Is It Burnout or Lost Motivation?

Executive directors aren't allowed to lose steam. At least that's the expectation in our sector. A middle manager at a bank can admit their job isn't doing it for them right now. The leader of a mission-driven org is supposed to be all in, all the time.

Jonathan is five years into leading the Seymour Center, fresh off a major milestone, and his motivation has stalled. He can see it in how he shows up to the office, and in the energy of his team.

I know that feeling well. Early on, every dip came with shame. The organization was doing well and I loved the work, so what was my excuse?

What changed things for me was separating burnout from a motivation slump. Burnout happens when you've been pummeled for too long without time to recover, and the fix is deep rest. A slump can hit when you have all the time and energy you need and still can't find the spark.

Success makes the slump more likely. When there's no pain pushing you, coasting starts to feel reasonable. I've done it, and it came back to bite me.

What gets me out of a slump is almost always new inspiration: a new idea, new peers, a new way of looking at an old problem.

So before you prescribe yourself a fix, ask which one you're dealing with. Are you out of capacity, or out of things that excite you?
 

Episode Highlights:

[00:01:35] The success hangover after a major milestone 
[00:02:10] Why motivation runs in cycles 
[00:04:40] A leader's mood sets the team's temperature 
[00:06:35] The expectation that executive directors are always motivated 
[00:08:00] Self-determination theory: autonomy, competence, and relatedness 
[00:11:00] Breaking the shame cycle around demotivation 
[00:13:00] Why rest and rote tasks only go so far 
[00:14:45] Pain as a motivator, and what happens when it's gone 
[00:17:00] Seeking inspiration to break the rut 
[00:18:15] Burnout vs. lost motivation 
[00:19:40] When the slump is really disillusionment or jadedness 
[00:21:35] Work, personal life, and the guilt of stepping away

Notable Quotes:

[00:04:15]: "I notice that how I'm showing up to the office is a little more muted, but what I notice is that also the energy of the team is down." Jonathan Hicken 

[00:06:40]: "There's an expectation that the leader, especially of a social impact organization, should always and must always be fully motivated and committed to the cause. And I just don't think that's a realistic expectation because we're all human here." Eric Ressler 

[00:14:40]: "It's almost like the fear of stagnating might be the thing that breaks me out." Jonathan Hicken 

[00:18:20]: "I think the antidote to burnout is true deep rest, and I don't think true deep rest is going to solve your motivation issue." Eric Ressler 

[00:20:40]: "I still very much believe in the work. And so one of the big problems is I don't even know where this is coming from." Jonathan Hicken 

[00:23:05]: "Work is important. I believe in work, but also work is not the full story, even if you're doing important purposeful work. And I will die on that hill." Eric Ressler

Resources & Links:

• The research behind the autonomy, competence, and relatedness model Eric references
• Designing Tomorrow episode on motivating your team: mentioned at [00:01:20]
• Designing Tomorrow episode on not coasting on your momentum: mentioned at [00:14:45]
• Designing Tomorrow episode on building culture at work: mentioned at [00:22:30]
• AAM Museum Leadership Academy: Museum-focused leadership cohort/academy Jonathan joined: mentioned at [00:17:00] and [00:19:10]

P.S. — Struggling to align your message with your mission? We help social impact leaders like you build trust-building brands through authentic storytelling, thoughtful design, and digital strategy that works. Let's talk about your goals »

Full Transcript:

Jonathan Hicken [00:00:45]: Eric, I want to talk to you today about leader motivation, self-motivation. I find myself in a unique situation where I find my motivation is waning and I can't be the only executive director of a social impact organization who feels this. And so I wanted to spend a little time with you today to unpack what that means for leaders, what that means for organizations, and ultimately, self-servingly, how to break out of this little rut that I'm in right now.

Eric Ressler [00:01:20]: Yeah, I love this. I've thought deeply about this and done a little research too in the past. I know we did an episode, I think, about how to motivate your team at one point. Now we're flipping it around. How do we stay motivated as leaders in this space? I love it. Let's go.

Jonathan Hicken [00:01:30]: So I've been in the role five years and we just hit some major milestones and it was a huge success. And I find myself in the few weeks and months following that big milestone moment in a bit of a lull. There's this maybe coming down, it's almost like a success hangover or something where I'm trying to figure out how to get back in touch with that motivation. And I've tried a few things and so far it has been mildly successful, but I know there's still a way to go. You've been at your role for 16 years.

Eric Ressler [00:02:10]: That's right.

Jonathan Hicken [00:02:10]: Have you experienced this before?

Eric Ressler [00:02:15]: All the time, man. Yeah. I feel like my motivation and inspiration is very cyclical. It is not steady. And there are times where I feel like I'm just having to do the work and I know that it's important and I have methods and beliefs around how to get that done and structures to a degree. But my inclination and my excitement comes from new things, new ideas, new ventures, new partnerships. I think that's actually one of the reasons why running an agency is overall a really good fit for me, because I get a lot of new learnings, new opportunities, new people I work with all the time. On the flip side, I can struggle sometimes with the follow-through. I love the new idea phase, I love designing the idea, but then actually seeing the idea all the way through can be hard for me.

Maybe it's a patience thing, maybe it's, I don't know, it's just not as exciting for whatever reason for my personality. So I struggle with this and there are times that I feel excited, inspired, motivated, jazzed, use your word, and then times where I'm just showing up and going through the motions. And I sometimes question, is this constructive? Might this be a time to actually pull back a little bit and take a little time off, or do I need that? This also brings to mind, do you feel like there's a difference between a loss of motivation and burnout? I think there is, but I'd be curious to hear your take on that.

Jonathan Hicken [00:03:50]: It might be. It might be. I don't think that that is necessarily the acute reason for my particular state, but the thing that's bringing it to my attention is I'm noticing the impacts of my lack of motivation, and bringing this back to how do we create excellent social impact organizations when in this particular situation you have a leader who's lost their motivation a little bit. And so the things that I'm noticing is I notice that how I'm showing up to the office is a little more muted. I'm usually a very... Yeah, preferious. Yeah. And I haven't been, not to say that I'm a Debbie Downer, but what I notice is that my team, also the energy of the team is down.

Eric Ressler [00:04:40]: Yeah. I've noticed this many, many times over the years, mostly in reflection of when I've not shown up as my best, when I've been stressed or demotivated or even at points definitely burned out. And it's hard to put a mask on. And I actually don't even know that you should be putting a mask on around that. But what I have noticed is that, unfortunately, my mood, my vibe, my essence, whatever, has an outsized impact on my team. And I wish it weren't that way actually. And I'm not saying that everything that happens on my team is because of me so much as that I think your team looks up to the leader as a signal, as a temperature check on how they should be acting and showing up. And at times certainly, and I'm so thankful for my team, even when I've been in those states, there are other team members who have shown up and cracked a joke that just got me out of my shell or whatever it is.

So it definitely goes both ways, but it's something that I've learned over the years that I didn't expect, honestly, in starting an organization. I didn't realize how much influence my mood and my vibe really have on how the team shows up, how the clients react, all of those things. So it's something I'm acutely aware of.

Jonathan Hicken [00:05:55]: The other thing that I'm worried about is that I've got a couple of really important fundraising moments coming up. And one of my most important roles here is to get our supporters jazzed about what we're doing. And so there's this anxiety a little bit about how am I going to show up when I need to be really pitching this enthusiastically? And I think I have it in me to put it on for that day that I need to. And I'm confident I can get there, but there is that worry about, oh, is this lack of motivation going to trickle down and impact the organization in these other ways?

Eric Ressler [00:06:30]: Yeah, I think that's a real fear. What I would say, especially to our listeners, but to you also, is I think there's a permission thing here. I think there's an expectation that the leader, especially of a social impact organization, should always and must always be fully motivated and committed to the cause. And I just don't think that's a realistic expectation because we're all human here and leadership can be difficult at times. And to expect to be consistently at the top, motivated at all times, I think is just not, A, a realistic expectation. But I do think, B, there is a different set of criteria around it. It's a little bit more acceptable to be demotivated as an individual team member, I think sometimes, and/or working not at a social impact organization. If you're a middle manager at a bank, it's socially acceptable to be like, "I'm not very motivated by my job right now." But when you're the executive director of a dynamic, important social impact organization, there's this expectation that motivation should and must always be high.

But I think that's at odds with our psychology at some level.

Jonathan Hicken [00:07:50]: So I have two questions then. One is, what are some of your strategies for overcoming this? And two, how do you find the motivation in those moments where you need it?

Eric Ressler [00:08:00]: Okay. Before I answer that, I actually want to... I remember in doing some research on team motivation, something about just basic psychology that I remember learning even in early college years. And it's this concept of self-determination theory. Have you heard about this? No. So some scientists, I can't remember their names, but we'll link to them in the show notes, studied this deeply. What actually motivates people? And I think they did some studies specifically about work and they concluded that it came down to these three things, which I've been paying attention to both for myself and for my team. So the first is autonomy, which basically means I feel like I can do the things that I want or need to do and I have some autonomy or agency in making those choices. So that's one. The second is competency, which is I feel like I'm good at what I do.

I'm competent in my job. And the third is relatedness, basically meaning I'm around people that I can relate to and I feel good working with. And when you think about our work in the social impact space as leaders, it seems like we should pretty easily be able to check all of those boxes. And I feel like overall I do, although what I will say is often when I feel demotivated, I've found it's when I don't feel like I have autonomy, which sounds weird because I'm the owner and I can do what I want at some level, but also I have commitments that I've made and I have things that I know must be done that I've signed up and committed to do that maybe I don't particularly enjoy. There are parts of the work that I find tiresome or tedious and I will procrastinate on those things even though I know that they must be done and they're important to do.

And in the current state, they're not something I can delegate. They're not something I can hire out and I've signed up for that. It's a commitment that I've made. I've thought about this more so through the lens of team members. And I think when team members, individual contributors, feel like they don't have autonomy, that's the one that I think is the most impactful. And I think when people do feel like they have autonomy, they can really come out as their best selves. And obviously they're all really important. If you don't feel competent... And this is one actually I think that maybe leaders, and frankly I feel sometimes as you grow into leadership, you're going to find yourself in situations where you're doing stuff for the first time. You probably aren't going to feel very competent. This ties into this sense of imposter syndrome when you're spinning up a new thing or you're learning something as an individual, as an org.

So all of these I think have a place in our work that we should be considering. And even relatedness, I think it would be worth digging into because at times, again, there's this thought of, well, of course we're doing good work and we're passionate, so we must relate to one another. But the human condition is much more complex than that. Just because we're aligned on a mission doesn't mean we're necessarily going to relate to one another from an interpersonal stance, and there may just be some conflict there too. So I just want to ground the conversation in those things because I feel like it's a helpful mental model more than anything.

In terms of what I do when I feel demotivated, I think as I've been doing this longer, I've learned that it's temporary, because early on when I felt demotivated, it was often paired with this sense of shame. Why am I demotivated? Objectively, I have it really good. We're successful as an organization. We're doing good things for good people. I'm doing work that I love, that I believe in. How can I possibly lose my motivation? So it came in this cycle of shame that would happen. So one thing I've definitely gotten a lot better at is acknowledging, hey, this is just part of the process. What I haven't done successfully that I'd love to riff with you on is how do you not just acknowledge that, but act on it in a way that is constructive and not tipping into laziness, right? Because there are times where I'm just like, I want to play my piano. I feel motivated to do that right now. And then there are also times where I'm just like, I'd put the piano away for something that I want to do for the business.

So I don't know, hopefully that resonates a little bit.

Eric Ressler [00:12:20]: Hey friends, real quick before we continue today's episode, I'm Eric Ressler, founder and creative director at Cosmic. Cosmic is a creative agency purpose-built for nonprofits and mission-driven organizations. For the last 15 years, we've helped leaders like you nail your impact story and sharpen your strategy, but we're not here to just leave you with a fancy slide deck and a pat on the back. We roll up our sleeves and help you bring our ideas to life through campaigns, creative, and digital experiences. Our work together helps you earn trust, connect deeply with your supporters, and grow your fundraising and your impact. If you value the thinking we share here and want it applied to your biggest challenges, let's talk at designbycosmic.com. All right, back to today's conversation.

Jonathan Hicken [00:13:05]: Two things. One is that my first instinct was, okay, take a deep breath. You just had a big success. The team really showed up and delivered. We're in a really good position. It's okay to just enjoy that and just be in the moment and enjoy that. And so I tried that for a while and that felt good in the sense that there was some rest. I could put more mental, emotional energy into things in my personal life. That was really important. Then I was like, okay, that's not enough. Maybe what I'm going to do is actually focus on rote tasks. I'm going to just knock out stuff that I know I've been needing to do for a while. I've been pushing it off and I just want to feel productive. So I'm going to try that. And that feels good, but that's temporary. It's...

Eric Ressler [00:13:55]: A quick hit.

Jonathan Hicken [00:13:55]: It's a quick hit. And so when you list off those three things, autonomy, relatedness, and...

Eric Ressler [00:14:00]: Competence.

Jonathan Hicken [00:14:05]: I think about those things and I'm like, I have those things.

Eric Ressler [00:14:10]: But I'm still not motivated.

Jonathan Hicken [00:14:10]: But I'm still not motivated. So right now there's a bit of a mystery. Now, the broader fear is I have the sense that this is a natural thing for leaders to encounter, but this is probably also a risky moment in that if I embrace this demotivation too much, we enter a coast...

Eric Ressler [00:14:30]: A coast or stagnation...

Jonathan Hicken [00:14:35]: Period. Stagnation period. And that to me is maybe the thing that's going to get me out of this. I can't allow that to happen. And so it's almost like the fear of stagnating might be the thing that breaks me out. It hasn't yet, but that's sitting there making me worried.

Eric Ressler [00:14:50]: Yeah. Okay. So reflections on this. First of all, I remember we just recently did an episode that was something along the lines of don't coast on your momentum, because you were saying, hey, everything's humming. Almost like, what do we do? And I think what I'm reflecting on is that actually one of the most effective, but maybe not the most pleasant, motivators is pain. So if you have pain, you're going to be really motivated to do whatever you need to move away from that pain. It's a basic human instinct, but it translates up to the org level too. If you're constantly struggling and you're not meeting payroll, whatever it is, you don't have the funding you need to reach your mission, it's painful and you're intrinsically motivated to do something about that. To get...

Jonathan Hicken [00:15:40]: Out of...

Eric Ressler [00:15:40]: That. Yeah. So if you're not in that situation, where there's no pain, just to put it bluntly, that's going to be a natural motivational deterrent at some level.

Jonathan Hicken [00:15:55]: The pain is not in my face right now. I can see the pain down the road.

Eric Ressler [00:16:00]: Yes. You can foresee the pain coming if you don't change something. Yeah.

Jonathan Hicken [00:16:05]: Exactly. Which is the urgency I feel to get motivated. It's really because of that.

Eric Ressler [00:16:10]: I'm reflecting on a time where I was in a similar position to yours, where things were just humming, the systems were working. We were busy, but we weren't too busy. We were profitable. There weren't any major problems to solve. The team was humming and I found myself just detached a little bit. I was like, "This thing's solved, man. I'm going to go surf more." And it came back to bite me in the ass hard. And in reflection, and I think we talked about this on a recent episode, that same recent episode about don't coast on your momentum, you need to take the time to celebrate and to calm down, whatever it is. And I don't want to prescribe this urgency around it, but at the same time, you have this opportunity now to build from stability. And we talked about this in the previous episode.

So what I've done that I found really helpful in these kinds of situations is to go seek opportunities for inspiration, which may not be and likely are not work-related things, but sometimes are. I know that you're signing up to do a really cool museum-focused cohort. I bet when you go start doing that, you're going to get all kinds of new ideas. You're going to learn a lot from your peers and it's going to just intrinsically motivate you, because you're going to get back into that imaginative state, or that curiosity state, or the experimentation state. To me, those are the things that create motivation when you have... Again, I'm speaking personally, different people are motivated by different things, but you have a new idea, a new possibility, a new venture, or a new frame of mind or thinking, and then you're like, ah, a switch flips and you're like, I could do not that, but this sort of thing that's related to it.

And then you get excited by this new potential. So I would seek opportunities for inspiration and learning. That's really what helps for me. If it's truly about motivation, which I do think we should break down, motivation versus burnout, because I think they're different.

Jonathan Hicken [00:18:10]: So how do you see those things as different?

Eric Ressler [00:18:15]: I think burnout is a systems-level issue. I'm sure there's science on this too, but I think it's more psychological. I think the antidote to burnout is true deep rest, and I don't think true deep rest is going to solve your motivation issue. I think they're different. So that's the distinction to me: burnout is you've been pummeled so many times for so long without enough time and energy to recoup that your system just goes into a self-destruction mode, and then you get into overwhelm and burnout and then you lack motivation, but the motivation that you're lacking is because you just don't have capacity to do anything. And that's not what I'm hearing you say.

Jonathan Hicken [00:18:55]: No, no. I feel like I can put in the energy, I can put in the time. Those resources are available to me. So it's a matter of when I show up with that time and with that energy, it's almost like this mental block. And by the time this episode comes out, I may actually...

Eric Ressler [00:19:20]: Be through...

Jonathan Hicken [00:19:20]: Through this academy. So that might be the thing. And actually one of the reasons I applied to that program was because of this, right?

Eric Ressler [00:19:25]: Yeah, you felt it.

Jonathan Hicken [00:19:30]: I felt that motivation waning and I thought, well, maybe if I surround myself with people who are doing similar but different things, maybe that's going to be what brings me out of it. So I'll report back on how that went.

Eric Ressler [00:19:40]: The other thing I was thinking about, and again, I don't think this is your situation at all, but what I have seen before, I think the other flavor of this worth mentioning, and I don't think this is you at all, is when the lack of motivation is actually a symptom of a deeper disillusionment with the mission or the organization. I've seen this with leaders where they're done, it's over. It's not even really motivation, or it's not even like I've lost interest. It's more like I don't even believe that the work is worth doing anymore. That is a really tough one.

Jonathan Hicken [00:20:20]: Yeah, that's a scary one. That's not where I'm at. And I could see then the pitfall of that leader staying in the role because it's a good paycheck and because it's stable or whatever, and going into that coast mode. So I still very much believe in the work. And so one of the big problems is I don't even know where this is coming from. I'm like, I don't even know the source. And so how can I address it if I don't even understand it?

Eric Ressler [00:20:50]: Yeah. Another near version of that would be almost like a jadedness, where you've been in the space or the org so long, you're just like, I've seen these same cycles over and over and over again. And frankly, I've been there at times and I'm sure I'll be there again, where I'm just like, I've been through the same cycles over and over and over again. There are some longstanding problems that we've tried to solve 10 different ways and just can't seem to fix. And that does start to tip you into a little bit of a jadedness. And that's an equally dangerous place to be, I think. And there's a whole different set of things that I think you have to work on if that's really your issue. So I'm just thinking about the different flavors that I've experienced of this and seen in leaders that we've worked with.

Jonathan Hicken [00:21:35]: It's occurring to me now actually, if things that are happening outside of work are really playing a role in my demotivation at work. I'm going through some personal stuff right now and maybe that is taking some of my energy away from this work. It sort of begs the question of this work-life balance thing. Maybe even some guilt around stepping away and handling these things in my personal life and taking the time to do that. And I do, I feel like this sometimes. I come in, I'm like, I really should spend four hours on this personal life thing, but I got to be at work. I got to be on. And so I don't take care of that and then I'm too tired to handle it when I get home. And so it's just this... I guess maybe I'm in the cycle of, maybe I really do need to take a few days off to go handle this personal life stuff and somehow grapple with the guilt of doing that.

Eric Ressler [00:22:30]: Yeah. This reminds me a little bit of the conversation we had around building culture at work. And I think I brought up my own disillusionment around the current meta culture of knowledge work and just professional work right now, where there are these expectations of speed and availability and productivity and efficiency, and I think AI is definitely not helping with all of this. And it's not healthy, man. We are all complex creatures. We have needs. Work is important. I believe in work, but also work is not the full story, even if you're doing important purposeful work. And I will die on that hill. I don't care how important what you're doing. I don't care if you're the president of the United States, you need some time to step aside and become whole again. And if all you do is put your mind on something 110%... I'm speaking personally again here, but almost all of my best ideas come when I'm not trying to come up with them.

And so there's this balance that you have to strike and everyone's got to find a balance. And there are seasons of this. There are grind seasons and there are times where you need to develop a pace that's a little bit more sustainable.

Jonathan Hicken [00:23:45]: Well, I hope that listeners, especially executive directors and CEOs who are listening to this, A, if you relate to this, you're not alone.

Eric Ressler [00:23:55]: Yeah, I'm...

Jonathan Hicken [00:24:00]: Not alone. And A, there's probably not a one-size-fits-all solution here to break out of your phase of demotivation, but hopefully we have unpacked some of the tools and techniques that people could use to get out of it. I need to actually go out and practice some of these things and I'll let you know in a couple of weeks how I'm feeling. But yeah, I guess it's just a, "Hey, this is normal, and ride it out."

Eric Ressler [00:24:25]: Yeah, man. I appreciate you bringing this topic in because it's one that I don't think we talk about enough in the professional world, and in the social impact space especially. I've seen a lot more about team-level motivation, and even what we've put out, but I do think there's a shame around, "Oh, of course I should be motivated." So hopefully this is a good conversation starter for the sector and for leaders to just realize, "Hey, we all go through this in different ways and we can start to share some tips around how to get out of it and how to..." Get out of it isn't even the right way of saying it, but just how to accept it and embrace it and work around it, so to speak, and know that you're going to come back out of it and hopefully have some tools to be able to do that in the right time.

Jonathan Hicken [00:25:05]: This is one where I really want to hear from listeners on if they've experienced this, and if they've done anything that worked, to share it, because maybe this is an opportunity to destigmatize a little bit this feeling that we have. But thanks for rapping with me on this one.

Eric Ressler [00:25:25]: Yeah, man. Thanks for bringing it to me. If you enjoyed today's video, please be sure to hit like and subscribe or even leave us a comment. It really helps. Thank you. And thank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.