In our last post, we defined organizational burnout as what happens when an organization’s choices—whether intentional or not—undermine the wellbeing of its team. The result? Exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficiency. Now, we’re following up with six actionable tips to help you prevent burnout and that kind of culture from taking root. These aren’t a checklist, but a starting point. Every organization is different, so tailor these ideas to fit your environment and risk areas.
Prevent burnout by Setting Clear Objectives
Hopefully your team has goals for the quarter or year that they are working toward. Are those goals SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely)? Consider whether those goals are connected to business outcomes or customer impact. Does the language in the goal answer the question “Why does this goal matter?” Also consider how you will measure progress and success in a business-impact-connected way? How much harder do you work when you can see the progress? Finally, with clear, business driven objectives. This empowers your teams to make course corrections and achieve the core “Commanders Intent” rather than slavishly adhere to a tactical goal that may have become irrelevant.
Then, help the team connect their individual contributions to the mission. Often, there is – at a minimum – a perceived gap between individual goals and contributions and organizational goals. As a leader, connect the dots for your teams so they understand how each piece they contribute is critical to the success of the whole. Recognize them for their contributions and clearly communicate how those contributions connect back to the goals, mission, and purpose of your organization.
Read more about crafting a great team mission here.
Provide Clear Expectations
Disappointment is the gap between expectations and what actually happens. If I expect my husband to take out the trash, but I never ask him to take out the trash (or have some explicitly or implicitly agreed upon trash routine), then he isn’t going to do it. And I will be disappointed. That disappointment is my fault for not communicating what I need rather than his fault for not reading my mind. If we never have that conversation, my constant negative emotion will turn our household culture into a distinctly negative one primed for burnout.
We prevent burnout by communicating expectations both ways. I clearly communicate what output I expect of you; and you clearly communicate, in return, what is required to achieve that output. As a leader, I must be open to the idea that my expectations might not be realistic. The employee who does the job every day is the expert, so engage in open discussions about expectations. Then ensure that you properly resource those objectives and expectations. If resources don’t match what is needed, one or the other must be adjusted to avoid burnout.
Read more about creating psychological safety to make these conversations possible here.
Protect Employees
Protect employees from the churn at your level to enable them to work with the appropriate degree of focused urgency. By creating and maintaining stable organizational goals, mission, vision, tenets, and a healthy workspace, employees can spend their time getting work done rather than trying to cope with yet another change. An engineer doesn’t necessarily care about the drama of ongoing customer contract negotiations. They care that they will get paid on time and that they are working on the right things to be successful into the future. A business analyst doesn’t necessarily care about the details of the annual budget cycle, so long as they know that leadership will fund work that makes sense.
Read more about building leadership presence to inspire this confidence here.
Provide Transparency
Provide adequate transparency and information so that employees are empowered to make the best decisions for themselves, their families, and the company. As an example, if a company is changing strategy from an energy management company to a crypto-mining company, that (along with the strategy to execute that transition) should be clearly communicated so that employees heavily invested in energy management can make decisions optimized for their happiness (and employees that are excited about crypto-mining can do the same!). By providing transparency, you show that your talk and walk match, reducing instability during change. Instability and change do consume mental real estate for everyone affected, so the more clarity you can provide during transitions, the easier it will be to prevent burnout.
This tip and the previous one (protect employees) are admittedly opposites of each other. How do you decide what to hold close to the chest versus what to share? This requires finesse. Consider whether communicating the change will create more or less stability than not communicating it. For example, decisions already made should be communicated, while “maybes” probably shouldn’t (unless you need help making the decision).
Read about navigating ambiguity as a leader here.
Align Decisions with Values
Make sure that your decisions as a leader align with the values that you and the company claim to have. Do you know what your values are? Can you look at the decisions you have made as a leader over the past month and map them to your personal core values? Do you consider the stated values of your company while making decisions?
Then, consider communicating how the decision you have made connects back to your or your company’s core values. Employees will always speculate about why certain decisions were made. Make it so they don’t need to waste mental energy wondering.
Read more about creating a company culture here.
Model Behavior
Model the behavior you would like to see. Seek first to understand and support hard conversations with respectful dialogue. Humans don’t want to be treated as disposable or insignificant. All of us desire to be heard and respected. The behavior we model as a leader will trickle down throughout the organization to fight the great majority of Nick Petrie’s 7 attributes of a high-burnout organization (plus my 3).
As a reminder, here are the ten attributes of a high-burnout organization:
- High workload, insufficient resources
- A culture of fear, threat, or emergency
- Treating people like expendable resources
- A system designed for insecurity
- Lack of support from above
- The talk doesn’t match the walk
- People don’t talk about burnout around here
- Poor communication/vision
- Unclear expectations
- Little opportunity for growth and purposeful contribution
What Should I Do?
These tips are generic. You and your leadership team will need to reflect on the best way to reduce exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy in your organization. Cairn Leadership offsites are a creative way to facilitate this reflection in the outdoors. Our experiential learning model will kick-start step-function leadership evolution. Reach out here today to create your custom leadership team experience.
