The real triggers of burnout in government

This article is written by Lucia Klestincova, a European transformation leader, impact catalyst, feminine leadership and burnout coach. After a decade of careers at the European Commission, she is empowering change agents who feel stuck and energy drained, to redesign their life and career around a new sense of alignment and service to humanity.

• The problem: Wrong diagnosis leads to wrong prescription. Burnout of bureaucrats is so misunderstood that thousands continue pushing through to continue saving the world – only to see themselves become more cynical and sabotage their policy efforts.
• Why it matters: Our commitment to transform humanity through values-based policies (and boost the reputation of civil service careers) is doomed to fail if policies are designed by leaders who cannot show up as their best selves, on top of their energy game and fully engaged.
• The solution: Drop the band-aid pseudo-solutions of wellbeing talk therapy and mindfulness breaks. Design and fund robust systems supportive of holistic healing, recognising the gender-specific needs for a unique mix of coaching, mentoring and training.

Yes, it is true that government officials and civil servants burn out because of:

• excessive workload,
• exhaustion and frustration,
• failure to balance it all out with more joyful artistic expression, to name just a couple of the reasons quoted in the recent Apolitical Q&A trying to pinpoint the triggers.

As always, I love to see Apolitical engage their community – this time by inviting them to reflect on why burnout is such a big problem in government right now.

The intention to get to the bottom of why it’s the case is honourable. We know that governments struggle to recruit due to a burnout pandemic but also that burnout of civil servants is an under-researched area.

It is mainly about the internal triggers, which make us feel sad, stuck, demotivated, disappointed and paralysed in a job that was supposed to be our life’s meaning but turned out not good enough.

Yet, from my experience of supporting burned out bureaucrats and activists, the respondents failed to identify the real root cause.

As I have shown in one of my newsletter articles, burnout of bureaucrats is different to the usual image of an executive that’s burned out due to high work pressure and meaningless tasks (career ladder leaning against the wrong wall – nurturing somebody's ego race instead of their soulful purpose).

It is not (only) about these largely external triggers (workload, skills mismatch, unfair treatment or an uninspiring job). It is mainly about the internal triggers, which make us feel sad, stuck, demotivated, disappointed and paralysed in a job that was supposed to be our life’s meaning but turned out not good enough.

This is what I have seen as specifics of burnout in civil service:

1. The service mentality and groupthink create pressure to ignore the signs of burnout that most of the bureaucrats I have met throughout my career experience. They push through and continue overworking – committed to their cause.
2. Our loyalty forces us to keep calm and continue serving, reluctant to open up and question the context with a childlike wonderment. It takes courage to admit it to oneself, to question the default ways of operating and to engage in a critical dialogue with those who can see beyond the bubble. It’s a tough balancing act to see how much a fish can be healed and how much of the disease is due to the toxic water we have been swimming in for quite some time.
3. People pleasing, perfectionism and conflict avoidance are any government official’s superpowers. Yes, they are at the origins of our commitment to civil service (careers). But they are the perfect ingredients for chronic burnout and are rooted in long-forgotten traumas. Most burned out professionals remain unaware of the complexity of the underlying triggers.
4. It is simple but not easy to break away from these patterns. It is important to decompose them into the original experiences that made us who we became, release what is no longer serving us and create new possibilities from a truly self-empowered place. I am convinced that this deep dive into one’s self is most effective if guided by somebody who can facilitate the process while understanding the complexity of a bureaucrat's identity.
5. Advocating for more self-care is a band-aid pseudo-solution. It does not compensate for such deep inquiry and a brutally honest shakeup of these underlying causes. You can tango every night (as suggested by one of the respondents in the Q&A) but if it is only to recharge your battery and then feel depleted at the end of the next day again, it remains a zero-sum game.
6. Yes, HR is to blame. But so are we, if we spend time surviving instead of thriving, waiting for the corporate culture to be fixed instead of creating our own game – so that we can create impact AND feel energised at once.

These are why I am on the mission to empower civil servants who are sick and tired of feeling sick and tired of this whole setup.

The blessing of this post-pandemic Era of the Great Resignation is de-taboo-isation of workplace wellbeing conversations. I meet an increasing number of people who may not know what the solution to their sense of stuckness and sadness is but they are ready to reach out for support that is more than just talk therapy.

May this spring give you plenty of such support for rebirth, social vitamins to blossom and direction to turn your burnout symptoms into a new energy game. May you feel on top of your game again, empowered to create impact, while feeling authentic, in control and thriving.

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