This past year, I watched a talented young professional morph from an enthusiastic new recruit into a discouraged, frustrated, and burned-out employee. How could this happen to someone so enthusiastic and driven? Quite simply, her eagerness to contribute and learn was met with radio silence. Not an encouraging word. Not an iota of constructive advice.

In the absence of meaningful feedback from leaders, employees have no choice but to guess and come to their own conclusions.

Without feedback, we either devote energy to everything (unsustainable) or sink time into projects we later learn aren’t priorities (aggravating); we repeat the same mistakes (embarrassing) and have no idea when we are on-track (frustrating); we assume our leaders don’t notice or care when we perform well (de-motivating) and resolve that you aren’t invested in our success (disheartening).

The result is an employee who feels exhausted, cynical, and ineffective—and it probably won’t surprise you to hear that these are the three components of burnout.  

For the aforementioned employee, her experience has been awful, but she will learn from it and land on her feet.

But for her employer, the cost will be huge. They will spend valuable time and money recruiting and hiring her replacement. But even more costly, they will lose an ambitious professional who could have added great value to their organization, if only they didn’t make her guess.

Guessing can be fun when you are about to open a present. But no one should ever have to guess where they stand at work.