When business leaders, managers, and high performers start to feel the stress of long hours and lack of institutional support, the problems can cascade throughout your entire organization. If absenteeism, high turnover, or detachment is beginning to set in in your office setting, you may need to consider how acceptance and emotional regulation can prevent burnout, for you and the members of your team.
Why Do High-Performing Leaders Burn Out?
Many entrepreneurs, business owners, and other leaders assume that their passion for their work insulates them from becoming burnt out. The truth is that the opposite is likely true. According to a 2020 Gallup report, 76% of all workers experience burnout on the job, at least some of the time, with over a quarter saying they are “very often” or “always” burned out at work. High-performing workers, and people in particular high-stress industries with emotionally demanding jobs, were especially vulnerable. Similarly, managers often felt as though they were working without a safety net or sufficient support. The truth is, burnout isn’t just caused by hours on the job, but your motivation and support, as well as your ability to emotionally process the stresses around you.
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Recognizing and Accepting Burnout
Burnout is a profound sense of exhaustion that affects your mind, body, and drive to do things, even things you believe to be essential to your organization’s success. In the workplace, experiencing burnout means you are simply unable to meet the demands of your job. You may describe it as feeling like you are sinking or getting pulled under by the stresses of your work. Depending on the person, and their role in the organization, burnout can look like:
- Elevated stress
- Physical exhaustion or chronic fatigue
- Feeling emotionally drained or detached
- Cynicism
- Irritability and argumentativeness
- Pessimism about your work or coworkers
- Passivity and a lack of motivation
- Withdrawal from social networks (including coworkers)
- Reduced feelings of accomplishment
- Imposter syndrome or reduced self-worth
- Feeling ineffectual
- Reduced productivity and effectiveness
- Absenteeism
- Physical illnesses including headaches, digestive issues, or changes to sleeping or eating patterns
- Aggravated mental health issues
The first step to addressing burnout is to recognize when it is happening. Many leaders and business owners will try to push through the hard times, assuming that stress will pass, or that regular headaches are just a part of the job. But recognizing and accepting burnout as a real part of the job is essential to recognizing and dealing with the difficult emotions influencing your actions.
How Emotional Regulation Can Prevent Burnout
One of the biggest ways that psychologists help their clients prevent burnout is by teaching them emotional regulation techniques. This can include:
Boundary Setting:
Drawing clear lines between work hours and non-working hours helps prevent burnout by giving you time to relax and improving focus while on the clock. While it may seem counter-intuitive, workers often get more done by working fewer hours, simply because they have enough time to recharge. In addition to the numbers of hours worked, boundaries can also involve when and how communication will happen.
Mindfulness:
Being aware of your emotional state as it is happening can make it easier to respond to the stressors that cause burnout. Mindfulness encourages you to stay emotionally centered and focusing on the present, rather than letting your mind ruminate on past mistakes or worry about future challenges.
Stress Management Techniques:
Burnout is often a result of a prolonged high-stress working environment. Sometimes there is nothing you can do to manage client expectations or manage deadlines. When stress is high, knowing how to respond to it can help you regulate your emotions, keeping you from losing your motivation. Meditation, muscle relaxation, journaling, and other stress management techniques can help reset your stress levels and keep you focused.
Healthy Life Habits:
Self-care routines including sleep schedules, nutrition, exercise, and social connections can all improve your emotional regulation and avoid irritability, poor health, and burnout. Living a health-conscious life isn’t just about staying fit or dieting. Healthy habits including diet and exercise also improve your ability to respond to work stresses, reduce depression and anxiety, and regulate emotional responses like irritability and frustration.
Reframed Perspectives:
Burnout can make negativity feel like a way of life. Stress can easily become overwhelming, and you can feel like you will never escape your to-do list. Using psychological techniques for changing your perspective about the problems you face can help turn down the volume of self-doubt and negativity, giving you a chance to get out from under the emotional weight of burnout. For example, breaking tasks into manageable pieces, or blocking out times in your schedule can give you a feeling of accomplishment, allowing you to celebrate the small wins of tasks getting done.
Taking Breaks:
Being constantly plugged in to your work isn’t healthy for your long-term productivity. Staying on-call 24/7 is a fast track to burnout and feeling overwhelmed. Healthy emotional regulation requires stepping away sometimes, whether for everyday lunch breaks (away from your desk), regular vacations, or taking a “time-out” to let strong emotions reset.
Highlighting Success:
Another key part of emotional regulation involves counteracting the negativity that comes with burnout. By highlighting your successes and celebrating your wins, you can interrupt the narrative that your job is terrible and you aren’t good enough.
Asking for Help:
Burnout is often at its worst when workers feel unsupported or isolated in what they do. This is especially challenging in remote working environments where employees are working from home, cut off from coworkers, managers, and others who could otherwise provide support. While there are online communications tools to keep everyone connected, it can be easy for a stressed-out employee to simply hunker down, remain isolated, and then feel like they can’t ask for help.
If you recognize that you are becoming burnt out, asking for help may be the key to interrupting that feeling. That could mean reaching out to a colleague, requesting support from a manager, or working with an executive coach. Even commiserating with your coworkers about an unreasonable client can help you regulate your emotions and keep a broader perspective about your work.
The danger of burnout in professional environments is real. By accepting the impacts of stress and proactively regulating your emotions, you can improve your psychological flexibility and keep you and your team on the path to success.
David Stanislaw and Karen Sherwood are leadership and executive coaches with 70 years of combined experience. Together, they apply their psychodynamic training and extensive experience to help leaders, business owners, and employees develop skills to fight burnout and improve performance. Contact us to meet with Stanislaw Consulting today.
This post was written by a human without the use of AI. Stanislaw Consulting does not consent to the use of its online content to train large language models or other forms of artificial intelligence.
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