NHPCO NewsLine Fall 2019 - 19

As a trainer and coach, I'm often
contacted by leaders to speak to
their teams about compassion
fatigue. The first couple of times,
I was greeted by staff who
listened with crossed arms and
raised eyebrows as I spoke.
"A healthy work-life balance
sounds great," they said, "but
when we try it, we get punished.
Self-care?", they snorted. "That's
a wonderful idea, but with a
caseload/quota/points system of
(insert obscenely high numbers
here), when exactly are we
supposed to do that?!"
They didn't have nearly as much
compassion fatigue, a state of
emotional depletion when we've
given more care energy than we've
taken in, as they did burnout from
workplace issues that they were
largely helpless to change.
Burnout, according to the
literature, stems from
perceptions of:
1. work overload
2. lack of control
3. lack of reward
4. lack of fairness
5. lack of community
6. values conflicts
(Maslach, C.; Schaufeli, W. B.; Leiter, M. P.
(2001). "Job burnout". In S. T. Fiske, D. L.
Schacter, & C. Zahn-Waxler. Annual Review
of Psychology (52): 397-422.)

I went back to their leaders to
explain I could teach their staff
about boundaries and self-care,
but if organizational and
management factors did not

change, all that would happen
would be that their staff would
get healthy enough to break up
with them.
Some staff cheered and jumped
on the, "It's administration's
fault" bandwagon. They were
surprised when I stopped them to
explain that organizations have a
significant role in creating the
conditions that contribute to
workplace burnout, but we staff
are no less off the hook for the
roles we play in this complex
dynamic.
I may fear that if I speak up, set
boundaries to protect my worklife balance, or ask for what I
need I will be fired, not able to
pay my bills, and wind up under
the bridge with my border collies.
All the dominoes inside my head
can fall that quickly to the most
catastrophic outcome.
As my mentor constantly reminds
me, however, not winding up
under the bridge is a choice I'm
making and having that choice
negates victim status. I may not
like my options but accepting
responsibility for the choices I
make and the situations I
volunteer to remain in is what it
means to be a healthy, mature,
and resilient person who thrives
through challenges rather than
merely surviving or being taken
out by them. The choice is far
more mine than I may realize or
want to accept.
It can be so tempting and seem
much easier to make everyone

else responsible and to want
them to act differently so we can
feel okay. Yet, accepting that we
are powerless to change people
and circumstances but that we
are not helpless to take action on
our own behalf will build a much
more resilient mindset in
ourselves and our teams.
So, I now speak to leadership and
staff about the role we each play
in co-creating resilience in the
workplace. Leaders can create
workplace conditions that
contribute to health or burnout in
their organizations. Staff can
contribute to our own and the
organization's resilience by
focusing on the things we can
change rather than wearing
ourselves out trying to control the
things we can't.
One of the best reviews of
resilience I've seen comes from
the February 11, 2016 edition of
The New Yorker, called "How
People Learn to Become
Resilient" by Maria Konnikova.
Despite a growing body of
research, we do not yet have one
set model for resilience, yet there
are factors that show up
consistently in the literature,
which I cover briefly below:

Perceptions and MeaningMaking
The stories we tell ourselves
about a circumstance greatly
impacts our experience of it.
According to one of the most
respected researchers of
resilience, George Bonanno, as

Newsline / Fall 2019

19
http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/the-secret-formula-for-resilience http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/the-secret-formula-for-resilience http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/the-secret-formula-for-resilience
NHPCO NewsLine Fall 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NHPCO NewsLine Fall 2019
