Job roles and responsibilities can get really tiring for yourself and your team members. As a manager, team lead or business owner, there is every need for you to be in a position to help them handle the pressures. However, sometimes you have extremely burned out yourself. The question becomes how do you raise others from the river that is drowning you?
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Burnout can be terrible as it keeps you fatigued, unhealthy and disconnected from relationships. The major key to dealing with it is by facing it heads on and not sweeping it under the carpet.
In this article, we will be looking at practical steps to helping you deal with burnout within your team. Here’s how:
Obviously, before you consider helping someone else solve a problem, you must first of all, flush that very problem out of your own system. Your physical and mental health is paramount to your helping your team. You need to first take care of your health. Eat healthily, exercise regularly, sleep appropriately, engage in meditation, take a break and have some time for recreational activities. To a great extent, these will detox you of your own stress level and place you in the right position to help others.
After you must have identified and managed your health situation, you will have to show sincere concern for your team. Apparently, you have gone through the same phase of burnout, so you need to show that understanding. Don’t be hard on anyone. Burnout often causes slowness, inefficiency and lack of concentration. But this is not the time to condemn your team for regression, but the time to be compassionate. In all you do, let your team know you are in it together. It will give them the confidence to work on themselves.
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Set A Standard With Yourself
It is quite difficult to claim you are helping your team or even deal with burnout but you engage in activities that only succeed in increasing your stress levels. Know your limits and know when to take breaks. If you are overtly busy running from one meeting to another or simply juggling things, what message do you think you will be passing across to your team? You need to show a good example with yourself. Let your team know you are taking a chill pill and they will follow suit. Truthfully, even if you invest more work, as long as the team is burned out, effectiveness and efficiency are greatly jeopardized. Encourage your team to take regular breaks by taking yours.
Over time, this strategy has worked in helping leaders achieves zero-burnout teams. Working together is a good way to tackle this problem. You can organize shared activities that can help you and your teamwork on it together. You could learn meditation as a group, go for self-care programs together, have a team retreat, and enjoy fun activities together. Make dealing with burnout a team goal and watch how it will make your team and yourself accountable to each other.
Most times there is an underlining cause of burnout among team members. You need to identify it. It can result from deviation from company values, work overload and need for company staffing, a toxic work environment or even individual problems. As a team lead, you can only help your team by identifying the cause of their burnout it will be a great step in the right direction.
Learn to manage your own stress levels and know the cause of your team burnout. Don’t forget to also be optimistic and encourage them as much as possible. Your team and yourself will be glad you did.
Featured Image Source: Healthline
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This article was first published on 1st November 2021
chidiogo-akaelu
Chidiogo Shalom Akaelu holds a degree in English and Literary Studies, from the University of Nigeria. She is a freelance writer, editor and founder of Loana Press, a budding online publishing outlet.
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