6 Ways To Prevent Leadership Burnout
Effective ways to help prevent leadership burnout in your organisation or business.
Sadly, management burnout is a chronic issue in today’s workforce and business. Especially for leaders, managers, and coaches who have with the added responsibility of leading others. One survey reveals that 66% of leaders experience burnout, with stress as a prominent factor. For many reasons, leadership has become far more demanding and exhausting.
Leadership Burnout And Long-Term Health Challenges
Unfortunately, leadership burnout is a major cause of disease, health and wellbeing challenges, and work absenteeism. It is a big cause of health issues for many small business owners, CEOs, life coaches, and business coaches. Who have not yet learned how to juggle a healthy work and life balance, deal with their stress more effectively. We just need to see the dramatic increase in chronic fatigue disorders in female leaders and female managers. And how much chronic fatigue impacts their quality of life, even their ability to work to see how much leadership burnout has to be addressed.
6 Tips To Eliminate Leadership Burnout
Top tips to reduce and eliminate leadership burnout in work and business
Maintain a healthy diet
Many leaders forget to take breaks, skip meals, or simply eat on the run. This is a habit you should avoid, after all, eating regularly and maintaining a healthy balanced diet has been proven to result in a lower level of burnout symptoms. This is because the stomach and central nervous system are tightly linked.
When healthy food is consumed, the brain takes this as a good sign and allows for positive mood changes. Before your workday starts, plan your meals. Include fruits, vegetables, carbohydrates like bread, and protein in your dishes. At work, make sure you take breaks to eat and rest, skipping meals can put all sorts of stress on the body especially our sugar levels, If you struggle to take regular breaks, then at least healthy snacks on hand like nuts or chopped fruit. Remember to stay hydrated, as this is a part of maintaining your health for burnout prevention.
Become more mindful
One common strategy that is being taught to reduce employee, management, and leadership stress is mindfulness. The more present and mindful you are as a leader, the easier it is to lead from a place of empowerment and ease, than a state of disease. The more you learn to slow down and focus on one task or person at a time, the more mindful you will be of your thoughts, actions, and reactions. This naturally improves a leader’s awareness of self and others and helps improve communication skills.
Set boundaries at work
As a leader that people depend on, you may have a difficult time rejecting additional tasks or favours that are outside your workload or pushing your limitations. Unhealthy boundaries can be a common cause of burnout because it burdens you with more responsibility and more external pressures from external sources outside your usual workload. To conquer this, learn to say no to additional tasks. Know your responsibilities at work and stick to doing those. To politely decline, you can tell the person “Sorry, but I already have prior commitments” or “Sadly, I am not qualified for that type of task”. Acknowledging your limits and learning to say no, can help reduce and prevent the extra stress that can lead to burnout.
Properly distribute tasks
Micromanaging is a habit that many unhealthy controlling leaders fall into. Because they want everything to be perfect and according to their standard, they tend to hover over everyone and their jobs. However, trying to manage every little thing can quickly cause you to burn out. Instead, communicate to your team your goals and visions. Tell them how you want a project to turn out and why it has to turn out that way. When you do this, they will know exactly what you want to see. As a result, they’ll perform their tasks in a way that reaches your goals. You are then able to better trust your team and properly distribute tasks, thus preventing burnout.
STOP and take breaks
Working through lunch and tea breaks is an unhealthy habit that many too leaders and employees fall into. This chronic busyness and often inability to switch off and relax is a major cause of chronic anxiety, chronic stress, and chronic burn-out. It is important to lead by example and take time to switch off throughout the day. Even short 5-minute breaks can help move the mind, body, and emotions off the stress response. That is why daily breaks are an important part of helping to eliminate burnout and stress.
Learn how to relax
Different forms of relaxation and relaxation therapy have been proven to reduce stress in individuals. In a test group of people who performed muscle relaxation techniques, it was found that their stress and anxiety lessened after the activity. Take time to practice relaxation techniques to prevent leadership burnout. Progressive muscle relaxation techniques can help.
Some are a simple two-step process that only takes 10-20 minutes. The first step is to tense particular muscle groups in your body, such as the neck and shoulders. Next, release the tension and pay attention to how your muscles feel as you relax them. This helps lower overall tension and stress, helping the body enter a state of relaxation. As a leader, you are vulnerable to experiencing burnout due to your responsibilities. However, you can conquer this using the natural ways listed above and will soon be back in top leadership shape.
Why Leadership Burnout Can Be Prevented And Reduced
As a leader, you may feel more vulnerable to experiencing burnout due to your responsibilities. But like everything in life, it is how you manage and deal with those responsibilities. With the right working habits, the right lifestyle, and the mindset you can prevent leadership burnout.
As a company you can do what you can to reduce leadership burnout in your company leaders, your managers and CEO’s. You can do this by implementing good stress management education and awareness. By encouraging and supporting a healthier work environment for all employees and management.
