Why People Burn Out in Brussels: Unpacking the Eurobubble Stress.
Since we’ve triggered a bit of a discussion on the toxicity of the Eurobubble and the risk of burnout it poses, we’ve spoken with many people to understand better why, specifically, the European affairs ecosystem is particularly high risk for our mental health. What makes our work environment different from London, Paris, or Amsterdam?
Expertise is not leadership
The Eurobubble is fueled by expertise more than many places in the world. No one denies that topical experts roam the streets of the European quarter in great numbers. But expertise is often rewarded by climbing up the management ladder, which unfortunately doesn’t always equate to good leadership.
While leadership skills can be acquired through experience, and some experts who are promoted to management naturally excel at it, many do not, and they need support. Being thrust into leadership positions without proper preparation is one of the most certain recipes for a disaster regarding team well-being and efficiency.
A city of expats: the mental health first line of support deficit
The Eurobubble attracts young people from all across Europe and beyond, ready to leave behind family and friends to imprint their mark on Europe.
But who do you usually turn to first for support when faced with difficulties at work? Exactly: family and friends. You might grab a beer with a high-school friend or go home to a warm meal made by your parents. Young Eurobubble hopefuls, however, who haven’t had time to build a network of supportive friends or whose parents are far away, are particularly vulnerable and fragile.
People with strong values and high ambitions
Of course, the Eurobubble is an ecosystem of high values and ambitions. People come here with the intention to “work for Europe” or bring their expertise to the table to make an impact, often carrying lofty ambitions.
When you combine uprooted young people with strong values in a highly competitive environment, you create the perfect cannon fodder for burnout. They are too willing to accept toxic conditions that have a massive toll on their mental health, hoping to climb the ladder and fulfil their values (sometimes with a passive threat of "What? Are you going to give up on your values?"), and have a real impact.
A tiny bubble and the networking treadmill
It is a tiny bubble and a one-field-centred bubble: Paris or London are way bigger, and they are not focused on one topic only. While, of course, Brussels is not the Eurobubble only, its European life is. Young Europeans coming to Brussels are all coming to work in European affairs.
Working in such a tiny bubble makes it way more difficult to disappear, to be anonymous, or just to switch to an adjacent bubble operating in your same geographical ecosystem.
This is also partly connected to the fact that people hold hyper-specific expertise and find their own even smaller ‘bubble in the bubble’, and it can become oppressing and even more difficult to get out when things get tough.
This smallness also creates pressure to stay on the “networking treadmill.” The fear of missing out on opportunities pushes people to constantly be “on,” often at the cost of boundaries between personal life and work.
Job as one’s whole identity: the resilience risk and blurred work-life boundaries
This problem is a corollary of the previous two. It is extremely common in Brussels to see people whose whole life and identity revolves around their jobs and work lives. And this is a disaster both in terms of resistance and resilience. If things get rough in your work, but you have other communities, say, you play badminton with friends, or you play in a musical theatre, you can find relief, happiness and support through these other communities. And if you lose your job or fall into severe burnout, these other communities can still provide a place for action and a sense of belonging. They can help you bounce back quickly.
However, merging your whole identity with your work will make the shock harder when things become difficult and will also increase the risk that slight disturbances affect you more.
This job-as-whole-identity issue, of course, also poses very concrete problems such as the difficulty of disconnecting and the merging of work-life boundaries (do you check your emails randomly during holidays? Do you have your Teams notifications activated after working hours? Do you go for beers mainly with your work colleagues?). And while many people claim these blurred boundaries are fine for them, in the long run, they are for sure a strain on our mental health.
Ambiguous success metrics and limited control over the outcomes
Two connected problems here.
There are jobs in the Eurobubble with clear success metrics. Some people in sales, for example. Do you sell advertising packages for Politico or Euractiv? Pretty sure you have quarterly targets. But even then, you might be a very good salesperson, but what if the journalists are doing a bad job? Or what if clients start checking the data and realise their ads are not being that effective? Your control over the outcomes (“selling more ads”) is becoming more and more limited by other factors.
And this is one of the least ambiguous examples we could think of.
Can you define success metrics for your job other than “my boss is happy with me” or beyond your organisation's long-term mission and vision?
And if you can define it, let’s say, “I have the objective of specifically influencing a part of the Nature Restoration Law”: With which certainty can you establish that your actions resulted in the desired outcomes?
This inherent ambiguity in the political ecosystem we work in is an aggravating risk factor. First, for people with high values and the desire to drive change, it can be draining not to be able to define precise metrics but also to always chase elusive results. But also, it creates a fertile ground for actively toxic management. Clear metrics and a clear path to achieve them provide clarity in a manager/direct report relationship and reduce the risk of being managed through emotions, impressions, and micro-management metrics.
Even in the most ambiguous environment, organisations and managers should seek to disambiguate these metrics, even so slightly, using appropriate proxies. After all, when an organisation recruits someone, they MUST have an idea of what success looks like for the person.
An ecosystem in a perpetual state of crisis: political uncertainties
The Eurobubble eats, breathes, and sleeps politics. And the least we can say is that it hasn’t seen a relaxing period for a while. The normal cyclical uncertainties and changes of any democratic environment, mixed with the general geopolitical volatility, have created a state of permanent change and emergencies.
This constant volatility certainly puts a strain on people’s mental health as well. The brain can never be at full rest, nor think that mental rest is coming for a long period of time.
The multicultural melting pot: different managerial approaches, different approaches to mental health
While this might be less specific to the Eurobubble, and quite common to every highly multicultural city, it is probably nowhere as acute: the cultural differences in management and approaches to mental health.
What if you come from a high-power cultural context and you are managed by a very informal boss or the other way around? What if you have work-related mental health issues, but your boss comes from a cultural context where they are not addressed openly?
Intercultural understanding skills are generally high in Brussels, but they might not be yet effectively targeted to this specific problem.
This is not an exhaustive list of factors that cause burnout or strain mental health, but we believe these features of the Eurobubble make the problem more acute. If you want to create a safe space for your team members, it’s essential to address these issues explicitly.
What can you do?
A good start would be to check the resources, activities, and services offered by the growing number of organisations trying to address these issues:
The Good Enough Company (that’s us!) offers organisational management and consulting to make your organisation more efficient AND healthier.
A Better Brussels, a new hub for resources and a community of practitioners to make the Eurobubble a healthier ecosystem.
The Harassment Support Network is an organisation that supports victims of harassment in the workplace.
You can also start, facilitate and encourage discussion at your workplace, especially if you are a leader or manager, to make sure your team members are aware of these risks and understand how they can specifically impact your organisation.
