I was not a perfect executive director. But one thing that I did well was to periodically have our whole staff fill out this burnout assessment in staff meetings. I didn’t require anyone to share their specific results, but we would talk about anything that surprised us and what we needed.
One time, I filled it out on my own and scored in the highest category (Passion Depleted — Get help now!). Whoops. Despite my best efforts to self-regulate, the unrelenting pace of leading the organization had overpowered me. In my case, I ended up transitioning out of the organization. I’m proud to say I did so with a 6-month advance notice to the board and overlapped for 3 weeks with the excellent interim director we were able to hire. But I was burned to a crisp by that point, and I know our staff felt the edges of my stress more than I wish they had.
In many other cases, people just hit their wall and leave suddenly to protect themselves. Or, they go on working with a crumbled foundation for months or years in a holding pattern of fear and distress. No fun any way you look at it.
This self-assessment is also not perfect. It doesn’t account for learning differences or neurodiversity. It won’t solve all the problems that burnout (aka toxic stress, aka cumulative stress) causes. But, it can help you get a snapshot of where you are at a given moment in time. You can view the Burnout Self-Assessment below or download it using the buttons at the bottom of this post.
Source: Kanter, B., Sherman, A. (2016). The Happy, Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact Without Burnout. Germany: Wiley.
