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Burnout Immunity

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Burnout Immunity

How Emotional Intelligence Can Help You Build Resilience and Heal Your Relationship with Work

HarperBusiness,

15 min read
7 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Nurture your emotional intelligence to bolster your “burnout immunity.” 

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Editorial Rating

8

getAbstract Rating

  • Applicable
  • Overview
  • Engaging

Recommendation

Why do some people burn out in the face of work-related stress, while others navigate the ups and downs of their careers with ease? In this intriguing read, author Kandi Wiens offers a clear, research-driven guide to understanding why burnout occurs and how bolstering your emotional intelligence can help you build “immunity” to it. Wiens weaves together studies, interviews, and personal stories to reveal the organizational forces that drive burnout and provides practical guidance in how to recover, reconnect with yourself, and cultivate a healthier relationship with work.

Summary

Bolstering emotional intelligence helps prevent burnout.

After years of overachieving, people-pleasing, and pushing past her limits, author Kandi Wiens reached a breaking point. She always assumed burnout would look like total collapse or dramatic frustration, but its effects turned out to be far more varied: showing up as illness, a sense of purposelessness and disconnection, emotional depletion, cynicism, and a sense of diminished effectiveness — every box of the World Health Organization’s definition of burnout. Rebuilding her life was not a quick process. She had to learn to set boundaries and rest, prioritize mindfulness and real vacations, and commit to paying attention to the signals she had long ignored.

It was during this period that Wiens first encountered psychologist Daniel Goleman’s research on emotional intelligence (EI), which he defined as the ability to note and understand your own feelings and those of others, to manage your and others’ emotions, and to motivate yourself. EI, he argued, was not just a vital leadership skill, but the primary reason people succeed in their careers. Wiens’s own research at the University of Pennsylvania took these findings...

About the Author

Kandi Wiens is a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, the director of the Penn Master’s in Medical Education Program and the Penn Health Professions Education Certificate Program, and the academic director of the PennCLO Master’s Program.

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