The Modern Leader
Burnout among leaders can have cascading effects throughout an organization, impacting team morale, productivity, and overall business performance.
As a leader, recognizing and addressing your own burnout is crucial not just for your well-being, but for the health of your entire team and organization. As you'll see below, your team feels your burnout too.
Spotting the signs
What's happening: Leaders often miss early warning signs of burnout, pushing through exhaustion and stress. These signs manifest in different ways for different people, so there's not necessarily just a list of checkboxes you mark to say "yes, I'm burned out".
Here are some of the possible indicators for burnout:
- Physical symptoms: Chronic fatigue, insomnia, frequent headaches, GI issues (the latter being one I more recently learned about!)
- Emotional indicators: Irritability, cynicism, lack of motivation. You're either short-tempered or you just don't care.
- Behavioral changes: Procrastination, isolation from team members, disengagement from meetings, doing the bare minimum when you're typically a higher performer
The ripple effect
As I said earlier, burnout doesn't just affect you - it impacts your entire team and organization. This typically manifests in:
- Decreased productivity and creativity: Your work (or their work) may be technically correct, but it's certainly not anything special and it may not be done on time.
- Higher turnover rates: If you start to see more people on your team leaving, take some time to understand why.
- Lower team morale and engagement: This one's the real sticking one. As previously mentioned, cynicism is an emotional indicator of burnout. As a leader, your team is modeling your behavior, and if they see you being cynical, they may inadvertently become the same.
The bottom line: Addressing your burnout is a critical leadership responsibility.
Strategies for recovery
Here are some of my go-to strategies for tackling burnout:
- Boundaries: Set clear work-life boundaries and stick to them.
- Designate "no-work" zones in your home. I don't work from the bedroom ever.
- Use technology to automate what you can, and block yourself from accessing company resources (e.g. Slack) when you're supposed to be off work.
- Delegation: Trust your team with more responsibilities.
- Identify tasks that can be delegated. I've written on this topic previously.
- Provide support and mentorship during the transition. They're not going to nail it the first time or do it exactly as you would, and that's okay.
- Self-care: Prioritize your physical and mental health.
- Do whatever you consider to be self care. For me that's running, cycling, or reading. Schedule time for this so you make sure it's prioritized.
- Practice mindfulness or meditation.
- Connections: Nurture relationships inside and outside of work.
- Find your people. This may be a local community (I'm part of our local Junior League chapter), a virtual community (I'm also a part of a few Discord/Slack groups), or a combination of the two. Attend meetups if any are close by and of interest.
- Make time for family and friends. Sometimes this requires putting time on my calendar or a reminder on my phone to remember to text someone. We all get busy, but when we're burned out we are much more likely to pull away from loved ones.
- Purpose: Reconnect with your personal and professional mission.
- Reflect on your core values. If you don't have them, now's the time to define them!
- Align daily tasks with long-term goals
Now what?
- Immediate action: Choose one strategy from the list above and implement it this week.
- Long-term planning: Schedule a team meeting to discuss creating a more burnout-resistant culture.
- Continuous improvement: Set a recurring calendar reminder to check in with yourself about burnout symptoms and recovery progress.
Addressing burnout is an ongoing process, not a one-time fix. And it's not going to happen overnight. Your commitment will pay dividends in your personal well-being and organizational success. And remember: you don't need to do this alone.