Dr Mike Drayton
Executive Coach,
Organisational Consultant &
Clinical Psychologist
Helping you to build great work place relationships and
improve performance with psychologically informed
consulting and coaching
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Who is the saboteur?
The unconscious in everyday life
This is a podcast for anyone
interested in finding out more about
the psychology of
work and every day life.
ANTI-BURNOUT
How to Create a Psychologically Safe and
High Performance Organisation
Burnout results in people feeling exhausted, cynical, detached and hopeless – even depressed and anxious.
This book looks at burnout from an individual, group and organisational perspective. It uses anecdotes from the author’s life; and examples from literature, poetry and art to bring
the subject to life.
Based on the latest scientific thinking on burnout and evidence-based ideas, this practical, easy read book gives leaders the knowledge they need to create a psychologically healthy and high performance culture at work.
Look inside...follow this link.
Is work damaging
your health?
Even trapeze artists and coal miners work in safe environments now...
In the past, workplaces could be dangerous places. Industrial accidents were common. People would suffer burns, fall off buildings or even lose fingers or limbs.
Young children working in textile factories routinely crawled under moving machinery to free trapped threads or jammed parts. This frequently led to mangled fingers and children being crushed to death.
In modern work, mental ill health is a disaster. It gets in the way of productive work in the same way as losing a leg in a coal mining accident fifty years ago, would have stopped a miner from working.
Would you like to read your personality profile?
You have a great need for other people to like and admire you.
You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. You have a great deal of unused capacity, which you have not turned to your advantage. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them...
The media and particularly social media, is full of experts who are quick to offer glib advice on mental well being, but who don't know what they are talking about. The coaching industry is similar - full of unqualified people who call themselves coaches, but rely on the Forer effect, rather than training and experience.
Is burnout caused by low moral fibre?
Shell shock is not caused by personal weakness or lack of moral fibre, it is caused by trench warfare. Similarly, burnout is not caused by weakness or low resilience, it is caused by a dysfunctional organisation.
Years ago, when I was working as a clinical psychologist, I had a client who was off sick from work with stress, anxiety and depression – in other words he was burnt out. As I talked to him, and as he described the culture of his workplace I wasn’t surprised that he was burnt out. He wasn’t dodging bombs or bullets, but had to endure a toxic work environment that was causing him to become ill.
My role was to help him get better so that he could be sent back to the front line...