How managers can break burnout habits for high performance

What are some of the things that I keep doing that keep making me feel more tired and more overwhelmed?
And, let's go one layer deeper now, what are the things that you're doing, and why are you doing them?
Welcome back to this week's episode of The High Performance Leader, the podcast for leaders working in complex, challenging environments to gain insights and ideas which help you increase your impact without burning out and to help you build a high-performance culture in your team. I'm your host Jimmy Burroughes, and if you're new to The High Performance Leader, make sure you subscribe or follow so you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes before you put down your device.
Hey, and welcome back to this week's episode of The High Performance Leader. This week, we're going to be diving deep on one of the topics extremely close to my heart, and it's how the power of your habits might be keeping you stuck in that cycle of burnout. And from personal experience, I can tell you that the habits that you have are extremely important when it comes to how you live your life and the way you are or aren't successful. And what we're looking for, of course, always is to prevent burnout from happening and to make sure that you can be maximum performance, maximum impact in a sustainable, long-term way.
So before we get into this, though, I think it's really important that we clarify the definition or what actually is burnout. For those of you who've read Beat Burnout - Ignite Performance, my book, we talk in great depth about the factors that can lead to you and your teams burning out. But burnout is not just stressed out or tired out or worn out. Burnout is when you've got this emotional, physical, and mental overwhelm that is essentially you living in the overdraft of your energy bank, and you keep dipping into it hoping that payday is going to rewrite the balance and that balance is going to come in the form of weekends or holidays or evenings. But as the time goes on, you gradually erode your energy so far that you can never get out of the overdraft, and that's where we start to see issues coming up, and that's where we start to see things like absenteeism, sickness, well-being challenges. High turnover start to be a problem. Engagement starts to become a problem. And these are all the things that we're looking for when we're supporting organisations with the Ways of Working programme. Essentially, it's diagnosing what's going on and putting in some customised solutions to stop that happening.
And you know, normally what we see is that leaders are essentially creating a rod for their own backs. They're sticking with habits that are causing them to burn out. So this week, we're going to dive a little bit deeper on that. What does it mean? What does it look like in reality? What are some common examples? And how can you start to get yourself out of those habits? Because this is not a great place to be. I can speak from personal experience. I can speak from the thousands of leaders that we've worked with when I say the journey to burnout is not a fun one, and the journey back can be challenging. And our goal is to keep you working, is to get you enjoying work again, is to keep you paying the mortgage, is to help you get the pay rises and promotions. So this is all about going from burnout to high performance by changing your habits.
Now, there's a beautiful quote that uh it was tail- I think it's from Samuel Johnson who says, "The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken." And you know, if you think back through your week that you've just had, how many of the things that you do are potentially making you more tired, more stressed, more exhausted, but you just keep doing them because, "We'll just get through this week and next week will be better," or, "We'll just get through this year and hopefully next year will be better"? Well, do you know what? I've got news for you. Things are not going to change until you start to change them. And so one of the things I really encourage you to do in this episode is to try and find examples where you're having habitual choices that are creating the life that you're living in, and we'll go a little bit deeper on that.
Now, as we mentioned, there's a significant impact of burnout on both individuals and on organisations, but what we focus on is the commercial impact, the well-being impact, the people impact. And when that commercial impact starts to bubble up into something really meaningful like lost dollars, lost promotions, lost opportunities, lost pay rises, lost customers, lost clients, lost staff, then people start to really pay attention to it. But while you're just making those little individual choices in your life, people probably aren't paying attention to you. So you have to pay attention to you, and that will start to make the change that we're looking for.
So what we've agreed so far, then, is that we're at the centre of most of the choices that create the habits that lead us to burnout. And you know, if I was to ask you a simple question like, how would you go from point A to point B? I have a lot of uh time living in New Zealand, and I often ask, "How do you drive from Auckland to Hamilton?" And 99.9% of people will either say, first of all, "I'd rather not," or, and no offence to anybody who lives in Hamilton, but equally, there was only really one way to go, which is State Highway 1. So most people use State Highway 1. And it's a habit to take State Highway 1. There are other possible routes, and you could go more circuitous, or a longer way, or on a smaller road, but the principal route to choose is State Highway 1.
And your brain does exactly the same thing. When you are trying to solve a problem, communicate with somebody, deal with a challenge, overcome something, work under pressure, your brain chooses the State Highway 1 equivalent from Auckland to Hamilton. It chooses the principal route that it thinks is going to get there faster. And because you've had a lifetime of reinforcing using that State Highway 1 in your brain, your brain rewards you when you use it because you feel like you've done something good.
And this is where the challenge starts to happen because we get rewarded for working hard, for working longer. We get recognised for that, so we keep doing it. We get rewarded for solving problems and fighting fires, and so we keep doing it. And it becomes our default operating system to make these choices, which can lead us into burnout.
Equally, there are choices that you will be making because you don't know a different way. You don't know a better way. You don't know about that secret new motorway that's been built around the back of the bypass that will get you there much quicker with lots less traffic and a lot less stress, because what we see equally in our research is a an underinvestment in leadership to help you manage your habits more effectively.
So we want to help. We want to help you get this right, and the Ways of Working programme that we work on with organisations all over the world now is exactly that. It's helping teams and leaders shift their habits in the way they work together, so they can create high performance. We start to understand the triggers to some of the choices that they're making, which are prolonging those habits, which are making things worse, which are eroding trust, and we help them to fix them. And we measure all of the things that you would look for in culture and in business performance that start to show whether it's making a difference, and we make significant difference to organisations both in engagement and in bottom-line results. What we're looking to do, though, is to help people reframe their choices.
Jimmy: Hey there, Jimmy here, and I just wanted to drop in to this episode and let you know we're extremely grateful for all the incredible reviews and feedback that we're getting about the Ways of Working podcast. We've managed to get ourselves, amazingly, into the top 10% globally of all management podcasts, which is an absolute dream for me to be able to share the Ways of Working message across a wider community.
I wanted to share a quick review from one of our listeners, because it's absolutely incredible and inspiring to those people that we're trying to reach and communicate with. From Pinnacle Coach, "Jimmy is a great, natural interviewer, and his background helps him to ask some really good questions. I've enjoyed a couple of the episodes from here and always come away feeling inspired for my own work." Pinnacle Coach, thank you so much for that incredible review. We really appreciate it, and if you haven't already, make sure you subscribe or follow on your favourite podcast platform of choice to the Ways of Working podcast, and we'll see you soon. Take care.
The author Will Durant said that, "We are what we repeatedly do." So excellence or high performance, then, is not an act, but it's a habit. So you can't just be high performance, you have to continually work at becoming high performance, and that is through your habits. So equally, if you're continually working at becoming burned out and overworked and overwhelmed, then that becomes the life that you live, and you are repeatedly trying to burn yourself out.
So I'm going to dig a bit deeper now on one of the case studies that we have just recently finished up, which is essentially about the idea of what causes burnout. Well, it's workaholism, and that might be one of your habits. Are you that person who spends all of their evenings and weekends online? Are you trying to stack up your leave because you don't believe that there's time, or or a window of opportunity to take a break? Are you the person that's always online? Are you always available? Are you always sending emails at 9:00, 10:00, maybe even midnight, 1:00, 2:00 in the morning? I remember when I was a GM, that's what I used to do. I'd be up at 4:00 a.m. sending emails. If something came in while I was watching TV at night, I'd be responding to it straight away. And it's these little habits that create the workaholism that we're trying to avoid.
We also see with workaholics and people who burn out is they often take on too much. They're overcommitting their resources. That could be the new projects where you're taking on more than you can handle. It could be not being able to delegate tasks, so you're involved in everything, you have to be everywhere all the time, or it might be just not trusting your team to take care of it themselves. You know, set them up for success, and let them shine, because let's face it, when you were starting out, the way you got to your role now was somebody took a chance on you and gave you an opportunity to shine. So why are you depriving those people around you of those same opportunities? It's because you're micromanaging, and it's because you want to be involved in everything, and maybe you don't trust them, or you don't have those people available to you right now, or you just haven't worked out how to leverage what's around you.
This probably means you're feeling quite tired. If you're listening to a podcast about burnout and the habits that you have, chances are you're thinking, "Hmm, I'm struggling with something here." Maybe you're tired, exhausted. I used to think it was like wading through mental treacle trying to make a good decision, trying to get myself the energy to go to work the next day, and it can really be a challenge.
So those habits are the choices you're making, and the only way you're going to start to change them is to start to change your habits.
So what do those habits look like for you? What are the things that you continually do that lead you deeper into the overdraft? Are you the one who's overcommitting? Are you the one that's not taking time out to refresh and restore your mind? Are you the one that gives up all of your gym, and hobby, and exercise, and well-being routines because, "I need to get this ready for the meeting in the morning"? Are you the one that's struggling with setting your priorities, and so you're just trying to do everything and be everywhere all at once? Are you the one that can't say no?
It's these habits that are causing you the challenge. It's these that are leading you deeper into burnout, and it's these, the ones that we want to try and help you change.
So the first thing I recommend you do is you start taking a look at the habits that you have. Maybe grab a notepad and pen, or you might want to do it in your iPad or in your phone, and just jot down, what are some of the things that I keep doing that keep making me feel more tired and more overwhelmed?
And let's go one layer deeper now, what are the things that you're doing, and why are you doing them? Often, we see this is caused by fear, maybe fear of being fired, fear of rejection, fear of not being seen as knowledgeable enough, fear of being seen as unimportant, fear of loss of control. Whatever those things are, once you can label them and identify them, you can start working on that fear, because often our habits are driven by beliefs, and it's the beliefs that we have, or the, "I believe that this is going to lead me to be fired if I don't do it," that's what's causing you, pushing you in the right direction. And your brain's really cunning. You're essentially a drug addict for dopamine, the challenge chemical, where you're like, "Oh, this is exciting. I need to do it," or, "If I don't do it, I'm going to be scared." So your brain is constantly reinforcing that you need to keep doing these things, and it will be very convincing. It will be almost like the little devil on your shoulder who tells you that if you don't do this, this is going to happen. But the reality is you can start to change it. You just need to change your conversations and start changing your choices, and it can be so difficult, but it is possible. And we have countless research projects and case studies of leaders who have gone on this route. Equally, if you're seeing your team doing the same thing, then maybe consider the Ways of Working programme to move people out of the habits that they've previously had into some new, more productive ones.
So these habits that you've got, why are you doing them? What's causing you to do them? And what would be a more productive version of that? So if it's maybe being the workaholic, what would it look like not to be the workaholic? And how can you achieve that? Because the reality is again, if you don't change it, it won't change. So how can you change that fear, initially? Do you need to go and have a conversation with somebody to say, "This is what I'm worrying about. Can we talk that out?" Or is it the conversation around you saying no? Or is it the conversation around you setting priorities? Or is it the conversation where you delegate something to your team, and you support them to deliver it, you let them shine?
Whatever that thing is, that's the why I'm scared of not doing this habit, or I'm scared of doing this habit, and the how might you change it, and what might that look like? If you can get that right, you start to see a shift.
The final piece of the puzzle, then, is what might trip me up? Where are those moments where old habits are going to come back? Where are those moments where I'll slip back to the default setting that I've always used because I've got 20, 25 years of habit doing this way? Is it that when your boss comes in and says, "I really need this tomorrow," and so you work through the night to deliver it? Is that one of those moments? And how are you going to anticipate that coming and make sure you don't slip back?
Because every time you slip back, you go back to almost square one. It's not as bad as that, but it might feel like that to you. So you want to try and gain that momentum of, what is the habit that's holding me back, why is it being caused, what would a better version of that look like, and how can I make sure I keep on track to achieve that? And then we might start to see some change.
And if you'd like some help with it, if you want to talk it out, then reach out to me or one of my team, and let's get on a call where we can just help you map out some of these habits that might be stopping you and help you identify some alternative ways of moving forward. We'd love to help people doing this, and so it is really important sometimes to have a second perspective, or a sounding board that you can just check in with.
So this week, we've talked all about habits, the habits that are causing you to burn out, the choices you're making, and the life that you're creating are the result of you. If you want to see something different, you need to do something different. And if you'd like some help with it, we're more than happy to help. But hopefully, we've given you a four-step process there that you can follow to map out those habits, map out the reason for those habits, find an alternative way, and overcome any barriers that might be into sustaining that new behaviour.
Speak soon. Take care, and I'd love to hear if you're getting some use out of that framework and if it's working for you. Take care.
That's it for this week's episode of The High Performance Leader. If you enjoyed this episode, please drop a review on whichever platform you listened on. We really appreciate it, and it helps us to connect with new listeners. Also, if you haven't already, head to jimmyburroughes.com and download a copy of my latest best seller, Beat Burnout - Ignite Performance. It's the leader's playbook for building a high-performance culture, and it's packed with practical action tips to get you started. Stay tuned for next week's episode of game-changing insights and ideas on The High Performance Leader.