How Self-Awareness Can Prevent Burnout
A friend and I were recently discussing her feelings of burnout at work.
After listening to her story, I occured to me that many of us have experienced something similar. Maybe you’ve found yourself in a place reminiscent of what she describes.
For many months she had been feeling tired, as if she could never catch up on demands. She described a lack of motivation, and admitted she was not always performing with the excellence that she had in the past. While she knew these feelings and behaviors weren’t normal, she chalked it up to the extra stress of the pandemic, a new baby and other significant life changes. She believed if she could just white-knuckle her way through, she would get over the hump and things would get back to normal.
With these things in mind, she approached her yearly evaluation with some trepidation.
Even so, she was certain she was still meeting expectations. It then came as an unfortunate surprise to hear her boss, as well as others on the leadership team within her company, felt she needed to work harder. Their instruction was to simply find a way to manage the stress and start working harder…or find another job.
While she knew she hadn’t been at her best, she was still surprised by their response. Under the weight of everything she was already juggling, she wasn’t sure she could find the energy to work even harder.
There are so many lessons we could take from this story.
There is much to learn about leadership and caring for those on your team when considering my friend’s experience. In addition, it speaks to how to motivate people when they are underperforming, and even how to communicate with your own boss when you’re experiencing times of prolonged stress. However, I keep coming back to the same question.
How do we recognize the signs of burnout before we experience its significant effects, and what can we do to manage it for healthier, better results?
I believe self-awareness is the key. Better understanding ourselves, our motivations and our limits is essential in preventing burnout. The problem is that greater self-awareness feels like an elusive goal. It seems simple and straightforward, yet tends to always appear slightly out of reach.
Here are four practical tools to grow self-awareness:
- Journaling. The act of reflection, and specifically documenting your thoughts, can lead to important points of discovery. Too often we allow the demands of the day to take over without pausing. We need intentional moments of quiet to reflect on what happened during the day. It’s easy to lose sight of how we reacted in those situations, how they made us feel and whether we achieved positive results.
- Asking for feedback. Often, we need the thoughts of someone we trust to help us gain perspective and a realistic representation of what’s going on. Learning the art of asking good questions and being intentional about seeking feedback can lead to important self-discovery.
- Utilize assessment tools. At Milestone, we often use the Birkman Method, but there are a number of quality personality assessment tools available. When used well, these tools can offer a number of valuable insights and language for important personality characteristics.
- Know your triggers. Too often, burnout happens because we can’t accurately identify our triggers for stress or manage our emotions to those triggers in a healthy way. When you’re reflecting and journaling, take note of the reoccurring emotions and themes. Can these lead you to repeated triggers? Once you’ve identified the triggers, experiment with different ways of managing them. When we learn to manage our emotional triggers, we will undoubtedly reduce stress.
Are you currently experiencing symptoms of prolonged stress and are you being intentional with how you manage it? How can these simple suggestions help?
If our Milestone team can ever assist you along your journey as a leader worth following, we’re here.
Written by: Stephanie Brown, Operations Manager – Milestone Leadership