8 Simple Strategies to Avoid Leadership Burnout

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Are you feeling overwhelmed by your responsibilities and the amount of work that keeps piling up? If so, you may be heading for full-blown leadership burnout. 

·      According to a Gallup study, a whopping two-thirds of full-time workers have grappled with burnout.

·      The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified work-related burnout as both an ‘occupational phenomenon’ and a ‘syndrome’. 

How Do You Know if You Have Leadership Burnout?

With escalating stressors, speed, and supercharged connectivity encompassing the modern workplace, you may reach the point when you feel like you just can’t work another minute. 

Symptoms of burnout include feelings of exhaustion or energy depletion, a lowering of confidence, decreased motivation, and more negativism. Plus, there’s a higher likelihood that you’ll take a sick day. 

The Good News – Self Help for Leadership Burnout

You don’t have to give in to burnout. You can learn some ways to self-soothe when your job seems to be spiraling out of control or when you think you just can’t take it anymore. Here are eight tips to help banish that helpless feeling and put you back in control. 

1.    Pay attention to your breathing. As soon as you feel stress hitting, turn to conscious breathing – deliberately take several slow and deep breaths, and concentrate on your breathing. This helps to expel tension and prevent it from getting stuck in your body.

2.    Visualize your stress away. Envision a stream of pure white light coming from the top of your head and a flood of darkness flowing out from the soles of your feet. This is one of several visualization techniques to help reduce overwhelm and produce more positive and productive energies.

3.    Give yourself some comfort. Just as a mother might console her baby by patting his/her chest, you can comfort yourself by placing your hand over your heart. This behavioral shift can give you something to focus on by feeling your heartbeat and chest breathing in and out.

4.    Talk to yourself positively. Don’t allow fear-based or negative thoughts to get in the way of believing in yourself. Instead, shift negative self-talk to positive self-talk, e.g., This is only a transient situation. I will come up with the best way to handle it, and everything will turn out okay.

5.    Be your own witness. The whole you is bigger than any fear, anxiety, or self-doubt. Tell yourself: I am not this emotion. I can center and calm myself and free myself from this state of feeling overwhelmed. And I can bear witness to my own experience. If you can master this technique, you will relax and gain a new and different perspective.  

6.    Accept others’ behaviors, experiences, and actions as their own. Everyone deserves the dignity of walking their own path. By accepting this affirmation, you will more readily take people for who they are, appreciate their life experiences, and avoid taking their actions personally.

7.    Be self-compassionate. The way you think makes a profound difference in your life. So don’t beat yourself up when you feel overwhelmed; exercise a little self-compassion instead. Be gentle and kind to yourself. Allow yourself some personal time, nourish yourself with rest and relaxation. Cut yourself some slack and tell yourself that you’re doing the best you can. 

8.    Body Scan.  Imagine a scanner going from the top of your head to the bottom of your toes.  What are you feeling, seeing, hearing in your body as you go through the scan.  Focus on the specific areas of tension that you are noticing.

More Ways to Self-Soothe

Self-soothing means doing things that make you feel food. For example, spend time with family and friends, dote on your kids and your pets, take a nature walk, curl up with a good book, binge-watch your favorite TV show, savor a special drink or food, meditate, pray. Do whatever resonates with you.

·      Most importantly, understand that with some simple strategies and a little daily practice, you can self-soothe and stop leadership burnout. However, you may need some support from Shaping Development to help you with overwhelm. Working with a coach can help you avoid burnout and improve your leadership skills.

How Practicing Mindfulness Can Shape Development

The practice of mindful meditation has recently been very much publicized in the news and the interwebs lately, and for good reason.  In fact, I recently did an online search at a bookstore for the topic and it came up with 2,231 search results for book topics and related material!

Practicing these behaviors have been shown through empirically validated research to reduce stress and anxiety, and increase emotion regulation and focus (Davis & Hayes, 2011).  Steven Hayes also provides support for the practice of mindfulness within Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, an empirically validated intervention, which exists within the one of its six tenets: "Being Present (Hayes, 2004)." (see also  Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)* With the benefit of modern technology, the practices of mindfulness and meditation are no longer accessible to those traveling to far off places who participate in retreats or structured classes, as many applications and books provide support in the practice, teaching beginners and advanced learners.

I have to be honest, I was incredibly resistant to engage in mindful meditation.  However, as a highly (self-proclaimed) anxious individual, I read countless articles proclaiming its benefit  to increase productivity and decrease anxiety and stress...so I decided to give it a try.

I started to notice a difference in my thinking and reactive behavior after the first week, though I'll be honest, and I almost gave up after the first or second session.  I scheduled time first thing in the morning to block off five minutes where I would sit in silence and "practice" mindful meditation.  I focused on my breathing, and tried to simply "notice" my thoughts.  The first two sessions were a disaster, and my thinking just kept racing at quick speeds about everything I needed to do that day in my business.  The third day, I was on the verge of giving up, when it finally clicked. One of the practices of mindfulness, advises people to think of a metaphor of a "Passenger on a Bus," to practice noticing your thoughts.  In this metaphor, the person practicing meditation imagines that they are a passenger on a bus, and all the thoughts and feelings present in the mind, pass by out a window as if you are a "passenger on a bus."  As soon as I visualized that scenario, I was able to think more on my breathing, and react less to the thoughts and feelings occurring.  By the end of the first week, I already saw a difference in my thinking and reacting to stressful situations.  By the end of the second week, I was able to stretch the practice time to 20 minutes instead of just 5 minutes.

As a skill set, practicing mindfulness, shown through both research and my own experience, has allowed myself and others to access more information, focus on work, and reduce stressful thinking practices.  If all leaders: teachers, parents, and business executives learned to practice this skill, and then in turn teach the skill to those they lead, we could all develop new ways to combat stress and anxiety in our daily lives!

*Please Note: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. 

References:

Hayes, S.C (2004). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and the new behavior therapies: Mindfulness, acceptance and relationship. In S. C. Hayes, V. M. Follette, & M. Linehan (Eds.), Mindfulness and acceptance: Expanding the cognitive behavioral tradition (pp. 1-29). New York: Guilford.

Davis, D.M & Hayes, J.A.(2011) What Are the Benefits of Mindfulness A Practice Review of Psychotherapy-Related Research. Psychotherapy 48(2) p 198-208

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