Burnout and Leadership

What is being a good leader?

I was having a conversation with an old colleague and continued dear friend the other day, and we started discussing this subject. She thought I was an exceptional leader, which was so lovely to hear, but honestly, I never believed that. I felt I simply operated in a way that was my role and responsibility, for example:

1. Hiring brilliantly, diverse and talented individuals that was far more superior and knowledgeable than me.

2. Giving my team the space to flourish, fail and knowing whatever their journey they had my backing and support.

3. Ensuring that everyone had clear and consistent communication. Making sure no department was left out in the distribution of messages, videos or team comms.

4. Getting up every day with a clear ambition and goal to make the team’s working lives easier, more enjoyable and help get behind them to drive the overall success of the business I led.

For me it was simple. It was creating that environment, driving clarity, reducing the noise and ensuring they focus on what matters.

Now for many years, this was my drug. I loved being needed, seeing their individual and collective successes, and helping to build and scales a business. My family were so incredibly supportive with work and travel commitments, me missing another parents evening or praying for rain so they cancelled school sports day. (I know bad Mama vibes there), but the way I saw the world, my work was something I felt good at that afforded my family all the things I didn’t have growing up and so much more. So, by placing work commitments ahead of family commitments sometimes that happened. I tried desperately to make it work, but sometimes Dave ‘my Husband’ played the parent card on behalf of both of us.

So, let’s go back to the initial question, what makes a great leader?

I’ve worked with many leaders over my career, and early on in my corporate career journey I recognised that some leaders actually can’t cope with the pressures. Either through fear or insecurity, they fail to sustain a psychological safe environment with to protect their teams. It’s not that they are bad people, they often don’t know how to navigate their own situation or to cope with the pressures and that can cause distrust, uncertainty and unpredictability that impacts on the employee experience. When things are damaged so greatly, employees will start to feel the stress, which can lead to absence or worse still they leave.

I was always very transparent with my teams about decisions I made, areas that were important to me and the Board, and when I made mistakes, I owned them, I’m human after all. What surprised me, more often than not, the greater the vulnerability and openness, I found further built the engagement and trust within the teams.

It’s not easy to vulnerable. It’s not easy being the leader either, but when you wake up every day determined to make the team great, it’s amazing what happens. So, what happens when you wake up and you’ve reached your physical limit. You’ve heard about burnout.

When you ask google what is Burnout this is the response:

‘Burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion. It is caused by prolonged or repeated stress. Burnout can occur in various areas of life, such as work, parenting, caretaking, or romantic relationships. It is characterized by feelings of emptiness, apathy, and hopelessness. One explanation for burnout is that it results from a chronic imbalance between job demands and available resources’

Since the pandemic we’ve seen more than ever the demands on people continue to grow. Businesses are looking to save cash, reduce resources and drive more. It’s something that any one of us can be impacted from. Now I have experienced micromanagement over my career which led to serious workplace stress, but it never stopped me working. It was however the rationale to move to another organisation when I recognised the signs. So, knowing what I knew, feeling that I can bring up 3 kids, run a household and support and lead a major corporation I would understand burnout and could manage it. My experience with burnout was the more like always being on.

I’d go to bed, and I dreamt I’d done a full day at work, waking up exhausted.

I’d have conversations with the kids and would be thinking of the 20+ things I still need to do before I close my eyes tonight.

I’d plan a weekend and realise that I was catching up with something I hadn’t finished that needed my focus.

I was continuously on. That seriously isn’t healthy, for your relationship, or you mental or physical health. Whilst I refused to admit that I was on a one way trip to real burnout, my stubbornness and sheer determination to be the person that the world sees as strong, determined, high energy, passionate about culture, I refused to believe I was actually truly needing a break from everything to focus on me before my body gave me the wake up call that I was refusing to hear.

Now to be completely clear, I didn’t have a breakdown or anything remotely that severe, but I did decide that I wanted to do things differently. So, I started with this list:

1. Take a proper break. Remove yourself from everything that gives you connection to what’s causing your angst. Your mobile devices, social media, everything.

2. Practice being present. It’s not easy with some highly functioning individuals, in fact it can be super hard. Be in the moment. For me, running and hot yoga were incredible support activities to really focus on my present thoughts.

3. Talk to people. It’s ok not to be superhuman. My family and friends were incredible support.

4. Reprioritise what is important to you. I did that with my day to day but then started planning my future bucket list.

5. Once you’ve taken the break revisit your new reprioritised list and check again post the break, if you feel the same way. For me, it was amazing what I learned about myself after a prolonged period operating in my new way. There were things I realised I’m great at and things I know I need to get back on my reprioritised list that initially I dropped. Such as a forecast call. Yes, I seriously miss a forecast call. Most folks shy away from them, but I truly miss them.

Nearing burnout or having burnout can be life similar to a true changing situation that needs the respect it deserves. Leaders, team leaders and employees can all experience it, and it’s so incredibly important to create opportunities for employees to share their experiences with their line managers or each other to retain great people within organisations. Equally, I believe more importantly, organisations and HR Leadership teams have a duty to review what’s being asked of their workforces and encourage trusting work environments where people can feel safe to share the support they need. Too often, I see CEOs advise ‘well we have EAP provisions in place’, but creating a culture of trust isn’t just one person’s responsibility, it’s every employee’s responsibility and it starts with company vision, values and how leadership teams drive their messaging throughout their organisations.