What Is “Burnout”?

Posted byRebecca ShulmanPosted inMuseum Administration, Organizational Culture in Museums
Image with “burnout in the center of a ring featuring the causes of burnout: Unsustainable workload; Perceived lack of control; Insufficient rewards for effort; Lack of a supportive community; Lack of fairness; and Mismatched values and skills.

Burnout was a hot topic in 2023. Attention to burnout was prompted by COVID-19, which made nearly everybody’s life more complicated and difficult, and post-COVID changes to the work environment and feelings about work.1 But even before 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) included burnout in it’s 2019 revision of “International Classification of Diseases.”2 And, further back, the journal Burnout Research was active from 2014-2017; the first sentence of the first issue is, “Burnout has been a longstanding issue of social concern.”3

In the museum community, the Museums Moving Forward 2023 report on “Workplace Equity and Organizational Culture in US Art Museums” notes that “two-thirds of art museum workers are thinking about leaving their jobs, if not the field altogether, and that low pay and burnout are the top reasons.”4 Writer and museum consultant Mike Murawski has brought attention to the issue of burnout in recent “Agents of Change” posts. On November 6, in  “How are you doing at Slowing Down?” he wrote, “burnout has been the biggest issue that has come up in my consulting work with museums and nonprofits all year long…. And recently, in a 4-week Changemaker Intensive with staff at one institution, it emerged as a core barrier for effectively implementing change.”5

Mike has focused on the overwork aspect of burnout, and in response, he has launched a “Slow the F*ck Down” movement. Robert J. Weisberg of Museum Human has also noted the frenetic culture of “activity levels, overstuffed schedules, and time scarcity.”6 Rob adds issues of climate change and destruction to the issue of overwork, citing indi.ca who points out that more work requires more energy leading to heating up the world.7

I am grateful to Mike, Rob, and others who are drawing attention to this issue: there is no doubt that museum employees are overworked, and that this needs to be addressed. And overwork is a critical part of burnout. Let’s please lobby for slowing down (you can buy your “Slow the F*ck Down t-shirt or coffee mug here). And let’s also take a more careful look at burnout, to better understand and address the other components of this pressing problem.

So what is burnout, and what causes it?

The WHO notes that burnout is not an individual condition but an occupational issue, indicating that it needs to be addressed systemically in the workplace, rather than at the individual level.8 Its definition notes three dimensions of burnout: overwork, cynicism, and a sense of inefficacy.  These dimensions are what is tested by the Maslach Burnout Inventory, developed by Christina Maslach in 1981. In order to understand each of these variables, here are just a few selected questions from the Maslach Burnout Inventory (there are 44 questions total in the “Maslach Burnout Toolkit for General Use) shared on an October 2023 episode of the podcast “No Stupid Questions”9 and in Maslach’s book “Burnout.”10 The answers are rated on how often you experience these feelings (not on whether you experience them or not).

Exhaustion:

  • I feel used up at the end of the workday.
  • I feel tired when I have to get up in the morning and face another day on the job.
  • I feel emotionally drained from my work.
  • Working with people all day is really a strain for me.

Cynicism:

  • I’ve become less interested in my work since I started this job.
  • I doubt the significance of my work.
  • I’ve become more callous toward people since I took this job.
  • I worry that this job is hardening me emotionally.

Inefficacy:

  • I feel I’m making an effective contribution to what this organization does.
  • I feel exhilarated when I accomplish something at work.
  • In my work, I deal with emotional problems very calmly.
  • I feel I’m positively influencing other people’s lives through my work.

In a 2016 issue of the publication Burnout Research, Maslach and co-author Michael Leitner noted that “the Burnout profile … is associated with a … more negative experience of worklife than is the experience of exhaustion alone…. Therefore, exhaustion does not seem to be a sufficient proxy for burnout.”11 Another way of saying this: the opposite of burnout is not vigor or energy or right-sized workload – the opposite of burnout is engagement.

If burnout is not solely the direct result of too much work, what causes it? Maslach has found that the causes of burnout include the following:

  • Unsustainable workload
  • Perceived lack of control
  • Insufficient rewards for effort
  • Lack of a supportive community
  • Lack of fairness
  • Mismatched values and skills

How well does your museum do in these six areas? What stories do you have of museums doing a good job or museums struggling to support staff?

I have my own theories about what is happening in 21st century museums related to these six areas, and in future posts, I would like to take a look of these areas in the context of museum work. But before doing so, I would like to broaden my understanding of the situation by collecting stories from people across the museum field. Please help me out by sharing your stories! Use this form to share stories which illustrate any of the six causes of burnout, OR something your museum is doing that is a positive example of limiting workload, offering employees control, rewarding individuals for effort, supporting staff, demonstrating fairness, or aligning staff and institutional values and skills.

Share your story

Resources:

  1. Jennifer Moss, “Beyond Burned Out,” The Burnout Crisis, Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2021/02/beyond-burned-out ↩︎
  2. World Health Organization, ICD-11 for Mortality and Morbidity Statistics – see https://icd.who.int/browse11/l-m/en#/http://id.who.int/icd/entity/129180281 or https://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupational-phenomenon-international-classification-of-diseases ↩︎
  3. Michael P. Leiter & Christina Maslach. “Editorial.” Burnout Research, 2014. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213058614000047 ↩︎
  4. Museums Moving Forward, Workplace Equity and Organizational Culture in US Art Museums, 2023. https://museumsmovingforward.com/data-studies/2023/ ↩︎
  5. Mike Murawski, “How are you doing at Slowing Down?” Agents of Change, November 6, 2023. https://agentsofchange.substack.com/p/how-are-you-doing-at-slowing-down ↩︎
  6. Robert J. Weisberg, “What Might Be in Store for Museum Human in 2024.”, Museum Human, January 2024, https://www.museumhuman.com/what-might-be-in-store-for-museum-human-in-2024/ ↩︎
  7. Robert J. Weisberg, “Links of the Week: December 1, 2023: We Can’t Grow Our Way Out of This.”, Museum Human https://www.museumhuman.com/links-of-the-week-december-1-2023-we-cant-grow-our-way-out-of-this/ ↩︎
  8. World Health Organization, https://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupational-phenomenon-international-classification-of-diseases ↩︎
  9. Angela Duckworth and Mike Maughan, “Are You Suffering from Burnout?,” No Stupid Questions, October 8, 2023, https://freakonomics.com/podcast/are-you-suffering-from-burnout/ ↩︎
  10. Christina Maslach. Burnout : the cost of caring. Malor Books, 2003. ↩︎
  11. Michael P. Leiter & Christina Maslach. “Latent burnout profiles: A new approach to understanding the burnout experience.” Burnout Research, 2016. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213058615300188?via%3Dihub ↩︎

Published by Rebecca Shulman

I am the Principal of Museum Questions Consulting, which delivers a range of services that motivate leaders at all levels to think deeply and carefully about goals and systems, so that they can plan effectively. have over 20 years of experience as a museum professional, working both within museums and as a consultant. Most recently I served as Founding Director of the Peoria PlayHouse Children’s Museum, in Peoria, Illinois. Prior to that I worked as Head of Education at the Noguchi Museum, and Senior Manager of Learning Through Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. While at the Guggenheim Museum I wrote a book, Looking at Art in the Classroom. Learn more about Museum Questions, my consulting practice, at www.museumquestions.com.

Please add your thoughts to the discussion!