A Research Paper By Eunju Im, Life and Career Coach, AUSTRIA
Job Burnout Prevention and Recovery Through Coaching
My research topic is job burnout prevention and recovery through coaching. Throughout my ICA journey, I have learned the powerful impacts that coaching can bring to clients in several aspects including career, relationship, transformation, leadership, etc. Among these, my inspiration prior to joining this program was career coaching, but more specifically to career search and career transition, aiming at helping clients to start or advance their careers. However, my curiosity has expanded to the well-being of employees while they are at the workplace, and it is something that a career coach can take a look into, at both the individual level and the organizational level for higher performance and talent retention. On this, I have learned that job burnout is one of the main reasons that employees or managers are disengaged with their work and unsatisfied with their workplace. In addition, this topic also talks to me personally as one of my family members has been suffering from burnout. Thus, my research question is what coaching can help to prevent and recover the client with close to or experiencing job burnout? I intend to do research to understand deeper where coaching could play unique roles in supporting clients with job burnout.
The main audience of this research paper would be the ones 1) who are experiencing job burnout, 1) who are unsatisfied at the workplace, and hence are exploring ways to find some clarity on their thinking and feelings. In addition, the secondary audience would be my peer student coaches who might have a similar interest in the mental health and well-being of individuals or employees of the organizations for their coaching practices.
Job Burnout
The definition of job burnout is a special type of work-related stress — a state of physical or emotional exhaustion that also involves a sense of reduced accomplishment and loss of personal identity. “Burnout” isn’t a medical diagnosis[1].
WHO announced that burn-out is included in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) as an occupational phenomenon in 2019. It also mentioned that Burnout is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions: feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one’s job, feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and reduced professional efficacy.
Even though it is not classified as a medical condition, it may lead to mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. Thus, job burnout needs to be detected early on and individual and organizational efforts are being put in place for the prevention and management of job-related stress in the organization.
With the above hypnosis, I conducted research on what coaching can bring to help clients who are experiencing job burnout.
Methodology
The methodology used in my research is a combination of 1) desk research, and 2) interviews with coaches in the areas of mental health and job burnout. For desk research, I focus on my research through online resources and a review of the literature on the topic.
For desk research,
- Websites of job burnout coaches in the market to understand their approach, and models, coaching services.
- Job burn coaches’ techniques to use for the clients with job burnout.
- Research paper on job burnout and coaching.
For interviews, I conducted interviews with two coaches who have experience/expertise in helping the client with burnout. For the interviews, I have prepared a list of questions as follows:
- What uniqueness does coaching bring to the clients who are close to/ already experiencing job burnout?
- Where is coaching more effectively used, for prevention or recovery of job burnout?
- How do you see the unique role of coaching versus counseling or physiotherapy for job burnout?
- What are the usual coaching models that you use for clients with job burnout?
- What are the assessments and/or tools that you have used for clients with job burnout? (e.g. visualization, assessment tools)
- I found some articles of coaches focusing on relaxation techniques, revisiting values, visualization, etc for job burnout clients. What are some effective approaches you have used for your clients?
- What is your advice for a future coach who is interested in job burnout coaching?
Interviews
Interview 1) Sandrine Planchon (Founder of Human Minds)
Sandrine is trained in mental health coaching and has been a professional coach for a few years. She has piloted a program called ‘disconnection week’, aiming at providing a safe and restful space for clients with close to burnout. The objectives of this program are 1) to help them have a break from their workplace, and 2) to raise awareness on what burnout impacts on one’s brain and its negative effects on physical/mental health. The program includes carrying out some activities (e.g. painting, physical exercise) to help the clients with inner feelings/thinking, followed by a 1:1 coaching session to identify the root causes of feeling burnout and find solutions on how to move forward to bring positive changes.
With this, Sandrine is planning to expand her coaching services to 1) people who are close to burnout, 2) people who want to change their careers due to their dissatisfaction with their jobs, and 3) people who are exposed to a stressful working environment. She plans to offer the full coaching package with disconnection week and follow-up coaching sessions.
From her experience, coaching is a very powerful tool to use to help clients who are close to burnout. So the coach’s role is to help the client to identify the reasons of dissatisfaction at work, and the reasons for feeling burnout, and also find ways to shift perspectives to connect more with themselves and to come up with some actions to bring positive changes to prevent burnout. When the symptoms are severe, she also recommends seeking out the right person for help (e.g. psychotherapist, psychiatrist, etc.).
She feels that the clients who are experiencing burnout and need treatment, it may be more effective to seek help from the mental health professional. However, a coach can play an important role for the client who is recovering from burnout, to help them move forward to the desired future. In addition, for her new business package, she is considering collaborating with a psychotherapist for the disconnection week to approach her program in a holistic manner.
Her coaching model consists of four pillars outlined below:
- Understanding of the brain changes due to stress,
- active disconnection, helping the client to focus on simple things for them to refocus and regain the positive energy,
- building a sense of belonging to share his/her feelings with other people who are in the same situation, learning from each other, and
- individual approach to help the clients look into their inner feelings in their mind and body, and thinking/perception which plays negatively to them through one-to-one coaching.
With these processes, it is expected that the client will have a better awareness of the consequences of burnout, make active decisions to find ways to disconnect from the work, reconnect to themselves, and finally feel more positive and ready to move forward for their well-being.
She is using the tool called ‘strengths finder’ to the client which would identify the core strengths so that the client can reflect more on their strengths rather than dwelling on problems. This tool has been effectively used prior to the disconnection week and facilitates the coaching sessions with the client during the event.
Sandrine believes that the change of culture is important at the organizational level by helping their employees with burnout to be diagnosed and treated early on so that the organization can truly help their employee’s well-being, and this would result in increased job satisfaction and a higher level of performance. Coaching and training are needed for the managers to have regular conversations on the well-being of their employees.
Interview 2) Alexandra Fay (Fay Coaching & Consulting)
Alexandra has rich experience in helping clients with burnout, close to burnout (prevention), during burnout (treatment), and after burnout (recovered, and ready to make the change). She mentioned that coaching can impact all three stages if the client is willing to make a change. If they are not ready to accept the change, coaching will not be helpful.
She found that common profiles of burnout clients are people-pleasing, perfectionists, and high performers/achievers. Because of these traits, they face challenges in setting boundaries. She helps the client with burnout by setting boundaries, regaining self-confidence, and acknowledging the need for self-love and self-care. She mentioned that the clients with burnout are showing negative emotions and saying their feelings are low. Thus, she approaches these clients in a gentle way, using a somatic coaching approach, first to help the clients regain their energy level, focus on positive thinking, connect with their body, and stay in the present. Other tools she is using are to give some small works for the clients to create collages of photos with good moments in life, and to write a gratitude journal after sessions.
During coaching sessions, she helps the clients to remove negative and shift to positive, also making the clients realize how much they actually achieved. For example, women managers/executives often feel that they are not working enough for the company but they are actually doing a lot longer hours for their roles not only as a manager in the company but also include unpaid hours of work as a mother/wife. There are also cases in which the client sees the situation as a victim, she uses powerful questions such as:‘ What are the things you can accept?’ ‘ What are the things you can change?’.
After the clients have recovered and are ready to move forward, the coach’s role can focus on helping the clients avoid the same situation happening again in the future. Otherwise, even after all the circumstances are changed, they may start a new phase of burnout, which means the fundamental changes within the client’s mind have not been made.
In terms of respecting the boundaries of other professions, she feels that coaching can complement the work of therapists and psychiatrists as coaching can help the clients move beyond their current thinking/feeling and help them to take actions/plans for the future. In order to further explore the roles of coaches for burnout clients, it is worthwhile to do further research on mental health associations.
Job Burnout Coaching Services
The main findings from my research can be summarized as follows:
- Coaching can bring a unique value to help clients with job burnout. There are specialized job burnout coaching services available both online and offline. Many specialized burnout coaches focus more on the prevention of burnout, in terms of stress management, alignment of values, and relaxation methods.
- It was also noted that even though the professional boundaries need to be respected where would be the most effective to support the clients, coaching can bring its unique roles to support the clients to take concrete and tangible actions to move forward for the future which goes beyond facilitating positive changes in clients feelings and emotions.
- For pursuing a coaching career for burnout clients, it would be worthwhile to look for further information in order to develop unique coaching models assessments, and tools built for burnout clients. Somatic coaching might be also an area to research further, as it offers a holistic approach to healing.
- Limitation: not many journals are available specific to job burnout coaching, however, there were some journals reviewed/referred. Thus, it was difficult for me to collect in-depth academic studies on the topic.
References
Cover Photo:
https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/work-burnout-signs-symptoms/
Coaching model for burnout.
https://defeatburnout.com/six-things-i-learned-while-recovering-from-burnout/
Chronic job burnout and daily functioning: A theoretical analysis
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213058614000096
Academic paper: How do coaches work with clients showing signs of burnout?
Anthony Geraghty (Craughwell, County Galway, Ireland), published: 01 June 2021
[1]Job burnout: How to spot it and take action – Mayo Clinic.