Manage Stress and Avoid Burnout

By Geri Puleo

We often think of burnout as just a natural part of doing work, but make no mistake: Burnout is very real, and its consequences can be severe. Fortunately, in Manage Stress and Avoid Burnout, an audio course from Scribd Coach, Geri Puleo explains how to respond to burnout — before it becomes a problem.

In the course, Puleo addresses the six risk factors for burnout; what a burned-out worker looks like; the effect perfectionism has on burnout; and much more. She also shares exercises along the way so you can begin putting what you’ve learned into practice immediately.

No more reacting to stress — whether you’re an employer or an worker, Manage Stress and Avoid Burnout will help you understand the troubling phenomenon of workplace burnout and take effective action.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scribd Coach
• Release date: Mar 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781094437101

Geri Puleo

Dr. Geri Puleo is a scholar-practitioner dedicated to transforming the world of work by eradicating workplace burnout, as well as a Senior Professional in HR. Puleo is the creator of the Burnout During Organizational Change (B-DOC) Model, a research-based solution that identifies 10 workplace stressors that contribute to burnout as well as the stages of descent and recovery experienced by burned out workers. To learn more about Puleo, visit her website, GAPuleo.com.

Book preview

Introduction

Hello, and thanks for joining me. My name is Dr. Geri Puelo, and this is Manage Stress and Avoid Burnout, a course from Scribd Coach.

Over the years, I’ve done a lot of research on managing stress and what is needed to avoid escalation into full-blown burnout. I’ve created this course to share that information with you. We’re going to define what burnout is and what it isn’t.

Burnout is very similar to PTSD, and I have often wondered if it’s another form of the disorder. While it’s not considered a disability under the American with Disabilities Act, it is listed as a physical disability under the American with Disabilities Amendments Act, or ADAAA. That means anyone with PTSD is entitled to reasonable accommodations at work, like extended time to complete tasks or avoidance of situations that would trigger a flashback.

Burnout does not share the same entitlements, but workplace policies and practices would drastically shift if they did. Vacation and paid time off would be mandatory. The way employees are recognized and praised for their efforts would also change, leading to an uptick in creativity, innovation, and better ideas and products for the company.

I compare burnout to the canary in the coalmine. The birds were once caged and taken into coal mines to detect carbon monoxide. Burned-out employees are much like the canaries in this scenario. They will succumb to the pressures and miss deadlines, opportunities, and threats to the company. They won’t develop new product ideas, customer service will suffer, and poor decisions will be made. They will go down before the company does, and when they do, your company will be subjected to lawsuits and other litigation for foreseeable errors.

That’s why we’ll also cover the six risk factors that cause one to be more prone to burnout, the profile of a burned-out worker, and the effect perfectionism has on burnout. We also say things to ourselves that walk us right down the road to burnout, and we’ll go over what that sounds like.

Residual burnout can last for an extended period of time, so I’m going to share what that looks like and the false cures out there you should avoid. Finally, we’ll discuss how to recover from burnout and set boundaries and expectations with your work to be fully productive.

So, to all current and future employers listening, ask yourself if you will be proactive about this and remember the humanity of your workers. It’s time to put the human back in human resources.

In the next unit of this course, we’ll identify burnout and define what it means.

Unit 1

Welcome back to Manage Stress and Avoid Burnout. In the first unit of this course, we’ll go over what burnout is and what it isn’t.

Burnout is more than just reaching a very stressful point in life. How you respond to the stress will determine the outcome. Some may be invigorated, while others are set on the course to burnout.

When we’re stressed, it feels like we struggle to deal with all of our responsibilities, and looking forward without worry seems impossible. However, it’s not. The long-term begins now is a quote from an unknown source, but they were right. The future starts in the present moment, and if you think this way, you can begin to balance competing demands and choose where you want to go and how you want to feel when you get there.

Author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi said in his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, "It is how