Dr. Steven Berglas is an executive coach
and management consultant who spent
twenty-five years on the faculty of
Harvard Medical School's Department of
Psychiatry where he also maintained a
private psychotherapy practice in
Boston.
Now based in Los Angeles, his coaching
practice draws upon his training in
behavioural psychiatry to design
interventions that are uniquely suited to
resolving the problems of senior level
executives at risk for career burnout or
the consequences of self-defeating
behaviours. His clients range from
Fortune 100 CEOs, to professional
athletes, Grammy and Oscar winners and
international chess Grandmasters.
Dr. Berglas is the author of Reclaiming
the Fire: How Successful People
Overcome Burnout, named by Fortune
Magazine as one of the 75 Smartest
Business Books ever written.
He talks here about how the
consequences of career success can
cause vocational, interpersonal and
psychological problems.
Guru Interview:
Dr. Steven Berglas
In this interview, Dr. Berglas talks
about how the consequences of
career success can cause vocational,
interpersonal and psychological
problems.
Guru Interview | Human Resources
Interview by James Nelson
Emerald for Managers | © Emerald Group Publishing Limited
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We normally associate stress with executive
burnout. You say the two are quite different and
not necessarily related. How do they differ?
dignity, spirit and will. Burnout causes people to
feel chronically exhausted, cynical, detached
from work and increasingly ineffective.
Dr. Steven Berglas:
Unlike the person experiencing stress, the person
suffering burnout is not anxious about harm but,
rather, detached from work and from his
colleagues. You’re suffering burnout when you’re
“going through the motions”, watching the clock,
being passive-aggressive to higher authorities, or
fantasizing an escape from work. The bottom-line
definition of executive burnout is when my
burned-out executive clients tell me: “I'm in it
only for the money”.
Actually, they are completely distinct disorders.
What often leads to their being confused is the
mishandling of the terms in the media. They are
assumed to be similar since in Western Society
stress occurs most frequently for executives in
connection with their jobs. That said, the
disorders are quite distinct. For example, stress is
a term that is constantly misused. It comes from
engineering where it refers to a force applied to
an entity. Being under excessive stress causes an
entity (e.g. a bridge support) to suffer strain or
“failure” in the integrity of the material it is
composed of. Two things are suggested by this:
(1) Psychological stress is a force lurking outside
us, like fire, that has a uniformly adverse effect
upon anyone who comes in contact with it, and,
(2) we get the notion of "cracking-up" from being
under too much stress.
Point 1 is totally false. Stress does not lurk
outside of us, it is not imposed, and it is not
uniform in its effects. Actually, psychological
stress is an “eye of the beholder” phenomenon.
People experience stress only if they view
something as posing a threat or harming them in
a physical or psychological way. I, for one,
experience threat (and stress) at the idea of
standing atop an icy mountaintop on two slats of
fibreglass and contemplating what I'm going to
have to do to get down to the bottom. People who
enjoy skiing find this exciting and, in fact,
capable of causing what psychologists call
“eustress” or the “good stress” derived from
confronting and overcoming challenges.
The way I help clients understand stress is to
quote a great thinker, Epictetus, who did his
thinking in 40 BC: “Men are disturbed not by
things but by the views they take of them”.
As for burnout, it’s a totally different experience.
According to most researchers, burnout occurs
when a person experiences a “disconnect”
between what they define themselves to be and
their vocational pursuits. This perspective has a
somewhat spiritual underpinning in that burnout
is seen as representing a deterioration in values,
Dr. Steven Berglas:
What is commonly referred to as executive stress
is usually what I call Supernova Burnout, a
disorder that afflicts successful people who find
that their vocation is no longer psychologically
rewarding or has become a threat to their selfesteem. The reason this is so pervasive among
“Top Talent” or executives in corporations, is that
Western Society culture glorifies material success
as an ideal that we all should strive for. The truth,
however, is that this flawed conviction is to
blame for the rising incidence of high-achieving
men and women wanting desperately to escape
the circumstances they are in after years of
arduous work to get there. I am referring to
business executives with years of success behind
them begging to break the grip of Golden
Handcuffs in order to do challenging work and not
engage in repetitive work that they mastered
decades ago.
Everyone knows of at least one dramatic rags-toriches-to-rags saga that ended because someone
who had it all became overwhelmed by
psychological demons and committed suicide
(Robert Maxwell, David Begelmen). This is not
Supernova Burnout. Supernova Burnout is a
pervasive dissatisfaction with a successful career
interrupted by often non-dramatic, yet incredibly
debilitating, symptoms ranging from anxiety
about living-up to the expectations born of
success to a sense of weariness and boredom
born of the realization that attaining the goal that
you thought would change your life did no such
thing. The pain of achieving what you want and
realizing that no favourable psychological
changes have automatically ensued is far worse
than failing to reach a goal. With failure, you can
always go back to the drawing board, “live to
fight another day,” or “try, try, again”; an actually
energizing state-of-affairs. With success that
forces you to ask the question “is that all there
is?” no such second chances exist. The
Guru Interview | Human Resources
“The bottom-line definition
of executive burnout is
when my burned-out
executive clients tell me:
‘I'm in it only for the
money.’”
You have written that the term executive stress is
often misused and misunderstood. Please
explain.
Emerald for Managers | © Emerald Group Publishing Limited
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disappointment derived from exposing the myths
that surround success is devastating.
Is this something which usually begins in middle
age or do you see it in younger ages?
Would you explain your concept of “perceived
control” and its relationship to stress?
Dr. Steven Berglas:
Dr. Steven Berglas:
Remember Epictetus? What he didn’t know was
that there is one factor that regulates how much
or how little our views of things are likely to result
in feelings of stress. Psychologists call it
“perceived control”. It’s perceived, rather than
actual, because you don’t have to be “in control”,
you just have to believe you are in order to have it
work wonders. The mind is all powerful. If I think
I can overcome, whether I ultimately do or not,
prior to the outcome I won’t be stressed.
Let’s go back to the mountain. I view skiing as
stressful because I have no idea how to do it. On
the other hand, I know how to box, so I'll happily
climb into a ring with almost anyone. Now, I won’t
be stressed boxing with a man smaller than I am
even if his skills are greater. He may pummel me,
but I won’t have a “stress syndrome” in advance
of getting some hefty wounds. Most people,
lacking control in a boxing ring, would be
stressed just walking between the ropes. But
since I perceive myself to be in control when I
box, I experience no stress when sparring,
irrespective of who I’m with, unless he’s
obviously a powerhouse.
Is the incidence of supernova burnout generally
confined to very senior level executives, or do
you also see it in middle management.
Dr. Steven Berglas:
The correlation between Supernova Burnout and
the midlife crisis in men exists because most
men become successful around age 50. That
said, I’ve treated men in their 30’s for Supernova
Burnout. It all depends upon when you reach
what you have determined is your life goal.
Can a change of job or location help?
Dr. Steven Berglas:
A change of location – what is known in
psychiatry as "The Geographic Cure" is of
absolutely no value. You simply take your
Supernova Burnout with you. On the other hand,
if your job change involves new challenges in a
field that taps into your area of expertise, that’s
"just what the Doctor ordered".
What seems to hold back sufferers from looking
for new dragons to slay?
Dr. Steven Berglas:
Expectations of what it means to be a success.
People who rise to the top in professional
spheres are "good boys"; they’ve studied hard,
done their homework, provided for their families.
I call this the Provider Paradox. They spend their
lives living according to someone’s – typically a
parent’s – definition of what they should do, then
at 50 they look around, realize they’re miserable,
and seduce their secretary in an effort to get
caught-in-the-act, blow it all, but at the same
time be free to live a life they can enjoy.
How do executives need to adjust their
expectations of the psychic rewards from a
career?
Is it more prevalent in men than in women?
Dr. Steven Berglas:
Dr. Steven Berglas:
Freud, the Bible, and most schools of ancient
philosophy noted, you need "Love and Work" to
be fulfilled. In Western Society, high achievers
believe, "Whoever dies with the most toys, wins",
and this just doesn’t work. If you’re not relating
well to people, no amount of money will buy love.
Actually, the Beatles said it too ("Can’t buy me
love..."). But for super-achievers, it’s easier to
make money than to make friends. That, in a
phrase, is the dilemma. □
Good Question! Women are infinitely less likely to
suffer Supernova Burnout because they are far
less invested in material success than men are.
Part of the reason why Supernova Burnout occurs
is that men put all their emotional energy into
careers and not into interpersonal relationships.
Women are far less likely to do that. When you
invest in people, not products, you do not get
disappointed when you reach a career goal
because you always have more "people goals" –
actually, an infinite number of them – left in life.
This is why women are, as a rule, psychologically
healthier at work than men.
Guru Interview | Human Resources
Supernova Burnout is particular to Top Talent. It
is, by definition, a disappointment with the
experience of success so you have to succeed to
suffer it.
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