Cultivate Passion and Not Burnout at Work

Sadly, many traits of high performers include seeking perfectionism and overworking. However, it's gratitude, hopefulness, goal-setting mindset, and emotional flexibility, the qualities that should define excellent employees.

An expert who helps people avoid burnout and find wellness at work is the journalist and speaker Jennifer Moss. She is the author of "Unlocking Happiness at Work: How a Data-driven Happiness Strategy Fuels Purpose, Passion and Performance" and "The Burnout Epidemic: The Rise of Chronic Stress and How We Can Fix It." According to Moss, we spend 50% of our waking hours at work in our lifetime.

Then, what better place to find wellness than the one we spend most of our time in?

As Harvard Business Review pointed out in one of its articles titled "When Passion Leads to Burnout," the saying "If you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life" couldn't be further from the truth.

Many workaholics justify their obsession to work, claiming that they are passion-driven people. However, it's crucial to take action and work for our wellness when self-care is left behind.

Highly engaged people tend to have perfectionist concerns, and they forget to take care of themselves. Jennifer Moss assures us that we can have harmonious passion and work to have life quality.

Passion, purpose, and meaning in our work are a precaution to burnout. It needs to be managed and moderated to avoid these toxic behaviors.

Also read: DO WOMEN OVER 45 HAVE DIFFICULTY FINDING WORK?

Prevent Burnout on Your Organization

The speaker claims that the responsibility to prevent burnout is moving more towards organizations than individuals. Here are some recommendations for leaders to avoid this phenomenon in their company.

-Organizations can help their employees to optimize their well-being. For example, a mental illness can't be solved for someone of their own. Many people experience this discomfort due to overwork.

-Fairness and equality it's crucial to guide high performers' auto-destructive tendencies. For example, talking with their manager and negotiating their tasks if they feel overwhelmed should be allowed.

-Start small. The expert suggests doing a Friday meeting where managers ask their teams these three questions: 1) Was this week particularly stressful? Why or why not? 2) What was the thing that helped you to feel motivated? And 3) What can I do as a leader to make next week better?

Making sure that everyone is sharing their feelings is the secret ingredient to having more engaged employees. By constantly doing this exercise, it's getting to the root of those problems way further upstream than tackling them when someone is taking long-term disability for being burned out.

Finally, Moss recommends having both: in-person check-ins and team meetings. The key is that teams can talk openly and feel safe in talking to each other. From sharing their thoughts with their manager privately to discussing how they can collaboratively support each other as a team, it's crucial for preventing burnout.

Lack of community and feeling like we're not bonded as a team is a predictor of burnout. It's time now to destigmatize workplace stress and anxiety and understand that being passionate about something doesn't mean sacrificing our well-being.