Leadership Must Protect Our Ability to Serve

The authors of the Ethical Standards for Drug Abuse Counselors Workbook (1999) state that it is their belief that “the ethical requirement that counselors protect their ability to serve clients extends beyond what might be considered normal ethical behavior...our profession is characterized by a high degree of burnout of overburdended counselors who have difficulty in distancing themselves from their jobs and client responsibilities...counselor burnout is unethical and should be guarded against by counselors and their employers by assuring plenty of time off, supervisory support, stress seminars, etc.” Twenty years later, this is even more relevant and critical for our counselors and all other staff.

So, the question for each of us to ask ourselves, our teams and our employers is how are we doing in this area? Last year I presented at a behavioral health executives conference and asked the group what their current census was and what was their average daily rate being paid for services rendered. Not surprisingly, they all had answers to these questions. My next set of questions was what was their staff turnover rate and how are their scores on staff satisfaction surveys? Unfortunately, fewer, if any, of them could answer these questions. I don’t think it is because they don’t care, but the reality is that very few organizations spend the time, attention and resources needed in the areas of staff, team and leadership that we need to protect all these areas.

When I was in a corporate leadership role several years ago and on the path to burning out, I didn’t recognize that it was burnout. I thought it was people around me not performing, or me not working hard enough, but efforts to work harder or push the team were not helpful. I often wonder what would have been different if my leadership had identified my burnout or if I was able to catch it earlier. Would it have made a difference?

What if the organization I worked for had more preventative measures in place, like making sure I took time off and didn’t work 60-plus hours per week, provided regular supervision with feedback sessions, and stress management tools based on our work? What if I was taught in graduate school as part of my social work and counseling curriculums that burnout can and will happen? What if in my internship sites the professionals there instructed us how burnout impacts them and what they do to avoid it? What if as a supervisor I gave staff what I needed but didn’t feel courageous enough to ask for? What if every workplace had educational support services to prevent, find and fix burnout?

In compliance work, we focus on the elements of effective programs that results in compliance officers being able to prevent, find and fix compliance issues and it seems to me there is no more important compliance/ethics issue than our staff wellness, team wellbeing and organizational health.

At Addiction Campuses, I am so lucky to be able to make such workforce and workplace initiatives part of our compliance and ethics workplan. In the past two years, I have been able to share the resilience work of Brene Brown with each of our teams, and this year I will facilitate her new leadership curriculum, Dare to Lead, which is a courage-building curriculum. We will have the courage to prevent, find and fix staff care to improve ethics!

Maeve O’Neill, MEd, LCDC, LPC-S, CHC, CDWF/CDTLF, is chief ethics and compliance officer for Addiction Campuses.