Did you know that April is National Stress Awareness Month? April is a great time to focus on what we all need to be doing to manage the mounting pressures of everyday life. And believe me, the “burnout at work” struggle is real – we are faced with tight deadlines, increasing customer demands, and too many leaders asking you to do more with less. We are facing challenges we’ve never seen before.
And this isn’t exclusive to salespeople – almost everybody feels too busy, too much pressure, and burned out at work facing too long a “to do” list.
Just this week, I had a client call who was struggling with this very subject. Her team leaders had come to her and said they were drowning, really drowning, and they shared they could not seem to get a handle on everything they had to do.
Now, my client was a little taken aback. She felt like her team leaders really had no idea what “too much to do” was. I mean, had they seen her schedule? How could they be struggling, when their list of “get dones” was not nearly as long as hers? She was barely keeping her own head above water, how was she supposed to find the time to help her direct reports?
So, this is exactly what she was calling me about – how to help her team recover from burnout in the office, when she really couldn’t understand their challenge. I listened intently, let her vent, and as soon as she was finished, I asked her to take a breath before I told her the bad news. The bad news is that if her team was feeling overwhelmed and burned out, it was her fault.
Okay, maybe that is a little strong, telling her it was her fault. What I really meant was that if the team was feeling overwhelmed and burned out at work, it was well within her control to help them. That’s the good news.
Reasons People Feel Burned Out At Work
If you want to help your team avoid burnout in the office, you need to back-up and help them understand where these feelings are coming from. So what are the causes of burnout at work?
Well, there can be a long list of reasons, but the most popular are:
- Lack of clarity around priorities
- Not being held accountable
- Bad job fit
- Not skilled to do the job
- Lack of direction or strategy
- Too many meetings
- Dysfunctional workplace
- Challenges at home
- Lack of work life balance’
The good news? As a leader, you have control over most of these issues. Every reason, other than home life challenges, you can influence.
How To Help Your Team Beat Overwhelm and Burnout at Work
So how do you help your team beat burnout and overwhelm in the office, and defuse the top nine reasons for stress in the workplace?
Get Clear on Priorities
What to beat burnout at work? The first step is to ensure your team leaders and team members are clear on their priorities. Not their job description – their priorities. There’s a difference. A job description is a long list that includes everything they need to do in their role. The biggest problem with a job description is the last line is almost always “And anything else you are asked to do.”
So that means when your team members come to work, they are trying to balance what they think they should do, what you think they should do, and anything else anyone asks them to do. No wonder they feel overwhelmed.
Sit down with every team member and get clear with them on the top five things you want them to do or accomplish. Let them know that these are their priorities, and no matter what else they are asked to do, these top five need to take priority.
Team members are overwhelmed because they have no one to make decisions about what is vital to get done, what is nice to get done, and what does not really need to get done. By setting priorities, you provide the tools they need to make leadership style decisions.
Coach and Re-Prioritize
Encourage each team member to make lists, do braindumps, and create “parking lots” of things they have on their to-do list, and bring those lists to one-to-ones with you.
Encouraging them to make a list gives them the opportunity to release their worries and hang-ups. Then, by bringing that list to you in your weekly one-to-ones, you can work with them to improve their decision making.
Coach them through what is a priority, what matters, and what can wait. In today’s busy world, priorities change and shift. Rather than telling your team leaders what to do, you need to help them learn to prioritize on their own.
Manage Energy
Last but not least, if you want to recover from burnout in the office you need to help your leaders and team members understand themselves. Encourage them to read the early warning signs when they are feeling stressed, burned out and overwhelmed, and do what they need to do to refill their energy.
Hard work, extreme change and just the everyday life of leading a team depletes your energy – even when you do the tasks you love.
So, you need to be mindful of that, and know what you need to do to refill your energy. The more energy you have, the stronger you feel. The less energy you have, the more overwhelmed, burned out, and stressed you will feel. PERIOD!
So, let’s celebrate STRESS AWARENESS Month by taking charge of the challenges in the marketplace, and start controlling the challenges, rather than allowing those challenges to control you.
