5.8 Burnout with Dr. Christina Maslach

Exhaustion. Cynicism. Inefficacy. These are three responses to chronic work stressors that Dr. Christina Maslach has found to be dimensions of burnout. In this episode of Two for You we explore what burnout is and six factors that often drive it.

Decades of research from Dr. Christina Maslach of University of California, Berkeley has revealed that burnout is not caused by just one thing. Her research has found that there are six common drivers of burnout: workload, control, reward, community, fairness, and values.

Find out more by reading her article in the Harvard Business Review.

Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (2021). Burnout: What it is and how to measure it. In Harvard Business Review, HBR guide to beating burnout (211-221). Boston MA: Harvard Business Review Press.

For more:
Maslach, C. (2017). Finding solutions to the problem of burnout. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 69, 143-152.

Watch for her upcoming book from Harvard University Press.

Watch a longer video to learn more.

Bio:
Dr. Christina Maslach
Professor of Psychology, Emerita
University of California, Berkeley

Dr. Christina Maslach is a Professor of Psychology (Emerita) and a researcher at the Healthy Workplaces Center at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her A.B. from Harvard, and her Ph.D. from Stanford. She is widely recognized as one of the pioneering researchers on job burnout, who has written numerous articles and books, including The Truth About Burnout, and has developed the leading research measure (the Maslach Burnout Inventory). Several of her articles have received awards for their significance and high impact, including her longitudinal research on early burnout predictors, which was honored in 2012 as one of the 50 most outstanding articles published by the top 300 management journals in the world. Recently, she received the 2017 Application of Personality and Social Psychology Award, as well as a lifetime career achievement award for her work on burnout. Christina received national recognition as Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation and The Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. She has been president of the Western Psychological Association, is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology, and has received the Berkeley Citation and the Distinguished Teaching Award from U.C. Berkeley.