to Patrick’s view, is we spend a lot of time in meetings. So the question is, are they the right kind of meetings for everyone who’s in the meeting? I think I said that well. What Patrick has exposed is what he calls turbulence in communication is that you’ve got people who have assignments to execute, and then you’ve got idea people who are trying to solve larger problems, and then you try to put them in the same meeting, and probably nobody’s being served in those kinds of meetings.

And so we often do not identify the purpose of a meeting first, that’s inside out, and therefore who should be in the meeting. Now that can change over the process, the evolution of a project, going from creation to implementation. But from an organizational structure place, I think that is what I see the most that can contribute to burnout. I’ll say it again. It’s what we call, what Patrick Lencioni calls leadership turbulence or communication turbulence.

Elevation Levels, Handoffs, and Burnout Risk

Those folks that are on the left side of the scale, on the ideation side, think and talk at a high elevation, most susceptible to change. Then you have the middle group that takes that and begins to develop it and massage it to the button-up group that executes it and finishes it. If you were just to divide those three sections into elevation, you have turbulence. And so the handoff from one section to the next is delicate in and of itself. If you’re following me.

What we often see, particularly not just in small organizations but in large organizations, that’s what we see. So what happens is you end up in a meeting, and that meeting is asking for you to engage your frustrations that I talked about earlier, because you would have to engage your frustrations to be a contributor at this such-and-such elevation of a meeting versus your fulfilling strengths or geniuses.

Leadership Awareness and Meeting Design

So it just seems to me that not to put blame on everybody, but I’ll say it again. We tend to think and speak according to the elevation of our strengths. And if that person who is thinking and speaking is at the top of the org chart, then they’re going to, if they’re not consciously aware of that, then they’re going to tend to create meetings that don’t serve the best interest of the organization and the individuals in the organization.

Winston: That’s great. If you’re a business leader, if you have any kind of influence in an organization, this is a podcast that you need to be tapping into. Listen to it again because Jim is dropping some gems, as well as share with other leaders and other team members, because this is, once again, an inside-out proposition. If we don’t get people who are growing and learning in these spaces to be able to influence your organizations, then we’ll never see the change we want to see.

I think we can move towards landing the plane with just helping people who are listening or watching just take some maybe practical considerations about what they should do when they feel like they’re facing burnout. Maybe they’re beyond burnout, but what are some responses to the potential of burnout?

Practical Responses and Living “Inside Out”

Burnout in Middle Management

Jim: Yeah, again, inside-out margin. When I’m on the road, hardworking, and I see it mostly in middle management, to be frank, I see most burnout in middle management.

Winston: Why do you think that is?

Jim: Well, in some ways, to stick up for them, in some ways, they have to be the best 360-degree leaders on the planet, and no one’s really trained them how to do that. And because that isn’t easy. I mean, you’ve got colleagues that you need to woo and collaborate with, especially if you work for any size organization, to move forward. Then, of course, you have people that are on your team, your direct reports below you, and then, of course, you have superiors in the sense of organizational, the business world calls it control. I would like to call it span of care versus span of control, but nevertheless.

And then if they’re customer-facing, then add on to that. I mean, there’s a lot there.

Promotion, Competence, and Organizational Misalignment

I would also say that we tend to promote people to middle management who probably, that’s probably not fair to promote them. Going back to points that you were alluding to earlier, the other thing that probably needs to be adjusted, and of course, those of you listening to this, I know you’re yelling back at me and you’re going, “Yeah, but yeah, but,” and unfortunately it’s not a two-way conversation, so I can’t hear the protest, and I know there’s protests, but just hear me out.

Sometimes we have somebody that’s really, really, really good at doing this certain thing, and so instead of figuring out a way to compensate them more, to give them the value, a sense of value and a message that we need you here exactly where you’re at, doing what you’re doing and influencing what you’re doing, we have to promote them. And then we promote them to a place where all of a sudden they’re trading their geniuses into some sort of, at best, competencies, if not frustrations. Now we’ve again hurt the organization.

But we’re so Super Bowl-minded in the US that if I don’t climb the ladder to CEO, somehow I have failed. No one may say that, but it goes up the unconscious spine of most Americans who have ambition, who are achievers in that way, shape, or form. Yeah, that was a great question.

Inside-Out Margin and Theological Reflection

I think what I mean by inside out is in the margin, from a theological perspective, I know this to the tough-minded guys sounds so silly, soft, but think about it. Do you see God as soft? I don’t. In fact, one of the first illustrations I ever pulled out when I was dealing with God was He’s more like a rock, something that I could not move. And I don’t always like that. I like it when He protects me, but I don’t like it when He won’t move the way I want Him to move. That’s why I see Him as this big rock.

Winston: Wow.

Jim: I say this all the time. You know it, but I do believe God is big enough to be small enough to care about me. So in the center of me, I do believe there is this very unique place that only God and I are allowed to go. I don’t think anybody else is allowed to go there. When I die, when I take my last breath, even if you’re holding my hand, you’re connected to one of my senses. You’re not going with me. So it’s in that place.

And that place is kind of what informs my soul, which is that very usable control center of judgment and decisions and feelings and strength in my life, which then informs my body, and the soul animates the body. But when the world, which isn’t all bad, but when the world influences my body, it has a way of also informing my soul. But if I live from the inside out, my soul will be able to properly interpret what’s coming in from the outside.

Quadrant 2 and Preventing Burnout

So I would say, in Stephen Covey– That’s the fourth name thrown out. In Stephen Covey terms, it comes back to things you and I have talked about before, Quadrant 2. Quadrant 2 is the really, really important things but not the urgent things. And things that are really important for you that are also not urgent are the easiest things for you to procrastinate and to put off. And it’s those things that will keep you from burning out: exercise, reading, taking time off.

If you can negotiate a better relationship with your organization and not be bound to this strict thing, because if you’re like me, I’ll say this from personal experience. I’m a bit of a risk taker. So if I’ve bent somebody’s nose out of shape and got fired, okay, that’s the way it goes. But what I would negotiate is, hey, if I need to put in 14 hours, I will put in 14 hours. But if I need to put in three, I’m going to put in three. Deal?

And that’s the kind of thing. And as far as the comparison thing, where the leader says, “Yeah, but if I do that for you, I can do that for everybody else,” he said, “Well, you can do that for everybody else. That’ll work, too, if they perform.” If they point their fingers at me and they say, “Well, you go talk to Jim. See how Jim gets it done.”

Organizational Constraints and HR Culture

And I know there’s not a perfect answer for every situation because some organizations have everything buttoned down. They have HR looking over your shoulder every time you sneeze, which is a whole other culture. I keep getting hate letters from HR people. I do love you, I do.

Winston: Might need to do an episode on HR. Hit a nerve. Yep, chalk it up. That’s coming.

Jim: Yeah. There is a place for HR. It’s a very important place. And that’s the whole thing. Stay in your place. But we’ll talk about that.

Yeah, burnout. Burnout is, I would just say it this way. I’ve been burned out, so that’s my confession. Most of that came from insecurity. I was always a high achiever, and insecurity can be a part of high achievers, people-pleasing. And so that contributes to burnout. So courage needs to develop in one’s life, where they don’t become a jerk, a joker, or a jackass, but they become strong. When you’re strong, you can help people, and you can help organizations. Strong doesn’t mean is a different thing.

The Cost of Burnout and Personal Responsibility

Winston: Yeah, on the theological side, the scripture that came to mind is, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? Speaking to that margin, whatever is driving us to say yes, whatever is driving us to work the 80 hours, the 100 hours, even if we can justify it. There are a lot of opportunities out there that, okay, I’m going to be able to provide for my family, or I’m going to be able to provide for my mom, or care for my sick family members, or be able to impact my community.

There’s all these justifiable reasons, except have we wrestled with the fact that what is the sacrifice? And if the sacrifice is the soul, aka burnout, then are we truly willing to pay that price? I don’t think that’s a price that we want to pay. For those who are listening or watching, I might make this statement: burnout is a decision.

Jim: It is. Even if you claim that you didn’t know any better, you still made a lot of small decisions toward that, that you did know better. The culmination of a lot of bad small, small bad, whatever the order is, decisions, we have to take responsibility for our lives. Yeah.

Closing Remarks

Winston: Well, this has been hopefully helpful and encouraging. I know just listening to Jim, I’ve taken away some things for myself as well. And so until next time, we’ll see you on The Today Counts Show.

Outro

Thanks for spending part of your day with us on The Today Counts Show. If today’s conversation encouraged you, challenged you, or helped you grow, share it with someone in your circle, because we’re better when we grow together. And be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and stay connected with us on Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook. And remember, real change doesn’t happen someday, it happens today. Until next time, keep showing up, keep building, keep making today count.
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