Christina Maslach: The Burnout Challenge Love in Action

Christina Maslach is the foremost expert and pioneer of research on job burnout. She is an American Social Psychology and professor emerita at UC-Berkeley, she also is the creator of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). Christina joins host Marcel Schwantes to discuss the book, The Burnout Challenge, which she co-authored. She provides a working definition for workplace burnout, which plays a big part in the 3 dimensions of the 6 job mismatches. As she explains these mismatches she also encourages ways to pivot from these chronic stressors, and help leaders become engaged.
 
The Burnout Challenge
As Marcel Schwantez and Christina Maslach dive into their discussion, The Burnout Challenge they talk about the real target of the book, “The way human beings function, depends on a relationship between the person and their environment.”[6:52] Christina comments on how too often people focus on just one part of that relationship, the person but what about the role the environment plays? How do we improve the relationship between the job and the people working? She then lays the groundwork for their discussion with a definition for Burnout in the workplace, a response to chronic job stressors that haven't been well managed. In this case, chronic is a very important word because these stressors become too frequent to cope with on a normal basis.

Job Mismatches
Christina overviews the 6 mismatches at work that lead to burnout: work overload, lack of control, insufficient reward, breakdown of community, absence of fairness,  and conflicting values. “These are the chronic job stressors, that are there all the time, that are annoying, that are hurtful, that get in the way, that are obstacles…that if you just didn't have them, you could get your job done and feel good about it.”[23:57] These are as she refers to as pebbles in the shoe, small but not trivial things that have a large impact on your ability to do your job.

The Three C’s
Collaborate, Customize, and Commit are the “Three C’s” Christina shares that leaders of organizations and their teams need to work on to move past and pivot away from the mismatches. She emphasizes the need to make it a we, not an I, and focus on bringing everyone to the table to come to a solution that does not have to be perfect, but can be better. Too often leaders and higher-ups are adding and adding more to their teams' plates but Christina says we need to rethink, redesign, and come up with something different but doable. “You have to do subtraction if you’re going to do addition in order to keep a relatively good balance between people and the job” [42:06]

Be an Engaged Leader
“People are capable of really good things…we ought to be able to figure out how to help more of that happen on a regular basis” [52:18] Christina makes an analogy about a beautiful flower plant on her deck, she could have paid a lot of money for it but that means nothing if she puts it in a broken pot, with bad soil, and gives it no water or sunlight…those are not the conditions for it to thrive. The same goes for leaders and their employees, they have to work to provide them with conditions that will help them thrive which is a major part of their role. She encourages leaders to be engaged, walk the floor, get to know their people and their needs so that they can be a part of the collaborative voice to help make things better.

Mentioned in this episode:
The Burnout Challenge
maslach@berkeley.edu
Christina Maslach | UC Psych
Marcel Schwantes on LinkedIn
Marcel Schwantes