The Professional Counselor | Volume 13, Issue 3 164 2) Is the relation between Negative Work Environment and Devaluing Client mediated by Deterioration in Personal Life, Exhaustion, and Incompetence in a serial order? Conceptual Framework The current study presents a hypothesized sequential process of counselor burnout using the five dimensions of burnout measured by the CBI. Below we provide the rationale for our proposed serial order of counselor burnout, which is: 1) Negative Work Environment, 2) Deterioration in Personal Life, 3) Exhaustion, 4) Incompetence, and 5) Devaluing Client. The first dimension, Negative Work Environment, reflects counselors’ attitudes and feelings toward their work environments beyond personal and interpersonal issues (S. M. Lee et al., 2007). Previous studies identified organizational factors as an early indicator of burnout among counselors, such as excessive work demands, role ambiguity and conflict, lack of recognition, limited supervisor and colleague support, poor relationships at work, and unfair decision-making (Demerouti et al., 2001; N. Kim & Lambie, 2018; Leiter & Maslach, 1988; Maslach & Leiter, 2008; C. McCarthy et al., 2010; Walsh & Walsh, 2002). These factors were found to be correlated with feelings of burnout and were identified as predictive factors for counselor burnout (N. Kim & Lambie, 2018). The second dimension of the CBI, Deterioration in Personal Life, recognized as another early indicator of burnout, significantly predicts a wide range of burnout syndromes. This dimension refers to the counselors’ failure to maintain well-being in their personal lives by spending insufficient time with family and friends and having poor boundaries between work and personal life. Deterioration in Personal Life was positively associated with the Exhaustion subscale of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), accounting for the high number of counselors’ levels of burnout (S. M. Lee et al., 2007). In terms of the sequential order between the two major indicators of counselor burnout, we posited that a negative work environment precedes deterioration in personal life. A negative work environment, with characteristics such as excessive workload, role ambiguity and conflict, and a lack of supervisor and colleague support, may restrict counselors’ personal lives by reducing personal time for their own wellness. When personal time conflicts with an unfavorable work environment and demand, counselors may not easily find a balance between work and life, thus experiencing reduced quality of life and emotional and physical exhaustion as consequences. Exhaustion, the third dimension of burnout, represents counselors’ physical and emotional depletions that result from excessive workloads and conflictive relationships at work. Exhaustion is the central quality of burnout (Maslach & Leiter, 2008), accompanied by feelings of being drained and emotionally overextended (Maslach, 1998). As many researchers have argued that exhaustion precedes other dimensions of burnout (Leiter & Maslach, 1999; Maslach et al., 1997, 2001; Maslach & Leiter, 2016), the core idea penetrating throughout their arguments is that emotional exhaustion occurs first, followed by reduced personal accomplishment and depersonalization. Therefore, we proposed that the fourth and fifth dimensions—Incompetence and Devaluing Client, respectively—may be consequences that stem from counselors’ emotional and physical exhaustion. In the CBI, Incompetence refers to a counselor’s internal feeling of incompetence while evaluating their effectiveness as a professional counselor, and it represents their belief that they are an incompetent counselor or that they are failing to make a positive change in their clients. Previous studies have provided evidence that emotional exhaustion increases professional incompetence or inefficacy (R. T. Lee & Ashforth, 1993; Park & Lee, 2013; van Dierendonck et al., 2001). R. T. Lee and Ashforth (1993)
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