Most of us are familiar with the research that details how employees lack a sense of engagement in the workplace. Gallup surveys consistently show that only about one-third of all employees feel engaged in their work. Among the factors contributing to engagement, according to Gallup, are being able to do what you do best, having a voice in the workplace, and having someone at work who encourages your development. Without such engagement, productivity--and ultimately business performance--suffer.
In a recent article, I suggested that disengagement in the workplace is not just a function of poor management practices, but also the absence of positive emotional experience connected to our work. Burnout occurs when four key components of well-being are absent from our daily experience:
- Joy - The experience of happiness and pleasure;
- Satisfaction - The experience of doing meaningful things;
- Energy - The experience of excitement and optimism;
- Relationships - The experience of closeness and support.
But let's go a step further: Why do so many people lack those positives, to the point where they feel unconnected to the work activities that comprise a sizable portion of their weeks?
A savvy trader in the financial markets pointed me to a remarkable talk by Shonda Rhimes, in which she described her own experience of disengagment and re-engagement. A writer for many of the most popular television dramas, Rhimes has sustained a remarkable degree of creative output--especially for a single parent. Eventually, however, she found that her "hum"--her ability to stay in the creative zone--was gone. She describes the experience as "All the colors were the same, and I was no longer having any fun."
Rhimes' experience is important, because it suggests that we can burn out and become disengaged not only because of the ineffective practices of managers, but because of our own ineffective self-management. When we mismanage the business of living, we can become disengaged from life itself. At that point, daily experience loses its color. Life is no longer enjoyable.
Rhimes was able to regain her hum by making a commitment to say "yes" to many of the activities she had been foregoing. Those activities were as simple as playing with her children and taking undivided 15-minute blocks of time with each of them. Her saying "yes" was an affirmation of the value of play amidst the many demands of work. "The more I play," she observes, "the better I work."
Play is our fuel; it gives us much of our joy, satisfaction, energy, and experience of affection. Without that emotional fuel, we burn out. We are most engaged when our tanks are full. That means, however, we must say "yes" to the experiences that provide us with the fuel of well-being. It is the quality of our not-work that energizes and inspires the quality of our work.
From this perspective, the greatest mistake we make in our self-management is the imposition of "no". Consider all we say no to, from taking the time to exercise to playing with our children to relaxing, meditating, vacationing, and socializing. Imagine the opposite scenario, in which we only played and never engaged in productive, creative, meaningful work activity. Eventually, we would tire of the play. We would burn out, much as many retirees find that golden years of leisure can become deadly in their routine. Too much routine limits the range of joy, satisfaction, energy, and connection that we can enjoy. Without variation in life, without color, we lose our hum.
In my recent book, I described a couple I had met with in counseling who had fallen out of love. They were great parents and great partners, but the romance had left their lives. In Rhimes' terms, they had lost their hum. In their commitment to become the kind of parents they had never enjoyed, they turned family life into endless work and responsibility. They were only able to regain their romance when they realized the sterile emotional experience they were modeling for their children. Being devoted parents meant devoting themselves to something other than parenting. They were the best parents they could be when they most nurtured their love for one another.
"No" is the enemy of engagement and the source of burnout. When part of life becomes so important that it swamps the rest of life, it constricts our sources of well-being. We are most engaged in life when we routinely engage the full range of our life's experience.
- Brett Steenbarger
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