Exercise 1: What leads to burnout?
Think of an organization where you have worked. If you have not yet worked in the human services field, any organization will do, even a fast-food or convenience store. Take a piece of paper and jot down some responses to the following questions. Write your responses not as gripes, but as specific behaviors and identifiable concrete problems that occurred there. As an example, instead of writing The shift supervisor was a louse, write The shift supervisor never gave specific instructions on clean-up procedures as to who was to do what, and when. As a result, there was a lot of confusion, and we often flunked health inspection. Write these down as quickly as you can. Now think about and respond to the following questions.
- What observable stress did you see in fellow workers because of a problem?
- What stress responses did you have behaviorally, cognitively, and affectively?
- What do you think would have happened if management would have brought in an
- outside consultant to deal with the workers and the organization?
- What stumbling blocks might there have been?
- Picture yourself as the outside consultant. How might you have handled these issues?
