It's not burnout. It's betrayal.

Slowly rise.

A theme in recent coaching calls and workshops has been something beyond burnout. "Crisis mode has become the norm," explained one participant.

An article in the New York Times focused on the unbalancing act hoisted upon mothers, "How Society has Turned its Back on Mothers: This isn't About Burnout, It's About Betrayal," crystalized the mismatch between expectations and requests and the infrastructure to support those expectations. 

A 2019 academic publication, Reframing Clinician Distress: Moral Injury not Burnout, examined the secondary trauma, the emotional toll, on clinicians who operate in systems not designed to support the health outcomes of their patients.

How do we continue to show up for others, even as we are stretched beyond our capacity? What do we do when we do not see the end in sight?

One of the ways we can both cope and chart a new course is to understand the specifics of the resources that are available.

To do: Become aware of and clear about the resources that we have available for a given situation. The Show Up Hard Resource Survey is a tool I use to assess my own tools for a current situation or a template for organizations or groups to use to identify the resources they have to support clients or staff.

The Resources Survey is ideally created prior to the crisis but can certainly be fine-tuned during a crisis and reviewed during a debrief. The resource survey can also help us with identifying gaps in resources, helping us to set new benchmarks for staff support or programming for clients. Without this awareness of what is available, we risk overpromising or under-delivering to those we seek to serve. 

As I recently said to one manager, our job as leaders is to help build the scaffolding so that the team can thrive. It's like charting the streets and turn signals and signs in a new city. How do people know where to go and what to expect when they get there? This is how we can think of our job as empathetic managers of people doing work that matters. A manager prepares the scaffolding and lights the way for their team.

Wishing you a strong headlamp and trusty compass on your journey.

#showuphard

For more tools to thrive at the intersection of empathy & resilience, sign up for my free 30-day e-course.