In today’s fast-paced world, as leaders, we are expected to work longer hours and assume greater responsibilities. We’re attempting to balance our job with family life, social activities, and personal passions while also maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Pressure can cause us to burn out.
By definition, burnout is a state of emotional, physical or mental exhaustion combined with doubts about your competence and the value of your work. As humans, we have a limited store of mental energy that becomes depleted when we overwork ourselves.
Symptoms of Burnout Include:
- Feeling fatigued and exhausted
- Experiencing a sense of reduced accomplishment and inability to meet your goals
- Losing interest in things that you used to enjoy
- Having feelings of futility or hopelessness about yourself or your work [or even both]
Burnout is not only detrimental to your health, but to your relationships, morale at work, and your performance. As leaders, burnout can affect how well the team performs and cause them to lose confidence in you.
Here are 5 ways you can prevent burnout:
1- Be the change: practice mindfulness
When leaders themselves are under intense pressure, it’s especially difficult to help employees deal with their own stress. Mindful leadership presence begins with one’s self, noticing stressful thoughts or emotional reactivity, and engaging practices to support greater calmness, openness and acceptance.
2- Allow time and space for employees
Leaders need to be diligent in reaching out to employees with sensitivity and compassion, cultivating a trusting environment where employees feel safe to share what’s on their minds.
Connectedness is vital to mental and emotional health.
3- Play music at work
Recent studies at some of the world’s leading research facilities have uncovered several reasons why there’s a connection between music, productivity, and well-being.
If your current working environment is quiet, mix things up by adding music! Classical music, for example, is one of the best ways to help employees unwind from the challenges they face outside the office.
4- Delegate more
If you are finding yourself frequently working late hours, flag this as a warning sign that you may not be delegating enough. Delegation helps to boost team morale, improve efficiency and productivity, and promotes enthusiasm, innovation, and cooperation – all of which are vital to a company’s bottom line.
5- Encourage your team to unplug
It is important for you to encourage your team to take time off. This will create a culture of mindfulness, which will not only prevent burnout but also will increase your team’s performance.
In Closing
When you find yourself feeling like your work is taking over, it’s time to take a break. Leaders who are able to catch the early warning signs of burnout and start recharging can avoid more serious consequences down the line. If this sounds familiar, schedule a coaching call with one of our experts today!
If you want to strategize about ways that you can recharge so that your business continues running smoothly while staying healthy, we are here to help.
What other leadership strategies have you tried?
