Your brain is fried, your focus is terrible, and your productivity is non-existent. You are burned out. It will take self-care to give yourself a break. The challenge with that plan? Your team is burned out and exhausted too. Chances are whatever lead to your sustained work stress also affected the rest of the team. As a leader, how do you you support your team with burnout, when you are exhausted too? What are the strategies to reduce workplace burnout on your team while dealing with your own work burnout?
What are the signs of burnout on your team?
The classic symptoms of burnout are:
- Depleted energy levels
- Apathy for work
- Lower productivity
- Pessimistic outlook
- Physical, mental, or emotional exhaustion
- Increased illness/time off from work
Employees are not always going to be forthcoming that they are experiencing these symptoms. They may want to hide them from you because they are afraid you will think less of them. They may not be aware themselves that there is a problem.
Look for common themes in their productivity, quality, and general demeanor. Is their work suffering? Do they seem more withdrawn and lower energy than usual? Are they making comments about how tired they always are?
Read more about the details on the subtle signs of burnout on your team or how you can support staff working virtually.
Recognize the signs of burnout in yourself
Have you have gone from eagerly taking on responsibility to fantasizing about living on a deserted island? Does remembering to perform all those little tasks seem more difficult than before? Sustained levels of stress (which varies from person to person) can lead to burnout. Give yourself a quick check in:
- everyday at work seems like a bad or stressful day
- You are having difficulty sleeping, turning your brain off seems impossible
- Your responsibilities seem overwhelming. Issues that didn’t seem huge before are now “one more thing to deal with”
- Your patience with problems and people is much lower than before
- Your are tempted by “escapist” activities, such one more glass of wine (or two) just to settle your brain
What are the strategies to deal with your own work burnout?
You can’t help your team unless you reduce stress for yourself. Just like on airplanes, you need to put your own oxygen mask before your are able to adequately assist others.
1. Figure out what is causing the stress
Start with finding the root cause to why you feel sustained levels of stress. Is there a major project with very demanding clients that never seem to be satisfied? Is there a merger or potential layoffs on the horizon?
If you are not really sure what the cause may be, create a ‘crap’ list at the end of what you would consider to be a bad or stressful day. Just a quick few points on what happened. If you find that there was a day that seemed tolerable, jot down what happened too. Do this until you can see a pattern emerge. Do you not have contact with someone on those good days? Did you perform a task that you dislike on those stressful days? What is it about that task that’s so stressful?
Is it possible that someone can take on some of those stressful pieces from you? As a leader, you may need to review the final work, but you could perhaps delegate parts of it.
2. Take a vacation
Set your auto-reply email to “I will respond to your email when I return” and give yourself a break! When you feel stress creeping in, make sure that you take some time to recharge.
3. Positive mindset
Keep out of a negative thought cycle by interjecting some positivity in your day.
Start with doing kind things for others – hold the elevator door, ask how someone’s family member is doing. It will give you a boost when you help someone without extending a lot of effort on your part.
Work your way up to positive affirmations for yourself. Focus on the light on the end of the tunnel.
4. Find a passion project
Remember when projects used to fire you up and get you excited? As far as strategies to reduce workplace burnout go, this one really helped me.
See what you can do to get back on track and excited about work again. Find a process improvement that will fire you up. Quick wins will give you a boost.
I also wrote about how to get your leadership back on track and find your groove again here. There are lots of tips about finding what excites you in leadership again.
5. Take care of yourself
Self care can go a long way in making yourself feel better. Better diet, eliminating coping vices (excessive sugar or alcohol), and exercise can go a long way. Exercise does not have to mean a trip to the gym, it can be as simple as a walk around your neighborhood in the evening. This is also great if you are working from home and feel like you never leave your four walls.
What are the strategies to reduce burnout in your team?
Now that you have learned strategies to reduce workplace burnout for yourself, you can help others around you.
It’s essential that you promote positive coping strategies on your team. The earlier that you address one of these issues, the less likely you are to start experience additional symptoms of burnout.
1. Encourage breaks
Actively encourage time off. Pick out your slower time at work and make sure people get their rest so that they can perform when you really need them during crazy times.
2. Find the pain points on your team
Just as you need to find your quick wins, so does the rest of the team. Find those things that may not seem like a top priority, and see how you can fit them in.
Yes, it may feel like you are adding extra stress to yourself- just when you need it the least – but this can give both yourself and your team a boost when complete.
3. Encourage staff to speak up
They need to be able to tell you when they have too much on their plate within fear of angering you or feeling like they are letting the team down when they are having a hard time.
4. Reassess goals
Sit down with the employee to reassess goals. This may be a time in their career where they meet expectations rather than strive for stretch goals.
5. Change their workload
It’s all too easy to slip into burnout from working from home. Your employee may be struggling with so many unprecedented demands – childcare, home school, health worries AND work on top of that.
Expectations will need to change and new work goals should be developed in collaboration with the employee. Read more on adjusting work/performance goals when working from home so that you can get an idea of adjustments that can be made.
6. Be as transparent as possible
Sometimes the lack of information or clarity from leadership can manifest and cause lots of stressful speculation. Reduce stress wherever you can! Be as transparent with your staff as possible to reduce job change or job loss with your team.
7. Have a supportive conversation
Have a one-on-one with the staff member. Ask how they are doing and what you can do to support them.
Let them know that you care about them and want them to do well. They are not robots and they need to recharge. Encourage taking a break, separating themselves from the office, and adjusting their workload for now to meet any additional needs that are happening in their life. Let them tell you what they need.
When you identify burnout in your self, take steps to help yourself so that you can help your staff. It’s important to make the effort to recover properly from burnout. Stress is going to keep happening in your work life, but it you take steps early to identify burnout in yourself, you can help your team get through anything.