Is your team actually burning out - or just bored out of their minds?

Your team is dragging their feet... Meetings lack energy, initiative has slowed down, ideas are uninspired and everyone feels stuck in a rut. tIs this fatigue from too much work? Or is your team actually under-stimulated instead of overwhelmed?

The 3 zones of effort

The model is well-known, simple and every leader should be able to navigate their team through the zones efficiently.

• Comfort zone: Think of comfort as the soft landing. People feel safe, competent, steady. It is a good place to catch your breath, but stay there too long and you stop growing.

• Stretch zone: This is where people feel challenged, engaged, and slightly uncomfortable in a productive way. Skills, confidence and purpose grow here. This is where your #team ideally spends most of their time.

• Panic zone: Too much pressure, too little clarity, too much uncertainty. Nothing good happens here for long.

Why under-stimulation destroys #engagement

We talk a lot about #burnout, but we rarely talk about the psychological cost of monotony: #Work that feels predictable, has no clear purpose and asks nothing of you except compliance.

Research from Gallup and Deloitte highlights the same drivers of engagement:

• Purpose

• Learning

• Autonomy

• Challenge

• Clear expectations

When you're lacking these elements, engagement suffers. That is why someone who is under-stimulated can look just as tired as someone who is overwhelmed. Similar symptoms - different causes.

Burnout VS Bore out: the 2 extremes in the effort zones

Burnout and bore out can show up with similar surface symptoms: low energy, flat mood, withdrawal, reduced initiative. Both can look like “tiredness” or “lack of motivation.”, but the causes underneath are completely different - and once you look beneath the surface, the distinction becomes obvious.

❌ Burnout is the outcome of too much for too long (panic zone). Too much pressure, too many expectations, too many moving parts. You will see emotional strain, irritability, stress behavior, and a sense of drowning.

❌ Bore out is the result of too little for too long (comfort zone). Too little challenge, too little meaning, too little stimulation. You will see politeness instead of presence, compliance instead of curiosity, and a slow fading of initiative.

Why this is so important for leaders: One person needs relief - the other needs challenge. Confuse the two, and you unintentionally make it worse.

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Leading through the bore out. If you have diagnosed your team with being bored and underwhelmed, restrain yourself from assigning them more tasks. Instead, give them a real problem to solve, a new thing they haven't tackled before and show them how their contribution really makes an impact.

🌟Sparking Leadership # 31: a weekly series on human-centered, sustainable #leadership. Follow for real talk and practical tools. In the meantime, lead with spark!