Preventing Burnout in Athletes and Employees: Behavioral Insights for Sustainable Success
Preface
If you are reading this, I’m assuming you have some basic idea of the concept of psychological burnout. For those new to this discussion, I’ll quickly lay out the broad overview before presenting stereotypical cases of athlete burnout and employee burnout. Using that case, I will highlight opportunities for coaches to help when an athlete or employee is struggling with burnout as well as ways coaches can implement burnout prevention practices. You can skip this first section if you want to get straight to the cases and insights.
Brief Overview of Burnout as a Concept
Burnout as a psychological concept is, as the metaphorical term suggests, an experience of feeling hollowed out or lacking intrinsic motivation; as if a fire has torn through your brain or heart and left only charred emotional remains. The metaphor is apt for the experience across sport and performance domains. Both athletes and employees have described burnout as causing feelings of loss, devaluing, resentment, and exhaustion. A recent burnout focused special issue in Sports Psychiatry highlighted that the concept has been in the research literature for over 40 years now and affects as many as 1 in 7 elite athletes. (Gerber et al., 2024).
Left unaddressed, the experience of burnout in athletes and employees has been reported as a major factor in decisions to quit, or otherwise take extended breaks, from their chosen sport or career pursuit. Such disruptions harm athletes, employees, and their respective organizations in four ways. The first two are immediate term costs to the individual and organization resulting from the sudden departure or significant reduction in athlete performance or employee productivity. For example, in team sport, the sudden departure of a player not only costs them their salary and all the challenges surrounding unplanned transitions, but costs their former team with filling a talent gap, integrating a new personality onto a roster, and administering such a change. Expenses that for all but the most commercially successful teams tend to result in compensatory reductions or eliminations in administrative support, travel support, medical insurance coverages, or even wages. The third and fourth costs are the losses in peak performances to the athlete or employee and their respective organizations. Peak performances normally being the outcome of long term skill mastery and opportunity. That confluence is increasingly likely as athlete’s and employee’s time with an organization increases.
Burnout, as witnessed by coaches and employers, tends to present as a combination of psychological and physical challenges and is sometimes reported as individuals overextending themselves, going too hard for too long, or failing to find a sustainable balance between work, or sport, efforts and non-work, or non-sport, efforts (typically referred to as “life”). Making a distinction between sport and life is a topic for another discussion, but colloquially, work-life balance or sport-life balance are frequent touch points when coaches and employers report on burnout amongst athletes and employees.
Stereotypical Cases of Reported Burnout
Across work and sport cases, burnout tends to be reported as including physical and mental exhaustion, detachment, loss of motivation, loss of perceived value, and/or feelings of resentment. Here are two fictional cases, one athlete and one employee, reporting stereotypical experiences of burnout. These cases are informed by my experiences working with both groups and provided here as reference for the upcoming behavioral parsing and insights for coaches discussions.
Athlete Burnout Case
A cyclist racing at the national elite level reports that compared to previous seasons, they have lost interest in participating in their sport. Where their previous level of engagement was described by their coach as consistent and high, the past few weeks/months have been a marked shift to less consistency and relatively disengaged when present at training and races. The athlete says that where in previous years, they felt “hungry” to get on podiums and giving full effort was almost easy, recently they have not been able to connect to that prior desire to compete and producing even acceptable levels of effort has been physically and emotionally taxing. This experience is upsetting to both the athlete and coach and so they have pursued medical tests to explore the possibility of underlying physiological causes. Those tests suggested that from a physiological standpoint, the athlete is healthy and there are no indications that the athlete is suffering from a known physiological alement. As the athlete has noticed this ongoing experience, they have been frustrated more often and more strongly with themselves, their current predicament, and those around them. They report that the combination of these experiences has undermined their beliefs around who they are and what they want in sport. They are seriously considering a mid-season break despite the potential cost in income, industry relationships, and general reputation. Due to the timing of the break, they are faced with either not competing in their regional and national championships or arriving undertrained and under supported at events critical to their sporting career development. They find themselves faced with a choice between staying in an unproductive and mentally taxing situation, or committing to an unplanned pivot that could require a year or more of work just to establish new opportunities and connections.
Employee Burnout Case
A mid-level supervisor at a financial institution is ready to quit. They report that their family and work responsibilities have transformed in the last year from being a source of pride and satisfaction to an overwhelming burden. Their position and responsibilities on the job have not significantly changed in recent years, and what was once felt as stable and comforting is now perceived as stale and boring. The supervisor reports that the repetitive nature of their work has become irritating. That, combined with a perception of limited opportunities both within and outside the organization, a sense of being trapped has defined their past few months. The supervisor’s coworkers describe them as working more and harder yet losing productivity and socializing less. Colleagues speculate that the supervisor may not be spending enough time on non-work hobbies. The supervisor’s HR professional often reminds the supervisor to use their saved paid time off before it expires. With the supervisor’s feelings of being both burdened and trapped, they have focused their recent efforts on trying to earn additional accolades through working harder than their colleagues. They are also aware that their efforts are having the opposite effect and this has become an additional source of confusion and tension. Like the athlete above, the supervisor is recently frequently entertaining thoughts of drastically changing their career situation in an attempt to resolve this sense of feeling adrift, devalued, and exhausted.
Parsing Behavioral Elements of Burnout
Tackling burnout in one big bite can feel like walking into a circus house of mirrors. There are a lot of big feelings, long timelines, and complex interactions involved. Sorting the experience into categorical elements can help us tease out potential access points toward helping the athlete or employee make choices that will move them in sustainable and meaningful ways. As a trained behavioral psychologist, I prefer using three broad categories of behavior (Emotion, External Responses, and Social Interactions) that align with the individual’s internal and external behaviors and their social environmental experiences.
Emotional Experience
Our athlete feels:
Disconnected to previous motivations
Disinterested in their sport
Critical of their own performance
Physically exhausted
Emotionally exhausted
Upset and Frustrated with self and others
Unsure of who they are
Forced to choose between two costly outcomes
Our employee feels:
Burdened by their responsibility
Bored and Stale in their daily duties
Trapped in their role
Frustrated with recent efforts backfiring
Detached from family and coworkers
Physically and emotionally exhausted
Faced with a dire choice
Individual Responses
Our athlete’s actions include:
Attending training less
Exerting less during training and racing
Reduced training and racing interaction with others
Working with coaches and medical professionals
Our employee’s actions include:
Putting more time in on work
Reducing social interactions
Working when they could be resting
Checking the quality of their work
Social Interactions
Our athlete’s social interaction:
Have decreased in frequency
May have decreased in quality
May now be primarily focused on their current experience
Our employee’s social interactions:
Have decreased in frequency
May have decreased in quality
Are more often about work
Insights from Behavior
Read back through that list of individual responses for each person. If someone were to watch these two individuals without any knowledge of language, they might conclude their situations as being entirely different. Where the athlete is withdrawing, the employee is doubling down. Yet if you compare their emotional and social experiences, these two are nearly identical. Frustrated, detached, and increasingly experiencing a world where social interaction is becoming less frequent and at the same time more and more closely related to their current challenge. Interpreting their individual responses through this lens, we can notice that they are both engaging in behaviors that focus on short term change at the cost of long term sustainability. The athlete may end up with more rest, but is arriving at the start line undertrained. The employee might get recognized for their work and yet be so hollowed out by the effort that resentment and exhaustion define the entire experience. Disconnected or doubling down, undercooked or overcooked, the outcome is predictably unsustainable.
And at this point you probably already see where the opportunities are as a coach for these people. Build an environment where experiencing their current feelings is accepted, where athletes and employees are awarded for sustainable engagement, and where trying a variety of new interactions with others is encouraged.
Building an Accepting Environment
The term “safe space” probably came to mind as you read that suggestion above. And this is great! While the concept has been warped by political discourse, the concept of providing an opportunity for athletes and employees to feel whatever they feel should be treated as settled science for optimal performance. We have known about the “White Bear Paradox” for centuries and documented the ironic failures of thought suppression almost 40 years ago. (Wegner et al., 1987) In brief, if you want an employee or athlete to spend their whole day thinking and feeling on a specific topic, tell them to stop thinking about it or not to feel that way. The only counter to this ironic backlash is making accepting space for whatever we think and feel. In practice, that can be as little as an empathetic acknowledgement that “If I was in your shoes, I’d feel that way too.” More commonly, coaches can encourage athletes and employees to take the time to feel whatever is showing up for them, acknowledge the feelings as valid, and then guide the conversation into exploring what is an important action for that person while they feel those experiences. This takes us to what sustainable engagement means for each person.
Awarding Sustainable Engagement
Burnout is defined by the unsustainable effort that taints each person’s experiences. Coaching an athlete or employee to long term sustainable success means keeping focus on the big picture even when the current experience is pulling our attention to the short term. When navigating these conversations, coaches want to take the time to uncover the long term drivers of each of their athletes and employees. This will help ensure that efforts by each team member are towards their own personal meaning and short term challenges can be approached cooperatively and strategically instead of from a reactionary starting point. In both of the cases above, the individual felt like they HAD TO make a choice between two undesirable outcomes. From your experience, you know that singular dire choices are rarely the only options available to athletes and employees. But you knowing that doesn’t change their perception. In the conversation with your athlete or employee, acknowledging their perspective and bringing their long term drivers into the conversation can encourage brainstorming about what other options may be available. This could be as simple as asking, “Let's set aside our expectations and realities of the moment and imagine that you had the best outcome occur for your athletic (employment) career. Take a moment to step into the future you’s shoes and reflect on this moment you’re in. What would future you do next? While feeling frustrated/burned out/detached, what did they do to keep them on track for that best outcome?” The actions that show up in these conversations are what you want to award. The use of long term outcomes in the conversation tends to pull the focus towards sustainable efforts. We each have a sense of what is and is not sustainable but our focus can get pulled off the big prize when the situation feels dire. Acknowledging that shortening of focus as expectable and prompting athletes and employees to reconnect to the long term can nudge them towards engaging in actions that will eventually support those long term goals as well as lift and broaden their focus once more. When they share those steps towards long term sustainability, acknowledge and reward those actions to make them more frequent.
Encourage Varied Social Engagement
The vicious spiral of burnout is turbo charged when the focus on the short term begins to constrain social interaction. As highlighted above, both the athlete and employee were interacting with others less. By that reduction alone, if they keep up the same frequency of interactions focused on their current suffering, that will come to dominate, and sometimes poison, social exchanges. You definitely know what happens next so I’ll move on to how we, as coaches, can help our athletes and employees. There are three ways coaches can encourage variety in athlete and employee engagement. The coach can change up the environment, they can leverage others, or they can encourage variability in the suffer’s behavior. Since this article is focused on the coaching conversation, I’ll focus on the last.
Coaches can encourage variability in the sufferer's behavior in two main ways. Directly, they can suggest that an athlete or employee try something new or that they haven’t tried in a while. This can piggyback off the previous conversation about long term goals. Taking that example, we might reword it slightly to encourage variability in behavior to, “...What new to you action would future you do? While feeling frustrated/burned out/detached, how did they try something different from what you’ve been doing recently to get them on track for that best outcome?” or to really drive the social engagement, “...Who would future you team up with? While feeling frustrated/burned out/detached, who did they team up with, and how, to keep them on track for that best outcome?”
The indirect method involves encouraging the athlete or employee to evaluate if their recent behavior supports their long term meaningful directions. Coaches can ask the person to walk them through what they have been doing recently to address their situation. From that conversation, ask the person to reflect on how those actions have contributed, or undermined, their long-term goals. You, as the coach, already know that much of their actions have undermined their long term goals. In this moment of the conversation, allow them the space and time to arrive at that point. Encouraging them to be specific (what they did, how it worked or didn’t for the long goal) and stay focused on the long term can help them the most. There are two goals in this conversation. First, to bring them into explicit contact with how their own efforts are undermining their long term goals. This can set them up for engaging in a lot of behavioral variation. If you do more talking than listening at this moment, the opposite effect is very likely. The second goal is to give them practice being rewarded for thinking through the long term consequences of their short term focused actions. Ultimately you want them to reliably consider each choice with respect to long term goals. Giving them the space and prompts to learn and practice this behavior moves them towards recognizing when their current actions are feeding the burnout spiral and engaging in the individual and social variation that will help them find their own path back to success.
Questions to Reveal Burnout Behavior and Environmental Redflags
Here are a few questions you can ask of others, yourself, and the environment you are working with to tease out if burnout is more likely. Remember our cases above. Precursors to burnout are varied and the answers to these questions have to be interpreted within the context of your performer’s situation. In other words, if their situation is normally continually changing then stability may be their redflag, or they may be turning over a new leaf. If you approach this process from a place of sincere exploration and let them guide you, you’re more likely to uncover the opportunities to be the best coach possible.
To Ask Others
Athletes
Compared to last year, how do you rate your level of engagement with your training and competitive performances?
Compared to last year, how much has the volume of your training and/or competing changed?
Compared to last year, how much has the time you are taking to spend on non-sport activities changed?
Compared to last year, how much has the frequency of your social interactions changed?
Employees
Compared to last year, how do you rate your level of engagement with your role and work responsibilities?
Compared to last year, how much has the volume of your work effort changed?
Compared to last year, how much has the time you are taking to spend on non-work activities changed?
Compared to last year, how much has the frequency of your social interactions changed?
Compared to last year, how has the amount of time off you’re taking changed?
To Ask Yourself
In the sport or workplace, how often do I reward my people for choosing work over their personally meaningful outcomes?
In the sport or workplace, how often do I reward my people for prioritizing personally meaningful outcomes?
In the sport or workplace, how often do I acknowledge my people for communicating their emotional experiences regardless of the content (fear, shame, happiness, etc) of that experience?
In the sport or workplace, how often do I collaborate with my people to strategically commit to their personally meaningful outcomes over short term time conflicts?
In the sport or workplace, how often do I reward my people for trying new things that are likely to help them breakout of social isolation and build new peer and mentor networks?
I’ve written all of the above with the reference to a year previously. Use your professional discretion to modify the reference time point. Life events like moving, new contracts, children, marriage, divorce, etc can all be useful points in time to reflect across.
To Check Your Environment
What rewards are in place, monetary or social, that reward my people for prioritizing long term sustainable behaviors?
What rewards are in place, monetary or social, that reward my people for prioritizing short term unsustainable behaviors?
How does our organization define heroic or commendable behavior? How does that definition show up, or get undermined in reality? Is that definition aligned with our people’s long term sustainability?
How does our organization define selfish or detestable behavior? How does that definition show up, or get undermined in reality? Is that definition undermining our people’s long term sustainability?
In both my applied and research work, the systematic issues are cultural promoters of burnout. This is related to the “American Work Ethic” and “Hustle Culture.” Financial and cultural incentives to choose short term gains at every turn feed unsustainable human grinders. Check your compensation structure for red flags that you may be paying your athletes and employees to figuratively and emotionally set themselves on fire. Relatedly, check how your organization celebrates “heroes” and shuns those who are “selfish.” Even if the financial structure is neutral or tends towards sustainable behavior, if the athlete/employee of the month’s picture in the email or hallway is the one who burned fast and bright, your culture may have serious opportunities to realign for reducing burnout and growing long term success.