The Financial Times is always worth a look on a Monday.
This week, the ‘Working Lives’ space was used for an article on ‘burnout’ and offered ‘Five tips to avoid exhaustion’.
I’ll offer 2 very basic thoughts
1. Take responsibility for yourself and your own wellbeing.
Whether you’re starting out on your career or managing others, don’t expect anyone else to be looking out for you. It’s not that your colleagues are bad people. They’ve got other things to do. And you alone know what burdens you carry, what challenges you face, and how you’re feeling today.
At the junior end, no one else will keep count of how many different tasks are delegated to you or assess how realistic it is for you – with your level of knowledge and skills – to meet the deadlines you’re set.
If you’re the manager, each colleague who ‘just’ wants 5 minutes of your time won’t know what else you have to deal with.
You must provide your own first line of defence, because you’re the only one with the full picture of how your world looks and feels. You owe it to yourself to look out for the warning signs that tell you that the burden is becoming too heavy.
2. Find the right way to say No.
Now you need to communicate.
Imagine you’re driving a car. Do you scan the road ahead for hazards and try to keep things as smooth as you can for yourself and your passengers? Or do you leave braking to the last second, to get some real value out of those seatbelts? I suggest the first, more measured, course provides a better experience for all concerned.
It’s the same in your office. If you let your burden build to a crisis before you address it, you’ll unsettle your colleagues, you’ll divert attention and energy away from what needs to be done, and you’ll make your colleagues think twice before involving you in the future.
‘When does this need to be done by?’, ‘Can it wait until I’ve finished this other piece of work?’, ‘Can you help me to work out what I should do first?’. If you don’t help yourself by asking the right questions, before you know it you’ll have 10 things equal-top of your Urgent list, you’ll be privately stressed, and your colleagues will be none the wiser until it’s too late.
As a manager, you might feel besieged. You’re the person everyone comes to when they can’t sort things out for themselves. And if you let them, they’ll keep coming – with everything.
You have to find a way to say No so that you can do your job and not be overrun. Some managers react to this fear of the ‘stampede’ by making themselves unapproachable. Putting all-comers off talking to you will give you a quiet life, but you know that’s not the answer. You need to find a balance that works for you, in your firm, and with your colleagues. The starting point is to accept that the person responsible for designing how your job is going to work is you.