'They're going to tell'

Have you ever had a thought that you unintentionally said out loud?

Have you ever then had to hand in your notice because of it? 😱

Last week I talked with Ken Schneck, who I've featured here previously, to learn more about the October day when he revealed – both to himself and to everyone attending a meeting – that he no longer wanted his job.

Eight people had gathered around the square wood conference table that took up most of the room, whose windows looked out over the Marlboro College campus in Vermont's Green Mountains. As dean of students, Schneck was half paying attention as he multitasked on his laptop. Toward the end of the meeting, he heard the words "August orientation." This would be his seventh orientation program, and he thought, "Oh, I don't actually want to do that again."

When silence fell around the table and every head cocked toward him, he realized he had said it out loud.

"It was very matter-of-fact," he said. "I remember the meeting ended pretty quickly after that because I threw off the cadence."

He left the room, not wanting to draw more attention to what had just happened, thinking, "They're going to tell. This will get out." So that same day, he went to the president's office to tell her himself: "I think that my time here has come to a close," he said. "I even just said something in a meeting that I didn't mean to. I don't have another plan and I don't need to leave in two weeks. So we can work out a really intentional transition."

It may not always be in front of a room of colleagues, but the truth will out. Burnout like Schneck had doesn't mean the employee has failed – it means the relationship between the person and their work needs fixing.

Revising the relationship

There are six areas of mismatch that can exist between a person and their job, according to researchers Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter in The Burnout Challenge (more on these in today's 🛶Career River Connection🛶 below). These mismatches are not the sole responsibility of the employee to fix, unlike much of the advice we've been given.

"Based on extensive research, we strongly disagree that 'fixing the person' should be the focus in dealing with burnout," they write. "We argue instead that burnout results from mismatches between the person and the job, and that solutions must therefore address both the workers and the workplace."

Their book offers specific guidance focused at helping workplaces better identify and address risk factors for burnout across the board. But not all of us work at places that will actively and intentionally work to combat burnout. That's why I wanted to share Schneck's story: because moving on from his dean of students role was the obvious choice once he admitted how he was feeling.

If you have experienced burnout, it's easy to blame yourself. If you take away one thing from Schneck's story, let it be this: the truth can set you free.

Schneck had been on call for the past 15 years – every emergency getting sent to his pager (cell service isn't great in the mountains). More than once he wondered, "What am I doing?" And he felt he had done what he needed to do at the college.

Later the same day as the meeting, Schneck sat down in his apartment to start job hunting. He didn't know where he would head after the seven months remaining in the school year were up, but he knew for certain he no longer wanted to continue in that role.

I asked Schneck if he felt anything after he spoke in that meeting: "I didn't," he said. "It clearly was an articulation of a decision my body had already made.

"I love that it alarms other people more than me," he said. "It makes for a good story of unintended admissions, but for me, it was just so clearly what needed to be said, even if I didn't wake up that morning with that intention."

Schneck did move on, leaving Marlboro and Vermont behind to move to Ohio for an associate professor job and branching out to found a nonprofit newsroom. Whenever he has noted the telltale signs of burnout beginning to show, he took action to reset - no meeting revelations necessary.

Happy navigating,
Bridget