Why recognising Burnout is a critical skill in Leadership

Burnout can have greater consequences to business than we initially might think…

Burnout can affect you as a Leader and business owner, and has major detrimental effects on your staff mental and physical health. Recognising the signs and knowing what to do about it, before it gets critical, is an important skill for Leaders.

Long term burnout looks like emotional, mental and physical exhaustion, which is the result of prolonged stress. This can feel like constant fatigue and brain fog, lack of ability to concentrate and working less productivity, and it can also look like withdrawal - without getting a handle on burnout in yourself and your team, long term mental illness is a huge risk.

So let’s look more deeply at how we can identify burnout in our team and some of the strategies for preventing and dealing with it.

As a Leader, first and foremost, we must take personal accountability for recognising this problem. It's imperative we don't shy away from the 'hassle' burnt out employees present us, and instead step towards the issue as an opportunity to overcome it to the betterment of our business and the lives of our employees. Become cognisant of what's going for your employees, pay attention, particularly to changes in their behaviour at work that may signify they're becoming burn out such as absenteeism, lateness or withdrawal.

Secondly, we need to be willing to ask the hard questions! That's right, no good solution was ever found without asking what needs to be done to solve an issue - and this might get uncomfortable, cause conflict or confront you - as a Leader, personal accountability calls for you to lean into this regardless. This includes engaging with your team to really uncover the ROOT causes of their burnout. Are we overloading them? Are they feeling ill-equipped to meet our needs? Do we cut into their personal downtime with constant contact? Are we not challenging them enough to keep them really engaged? Are we not recognising and rewarding our staff for their efforts accordingly?

Developing a mindful and open communication style with our employees will allow them to feel safe in bringing issues like burnout to our attention. We can do this by encouraging them to give us feedback, asking them questions about how they’re coping with work demands and most importantly, by demonstrating our openness and willingness to be attentive and caring towards their needs. As Leaders, we must behave in a way that shows our staff there won’t be repercussions for them by bringing issues like burnout to our attention. If staff don’t feel psychologically safe to bring these issues to us, they can continue to worsen into long term mental and physical health concerns, not only affecting the lives of our employees and families, but increasing absenteeism in the workplace, decreasing productivity and negatively effecting workplace culture.

Lastly, providing motivation and recognition to our staff helps to build their intrinsic motivation and engagement with their role, keeping them appropriately challenged and rewarded for their efforts accordingly. Allowing staff to take enough breaks and encouraging vacation days also helps to minimize burnout and boost productivity as staff can reset both mentally and physically.

As a Leader, understanding burnout prevention for yourself and your team will keep the wheels on the bus turning, AND the right people on your bus! Humans are more productive when they're happy, engaged and healthy - making burnout is the opposite of what we’re aiming for.