{"id":392,"date":"2020-06-16T14:20:23","date_gmt":"2020-06-16T14:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/enlightadvisors.com\/blog\/?p=392"},"modified":"2020-06-16T14:20:23","modified_gmt":"2020-06-16T14:20:23","slug":"whats-the-difference-between-a-responsibility-and-a-burden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/enlightadvisors.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/16\/whats-the-difference-between-a-responsibility-and-a-burden\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s the difference between a responsibility and a burden?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"tenor-gif-embed\" data-postid=\"5803167\" data-share-method=\"host\" data-width=\"100%\" data-aspect-ratio=\"1.8208955223880596\"><a href=\"https:\/\/tenor.com\/view\/hopeless-no-hope-depressed-sad-blackish-gif-5803167\">No Hope GIF<\/a> from <a href=\"https:\/\/tenor.com\/search\/hopeless-gifs\">Hopeless GIFs<\/a><\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\" async src=\"https:\/\/tenor.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Do your employees think of their work as a responsibility or a burden?\u00a0 How does your answer affect your culture, employee retention or financial performance?\u00a0 And how does it impact the emotional well-being of your employees?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I recently caught up with a former client and friend who\u2019s about to retire.\u00a0 She confessed that her excitement about entering the next phase of life was eclipsed by relief to be leaving her workplace.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI\u2019ll finally be free of the burden I\u2019ve shouldered for so long.\u00a0 I know I should think of it as a responsibility, but it\u2019s been a burden.\u00a0 And, I\u2019m exhausted.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I was struck not only by the comparison between burden and responsibility &#8211; but also by the accompanying guilt. \u00a0 As we talked, we realized it wasn\u2019t the actual work that felt burdensome.\u00a0 In fact, she loved the customer-facing side of her job and had a strong personal connection to its success. \u00a0 But, her company\u2019s culture and internal politics, including years of passive-aggressive treatment by her superiors and colleagues, made the role feel like a burden.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are two surprising things about her situation:<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Her superiors and colleagues had no idea how their actions impacted her &#8211; and they didn\u2019t seek to create such a demotivating, emotionally challenging work environment<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She felt an immense amount of guilt about the weight of the burden &#8211; she\u00a0 blamed herself for the realities of her day-to-day work experience<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My client\u2019s experience creates a teachable moment for all of us.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the rundown of the attributes of the situation that compounded her emotional burden:<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Her Project Was Untethered\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Although tasked with a special project that she took very seriously, my client\u2019s superiors and colleagues viewed the work as a \u201cbox-checking\u201d exercise.\u00a0 Without acknowledging the importance of the project to the company\u2019s strategic objectives, they passive-aggressively refused to approve her detailed plan and budget and didn\u2019t embrace their role in ensuring the project\u2019s long-term success.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>She Was Consistently \u201cIced Out\u201d <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Because the work wasn\u2019t regarded as critical to the success of the organization, neither was she.\u00a0 Her boss excluded her from meetings and never mentioned her work when communicating about his team and their accomplishments.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Bad behaviors were rewarded\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Even though her immediate supervisor refused to engage and develop team members equitably, he was considered a superstar in the organization.\u00a0 Some managers were consistently rewarded and praised despite their demoralizing leadership style.\u00a0 It felt like the organization sought results at any cost, including employee morale and mental health.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>She Felt Invisible<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My client\u2019s superiors and colleagues didn\u2019t value her expertise and had no vision as to how it could contribute to the company\u2019s success.\u00a0 Furthermore, they were unwilling to invest in her &#8211; they never provided improvement feedback or coaching for how to be more effective.\u00a0 Desperate to be valued, she spent years without their support.\u00a0 Instead, my client felt constantly shut down.\u00a0 And worn down.\u00a0 And demoralized.\u00a0 And hopeless.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sadly, her experience is pervasive in all types of businesses.\u00a0 And, for certain employees, the weight of the burden is even heavier.\u00a0 People of color, immigrants, women and other minority groups already carry extra emotional burdens related to the cumulative challenges of work, home and life.\u00a0 When their day-to-day work experience increases the burden they carry it can have real impacts on their performance, productivity, satisfaction and health.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What about your company?\u00a0 How many of your employees feel burdened?\u00a0 Is it damaging your company&#8217;s culture?\u00a0 How does it impact employee retention?\u00a0 What\u2019s the financial impact?\u00a0 How does it affect your employees\u2019 health and well-being?<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\"><b><i>What do your answers say about you as a leader?<\/i><\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Especially in times of crisis, we should aspire to bring out the best in all employees.\u00a0 Don\u2019t let your behaviors or those of your leadership team burden your employees.\u00a0 They\u2019re already dealing with enough.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"mailto:info@enlightadvisors.com\">Contact <em><strong>enlight <\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">for help assessing your company\u2019s culture and pinpointing clear actions for improvement.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do your employees think of their work as a responsibility or a burden?\u00a0 How does your answer affect your culture, employee retention or financial performance?\u00a0 And how does it impact the emotional well-being of your employees?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-family-office","category-non-profit"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/enlightadvisors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/enlightadvisors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/enlightadvisors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enlightadvisors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enlightadvisors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/enlightadvisors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":400,"href":"https:\/\/enlightadvisors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392\/revisions\/400"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enlightadvisors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/enlightadvisors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enlightadvisors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enlightadvisors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}