Are you burnt out because your co-workers are incompetent?

Hit ’em with the horns:

In a qualitative study, we asked 238 employees in a variety of industries to explain why they would or wouldn’t accept help from a coworker. From their responses, we identified five key reasons people avoid being helped: preferring to be self-reliant and complete their work on their own, wanting to protect their image, not wanting to feel obligated to return the favor, not trusting their coworkers’ motives, and believing that their coworkers are incompetent.

OK, so let’s parse this out for a second.

• 238 isn’t a huge sample size, no.
• “Preferring to be self-reliant:” work martyr
• “Wanting to protect their image:” quest for relevance
• “Not wanting to return the favor:” Backstabby politics
• “Not trusting motives:” Ditto
• “Believing their co-workers are incompetent:” This is also work in a nutshell

But we need to find the elephant in this little room now. That would be burnout.

Burnout is pretty normative, right?

For sure. Emotional burnout from work is normative, and work stress has been on the rise for decades.