Dear Managers
How to manage burnout.
Stress is the feeling of being overwhelmed in an environment where the ability to cope is important. Burnout is when your cortisol levels are so high that you never have the sensation of “coming down” and have no respite from being constantly “switched on”. This is damaging to the body and ultimately, your body physically switches off. No longer being able to produce the adrenaline needed to fight the good fight, your body is depleted, leaving you feeling listless, chronically tired and unable to muster the energy needed to navigate the day. The feeling is one of mental tiredness, of feeling overwhelmed and physically exhausted.
Much has been written about burnout and the phenomenon that has been exacerbated by Lockdowns and the new working paradigm and being #AlwaysOn. Some of the best articles I have seen on burnout come from the Harvard Business Review stable[1]. During 2020, I coached many young leaders in organisations, the level that still has a higher level of management to answer to, while desperately trying to manage their own time, their own reports and workloads. Many employees complain there is no off button and that they are on call all the time. It appears that respect for personal time has gone out of the window. An interesting phenomenon about burnout is the cynicism that creeps in, something I saw again and again in the leaders I coached. Cynicism is dangerous as it drives people to a point of no longer caring. No longer caring whether the deadlines are met, no longer caring whether the work is done and feeling hopelessness to the point of neglecting what it is they need to do.
The HBR studies have found that the people that seem to have suffered the most, are:
- Young people, Millennials
- Women
- People with young children who must home-school (men and women, although the bulk of this burden seems to fall on the shoulders of women)
- People whose working circumstances at home were not optimal and difficult.
- Employees, whose life consists of a constant round of meetings.
In my own experience, the second group expressed the most stress – those that on top of all their other priorities had to home-school. This group is also often young and not on the upper rungs of the hierarchical ladder in their respective workplaces. Why this matters, is that they are often not in control of their day. They might draw on all their resources to order their day, make lists and create priorities, only to have their equilibrium disturbed by their manager, whose priorities are more important than theirs. This means their own work is constantly put on the backburner, through meetings, through priorities that are more important than theirs, through the demands of their children, who now see their parent as available.
One of the reasons managers call on their employees at all hours of the day (I believe), is their own need to make some sense of what is happening. The pandemic has put stress on all of us to perform, either to claw back some of the income that was lost, or to control the feeling of remoteness from their teams and the fear of not quite knowing what their teams are doing, and to have a handle in some way on the unexplainable. The answer has been to work more, not smarter.
My thoughts on how to alleviate the plight of all of us who in the foreseeable future will continue to work this way, either full-time or partly from home:
- With every meeting, ask if it is really necessary. Would a round-robin email do, would a WhatsApp group message achieve the result? Would a simple phone-call to the relevant person do? Minimise your meetings to down-times in the day. Peoples’ energy flags after lunch and late afternoons. Don’t set up your meetings in the most productive time of the day – in the morning!
- Respect your employees’ own time. Before delegating, ask the employee what is on their desk. What are they currently working on? What are their priorities? When would they be able to fit the work in? Help them prioritise.
- Make it a golden rule not to call after hours. It is simply disrespectful of the employee, their time, their family, their privacy. Only emergencies are allowed after hours. To insist that your employees are constantly on call is controlling behaviour. It speaks of your own lack of organisation and need to control your own time. If you recognise this pattern of behaviour in yourself, seek guidance from a coach, and ask for help in setting goals and prioritising.
- Be humane. Set dedicated check-in times with all your team members. Ask them how they really are, not just a quick platitude at the start of a meeting, in front of all the others. Mental health has become increasingly prevalent and is a worrying factor of the effects of Covid 19, or maybe the pandemic has simply highlighted an already existing problem. Reassure people they will not be victimised for sharing that they are struggling. If you lack the capacity to discuss this with your team, assign someone whom employees are encouraged to approach. Not all of us can separate the workload and productivity from the people behind the work. If this is you, make sure your organisation has in place an EAP program or has at least assigned someone employees can talk to.
- Set times with your team that they can give you feedback on how you are performing as a manager, either individually or collectively. Not many managers welcome this or are able to handle this type of feedback. If this is you, ask for help from a coach or arrange EQ training sessions for all managers in your company, as it is something that not all managers feel comfortable with.
- Tell your employees where they fit in, why they are important and why what they are doing is important.
A fascinating point made in one of the HBR articles, is that those employees who had a sense of purpose (i.e., they knew what their role was in the organisation) coped better than those who did not. Many employees have never given this any thought. A sense of purpose, understanding why you are doing certain tasks and where you fit into the cog that makes the wheel turn is a vital factor in also managing work life balance in the pandemic, but it is also invaluable to know generally, to manage life in a more meaningful way.
Comments and input is most welcome, I would love to have a discussion on this “burning” topic!
Marleen Potgieter
2 March 2021
[1]https://hbr.org/2021/02/beyond-burned-out