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Type 3 Corporate Psychopaths:

Micromanagers

In modern IT corporation having an encounter with a micromanager is as inevitable as death and taxes. Micromanager is probably the most popular subcategory of toxic managers or in less politically correct terms  a special type of corporate psychopath.

Micromanagers can especially visible in large corporation but they are especially nasty in software development environment, may be due the complexity of the environment in which programmers operates.  If we are talking about micromanagement we usually assume significant level of incompetence. Extremely (or toxically) competent manager usually does not produce such a strong allergic reaction although everything has its limits.

Note 1: Paranoid incompetent micromanagers (PIMM), who successfully combine tight control of minute details/procedures used in performing assignments with compete incompetence are often called "control freaks" (CF). This category of micromanagers represents really nasty beasts of IT jungles who tend to completely paralyze their victims.  They are completely different from PHB on Dilbert cartoons.

In this set of pages that include

• Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks
• Fighting Paranoid Incompetent Micromanagers and Control Freaks
• Documenting Micromanager Behavior
• Communication with Corporate Psychopaths
• Coping with the toxic stress in IT environment
• The micromanagment-induced anger trap

we will mainly address this menace. 

Note 2: Good advice about the topic is difficult to come by and depends on your concrete situation: take any recommendations with a grain of salt.

Most PIMM are simultaneously workplace bullies, ruthless dictators like petty variant of Mao or Stalin  who based of particular circumstances try to twist political and social power to inflict psychological abuse on a carefully chosen target. Paradoxically often this target is a mirror of micromanager: perfectionist, workaholic with the only difference that he/she is a competent one.

Knowing how to deal with PIMM is a skill that is not easily acquired nor mastered, but is an essential requirement to your survival and, often, to your physical and, especially, psychical health. Negative health effects are usually typical consequence of the combination of a workaholic culture and chronic toxic stress  inflicted by control freaks: they are similar to combat stress.

In milder form micromanagement is rampant. According to some surveys nearly eight in 10 employees are victims of a micromanaging boss. If we consider bulling as most typical behavior of PIMM then data suggest that: 

• About one worker in six is bullied in any given year.
• A woman is the target in eight of every 10 cases.
• In six of 10 cases, a woman is the PIMM.  I suspect that it might be seven out of ten: this is an interesting side effect of affirmative action: road to hell is paved with good intentions...

It is easier to cope with PIMM and micromanagers by considering them as psychiatrist patients who somehow escaped treatment. And the most sad fact is that there are so many of them and while men in extreme cases are probably nastier this is a real epidemics among female managers. Might be a side effect of affirmative action when instead of promoting best people corporations are promoting incompetent and power hungry females because they need to meet quotas.

Viewing PIMM as psychiatric patients who managed to escape treatment helps first of all restore self-respect severely damaged by control freaks.  Like relationship in problem marriages micromanaging usually indicates hidden personality problems of a particular individual who tries to exploit your individual weaknesses and creates evil, toxic workplace.

The most common consequences are problems with health and burnout. Insomnia is probably the first warning sign of health problems. Burnout is a natural and inevitable consequence of  an uneasy relationship between employee and micromanagers; it is worth repeating that  micromanagement sucks the life out of workers. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines burnout as "exhaustion of physical or emotional strength or motivation usually as a result of prolonged stress or frustration."  That's an apt description of the condition, and it explain why burnout is typical side effect of micromanagement. Burnout is especially acute in programming and system administration when after jumping though a lot of useless hoops trying to do the job despite micromanager people just give up.

Reducing the burnout from micromanagement is not just a matter of reducing the number of negatives. Indeed, like in any abusive authority-based relationship there is not a lot you can do about the negative effects of micromanagement on you as an individual.  Instead, it is often more useful to think about increasing the number of positives, and of building the opposite of burnout, private safety niche and side interests and activities. Enrolling in gym is probably the easiest and the most useful countermeasure. Buing a punch bag is probably the second. Enrolling into social psychology course in your local community collage is the third. And so on.  If you stay at work managed by a micromanager the key to survival is minimizing your work hours (this is a toxic workplace; consider each hour as additional exposure to the toxin) and separation of your work and private interests in such a way that your outside interest compensate the negative aspects of daily work.

I believe that you can often somewhat loosen the grip of PIMM a bit. There is a classic story about the pilot who endured several years as a prisoner of war in Viet Nam. Nearly starved and frequently beaten by his captors, the pilot stunned interviewers when he said he had so much to be grateful for in the time he was held. For him, the hunger and beatings weren't the biggest problems. The hardest part of imprisonment was complete isolation in a cramped and dirty room. The pilot told about a female rat that found her way into his lonely cell. He felt blessed by her companionship and the opportunity to witness, over time, the birth and mother's care of three litters of babies. The rat was his only contact with another living being for a long time-and its presence was a gift, he said, that gave him strength and the ability to endure extreme stress and hardship.

That pilot's story exemplifies some really important concepts for dealing with stress and burnout. First you need to distinguish between things which he wanted (better conditions, more and better food, freedom) and minimum conditions that needed to survive and preserve sanity (contact with another living being).

The research by Dr. Karen Ballard , a program development and evaluation specialist at the University of Arkansas' Cooperative Extension Service,  showed  that Vietnam POWs either died quickly or "they not only survived imprisonment, but, in many cases, did remarkably well when they returned home." What distinguished the survivors? "The awareness that they had choices," Ballard says. "They may not have had a lot of choices-they may not have had very good choices. But they had the capacity to evaluate their own resources and select the best available choices for their situations. They couldn't control all of their circumstances, but they chose to control what they could."

Ballard says trying to figure out what those choices are is the first step away from the path that leads to chronic, toxic stress and burnout. She recommends an "honest" self-inventory to identify what's causing the stress. "Write it down. Think about what makes you angry, unhappy, sad-what makes you not want to go to work," she advises. "Make an exhaustive list. This is a critical step to gaining control. Work on it for days if you need to."  While the main reason is clear it is a particular control freak, modes of his attacks and circumstances under which he attack you need to be identified.

A the same time I would like to warn that "Control freak" is one of those terms for which the meaning is starting to get distorted and became a nasty little clutch:

• 68% of employees with a female boss consider her to be a control freak.
• 57% of employees with a male boss consider him to be a control freak.

Usually psychopath constitute around `1% of human population. Even if we assume that in management position the concentration is 10 times higher due to natural selection still that gives us 10% as an estimate.

At the same time each control freak like each psychopath is different and combination of qualities that make them tick are somewhat different too. For example I saw control freak that give no attention of  time control at all but was tremendously concerned with the creating useless detailed procedures for each minor step (documentation or procedural freak). What was funny that for this type of corporate psychopath the final result of the project did not mean much as long as everything was "proceduralized" to death.

Please note that most control freaks are total "gatekeepers" and try to isolate subordinates from all independent streams of information. Expect to be cut from vital meeting, expect withholding viral information, expect that bits of information the will be communicated are comply twisted and distorted. Try to create your independent network so that you get at least something not so distorted. But some PIMMs are selective and actually can encourage some outside communication that doe not harm them.

A control freak (PIMM) tries to control every little detail but they are not super humans and their attention span is limited: they usually bog themselves down to the extent they lose a bigger picture. If more than five people report to control freak it is logically to assume that he/she operates in chronic overload mode. Yes, they still try to control every little detail they assign to you, instead of giving you the job and leaving you to do it.  But you can try to escape their deadly embrace by feeding them wrong or not-relevant information, by perusing parallel projects on your own, by structuring communication to avoid unnecessary conflicts and other means.

The worst type is very process-oriented, the type that usually bog you down in useless documentation. But the question to ask is whether they can read it ? Can probably you fool then by resubmitting old documents with slight modification. Can you fool them by submitting completely bogus or not relevant documents. Those are questions that you should always ask.

There is another aspect of control freaks that deserved to be mentioned in this introductory page without going into too much detail that are provided elsewhere: for control freak Excel spreadsheet from a tool suddenly become instrument of torture. But is not it nice to counter this tendency by leaning programmability aspects of Excel and generating large useless tables using macros and VBA (of course by you should never tell that control freak that this is a generated spreadsheet; he/she should assumed that you diligently types this crap into each and every cell). I once managed to generated a huge table from raw data using Perl script and export from comma delimited format. The table that would take me a week to do manually was done in 15 minutes. Plus 30 minutes for polishing titles, subnotes and line. Generally drawing PIMM in spam -- ocean of superficial, redundant or useless information is quite effective strategy if you master the capabilities of MS Office to the extent you can write all sorts of macros.

Another common characteristic, as pointed out by numerous posts here, is a lack of a clear vision of the end goal of a project.  The problem with PIMMs is that they can abruptly change direction in the middle of the project, usually several times, and almost always reversing themselves at least once.  Yes I admit that this is like spitting in your face but again there are nice countermeasures here: one the most drastic is by leading PIMM to a solution that has destructive value for the company. This is a dangerous move but if documented properly and presented to HR it can lead to demotion of the PIMM and, of course, you. In this case you of course are sacrificing yourself so at this time you better have an alternative job offer (which surprisingly, due to general hostility to PIMM, often can be found within the organization). This strategy can be called Ivan Susanin" strategy:

In 1612 there were many Polish detachments still roaming Russia, however. They supported Sigismund III Vasa, who refused to accept defeat and still laid claim to the Russian throne. One of these discovered the news and sent troops to Kostroma to find and kill the young tsar.

It is said that they did not know the road to Domnino very well, so they started to ask the locals for directions. In a wood near the village they met a logger, Ivan Susanin, who promised to take them via a "shortcut" through a forest directly to the Ipatiev Monastery, where Mikhail apparently was hiding. The enemies followed him and were never heard from again. It is presumed that Susanin led them so deep into the forest into semi-frozen swaps that they could not find a way out, and they perished in the bitter February cold.

Susanin's grandson, who Susanin secretly sent ahead via a different route, warned Mikhail Romanov, and the monks concealed him from further Polish raids. Mikhail was crowned tsar and ruled Russia for 32 years, founding the Romanov dynasty.

The other less dramatic move is to navigate PIMM to the project that  despite being not the best choice for the organization has some interesting technologies or is so complex that you will have considerable freedom to study something interesting. Killing PIMM with complexity is actually a pretty useful general strategy that capitalize on the level of overload they subject themselves. And the nicest thing is that he will consider this project his own choice and as such would be inclined to provide you some training, consultant help, etc. The downsize here is the necessity to learn some monster useless system, but still it can be useful on your resume.

There are always two needed for a tango and often some problems that we experience with control freak are actually to a certain extent are problem with ourselves.  Ironically, targets of PIMM tend to be high achievers, perfectionists and workaholics themselves.  Often PIMM try to mask their own insecurities by striking out similar soils much like shark is attracted by blood. 

Also it is important to understand that any attempt to correct the bad behavior of the PIMM will be perceived as a personal threat to his/her self-esteem.  Paradoxically many PIMM self-justify their obnoxious behavior as mentoring.  Perceiving a threat the PIMM might take steps to have you terminated to regain control.

It's all about honest self-awareness and recognizing that you do have choices. Individuals who burn out under the PIMM are often the ones who are in jobs that don't play to their personal styles and preferences and who cannot quickly find alternative source of supporting self-esteem.  Their strengths are not rewarded. They are constantly battling an environment that just doesn't suit them. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

All the self-awareness in the world will not change control freak, it just identify the way it behaves. It's important to analyze whom you're dealing with in  order to make choices about how to respond to them in ways that minimize your own stress. It's easy to take their behaviors personally, but most of the time it's not only about "them" its about both of you. It's about them. 

At the same time self-adaptation has its limit and countermoves discussed in the bottom line is best summed up in the Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr:

One common strategy of PIMM is to increase his/her power by surrounding  themselves with staff members who accept their personality and work style:  patsies.  Weak passive employees often can benefit from PIMM and provide support in return.  That further isolates you in the group, especially if the group is small.

But in any case max out possibilities to be out of the office. Lower your productivity and switch a large part of your energy on documenting everything.  And remember that this is not your fault. Actually PIMM sacrifice the health, morale and productivity of the organization for their own emotional comfort. Their actions speak more loudly than any administrative memo. PIMM-led organization tend to shrink and become stagnant and out of touch with reality.   Expect them to be natural victims of outsourcing.

PIMM excels in burning high archiver by putting them in tar pit of unnecessary documentation, boring and repetitive assignments, etc. If you're a risk taker you're going to experience a tremendous amount of stress in your job.  find you won pet projects and pursue them or try to obtains relevant to your work certification.

In case you are very sensitive to critique expect that you like solders in the front line you might have some signs of  "post-traumatic stress syndrome" (PTSS) due to chronic stress. It is estimated that about 17% of returning war fighters have PTSS with clinical signs of  anxiety and depression, compared with about 6% or 7% of the general population. Important aspect of  PTSS  is the desire to withdraw from the world, and other people. Don't do this. Fight it with physical activity, enroll in the gym, double the amount of time you spend outside.  Enroll into some volunteer help group. See  also The Bully at Work   for how to deal with outburst and how to counterattack direct and ruthless exercise of power.

Outline of the more high level strategy of fighting PIMM now moved to a separate page.

Old News

Making the distribution, Part 1

Another story from a volunteer developer

Getting involved

When people ask me how to get involved in an open source project, I tell them to find a place where they can be helpful, even if it's just by helping with basic Linux questions. A sincere desire to help others is a great ticket into the Linux community because this sentiment is at the heart of all open source development (including Linux). At least, it should be.

Along the way you'll inevitably run into people who know more than you. And you'll learn from them just as newbies continue to learn from you. It's also likely that as you gain more experience you'll come across opportunities to help in new ways. Maybe some of the project developers you come across will suggest something, or they'll ask for help themselves. They may even invite you to become part of the development team. If you're focused on helping others, they'd be foolish to pass you by. If you're helping a lot of people out, you will definitely be noticed in the community. That's sort of how it happened with Stampede and me.

Gradually I became more and more involved in Stampede development. Before long, I was an official Stampede developer. With the blessing of skibum (Matt Wood, Stampede's head honcho), I began working on a new version of Stampede's primitive .slp packaging format. At the time the .slp package format consisted of a .tar.bz2 archive with a fixed-length footer stuck on the end that contained information about the package author, a description of the contents, the package creator, etc. This approach had two major problems: the fields were a fixed length and the footer really wasn't that big, and there was no extensibility built into the format (there was no way to add any additional fields to the .slp format in the future). Obviously this thing needed a major overhaul.

Working with the senior Stampede developers, I wrote up a proposal of how to deal with the problem. Then I started coding the prototype tools in Python. The new format (codenamed slpv6) was somewhat similar to the IFF file format from the Amiga world. This next-generation .slp format allowed for 2 32 fields, 2 32 categories of fields, and a maximum field data length of 2 32 bytes. Not only was the format very extensible, it was also more compact than plain-text and easy to parse. Both text and binary data could be stored in the format, which allowed for a lot of possibilities for the future. The idea was to stick this next-generation dynamic header on the end of the archive file, thereby producing a next-generation .slp format that would serve Stampede users for years to come and at the same time maintain compatibility with standard UNIX archive formats.

People can get ugly

slpv6 development was going well and all the senior developers were happy with my progress. But unfortunately, two lower-level Stampede developers wanted to control the slpv6 project. They didn't like the direction I was taking, and they spent most of their time insulting the new slpv6 system. Though I spent hours in heated development discussions defending the proposal against their attacks, we weren't able to resolve anything. Eventually it became clear that they were just naturally argumentative and wouldn't be happy until they had their way. Fortunately for me, my project had the approval of the senior Stampede developers. But these discussions began to wear on me and made Stampede development very unpleasant. Ugh!

I couldn't avoid these guys since I had to hang out on #stampede to chat with higher-level developers. And every time I was on the channel they became combative, trying to undermine my work. They'd use devious techniques like calling for development meetings (really just an opportunity to insult my work in front of the senior developers). They'd also try to call for votes, attempting to seize control of Stampede. Of course they'd only call for a vote when they thought they had convinced enough people to agree with them. Throughout all of this I continued my slpv6 development. Needless to say, the senior development loved my work and wanted me to continue (without their support I wouldn't have been able to stick it out).

Understanding the freak

These two guys belong to a category of developer I like to call "the freak". But although they made my development work very unpleasant, I also learned a lot from having to deal with them. At this point I'd like to offer you an expos?f the freak developers, a sort of comprehensive overview: the qualities that make a freak, the freak's modus operandi, and how you, the development project leader, can confront and possibly reform the freak without exerting a lot of effort.

In order to avoid emotional damage, you'll need one prerequisite: a backbone. If you're unable to confront the freak in a respectful but firm manner, there's no hope. The freak's goal is to control as much of your project as possible so that he or she will feel powerful. The freak will use several techniques to make this happen. First they'll start unfairly criticizing or bitterly complaining about a project and/or the developers working on a project. Then they will refrain from offering any constructive solutions. They will also not be willing to help with the project in any other way unless they are promoted to the role of project manager. Their goal is to convince you to give them as much authority as possible so that they can solve problems that only they, with their finely trained freak eyes, can see.

If the criticism and complaining aren't effective, they'll request a developer meeting. This will be their opportunity to try and divide your development team into two factions. When they think that they've gotten enough people on their side, they'll request a vote (knowing they will win). If they don't win the vote or they are overruled, they'll push for another developer meeting next week in which they'll again try to divide your development team. They'll repeat this process endlessly.

If the developer meeting approach doesn't work, freaks will become reformers. By adopting this role they will try to streamline (read: undermine) the oppressive and unfair executive decision-making process by attempting to replace it with something more democratic (read: easily manipulated.) This will often involve convincing you that you should do whatever the majority of your developers want. Freaks love this because then you can't override those developer meeting votes anymore (muhahaha!). If you allow this to happen, you've basically given the freak the keys to your Lexus. You're powerless.

In another approach, freaks will irritate and drive away your productive developers. Then they'll work your entire team into a frenzy as they forcefully try to reform the project's power structure. If their efforts are finally defeated, they'll try to rally as many defectors together as possible and fork from your project. Ouch!

Managing the freak

You can identify these guys pretty easily. They're the ones who aren't writing any code (nor do they have any intention to). Instead they spend their time talking about more important things. You know, those managerial issues. If you're a project leader, it's pretty easy to deal with them. Just tell them that you won't consider any proposal unless they produce working code. Or insist that they constructively help the current project, which includes obeying the current project manager, before giving them the opportunity to offer any (constructive) criticism. If they write some nice code or start being more helpful, great. If not, tell them to go away. They'll either leave the project (if you ignore them long enough), or they'll get their act together and start writing some code and generally become more pleasant.

Unfortunately the senior Stampede developers didn't take on freak management. In other words, they allowed these two guys to pester me (and others) to no end. While the senior developers were always in favor of my development work, they didn't do much to get these guys under control. So one day I decided that it would be easier to create my own distribution rather than have to put up with the two freaks. I resigned from Stampede development and started making plans to produce my own distro.

While I felt a bit weird about leaving a project because of two lower-level developers, the fact that they weren't dealt with really indicated that the project had severe managerial problems. If the higher-level developers weren't able or willing to make sure the Stampede development effort was pleasant and rewarding, then I didn't want to be there.

[Mar 6, 2007] Letter from the reader

One area you seem to miss is that although micromanagement is a cancer in the business community...it is epidemic in the non-profit/volunteer management world.

Most volunteer managers already believe that the reason a person is volunteering is he must either be unemployed or a retiree as an elementary school janitor...but in fact most volunteers are more educated, experienced and knowledgeable than there volunteer managers. Most non-profits do not have the financial capability to hire the best in their needed fields.

The reasons many people volunteer are generally altruistic but they are often successful businessmen (lawyers, business owners, doctors..etc, who don't have to work the extra hours and want to give something back to the community or believe in a cause. The "I am the manager so I know how to do it better than everybody else".....and treating the volunteer a "useful idiot" is pretty common.

And it has the same results of frustration, loss of your most creative, knowledgeable and capable people...and generally due to the managers incompetentcy....damage to company services or product.

PERFECTIONISM AND LEADERSHIP SMR_Micromanagement_Paper

How To Deal With a Difficult Boss by Tristan Loo

Most people at some point in their lives have to deal with a difficult boss. Difficult supervisors vary in personality from being a little pushy or rude, all the way to being downright abusive. Many people feel that an abusive boss has control of their personal life outside of work by lowering their self-esteem and making them live in constant fear. The role of a supervisor sometimes attracts certain controlling-type personalities because they crave the power it gives them and because they lack such control in their own personal lives. A supervisor has complete control over your most basic human needs—your ability to put food on the table and a roof over your head. These are powerful motivating factors that allow a difficult supervisor to control people out of fear of losing these basic needs. We may not be able to always correct their behavior, but we should never have to live in fear and let our difficult boss control our lives.

Here are some strategies on handling a difficult boss situation.

1. Always have a plan B. ...
    
2. Never react to verbal abuse or harsh criticism with emotion. ...
    
3. Discuss rather than confront. ...
4. Manage the manager. ...
5. Know that you can do little to change them. ...
6. Keep your professional face on. ...
    
7. Evaluate your own performance. ...
    
8. Gather additional support. ...
9. Don’t go to up the chain of command unless it’s a last resort....
10. Encourage good behavior with praise. ...
     
11. Document everything. ...
     
12. Leave work at work. ...

[Jan 12, 2007] WBI Workplace Bullying Studies

Experiences outside work

• you feel like throwing up the night before the start of your work week
• your frustrated family demands that you to stop obsessing about work at home
• your doctor asks what could be causing your skyrocketing blood pressure and recent health problems, and tells you to change jobs
• you feel too ashamed of being controlled by another person at work to tell your spouse or partner
• all your paid time off is used for "mental health breaks" from the misery
• days off are spent exhausted and lifeless, your desire to do anything is gone
• your favorite activities and fun with family are no longer appealing
• you begin to believe that you provoked the workplace cruelty

Experiences at work

• you attempt the obviously impossible task of doing a new job without training or time to learn new skills but that work is never good enough for the boss
• surprise meetings are called by your boss with no results other than further humiliation
• everything your tormenter does to you is arbitrary and capricious, working a personal agenda that undermines the employer's legitimate business interests
• others at work have been told to stop working, talking or socializing with you
• you constantly feel agitated and anxious, experiencing a sense of doom, waiting for bad things to happen
• no matter what you do, you are never left alone to do your job without interference
• people feel justified screaming or yelling at you in front of others, but you are punished if you scream back
• HR tells you that your harassment isn't illegal, that you have to "work it out between yourselves"
• you finally, firmly confront your tormentor to stop the abusive conduct, you are accused of harassment
• you are shocked when accused of incompetence despite a history of objective excellence, typically by someone who cannot do your job
• everyone -- co-workers, senior bosses, HR -- agrees (in person and orally) that your tormentor is a jerk, but there is nothing they will do about it (and deny saying what they said later when asked to support you)
• your request to transfer to an open position under another boss is mysteriously denied

[Jan 11, 2007] Bullying in the Workplace (Dealing with Difficult People)

According to the Workplace Bullying and Trauma Institute (WBTI), the top 10 bullying tactics include:

1. Falsely accused someone of "errors" not actually made (71%)
2. Stared, glared, was nonverbally intimidating and was clearly showing hostility (68%)
3. Discounted the person’s thoughts or feelings ("oh, that’s silly") in meetings (64%)
4. Used the "silent treatment" to "ice out" & separate from others (64%)
5. Exhibited presumably uncontrollable mood swings in front of the group (61%)
6. Made up own rules on the fly that even she/he did not follow (61%)
7. Disregarded satisfactory or exemplary quality of completed work despite evidence (58%)
8. Harshly and constantly criticized having a different ‘standard’ for the Target (57%)
9. Started, or failed to stop, destructive rumors or gossip about the person (56%)
10. Encouraged people to turn against the person being tormented (55%).

[Sept 10, 2006]  Do you hate your job MSNBC.com By Melanie Lasoff Levs

Before Maria Schnabel, director of Latino public relations for Cingular Wireless, began her rewarding career in the corporate world, she was a young, floundering freelance writer just out of journalism school at San Diego State. Her unpaid student internship at the Los Angeles Times garnered her experience working on interesting stories. But when she realized she was dissatisfied with the industry, she had a revelation.

"Entry-level journalism jobs were very few and very low-paying," says Schnabel, who is now 50. "This was not a career I could see myself in for a number of years." Though it was years ago, she remembers her first job well. She didn't like it. "It was, 'Do I continue in substandard living or move on into something more lucrative?'"

Her decision was difficult because she had focused on journalism in college. But, she says, disliking where she was meant changing her perspective. "It's a decision I've never regretted," says Schnabel, a native of Barcelona, Spain. "I find PR very interesting, and I have a great career."

She has approached her career — which has included several years launching products in Latin America for BellSouth — with that same resolve and strategic eye. "Your career needs to be planned like you plan projects," she says. And, she adds, if you don't like a job or a direction, take control. "Look inside yourself and see what else you can bring to the equation."

There are as many reasons for hating a job as there are jobs. Some of the most prevalent include a lack of autonomy and flexibility, a corporate culture that doesn't fit with your values, feeling disrespected or unappreciated, and discrepancies in pay. But the top reason is a difficult boss.

Elizabeth, 31, an executive at a boutique PR firm in Los Angeles who asked that her last name not be used, was once a practicing attorney at a small law firm. But her boss, part of the husband-and-wife team that headed the firm, frequently "freaked out" on her, she says. Once he yelled at her because she billed too many hours while catching up on a case.

Another time, she recalls, he was so angry for reasons she couldn't understand that he ordered her out of his office and then stopped talking to her for days. "I would cry every day on the way to work," she re­members. "Every day I was sick to my stomach that I had to get up and go to work." She eventually quit and is now happy at a new job.

So how much should you tolerate? People often stay too long, says Utah-based consultant and trainer Sherron Bienvenu, professor emerita at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University and visiting professor at the international M.B.A. program of the Helsinki School of Economics.

They stay because they like the location, they have a close friend at work, they don't want to let their co-workers or subordinates down, or, simply put, they don't want to lose the cash and benefits.

Articulate exactly what you don't like, she says. If it's a supervisor, perhaps you can move within the company and work for somebody else. If it's the schedule, create a proposal to suit your needs and benefit the company, and approach management with it.

If it's because you feel overwhelmed, maybe you can negotiate an intern to help with tasks or take a training course in an area in which you're weak. "Rather than making a blanket statement, be specific," Bienvenu advises.

Liz Ryan, workplace expert and founder of WorldWIT, an online network for professional women, classifies job complaints into two categories: modifiable and nonmodifiable. The modifiable categories include discrepancies in pay or promotions (you can attempt to negotiate), problem co-workers (talk to the boss so you don't work with the person anymore) and individual policies or even job tasks (ask if you can take on different responsibilities that match your interests).

The nonmodifiable aspects include the speed at which things happen at the company and office politics. "That is the proverbial turning a battleship around. It takes forever to change a culture," Ryan says.

Dividing your complaints into those categories puts them into perspective. "If you end up with a couple things in the nonmodifiable category — say, you don't like the direction the company is going and you don't like the CEO — those might not outweigh the modifiable things," she says. If you can change the majority of your situation, she adds, "It could be worth it to stick around."

Laura Berman Fortgang, career coach and author of Now What? 90 Days to a New Life Direction, has her clients write a list of complaints to see what's manageable.

"Is it about a whole new career," she asks, "or something practical that needs to be fixed about the current one?"

She and other experts do not advise quitting immediately. But if the signs in­dicate the job is not working, take action, says Rebecca Kiki Weingarten, a career and life coach and co-founder of New York City-based Daily Life Consulting.

"You spend so much of your waking hours at work, and it is so much a part of our identity," she says. "You just don't want to be miserable."  

© 2006 Forbes.com

Manager Tools - Tools for Leaders and Managers » Blog Archive » There is NOT a Micromanagement “Pandemic”

I recently read an article in American Way magazine called, “And You Thought YOUR Boss Was Bad.” It made the claim that “nearly 8 in 10 employees are victims of a micromanaging boss.”

This is patently false.

There are so many things that irritate me about this article that it’s hard to know where to start, but I’ll do my best.

First of all, the line above about “nearly 8 in 10…” makes a common (but important) statistical error of suggesting that because someone once had a micromanager for a boss, they “are” victims of micromanagement. The actual line later in the article is:

“79 percent of us say we have been micromanaged.”

I won’t even attempt to address the issue that the statistic comes from a book purporting to be a “Micromanagement Survival Guide.” The problem here is that if I say I “have been” micromanaged, that doesn’t mean I “am being” micromanaged right now.

I have come to believe that journalists do this on purpose. Sorry, but that’s what I think. I see this so often I can no longer chalk it up to a lack of understanding of the difference.

Further, there’s a quote from a Dr. Robert Trestman:

“We are in a micromanagement pandemic.”

What a joke. This is even MORE patently false - if it’s possible - than the 8 of 10 statistic above.

Dr. Trestman is a clinical psychiatrist, and surely much more studied and intelligent than I am. Please, I have nothing against Dr. Trestman. But he’s just flat wrong.

The issue here is that just because someone tells you they’re being micromanaged does NOT make it so. Oh, I’m sure there are clinicians and HR folks and therapists who would say that that IS the definition, but it’s not. If that IS the definition, then that look you saw on the face of your directs when you asked if you could give them feedback - that look alone - could cause you to be considered a micromanager.

This is a victimization mentality, and it’s not just wrong, it’s insidious.

By the way, this article has some great anecdotes about micromanagers, all of them amusing and several horrific. Putting compelling anecdotes in an article this way is a great (and false) way to support your thesis. Don’t confuse anecdotes with statistics.

Look, it’s unlikely you are a micromanager. (But if your team reads this article, they might think you are, just to make themselves feel like part of the majority!)

Let me stop here, having gotten through the lesser of the two evils of this article: its sloppiness and resultant false hyperbole.

I’d love to hear your comments, and when I recur, I’ll talk about how the problem is NOT micromanagement

Stanford Social Innovation Review Printer Version Reversing Burnout

... ... ...

Burnout reflects an uneasy relationship between people and their work. Like relationship problems between two people, those between people and their work usually indicate a bad fit between the two, rather than just individual weaknesses, or just evil workplaces. And so reversing burnout requires focusing on both individuals and their organizations to bring them back into sync with each other.²

Beating burnout is not just a matter of reducing the number of negatives. Indeed, sometimes there is not a lot you can do about the negative aspects of work. Instead, it is often more useful to think about increasing the number of positives, and of building the opposite of burnout, engagement. When burnout is counteracted with engagement, exhaustion is replaced with enthusiasm, bitterness with compassion, and anxiety with efficacy

The Six Areas of Burnout

How do individuals and organizations move from burnout to engagement? How do they make sense of what's going wrong, and figure out how to make things right? Our surveys and interviews of more than 10,000 people across a wide range of organizations in several different countries have revealed that most person-job mismatches fall into six categories: workload (too much work, not enough resources); control (micromanagement, lack of influence, accountability without power); reward (not enough pay, acknowledgment, or satisfaction); community (isolation, conflict, disrespect); fairness (discrimination, favoritism); and values (ethical conflicts, meaningless tasks).³

We originally developed this six-category framework as a way of organizing the vast research literature on burnout. Our subsequent work then showed that both individuals and organizations could use the framework to diagnose which categories are especially troublesome for them, and then to design interventions that target these problem areas.⁴ The six-area framework has now been incorporated into assessment programs for organizations⁵ and for individuals.⁶

To fix burnout, individuals and organizations must first identify the areas in which their mismatches lie, and then tailor solutions to improve the fit within each area. In Mark's case, his core problem is work overload. Workers in the nonprofit sector are distinctly vulnerable to work overload for two reasons. First, nonprofit organizations may often have fewer resources than organizations in other sectors, leaving workers with too little time and too few tools with which to handle their workload. Second, nonprofit employees have high expectations and are attempting to solve truly monumental problems. Their idealism can lead them to overextend themselves and take on too much.

Mark is also experiencing an imbalance in the area of values. Although workers in the nonprofit sector may not face the same ethical dilemmas that many workers in for-profit companies do, they often feel value conflicts of a different sort: between the loftiness of their ideals and the realities of their day-to-day work. This is what is going on with Mark, who often feels so bogged down in the details of organizing volunteers and coordinating actions that he loses sight of the larger goal of environmental preservation. His work no longer feels meaningful to him

Mark also feels a lot of dissatisfaction in the area of rewards. No one goes into the nonprofit sector to get rich, but Mark expected to enjoy his activist activities more. He also expected more appreciation and praise from his colleagues and from the communities he serves.

In contrast, Susan's core problem is in the area of community. ⁷ In her work setting, she is excluded from her colleagues' circle of support, and she spends a lot of time feeling isolated and lonely. Being left out of the loop introduces a second mismatch for Susan, this time in the area of control. By the time an issue appears on a meeting's formal agenda, the matter has already been settled in the informal conversations in which Susan could not participate. As a result, Susan does not feel that she has an adequate say in how she does her work.

As time wears on, Susan has begun to suspect that her lack of community and control at work are due to a third area of mismatch: fairness. She wonders whether the male doctors in the ER are discriminating against her because she is a woman. Because of this hint of injustice, Susan feels not only anxious and uncertain about how best to do her job, but also angry and hostile toward her colleagues.

Two Paths to Engagement

There are two paths to banishing burnout: the individual path, and the organizational path. Both Mark and Susan took individual approaches; they first identified the mismatches leading to their burnout, and then enlisted their colleagues and organizations in addressing those mismatches.⁸

An organizational approach, in contrast, starts with management first identifying mismatches that are commonly shared, and then connecting with individuals to narrow these person organization gaps.⁹ The sidebar (left) describes how this organizational approach was used in a large organization. This strategy of working collaboratively on shared problems can be used in organizations of any size, even those nonprofits that are small and that have limited resources.

No matter the path to engagement, it is important to keep in mind that positive changes don't just happen. Instead, people must take action, and well-informed action, at that. Rather than assumptions and "best guesses" about what the problem is, the six-area diagnostic tool can help pinpoint it more accurately. Solutions that don't address the problem can be worse than no solutions at all.

For example, we recall attending a meeting of teachers for which the school superintendent had hired a motivational speaker to inspire them and help them deal with stress. As the speaker reeled off stories from his own days as an athletic coach, we watched the teachers sitting silently, their venom rising with each minute. They did not lack motivation. Decent pay, adequate supplies, parents' support, a manageable workload, yes. But not motivation. The superintendent's well-meaning attempt to nip burnout in the bud only nurtured it.

Lightening Mark's Load

Having identified workload as his main relationship problem with his work, Mark is finding ways to relax during strenuous times. He now takes regular breaks in which he gets away from the job, either physically (e.g., by jogging around the neighborhood) or mentally (e.g., by reading a book that has nothing to do with his activist interests). Even more effective for him are temporary changes in work, in which he "downshifts" to some less demanding task (e.g., taking care of routine paperwork, sweeping the floor) before returning to the more challenging jobs.

Another critical discovery for Mark is that he really didn't have to be the center of his activist universe. Instead of being the lone person who does everything, he is learning to delegate tasks, to train others to do what he did, and to get them to share the responsibility. "Now I don't struggle against the feeling of burnout," he says. "I'll say to myself: 'Oh, I'm burned out, I'll just sit here for a while. Let somebody else do it.' And you know what? Somebody else does."

Mark's new perspective on his place in his activist organization reflects the wisdom of an older colleague who told him: "When I was younger, I was convinced that I needed to drive myself every single minute. Now I feel that I can go to the sauna, and I'll still hate imperialism in an hour and a half. And that's helped me to stay an activist."

By addressing his workload problem, Mark has simultaneously improved the fit between him and his activist work on the dimension of value. To relieve stress, he took several long hikes in the wilderness, which renewed his feelings of awe at the beauty of nature -- feelings that fueled his commitment to environmental activism in the first place. "I felt in love. It was a passion I hadn't felt in a long time. There was very little burnout. Instead there was a craving."

Building Susan's Community

After zeroing in on community as her primary area of self-work mismatch, Susan first took a few minutes at the start of her next shift to talk with Tom, one of the most approachable of the doctors. Tom told Susan that he was amazed that she could feel left out, and assured her that no one intended to exclude her. Susan didn't quite buy Tom's assurances, but nevertheless replied that she was pleased to hear this, because she certainly didn't want to go through the complicated, time-consuming, and awkward process of making a formal complaint. She was confident that before too long, the ER doctors' clique would know all about their conversation.

Susan took the second step toward narrowing the gap between her expectations and her work reality at the next meeting of the ER medical staff. She told the staff that she was feeling left out of important decisions, and requested that they include her in all discussions about clinical matters and hospital issues during her shift. There were a few furtive glances, but overall most people nodded and said, "Of course."

With Tom and a few other doctors, Susan has smoothly moved into relaxed conversations. She refers to her feelings of burnout only within the context of working on better ways of working together. With the other doctors, it has been more of an uphill battle, but is still an improvement over silence. Since Susan took her complaints to her colleagues, there have been a lot fewer surprises at medical staff meetings, making Susan feel like she has more say in her work environment. She also now realizes that the doctors' previous exclusive patterns were more a matter of thoughtlessness than a concerted campaign to exclude her -- thereby assuaging her fears of sexism.

Feeling that she is part of a community, respected, and in control is giving Susan a renewed enthusiasm for her work. The end of the shift brings the same familiar pattern of aches and pains from the hours on her feet. But the dullness of feeling is now rare.

"Looking back now, I'm shocked to think of how close I was to losing my connection to the work that I love and that I do very well," she says. "It's not just about working with the patients. It's taking on colleagues and relationships to make sure you're included and respected."

By confronting the situation in an informed and focused way, Susan has been able to repair the relationship between herself and her work. An important principle in Susan's situation is that unfair treatment is difficult to sustain after it has been brought into the open. There were no defensible grounds for excluding Susan from professional discussions at work. But the situation persisted until Susan called her colleagues on their actions.

Shining On

Mark and Susan have had different experiences of burnout, reflecting the unique qualities of their work settings. Each situation involved a different area of mismatch, and each called for distinct solutions. Note that neither attempted to address all of their mismatches at once. Rather, each first identified and addressed his or her core area of concern.

Both had also begun to feel the personal costs of burnout, which include poorer health and strained private lives. But at least as important, Mark's and Susan's organizations had also begun to suffer. When employees shift to minimum performance, minimum standards of working, and minimum production quality, rather than performing at their best, they make more errors, become less thorough, and have less creativity for solving problems. They are also less committed to the organization and less willing to go the extra mile to make a real difference.

Burnout is not a problem of individuals but of the social environment in which they work. Workplaces shape how people interact with one another and how they carry out their jobs. When the workplace does not recognize the human side of work, and there are major mismatches between the nature of the job and the nature of people, there will be a greater risk of burnout. A good understanding of burnout, its dynamics, and what to do to overcome it is therefore an essential part of staying true to the pursuit of a noble cause, and keeping the flame of compassion and dedication burning brightly.

Sources

1 "Mark" and "Susan" are pseudonyms.

2 For our review of the psychological literature on burnout, see Maslach, C., Schaufeli, W.B., & Leiter, M.P. "Job Burnout," in Annual Review of Psychology 52, eds. S.T. Fiske, D.L. Schacter, & C. Zahn-Waxler (2001): 397-422.

3 Maslach, C. & Leiter, M.P. The Truth About Burnout (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997).

4 Leiter, M.P. & Maslach, C. "Areas of Worklife: A Structured Approach to Organizational Predictors of Job Burnout," in Research in Occupational Stress and Well- Being 3, eds. P.L. Perrewe & D.C. Ganster (Oxford: Elsevier, 2004): 91-134.

5 Leiter, M.P. & Maslach, C. Preventing Burnout and Building Engagement: A Complete Program for Organizational Renewal (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000).

6 Leiter, M.P. & Maslach, C. Banishing Burnout: Six Strategies for Improving Your Relationship With Work (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005).

7 See also De Jonge, J. & Kompier, M.A.J. "A Critical Examination of the Demand- Control-Support Model From a Work Psychological Perspective," International Journal of Stress Management 4 (1997): 235-258.

8 Leiter & Maslach, Banishing Burnout: Six Strategies for Improving Your Relationship With Work.

9 Leiter & Maslach, Preventing Burnout and Building Engagement: A Complete Program for Organizational Renewal.

Feature) Job burnout can affect anyone by Master Sgt. Merrie Schilter Lowe

Air Force News Service Features

WASHINGTON -- Job burnout normally afflicts people in helping or service professions -- such as ministry or medicine -- but it can affect anyone.

Psychologist Herbert Freudenbeger, who claims credit for the term, defines burnout as a depletion of energy and a feeling of being overwhelmed by other peoples' problems.

The condition is analogous to combat stress in that it occurs when a person has "seen too much, done too much, and had to contend with a situation for too long," said Col. (Dr.) Karl O. Moe, chairman of the psychology department at Malcolm Grow Medical Center, Andrews Air Force Base, Md.

Job burnout, he said, results from prolonged work stress. Symptoms include digestive upsets; a constant sense of fatigue, coupled with insomnia; and an extreme anxiety over proving one's self-worth.

If not treated, burnout can lead to depression and even suicidal thoughts, Freudenbeger said in his book "Burn-Out."

He lists warning signs that people should watch for:

-- Exhaustion. Lack of energy associated with feelings of tiredness and trouble keeping up with usual activities.

-- Detachment. People headed for burnout begin putting distance between themselves and other people, Freudenbeger said, particularly those with whom the person has had close relationships.

-- Boredom and cynicism. The burnout victim begins to question the value of friendships and activities, and even life itself.

-- Increased impatience and irritability. According to Freudenbeger, burnout victims are usually people who have been able to do things quickly. However, as burnout takes hold, their ability to do things diminishes and they become impatient and begin to blame family and coworkers for things that are their own fault.

-- A sense of omnipotence. Some victims begin thinking that no one else can do their jobs as well, not even God.

-- Feelings of not being appreciated. Burnout victims want to be appreciated for their added efforts which really aren't producing more but less, Freudenbeger said. These feelings result in the burnout victim becoming bitter, angry, and resentful.

-- Change of work style. Reduced results and conflicts with others eventually cause burnout victims to withdraw from decisive leadership and work habits, or to compensate for conflicts by becoming more demanding, tyrannical or inflexible.

-- Paranoia. Long-term burnout can lead victims to believe that someone is out to get them.

-- Disorientation. Long-term burnout causes the victim's thoughts to wonder, speech pattern to falter and concentration spans to become limited. The person may joke about becoming senile but inwardly, stress and agitation are the problem.

-- Psychosomatic complaints. Physical ailments such as headaches, lingering colds, backaches and similar complaints flourish in burnout victims. Although the complaints may have real physical causes, they are more likely brought on by emotional stress, which the victim may not want to admit, Freudenbeger said.

-- Depression. The depression is usually temporary, specific and localized to one area of life.

-- Major depression. Some burnout victims will develop major depression that pervades all areas of their lives. Generally, the burnout victim will stop blaming others for negative circumstances and start blaming themselves. Instead of being angry with others, he or she will feel guilty for everything that goes wrong.

-- Suicidal thinking. As the depression progresses, the results can be suicidal thinking, Fredenbeger said. Some personality types, such as the hysterical personality, may make suicide threats or gestures that are manipulative. However, an obsessive-compulsive personality will likely attempt suicide, he said.

Once a person is burned out, the solution could be in changing jobs. "It doesn't have to be out of their career field," Moe said. For example, he said an emergency room nurse could work in a different section of the hospital, "somewhere that doesn't cause such an emotional drain." After a period of time, the person could go back to the emergency room, Moe said.

Since prolonged stress leads to burnout, the No. 1 buffer against stress is social support, Moe said.

"You need to have someone at work whom you can talk with and blow off steam. You don't even have to talk about the problem, as long as you have enough of a relationship to know you could talk about it if you wanted to," Moe said.

If support at work is not possible, "talk with someone in your family or from church, or one of the organizations you belong to," said Moe.

Burnout victims also need to take care of their physical needs with rest and proper nutrition, according to Drs. Frank Minirth and Paul Mier in their book "How to Beat Burnout."

Additionally, they recommend that the person talk about his or her negative feelings rather than bury them. This will help the burnout victim see the situation more realistically, they said, and move on.

For more information about stress or job burnout, people can contact the base mental health clinic, Moe said.

Burnout

Burnout is a cluster of physical, emotional and mental exhaustion reactions. It is the result of constant and repeated emotional upheaval associated with people at home and in the work place. It is created by an environment with too many pressures and not enough support. People who burn out develop negative self-concepts and job attitudes, while becoming detached, apathetic, angry or hostile.

Burnout is a major problem in the helping occupations, where people give a lot to others but fail to take care of themselves in the process. Professionals in medicine, social work, law enforcement and education are especially prone to burnout symptoms.

Of course, burnout can also affect people in other types of careers as well. Jobs that promote burnout include ones in which workers do repetitive or routine tasks, never get much feedback or have a lot of responsibility but very little control.

Employees who are suffering from burnout feel they are answerable for everything that happens. They feel they receive very little cooperation from co-workers, and they personally feel powerless to change things. These feelings tend to make them assume a martyr-like position, become resigned and apathetic, and focus on the worst aspects of the job. Persons suffering from burnout often blame others or the situation, rather than taking action for change. How does burnout happen? It can begin when a person who has difficulty setting priorities and putting life into balance is confronted with a stressful home or work environment. Some common sources of job-related stress include:

• Poor time management
• Conflicts with co-workers, supervisors and managers
• Feeling unable or unqualified to do the job
• Difficulties adapting to changes in the work routine
• Feeling overwhelmed by work
• Inability to meet deadlines
• Lack of support from supervisors and managers
• Feeling that work is meaningless or boring

Many people learn to with job-reowonists, idealists and workaholics. They start out enthusiastic about their work, dedicated and committed gh energy levels, positive attitudes and are high achievers.

Over time, stress and the inability to cope with it lead to pessimism and early job dissatisfaction. Workers in the early stages of burnout feel fatigued, frustrated, disillusioned and bored. They may suffer from symptoms of stress, such as:

• increased consumption of alcohol, caffeine and nicotine
• abrupt speech
• decreased eye contact during conversations
• changes in sleeping and eating habits
• withdrawal from other people
• moodiness and irritability

As burnout progresses, work habits begin to deteriorate. Affected workers arrive late and leave early. Productivity drops. They become isolated and withdrawn and avoid contact with co-workers and supervisors. They become increasingly angry, hostile and depressed. Most suffer from physical symptoms of stress such as:

• chronic fatigue
• headaches
• back pain
• dry mouth and throat or difficulty swallowing
• diarrhea or constipation
• rashes, hives or other skin problems
• chest pains or heart palpitations
• nervous tics

In the final stages of burnout, workers experience an irreversible feeling of detachment and a total loss of interest in their jobs. Self-esteem is very low. Feelings about work are totally negative and chronic absenteeism becomes a problem. At this point, the only course of action is to change careers.

Burnout doesn't happen overnight, and it can be reversed with the right steps. Managers can help by:

• Using employees to their full potential. Involve them in decision making, increase their responsibilities and allow them to use their skills and abilities. Employees need to feel needed and important.
• Giving positive feedback and recognizing achievement. Praise and encouragement are vital to job satisfaction.
• Developing a supportive management style. The most stressful management styles are: intimidating; overly ambitious; cold and arrogant; or demanding and unfair. If you see yourself in any of these styles, you need to make a change.
• Being fair and realistic in your promotion practices. Unfair promotion practices speak very poorly of a company's attitudes toward its employees.
• Encouraging your employees to share their feelings and concerns. Talking with co-workers can help put an issue into perspective.
• Striving for success. Work groups that are constantly trying new ideas and taking risks seldom burn out.

Baptist Hospital East's Center for Behavioral Health offers Building Healthy Employees, a program which provides on-site training on topics such as team building, communication, assertiveness, stress management and relaxation, workplace wellness, conflict resolution, self-esteem and peak performance, and accessing strengths. The Center for Behavioral Health also offers Relaxing in the 90s: A Stress Management Workshop for individuals who want to learn more about stress management and relaxation techniques. For more information, call (502) 896-7105.

Drowning in Paperwork

Being Evaluated - Is There ANYTHING more Time-Wasting or Aggravating at The Median Sib

Common Good What Matters Most

Reading the teachers’ diaries is an exercise in frustration: Tales of breaking up fist fights; confiscating scissors from one student threatening to stab another; a student threatening to slash a teacher’s tires — and time and time again, there are no consequences for misbehavior. The offending students are simply returned to the classroom.

Standardized testing has consumed increasingly larger parts of the day. Some teachers were pulled from their regular teaching assignments for up to five weeks as they administered and graded tests. One teacher wrote: “This situation emplifies what education in New York City has become — preparing for tests, testing, and grading tests. What has happened to teaching?”

Mandated teaching requirements also created some frustration for the teachers — especially the veterans. “Sometimes I feel like I’m a robot regurgitating the scripted dialogue that’s expected of us day in and day out,” one writes. Another teacher restates her day despondently: “Teach mini-lesson... Student raises hand with question. Tell him to put hand down. Students not allowed to ask questions during mini-lesson. Feel guilty.”

The report also describes constant interruptions during class time — administrators calling seeking paperwork, PA announcements and parent visits. One Common Good researcher observed a teacher who was interrupted sixteen times in a single day. A certain amount of test preparation, disciplinary action and paperwork can and should be expected in a typical workday for any teacher, but the situations described in the diaries can’t possibly be what anyone truly intended. Layer upon layer of new mandates developed without a teacher’s voice — much less a real collaboration between classroom professionals and those who supervise them — have resulted in a system that substitutes time- consuming bureaucratic routines for quality teaching and learning.

This is not unique to New York. If we are serious about improving America’s schools, we need to listen carefully to what teachers are telling us. We must bring order and safety to our schools, because learning suffers in an environment that is neither safe nor secure. We need to strike a healthy balance between teaching and testing, because students are denied important opportunities or new learning when testing is excessive. And we must respect the skill and commitment of our educators, providing them with the professional latitude they need to do their jobs, rather than drowning them in paperwork and micromanagement.

That’s just common sense.

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Improve your supervisor relationship and reduce stress - MayoClinic.com

The battle with burnout

Negative emotions

It's normal to feel frustrated, angry, depressed, dissatisfied or anxious occasionally. But if you're caught in the burnout cycle, you usually will experience these negative emotions more and more often, until they become chronic. Eventually, you will feel emotional fatigue.

Interpersonal problems

When you feel emotionally drained, it becomes harder to deal with people at work and at home. When the inevitable conflicts arise, you're likely to overreact with an emotional outburst or intense hostility. This makes communicating with co-workers, friends and family members increasingly difficult. Some burnout victims are also apt to withdraw socially. The tendency to withdraw is most pronounced among "helping" professionals, who often become aloof and inaccessible to the very people they are expected to help.

Health problems

As your emotional reserves become depleted and the quality of your relationships deteriorate, your physical resilience declines. You may frequently experience minor ailments, such as colds, headaches, insomnia and backaches. In general, you feel tired and rundown.

Below-par performance

During the burnout process, you may become bored with your job or lose enthusiasm for your projects. Or you may find it difficult to concentrate. You become less productive and the quality of your work declines.

Substance abuse

To cope with the stress associated with job conflict and declining performance, you may find yourself drinking more alcohol, using more drugs, eating more (or less), drinking more coffee and/or smoking more cigarettes. Increased substance abuse further compounds your problems.

Feelings of meaninglessness

More and more, you find yourself thinking "so what" and "why bother?" This is particularly common among burnout victims who were once very enthusiastic and dedicated. Your enthusiasm is replaced by cynicism. Working seems pointless.

Humor

Top 10 Signs That You Have Job Burnout

10. You're so tired, you now answer the phone with just: "Hell."

9. Your friends call to ask how you've been, and you immediately scream, "Get off my back!!"

8. Your garbage can is your "In" box.

7. You wake up to discover your bed is on fire, but go back to sleep because you just don't care.

6. You have so much on your mind, you've forgotten how to logon to your 401K account.

5. Amount of staff in your mailbox helps you make it from Saturday to Monday.

4. You don't set your alarm anymore because you know the cellphone will go off before the alarm does.

3. You leave for a party and instinctively bring your badge and secure ID token with you.

2. You keep your sleeping bag in the car just in case you can't make the commute.

1. Sometimes you think about how relaxing it for prison inmates to do nothing for days and weeks.

Etc

Burnout Inventory (Test)

Burnout Self-Test -- from Baptist Hospital East

Show Me Careers - Burnout -- very good have great references

Top 10 Signs you have job burnout -- humor

ACoA and Job Burnout -- story

Baptist Hospital East - Health Information - Burnout on the Job

untitled

Preventing Job Burnout

by Susan Friedmann

ExhibiTips, Volume 3. #3, March 1995, Professional Development

Copyright Trade Show Exhibitors Association