Pushing through pain barriers: Can you thrive in stressful project environments?
By: Allan Owens
Tags: Productivity, Change Management, Leadership, Business, Leadership Development

The bad guys: Burnout and strain. The good guys: Grit, values and gradual exposure to the bad guys

Image by 272447 from Pixabay

“Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” ― George S. Patton Jr., War as I Knew It

Life on projects is not easy. My experience in operational roles was straightforward and repetitive. After a while I took every opportunity to jump onto a project. These projects may have been secondments or fixed-term contracts at first. Each project operated at a faster pace, with many thrills and uncertainty. The pressure of deadlines and unexpected events. Trying to remain calm under pressure. Working with quick-thinking and talented colleagues.

Lots of travel too: after many restaurant meals, the extra padding and long hours, travel lost its lustre! After over fifteen years on projects, I still love project work. I left permanent employment to become a contractor. The higher expectations and career opportunities as a contractor have been thrilling and worthwhile.

There have been a few dark times on projects, where I had to tap into my resolve to get through each day. I have not always won my battles. I trod the fine line between burnout and optimal performance on projects. And got it wrong sometimes. I have experienced burnout a few times in my career. I am happy to share what I have learned.

We now examine the “bad guys” of project life: burnout and strain. Then we take a look at the “good guys”, who help you fight burnout and strain. These “good guys” are concepts developed by psychologists and executive coaches. We examine the concept of grit and how your values provide you with strength. Research also suggests that gradual exposure to exacting situations may strengthen you. We apply this thinking to our career on projects!

What is burnout?

Burnout is “emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, and lack of personal accomplishment” ¹. Here are common statements that you may hear in others who may be risking burnout.

Emotional Exhaustion — “I feel emotionally drained from my work”

Depersonalisation — “I’ve become more callous toward people since I took this job”

Lack of personal accomplishment — “I feel I’m making no influence on other people’s lives through my work” ²

Working in an operational role has different challenges to life on projects. Project work demands a greater degree of self-reliance. Your work is unstructured. Project leaders may want you to get on with creating your own structure. This structure might last only five minutes, before surprises surface. This often happens when you craft a project plan and work through unexpected issues. Your stakeholders may bristle from any changes your project team propose. There could be an incredible amount of “unknowns” in your project. There are certain times on any project when long hours are everyone’s norm. Or you may have to fill in gaps in your project team. You may be tired and a bit flat already. You might not feel you have the stamina to switch gears between different “hats”. Nor surging demands on your time. That stakeholder pinging you for the tenth time in the last two days. Your limits start to become plain.

Introducing four reasons for burnout on projects

Here are four reasons for burnout, tailored to change professionals. Which one of the four reasons for burnout hits you the hardest? Working with the “four horsemen of the Change Apocalypse” is exhausting:

1. Change fatigue

2. Resistance and conflict

3. Ambiguity

4. Wearing many hats.

Your organisation or project leadership may have some influence over these sources of burnout ³. But don’t hold your breath. You may experience faster relief of burnout by aiming to change how you see a problem instead. The toughest times in your career are the best for learning and growing.

Source: Author (under licence from Flaticon)

Stress and strain

The Yerkes-Dodson curve is a fundamental concept taught to psychologists ⁴. This curve is a model for understanding stress. Stress is not a “bad” thing — this curve suggests we have an optimal level of stress.

Source: as above

But when we have minimal stress placed upon us, boredom sets in. You may find you lack energy, and turn to coping mechanisms that aren’t that helpful. These mechanisms may be over-drinking, over-eating, complaining. Whatever works for you. These coping mechanisms may help you to numb, distract or suppress feelings. What are your go-to, “safety blanket” ways of coping?

On some projects, there’s no traction. No sense of accomplishment. One pointless meeting after the other. Endless politicking, but no actual tangible deliverables provided to the organisation. Over time, your understanding of your organisation’s “big picture” constricts. You can’t see how your work contributes to the big picture. Instead, small, petty battles consume your attention. Or you’re thinking about other career paths — and that recruiter’s phone call. The apathy and wishing-you-were-anywhere-but-here is like your own mid-life crisis hitting you mid-project. Politics are rife in these environments. These dull, tractionless working environments reward ingratiation and other political game-playing.

I thought project life was always fast-paced — not “bums on seats”, sitting around pretending to look busy? Yes, some projects are like this for many project professionals.

And too much stress? Again, you may lack energy — or be hypervigilant. The adrenaline courses through you … until it stops one day. You might feel on the verge of tears, prone to snapping at others, or just completely over it. Part of your value as a project professional is the diplomacy and professionalism you bring to the table. What do you do when you don’t have any reserves left for diplomacy? How do you concentrate on yet another emergency communication? Or bite your tongue in the face of another insulting remark from a stakeholder? Or scrambling to cover today’s training sessions when your trainer calls in sick?

There may also be a few times you’re snapped out of your sleep at 3am. These sudden wake-ups can happen when you’re over or under-stressed. You have been dreaming of that spreadsheet again, or that tough conversation with that irritating colleague. You can’t get back to sleep, no matter how you try. Your career achievements and any enjoyment from your work at all are cold comfort in the face of another sleepless night. Your income or contract day rate does not matter. Regular sleepless nights — not worth any money. Everyone’s response to strain is a unique beast.

Both under and over-stress creates strain. Strain is what harms your health when sustained over long timeframes. The health impacts are many. Diminished immunity, changing digestive system behaviours and impaired psychological health are frequent outcomes.

Where is the optimal stress level, where we experience an ideal blend of challenge and engagement? When you are at your optimal stress level, you may experience a state of “flow” ⁵. Flow is where you may lose track of time. You enter status update meetings and proudly tick off completed items. “Done”! You effortlessly spend hours producing that video for your change work. Those training sessions are a breeze to facilitate — and it’s fun. Those meetings where everyone contributes, it’s high energy and there is a true synergy between each participant. The days where you might even admit that you would do this job for free. Although being paid is nice too.

Big life events also are stressful — even if they are “positive” events like a promotion. Psychologists learn about the Holmes-Rahe scale as part of their training ⁶. This scale shows a table depicting major life events, placing a “score” against each. These life events include both “bad” events: death of a spouse and “good” events: work promotions. It’s no surprise that these underlying events in your personal life bleed over into your work life.

Source: As above

As the above image suggests, strain is not derived only from low or high stress levels. Interpersonal conflicts, value misalignment and challenges to your beliefs about how change should work — all contribute to strain. What are your ways of coping with each strain-causing event? Your ability to tolerate distress is important. With life experience and dedicated practice in environments where you will feel distress, you can build your capacity. Grit is necessary to keep going in the face of distress.

Grit

Grit is not just simple elbow-grease term for rugged persistence. It is an often invisible display of endurance that lets you stay in an uncomfortable place, work hard to improve upon a given interest, and do it again and again. Sarah Lewis

Angela Duckworth coined the term ‘grit’ ⁷. Duckworth gained experience as a psychologist, teacher and McKinsey consultant. She sought to understand why certain people become accomplished. She studied executives, military trainee leaders at West Point and elite athletes, among other cohorts ⁸. Yes, grit was the defining construct separating those standing at the finish line from everyone else.

Change professionals need high levels of grit given the barrage of intellectual, emotional/inter-personal and workload challenges. You can measure your own grit, courtesy of a brief scale ⁹.

What source(s) of burnout and strain hits you the hardest? Think about the career progression and performance standards of high achieving change professionals. Now think about the capabilities and mindset of multi-sport athletes. Do you see any similarities? Change professionals may:

Deliver training

Win over difficult stakeholders

Devise savvy communications

Perform number-crunching analytical work and

Show a deep level of system understanding and creative thinking.

…sometimes all in the same day!

Is the idea of grit (“sticking it out”) a contradiction of the concept of self-care? No. Both grit and self-care can work together. Plan out your self-care in advance when working on a project. Take advantage of slower times on your project to refresh. Take those long weekends when you can! And don’t do as I do, and try to write a book during a project go-live.

Grit is moving forwards in the absence of our safe friends. Our safe friends, you say? They are: a drive for perfection, a complete information set and regular positive feedback.

Remove your safe friends from your professional way of operating on projects. These safe friends may hinder your longevity on tough projects. These psychological “safety blankets” may eat into your reserves of energy and grit.

Perfection — a cure for longevity on projects

Think about professionally satisfying outcomes during your career. Did you draw on reserves of grit? You may have, especially the first time you had to engage in complicated scenarios. Reward yourself for building your levels of grit. And for tolerating a ‘seven out of ten’, rather than a ‘nine or ten out of ten’. Yes — that last one was for all the perfectionists out there.

Make a decision — and get on with it

You may have endured distressing times and powerful emotions during your work on projects. The higher you go in your career, the more distress tolerance you will need. You will likely see less traction and personal accomplishment, as your team may do the work. You will experience far more ambiguity. You have less reliable “hands-on” exposure to reliable information and feedback. The problems you grapple with are less clearer, yet may have a far-reaching impact.

Also, are you comfortable with failure? Or do you put undue pressure on yourself instead? Do you avoid placing boundaries around your change practice? Do you avoid closing loose ends? Loose ends could be small tasks which take a few minutes to action. Or you could write down all your loose ends. These two options release these loose ends from your mind. This effect (known as the Zeigarnik effect) is a powerful stress-eliminator ¹⁰.

“Attaboy!”

Do you expect constant feedback on your work? Do you wither under criticism? Rid your mind of attraction to “reward” or aversion to criticism. But you may need constant disciplined effort to maintain the stoic mindset required. Keep in mind, though — the higher you go in projects, the more criticism you attract. And when things are going right, act like your victory didn’t happen ¹¹.

During the Vietnam War, the great North Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap had a simple rule of thumb: after a successful campaign, he would convince himself that it had actually been a failure. As a result he never got drunk on his success, and he never repeated the same strategy in the next battle. Rather he had to think through each situation anew. Robert Greene, 33 Strategies of War, pg. 23

Project life raises many challenges demanding grit. This is especially the case if you lead others in complex, tumultuous environments. A similar challenge demanding even higher amounts of grit: the Australian Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) selection “Cadre” course.

During the SASR Cadre course, candidates march in the bush alone with heavy backpacks for days on end. Candidates receive no feedback. They only meet stony-faced Directing Staff to receive their next co-ordinates. This alone time, struggling through hot, mountainous bush provides ample space for self-doubt.

Terry O’Farrell speaks about the Australian SASR selection course:

“There is no program issued, you have to be ready to go all the time and do whatever is thrown at you. People can’t cope with that because they are living in a chaotic world, they like things to be neat and tidy. No feedback, for example — everyone wants a pat on the back. The only communications with staff are directions. Do this or do that, there is no debrief, just get on with it. This builds up in a bloke’s mind. He will say, “I don’t know how I am going, I have no idea.” All of a sudden things get a bit tough, he won’t know how much further he has got to go and he will say to himself, “I am not doing any good in this… I am out.” ¹² Terry O’Farrell, 38-year SASR veteran, The Amazing SAS: The inside story of Australia’s special forces, pg. 11

PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) candidates have a similar “endurance march”. Their research journey may start on a good note, but the direction of the thesis is up to each candidate. There is often plenty of negative feedback about their thesis, regardless of their relationship with their supervisor. Each candidate may have their doubts about their research approach or findings. They may grapple with perfectionism — a useful trait to have to get into a PhD program, but not always a helpful one after that. No wonder a vast majority of PhD students find the years of toil going into their final work difficult.

Change professionals can be brought in late into a project. There’s pricky or complex stakeholder personalities to manage. We may face many surprises on projects — like every other project professional. In this difficulty lies growth.

This growth leads to experience, where you can build your self-understanding. This self-understanding helps you discern whether you are hitting your limits… or feeling a pain barrier, before you achieve a second wind. A second wind is a gust of energy, unlocking more endurance than you ever thought possible at the time.

Link to your values

Why do you work on projects? What draws you to being (or wanting to be) a change professional?

Dr. Viktor Frankl wrote a book called The Search for Meaning. His book is a brilliant text for finding meaning in difficult times ¹³. Dr Frankel found that he could sustain himself motivation in very dark and challenging times by linking to his core values.

The best change professionals bring their heart and minds to work. Their hearts are in effect their value systems. Most of us need “heart” to keep going through difficult times on projects. Energy reserves can take a beating in initial weeks on a project where you are learning and adapting to new environments. And of course, in the lead-up to your project’s go-live.

But also at unpredictable stages in your project. Late at night, when you’re going through a lot of stress and you’re thinking through all the loose ends in the project. The recent changes in scope.

Attach your work to your values. Draw from the things you value as a change professional. These values become your “why” for leading change. This can help sustain you over the long run.

Photo by Baylee Gramling on Unsplash

Gradual exposure…

How can you build your capacity for sustained distress tolerance? It takes slow, gradual exposure to challenging and complex challenges. Psychologists treat many anxiety disorders and phobias with a technique called graded exposure ¹⁴ ¹⁵. Graded exposure allows patients to explore increasingly anxiety-causing stimuli safely. Have a spider phobia? Graded exposure might start with a ‘harmless’ stimuli, such as looking at a picture of a spider. Several more ‘levels of increasingly anxiety-causing stimuli are introduced over time. The patient learns to manage their distress. Depending on their treatment plan — they may even experiment with their discomfort. Their experimentation may involve challenging their thinking and emotions. They may learn to ‘re-frame’ the thoughts and behaviours perpetuating their fears. The stimuli may culminate in episodes, like closer proximity to a real spider.

During your career, you have embraced increasingly difficult challenges. You may have started out in an apprenticeship of sorts. You could have started your career observing experienced change practitioners or project professionals. Completed certifications to aid your understanding? Over time, you increased your capacity to tolerate difficult stakeholder encounters? Or led a big workshop, or became responsible for a whole stream of change activity?

What kept you up at night earlier in your career — presentations, or not knowing the next step in your project — now becomes a part of a regular day’s work. Working on different projects, different team dynamics, locations and job demands. Crunching numbers for benefits realisation work. Developing a complex options paper. The leader who gave you a go and trusted you to lead a change initiative. The experiences may have been difficult at the time, but you grew from the experience. These ever-changing project circumstances help evolve your change practice and build your self-confidence.

You can deliberately practice graded exposure to things in your career that terrifies you. This technique can apply to your tolerance of any of the sources of burnout. Also, be mindful of your hindrances to grit -perfectionism, indecision or a need for regular feedback.

One way to think about your career: a psychological inoculation. Each challenge you overcome prepares you for more difficult challenges ¹⁶. Some of your capacity to have grit, and sustain distress tolerance is due to your make-up (your ‘state’) ¹⁷.

Even so, there is a considerable amount of resources within your control (your ‘traits). As the ‘Five wellbeing pillars’ image below suggests, have you recently asked yourself important questions about your current situation? Simple things, like getting enough sleep and an adequate diet, make a significant difference to your “buffer” to sustain difficult times.

After all this commentary on the tools to sustain yourself, it’s worth mentioning that you should not persevere through every challenge. Which ones help you grow, and which ones will leave you an anxious puddle in the corner? I have sometimes persevered against all odds in sticking at jobs I shouldn’t have. I wish that I didn’t in hindsight. This was a valuable learning experience, and helped me experience burnout first-hand. I also learned the extent of my grit.

Grit is not a construct for pushing through career situations which are against your values. Quitting is not a weakness, and retreating is a significant tactical move for any career professional. This article speaks about sustaining through difficulties which can help you grow.

Source: Author, adapted from https://www.gallup.com/workplace/237020/five-essential-elements.aspx

Recap

Your career potential as a change professional relies on longevity. Longevity depends on your ability to navigate burnout and strain. Burnout and strain are dealt in fairly high amounts to you on projects! Developing constructive coping strategies is a vital counterpoint to burnout and strain.

Knowing about, and developing grit is one strategy. Distress tolerance and reframing problems as challenges is one step to developing grit. Drop your hindrances to grit — perfectionism, indecision and continual feedback. Understand your values, and link your values to your change practice. Make a conscious, deliberate decision to set yourself increasingly difficult challenges in your career. Ideally, in career aspects you are afraid of and want to master!

Your call to action

What challenges could you face to build your confidence (and grit) today? What does having grit look like to you as a change professional?

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