The influence of the emotional burnout on the relational maintenance strategies

Abstract

The syndrome of emotional burnout is developed in people whose profession requires a lot of communication, and the effectiveness of their work depends on its quality. The aim of our study was to determine the influence of burnout on relational maintenance strategies.8 professors of università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland participated in this research. We used Maslach Burnout Inventory and The relational maintenance strategies scale. Moderate level of emotional exhaustion was detected in the majority of the participants. This condition is characterized by the urge towards finding a place to stay alone and get some rest from everything and everybody. It is accompanied by the feeling of emptiness, depression, and apathy. These indicate pronounced tiredness, disappointment, and unwillingness to work among our participants. The high level of Lack of personal accomplishments phase is being developed in all the participants. It indicates the pronounced doubts in the necessity to keep performing the work and in the fact that the work is needed and recognized by other people. We demonstrated that among the professors with burnout such strategies as conflict management, openness, assurances and positivism are the most widespread. Our data indicate that the readiness to work together on certain project or scientific problem (Openness), the willingness to support a student (Advice Giving) and the help to find necessary support outside of current academic environment (Social Networks) decreases with the development of emotional burnout. Understating the level of one's self-appraisal, observed during the development of burnout, ruins effective collaboration between professors and their PhD students, and formalizes their relationships. Thus, burnout is an important mediating variable between interpersonal aspects of work environment.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.