Andy Hibel 0:13
Welcome to the HigherEdJobs podcast. Ask the Expert edition. I'm Andy Hibel the chief operating officer and of the co-founders of HigherEdJobs.

Kelly Cherwin 0:21
And I'm Kelly Cherwin, the director of Editorial strategy. We're happy to have our expert Matt Traynham back today. So welcome back, Matt.

Matt Trainum 0:28
I love being here. Thanks for having me.

Kelly Cherwin 0:29
Always fun to have you here. So let's get into our question today from our listener. Our listener says many people in higher ed are spread too thin. How can they communicate that with their supervisor before burnout? This is an emotional question, Matt. So what do you think of this?

Matt Trainum 0:45
Yeah, you know, I'll I'll share just a really quick story. We've been having some conversations internally in some of the communities I'm in and we have regular reoccurring monthly conversations and we actually had one recently. And after all these conversations we invite people to reach out to us. On the last one, we started to talk about burnout a little bit at the end. And I will tell you, we had probably triple the reach outs after that conversation than after our normal conversation. It is this is me reflecting back the accuracy of this question for the moment. Right. So there's a there's a couple of things I think about. First thing I'd say is, what are you burnt out with? Right. What are you burnt out with? Is it the people around you? Is it the broader culture? Is it the organizational values and philosophy? I have a colleague who I've talked with recently who said, I know this is not the place I came to work at, and I don't think it was so much the workload that they were burnt out with. It was the philosophical shift of the organization and where they went. Is it the workload? It might. It might be the workload. If they doubled the pay, would you feel burnt out? Right. So is there a sense of of valuing? Has the work just gotten old? I find a lot of people that I talk with who I get a sense of burnout from are actually just professionally. They have matured where the position is no longer challenging to them and therefore it's not stimulating. And there might be an additional amount of work, but it's also there's no stimulation that that counters the additional amount of work. Not to continue too much of here, but is there a lack of appreciation for the contribution? So the question I first kind of ask with a little bit of burnout is what is out of alignment? Is it the workload out of alignment? Is it the job responsibilities? Is the pay is at the skill level? Is it the goals? Is the commitment, what's what's out of alignment? That's a first place I start. When I think about burnout.

Kelly Cherwin 2:34
I think that's great because you you have to kind of categorize what the issue is before you could actually move forward to solve it. And I love the word value because I think oftentimes that could be a big sore spot in many situations where people might not feel that they are being appreciated and being valued. They're asking to take on too much. And in some times maybe they don't feel like the trust factor is there. They might be told something and something else is happening and they are this leading to a bad morale of not being valued. So I like how you categorize finding out what the reason is, and then you can hopefully address what the burnout is.

Matt Trainum 3:11
Kelly on the told something and seen different things. I would say it highlights that the organization is large and complex and that our immediate supervisors only control so much of the narrative and so much of the experience. And so you might be in alignment with your supervisor, but out of alignment with the broader organization has the organization shifting. And that can also lead to a sense of burnout and disconnect. You know, setting the stage here, when you think about people who are burnout, I mean, we all we all need jobs. And I think we worry when we're not performing in a way that we think is being asked to do right, because it feels like we're in jeopardy. And I would next say most of us want to support the organizations we're at, right? So we get worried when we can't do what we're being asked. We have a desire to be supportive them. We're actually bizarrely sympathetic to the struggles of our organization. So often it's like, Oh, there's, you know, this going on or that going on, and we kind of do our best to help the organization, right? This kind of vague thing. And oddly, a lot of us and I think a lot of us here on this podcast like working in general, right? And so you you set the stage like that, but then you have a hypothetical where the person whose office is next to mine is gone now, and I have to carry all of their responsibilities, right? So now I have two jobs. And so all of that worry, all of that investment in the in the role actually leads to more burnout. And when we're burnout, we're not performing the way we want to right. We're short with others, we're not creative, we're not in generative spaces. We might have a sense of isolation, were unable to meet the expectations that we set for ourselves, you know, which are which are harsher. That's, I think, where a lot of that burnout comes, not just the external expectations, it's our own and we don't have time for recharge. So I hope we've done a good job in the last 5 minutes of not answering the question of what do you do right here? Work. We're kind of I'm kind of shaping it a little bit, right? This is what what burnout looks like. And so I'll just pause there for a minute and then we can move into now what do we do? But I'll pause to have some reflection time.

Andy Hibel 5:09
I hope folks appreciate what we're trying to do with shaping this question, and maybe I might to try to shape just a little bit more because I think you hit on something that's right there. I want to kind of pull out somebody who might be a high performer. And what happens in those instances that when the person in the office next to you goes away and you're like, hey, can you just chip in? I think we're bizarrely committed to the institutions, but we're firmly committed to the team that we love. Like, yeah, we're happy to do this for the institution, but we love the people we work with. And I can achieve I can do this, I want to pitch in. I think that's great. As somebody who's a member of a team being asked to do that, having a go normally, but when it goes bad, that's what we're talking about. And I think I might leave the question to you about I can't wait to hear what you have to say about how do you gently handle this with your supervisor. But I want to talk about and I don't want to go too dark here is when that goes bad, when it's really not, you're trying to help you try the pitch. And we're trying to do this transition to the next person sitting in the office next to you. But really, there's no real commitment to finding somebody else and you've just basically picked up another job. And we've followed the best advice that you've just given us that you will give us. What do you do? And I think that's the part where I kind of look at the barometer here. Is it an unforgivable sin? At what point have you just been asked to do too much? And this team isn't what you thought it was. The supervisor isn't who you think they were. And maybe it's time to vote with your feet and go someplace else. I think that's the part where I think if you're cyclically in this place at an organization, I think you really need to think twice about whether or not this could be an unforgivable sin of the organization. And it's just not palatable because I really fear for people, particularly with tight budgets and in situations like that and and high achievers, that that's just not healthy for them. And do you need to get yourself out of there.

Matt Trainum 7:13
Andy there's a reality here of if the work is getting done, why would I resource another person to come do it? And so if the high performers are picking it up and covering it, then I have no priority, right? It's not till it starts to fall that it becomes a priority. I have a few thoughts to this and I've loved just listening to what you were sharing there. Let me give you two thoughts and then position it a little bit. So first thing I would say is what's most important to your boss? That's always first, and it really is. And that is really hard for more people than we might think. The second thing I would say is what's most important to the most number of people you do that next do what's most important to the boss first, do what the most other people need you to get done next. And the way I'll sort of philosophically position. This is often what I see is folks are performing to the expectations that they have in their head and they are somewhat the expectations of the organization. But if a person B leaves if a person beside me leaves, I'm assuming I have to do everything that that person did, that might not be the case. So the expectations that I have for myself of what I'm supposed to do are super important. Let me give you two quick examples. One is years ago, when I was working at an institution, we hired people into a job that had a very regular title that you would find throughout higher education. Let's just put it that way. Our description for that role was very different and people would come thinking they were supposed to do all of that other stuff because that's what that person normally did. And I would point out we had no one that did that other stuff. So the people came and attempted to do all of that as well as the stuff that we actually asked them to do. It was very hard for them to not get burnt out because they were trying to do more than the expectations that me as a supervisor was putting on them. They were doing their expectations they put on themselves. I'm now going to give you a terrible modern example of that. There are probably hundreds of people at X right now who are terribly frustrated. This is a very risky example. Right. Who are terribly frustrated because they're trying to do the work of ten other people. When I think part of what the model is that is trying to happen there and I'm not saying I support it, but is we don't have to do all the stuff we were doing like we were trying to do too much is my guess. That's the only way that philosophy of dismissing that many people can work is we were overextending what we need to do. We don't need to do that much. And so what do we really, really have to do? I use that very risky example to say this might be a time where the person has to say, What do we really, really have to do? Not what do I want to do? Not what do I historically see this role do, but what is my boss need to get done and what are the most people around me need to get done? Let me prioritize those items and not think of all the other things that I used to do and used to be important. I will close just because I felt, Well, let me close there and let you respond.

Andy Hibel 10:04
I just I just checked my email. My ex account has now been frozen.

Kelly Cherwin 10:10
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Matt Trainum 10:42
You know I think about I think about COVID and it is such a phenomenal example where we stopped doing hundreds of things across campuses that we had done and prioritized and moved our work to other things. And there were meetings that had happened for ten years in a row every Tuesday at 8:00, and those meetings stopped happening. And at a lot of campuses when the campus returned, a lot of them, those meetings did not start happening again because that work had gone away, that we had decided a different way to process and manage that. We'll talk in a minute about actually addressing this with the boss. But I'm I'm trying to set a standard where I think a lot of the burnout I see from my peers, from folks who I really value, who are in senior positions or administrative positions, is assumed burnout, trying to do a whole lot more than perhaps the organization actually thinks they can get done. And they're holding on to it really tightly. I know that I'm supposed to be here perhaps advocating for the individual on the question, and I'm trying to advocate for them by saying maybe it's okay for you to set different standards for yourself and then see how that plays out in the organization. And then to your point, and if it doesn't play out well, well, then it's probably time to look for somewhere new.

Andy Hibel 11:53
I mean, I think we're heavily focusing on the the administrative side and the leadership side, but this is just as prevalent on the faculty side. So somebody leaves the institution, somebody else needs to pick up the class. It happens every day at institutions that, hey, you need to pick up another class. Your colleague is left.

Kelly Cherwin 12:11
So how do you I mean, truly, how do you negotiate that with your chair, with your supervisor? Like that's the million dollar question.

Andy Hibel 12:16
I wish we had an expert to answer that question. Yeah.

Matt Trainum 12:21
You have to be as direct as you can. I know this is important. There's not capacity here to do that task right now. I suggest speaking to blank and let's if we need to get to the other, to explore what options are available. Right. That is the way to lay it out. And then again, if they push too much too Andy's point, if that's always a, well, you still have to do this, then you have to reflect on if that's something you still want to do. I have found that organizations are okay with things not happening if there is clarity and communication around them. Right? So I know this is important. There's not capacity to do it right now. If we need to. Three of us need to get together for 15 minutes and talk about some solutions, but here's what that looks like and then go for it. So there are some more specific tactics like you could take a time if you're absorbing someone else's role. For instance, here, let me list out all of the duties of the two roles. Let's say, hypothetically, that there's ten gestalt duties across both roles, you know, so there's 20 total. So let's assume I'm going to do not ten anymore, but maybe 12. So let's pick out the 12 that you want to get done. Right? There are other tactics like are there things that that are a bundleable, that can be offloaded or managed a different way? Andy just highlighted a perfect one. A new class or a class need could be offloaded to an adjunct. Could be offloaded to an online course sharing program. Where folks can simply jump into classes that already exist that consortia agreements allow the institution to manage without having to do any additional work. So there's there's other ways to do that. So you might also look at that list of 12 things and say, what can we manage in a different way than we normally manage it?

Kelly Cherwin 13:53
I love that. I love coming up with a list of the duties and having a sit down conversation and going over possible solutions. Actually, I'll reference article that Dan Griffith wrote for us several months ago, from the management perspective. Are managers or leaders expecting too much of their high performers. And I guess the good thing is when you are doing your job well and you're a high performer, you almost get rewarded and you're doing everything so well, you get to do more work. And they might not be doing that to dump things on you and, you know, make your life miserable. They might think that this is a huge compliment, that you can do everything done so you can do it. But then the performer is like, wait, I can't for my mental health, my, you know, my sanity, keep doing all of this. So let's come up with a list of what was in my job, what was in job B, and how we can move forward, what the solutions are. So thank you, Matt, for those ideas.

Matt Trainum 14:45
I'll acknowledge this is really hard space. I was working with a president a while back and he had a vice president who decided he didn't want to be part of some different areas and simply stopped going to do the work right, stopped going to the committees. And I remember thinking to myself as I was working with that team on that, I was like, Well, this is really fascinating. I didn't know you could just not do something that was in your job, right? I was like, That's fascinating. This person just chose to not do it. So there are limits to some of that approach. But I will say what that choice did is it highlighted that need in a way that really put conversation around it. Right. And so there is the ability to say, hey, I'm going to set for myself a 40 hour, 50 hour, 60 hour. I mean, let's be reasonable. Probably not 40, right? I'm going to set myself a limit on the amount of time I'm going to spend on my job because there's diminishing returns after that amount of time. And for high performers, maybe that's 65 hours, right? For some of us, maybe it's 60 or 55 or 45. Right. I'm going to I'm going to set some limits on my time because then the time I'm contributing is much more valuable. And being able to set that limit and stick to it and go from there is important. I will tell you one of my most recent works in professional development for myself has been faster, quicker, shorter answers. So I'm at a level and I've been engaged in the conversation long enough, and I think most of the people listening to this have been doing their work long enough. I can probably answer things 30% quicker than I've been answering them. Now, I don't mean to sound silly there, but shorter, quicker answers. And I have found that this is just my own tactic. I've gotten through a lot more lately. Faster, quicker, shorter answers. People know me, They know I don't have you know, it's not even it's not even really shorter emails. It's just I trust my initial thought. Go with it. I don't pause to to too long to, to think to, to to too much about it. I do that for high level important things you know contract negotiations items like that, hiring decisions, for instance. But the regular weekly tasks that come through, I roll them right out. And so I think there is some professional development that could come in beyond like burnout coaching, beyond conversation of how I'm doing. There might actually be some skill development that can help the individual feel less burnt out. And none of this takes away from Andy's point. The organization ultimately has responsible to make sure everybody's workload is balanced and fair. Nothing I hope, and nothing I've said and I hope nothing anyone else here has said takes away from that 100% truth. So the rest of this is when that organization's not making that commitment. Well, how do you manage it?

Kelly Cherwin 17:13
Thank you, Matt.

Andy Hibel 17:14
Thanks, Matt, and thank you for listening. If you have a question for one of our experts, please email us at podcast at HigherEdJobs.com or send us a message on X @HigherEdCareers. Thanks for listening and we look forward to talking with you soon.