1. Self-Care: Avoiding Burnout at Work
Elizabeth Brown
Director of Human Resources
Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County

2. Learn how to identify precursors to burnout in yourself and others.
Objectives:
Learn how to identify precursors to burnout in yourself and others.
Learn how to foster and support a culture that prioritizes self-care.
Create actions you can achieve in 30 days for yourself and in your organization.

3. What is Burnout?
Two key definitions of burnout are:
“A state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion caused by long term involvement in emotionally demanding situations.” Ayala Pines and Elliot Aronson (Career Burnout: Causes and Cures)
“A state of fatigue or frustration brought about by devotion to a case, way of life, or relationship that failed to produce the expected reward.” Herbert J. Freudenberger (Burnout: The High cost of Achievement)
Burnout is a mixture of stress, exhaustion, and long-term disillusionment.
…primarily strikes people who are high performers and highly committed to their work
Why do you think that's true? What do you think people that are highly committed
...or at lease at one point were highly committed to their work?

4. Exercise: 2 people each group
Think about a time when you were burned out-What was the external pressures? What was going on with you emotionally, with work?, personally, what was going on physically?
Did you experience burnout? What were the symptoms, How do you know?
Second question: How did you notice burnout with a staff member?

5. The Yerkes-Dodson Law
…dictates that performance increases with physiological or mental arousal, but only up to a point. When levels of arousal become too high, performance decreases. (BURNOUT)
Yerk Dodson law is an empirical relationship between arousal (how much capacity you have available to work with) and performance, originally developed by psychologist Robert Yerkes and Joh Dodson in According to Yerkes and Dodson, how many of you all were at burnout or was it stress fatigue and exhaustion?
POINT: YOU DO NOT WANT TO GET INTO THE RED ZONE
Before next slide: Why are we more susceptible to burnout than any other organization?
Stress curve--what does What does it look like when people are fatigued
What does it look like when people are highly exhausted?
What does it look like when people are in the Burn-out Zone?

6. How Does Burnout Affect Leaders in Legal Services?
High Achievers
Emotionally and physically
Hidden cost of empathy
Goals and objectives of the organization
Negative/Poor Performance
e.g., paralysis, desensitized, overly sensitive and/or anxious
Outcomes for the populations we serve
Poor performance from advocates results in poor outcomes for clients
You cant expect the same level of performance from a new hire or new attorney compared to an experience attorney. Of course they will be slower. The biggest complaint I hear from managers is that the newer attorneys need more cases, they are slow. If you rush them, you will increase their stress levels and their performance will decrease. Give them time to develop habits and assimilate the knowledge they are leaning.
Take the time to build relaxation techniques into your days to reduce stress levels and keep to the left of the curve
Increase your self awareness to recognize when your stress levels are increasing and determine why this is occurring, when you recognize a pattern developing take action and reduce this
Burnout Symptoms: Having a negative and critical attitude at work, dreading going into work, wanting to leave once you're there
Having low energy and little interest
Having trouble sleeping, bring absent from work, having feeling of emptiness, experiencing physical complaints, being irritated easily by team member, having thoughts that your work doesn't have meaning or make a difference, pulling away emo0tionallyy from your colleagues or clients, feeling that your work and contribution goes unrecognized, blaming other for your mistake, thinking of quitting work
What are the signs in your people when they are stressed

7. “You can stop worrying about job burn-out”
We want to avoid this:
“You can stop worrying about job burn-out”

8. Recognize and identify the signs of potential BURNOUT before it happens
Within yourself
With your team
Manage stress and stress factors—different from burnout
Eustress vs. Distress
How does this effect the Yerkes-Dodson Law Bell Curve?
How will this effect the Yerkes Dodson Law Bell Curve
E.g. New hires, New attorneys will have curves with peaks to the left. They can easily tip into overwhelm and distress as they are being exposed to so much new information
Experience moves the peak to the right
Recognize Eustress is healthy stress. It moves you to increased performance
Distress is unhealthy stress and tips you to the right of the curve where performance decrease and the effects of stress increase.

9. What is the Key to Avoiding Burnout? SELF-CARE

10. What is it and Why is it so important to
Any activity that you do voluntarily which helps you maintain your physical, mental, or emotional health.

11. SELF-CARE: What is it and Why is it so important?
Identify your own needs and take steps to meet them.
Identify the needs of your organization and take steps to meet them.
PERSONAL:
Care for yourself first
“Do no harm to yourself when helping others.”
Prioritize your physical, social, emotional, spiritual needs. Examples?
Be aware of the emotional and physical manifestations of burnout
E.g., empathic resonance, anger, sadness, hyperarousal, hypersensitivity
ORGANIZATIONAL:
Infuse self-care philosophy in Leadership Team
Regular supervision and ongoing support
Continuous Communication and Feedback
Incorporate self-care philosophy in meetings and staff interaction.
Implement De-stress and Di-gest meetings
We value the body more than the mind. We should actually value the mind more - Physical health and physical hygiene, What did our parent teach us, do we teach our children? Do we teach our families? We sustain psychological injuries more. We must care for ourselves
Example of an oxygen mask on a plane
Easiest thing to forget
Talk openly with a trusted friend, sit outside wand listen to births, practice breathing
Make sure you are eating a well balanced diet, get enough sleep, make room in your life for a nap, make exercise a regular part of your routine, listen to music you enjoy, yoga, reading, plant a garden, buy yourself something, attend a class, spa

12. How do we foster self-care in our organization?
How does Burnout show itself in your organization?
How is the culture affected when it comes to burnout? E.g. people keep working, talking about stress, high turnover, performance issues, people will easily lash out, get angry easily
What are some of the things we can do to foster a culture of S.C.?
Acknowledge it: Discuss burnout, stress,
What kind of environment would you like to see?
What is the culture that would support that environment? Culture that is aware and sensitive to precenting burnout
How many of you have some self care models in your organization?
What kind of culture would exhibit a lot of burnout and what kind of culture would discourage burnout?

13. Fostering, Supporting, and Prioritizing Self-Care in your Organization
The CLT Model
Culture: Change
Leadership: Accountability; Manage with care in mind
Training: Awareness; Learning; Utilizing and leveraging internal skills; Practice
Culture
Training
Leadership

14. We need to incorporate self-care in our organization…BUT HOW?

15. Executing Self-Care Principles: Create an Action Plan
List three stressors in your organization that you would like to eliminate.
Identify what you can change about these situations and what you cannot.
List two methods of dealing with those stressors.
Think about the stressors (trigger, a part of managing stress) and ways to incorporate self-care within your organization
Make your action items measurable
Based on the three stressors how can you apply the CLT Model?
How will you ensure your action items will foster, support, and prioritize self care in your organization (Culture, Leadership, Change)?
Give out Sheet
When you deal with methods of dealing with

16. Discussion: Feedback and Questions

17. Session Summary: Did we achieve our objectives?
Learn how to identify precursors to burnout in yourself and others.
Learn how to foster and support a culture that prioritizes self-care.
Create actions you can achieve in 30 days for yourself and in your organization.
Think about one employee and say this person is on the verge of burnout, how do you know and what do you do?
Bring this info to your next LR meeting and share. Inform your team on a scale of 1 to 10, where you are. Inform them that this will negatively affect your work, but it has to be rolled in the culture and adopted by your management team. Should raise consciousness with them, work from there.

18. You will always get a high ROI when you invest in SELF-CARE.
THANK YOU!
Elizabeth Brown
Director of Human Resources
Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County