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Hi Carolyn,
Quiet quitting, burnout, exhaustion. We're seeing these themes play out in organizations over and over again.
The biggest favour leaders can do for their employees is to assess their ability to react and respond to problems, challenges, and opportunities.
What I see as a significant contributor to burnout is when employees are constantly responding to the firefighting occurring in their organizations. When employees are being taken off of their important work that is rooted in thought-out planning and goal setting to react to their leader's latest best idea - this is what contributes to burnout.
What are my priorities? How do I prioritize when everything is a priority?
Whenever a client reaches out for training for their teams, the first question is, "What strategic objective is this training connected to?" If they can answer the question, I do a little fist pump. It means this training has been thought out and carefully decided upon to help build their teams. If they respond and say, "It isn't... we just want some team building", I know it won't be a long-term transformational engagement. But commonly, I'll take the training anyway because I love this work! Ha ha!
If your organization is experiencing burnout, quiet quitting, or exhaustion, I encourage you to slow down to consider:
- How good of a job are we doing at following our strategic plan?
- What is the overall mindset makeup of our team? Are we "fixed" thinkers rooted in the doom and gloom of today's external outlook, or do we have a "growth" mindset believing that no matter what the external outlook is, we have the resiliency and resourcefulness to adapt and change to the current climate?
- How often as a leader am I interrupting my employees' important work with my firefighting, reactive objectives, and impulsive ideas...be honest here.?
In challenging economic times, it can be easy to think we need to say yes to every opportunity that comes our way. But remember that this is fixed thinking and that there is a cost to saying yes. Sometimes saying no actually allows for a greater, more important opportunity to come your way.
Perhaps consider that saying no to that next tricky client or shiny opportunity is actually saying YES to your employees' well-being, and their ability to serve the amazing clients you already have.
What strategic objective is your employee request connected to?
What do you need to say no to in order to stay true to your important work and execute your strategy?
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