How managers can overcome overwhelm and prevent burnout

Jimmy: So, we've talked today a little bit about the concept of overwhelm. Overwhelm is something that creeps up on you. It isn't something that suddenly is there in front of you. It starts to chip away and chip away. And we kind of use the analogy of a whirlpool. You can get out of overwhelm really quickly when you're not too deep. But when you're really overwhelmed, it can be very hard to get out of and that can significantly drive you towards burnout. 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. Hello, and welcome back to this week's episode of The High Performance Leader. Um this week, we're going to be doing another solo episode where we go a little bit deeper on one of the topics that keeps coming up in conversation when we're talking to leaders about how they can be more impactful and gain greater results. And this week's topic is all around the concept of overwhelm. And for those of you who listened to the previous episode, which was the A E I O U signs and symptoms of burnout, you'll have seen overwhelm talked about a little bit there. But this week, we're going to go a bit deeper on that, and really get into the prevalence of overwhelm in the day-to-day of leaders who are working through their performance journey. If we really try to understand what overwhelm is, it's when you feel like there's just too many things coming at you and you're maybe not even sure where to start. Or you're not sure which task, of the many tasks, you should be focusing your energy on. So, you try and tackle all of them at once. You know, the modern leadership landscape is now so full of challenges, all of the easy things have been fixed, all of the layers of management have been stripped out. So, now what's left is a high-tempo BAU with some really crunchy, challenging problems for you to fix on a day-to-day basis. Equally, as the world becomes more VUCA, volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, what we're seeing is some real challenges in the leadership skills and training that people have received to deal with some of these challenges. And you know, one in four leaders ends up in a leadership role without any formal training. That's concerning, right? Uh and if you're one of those people who maybe been on a Management 101 course a few years ago, but you haven't actually had any leadership training, perhaps you are not fully equipped to deal with the modern day. This can create a real mismatch between what your role is asking of you and the tools and skills that you have to be able to do that role really effectively. And is there any wonder why you're struggling a little bit? This has been corroborated by some great research by Jack Zenger who said that there's a 16-year gap, on average, between people's first leadership role and their first leadership training. So, let's not confuse this with their first management role. This is their first leadership role and the first leadership training they get. And the first leadership role tends to be around the age of 26. They don't get leadership training until they hit 42. Uh and this is, again, this is averages across a wide body of research. But that means for 16 years, you're just kind of making it up and winging it as best as you can. And understandably, that can create a bit of pressure. Equally, what we see are what we call accidental managers. And a surprising 82% of bosses are accidental managers. They've been promoted into that position because they were the best salesperson, or the best marketer, or the best individual contributor. And they weren't prepared, or that bridge was not built for them. They weren't transitioned into their new leadership role, and the expectations of them are not set very clearly, and they weren't supported through that transition to be really effective. So, again, they tend to struggle. The final piece is just the sheer volume of stuff. The average manager now checks their emails 74 times a day, and they do what we call task switching 566 times a day. So, this is a phenomenal amount of supposed multitasking going on, which is actually not multitasking. It's kind of like one of those old dual cassette players that you used to own where you press play on one tape, then you press stop, and there's a little bit of thinking, and then you press play on the other one. And then you press stop and you press play on the first one again. That's actually what's happening. And the average person's doing that 566 times a day. Incredible amount of task switching, and each time we task switch, it uses a little bit of energy in our mind and it burns a little bit of the raw materials in our brains which creates biological byproducts that from breakdown and that causes us fatigue. And over time, if you're consistently doing that, we see less creativity, less ingenuity, less curiosity, because we're just that hamster on the wheel trying to survive. The final piece of um real research that comes out of um that really contributes to our belief that overwhelm is a significant challenge for leaders right now is Microsoft's research that talked about 50% plus of leaders being on the verge of burnout. And a significant piece of burnout is that absolute overwhelm. How do we deal with this? Because the consequence of these overworked, overstretched, undertrained leaders like you is that that's having a ripple effect on the business. Not only is it starting to cause you problems, but perhaps you're not leading as effectively as you could. Perhaps you are making less quality decisions. And maybe it's starting to have a financial, or an operational, or impact on the business around you. And I recall when I was a GM, I thought I was holding it all together, but as time went on, and I got deeper and deeper into that spiral of burnout, I suddenly realized that I was just hanging on by the fingertips uh or the fingernails, and I wasn't being the best version of me, and I was trying to be everywhere all at once, when actually I should have been taking a step back and thinking about where I really should be and where I should be putting my effort. You add to that that urgency for everything to be done now and the immediacy of the workplace, and is there any wonder why you are struggling and potentially your team is struggling. So, we need to find a way of dealing with this overwhelm. We need to find a a moment where we don't feel overwhelmed, and where our brain naturally starts to reprocess and and re- redefine the information we're taking in to allow us to have those creative moments, those insights. Hey, Jimmy here. Just wanted to drop in to this episode and let you know that we're so grateful for all of those reviews that you as listeners leave on our podcast. We put our hearts and souls into the podcast, and the guests we invite are absolutely fantastic. I wanted to share one review with you from a recent episode from Kelly. "Jimmy's experience and thoughtful dialogue provide a phenomenal canvas of learning opportunities from thought leaders in the industry. It was a pleasure both listening and participating. What a great resource to learn valuable tips and tricks to navigating impactful leadership capabilities." So, not only are we thrilled to have incredible guests on the show, but we're also absolutely overjoyed that it's having a positive impact on our listeners, like you, on The Ways of Working podcast. Speak soon. In chapter 5 of my book, now available on Amazon, we talk about the concept of downtime and switching between what we call our task processing network, our executive function, and our default mode network, our daydreaming function. And it's when we're in the daydreaming function actually all the magic happens. All of the things that are confused, and chaotic, and and all over the place in our minds, those problems we're trying to solve, those things we're wrangling with, they all get dealt with when we go into our default mode network and we actually let our daydreaming mode take over and our subconscious starts to work on things. And if you've ever had a really creative or brilliant idea when you're folding the laundry or washing the dishes, this is exactly why. But most of us aren't allowing ourselves that daydreaming time anymore. Most of us are watching the TV or trying to catch up with family, but we're also on our cell phones or we're checking a Google Doc or we're updating an email quickly. We don't go into that daydreaming mode and that contributes to this overwhelm. And so we need to find a way of consciously switching off and going into our default mode network, daydreaming mode, in order to allow that overwhelm to start to dampen down a little bit. So, how do you actually do that? Well, first of all, you need to really be clear on what is the purpose of your role as a leader. One of the things we see leaders who are overwhelmed uh very frequently is that they are involved in everything. They are the centre of all the decisions, they're the one solving all the problems, they're on all the projects, they're in all the meetings. And some of that stuff is not even their responsibility or their role anymore. Maybe they've inherited those things, or maybe they've kept hold of them from their previous job. And the activity that we often recommend is go back to your job description and take a look at what are you actually responsible for? Have a really good conversation with your manager. What are you actually expecting me to be doing? What does good look like for you? Because when you get very clear on the purpose of your role as a leader, you will notice that there are some things that that you perhaps enjoy doing, but they're not your role. That you're good at doing, but they're not your role. And maybe things that have made you famous on the way to this point, but they're not your role. They're things that should be delegated or handed off to somebody else or that you should let go and stop doing, because they're not your role. And immediately what we see when we go through this activity with leaders is they can reduce their work load by 20% to 30%, just by getting very clear on their role purpose and stopping doing the things that are starting to overfill the bucket. Because when you move into a leadership role, you take on a whole new set of responsibilities. You've suddenly got responsibility for people, maybe for a budget, maybe for some new things that you haven't got your head around before. And that can be very quickly overwhelming if you're still doing all of your old job and this new job. Equally, there's the necessity to learn how to prioritize. Again, if you're trying to be everywhere, do everything, answer all the problems, be in all the meetings, then you're probably not putting your best effort into the things that really matter. You're trying to be everywhere all at once. And from personal experience, I can tell you that doesn't work. And it's kind of do you want to be a wide a mile wide and an inch deep? Or do you want to be in a mile deep and an inch wide? And the truth is probably somewhere halfway between the two. But you don't want to be spread across everything really thinly. You want to be that weapon of of high impact, that when you put your energy, when you put your presence, and when you put your focus there, real results happen. Things that move the team, or move the business forward, actually happen. So, you've got to prioritize. We talk about how do you chunk your priorities down? Maybe think about here's my quarterly goals. In that quarter, I've got three one-month blocks. In each month, I've got four one-week blocks. And so what is my focus for this week on the big priorities? And how am I going to move those forward? Focus on those first, and then the other tasks will slot in around them. If you're focusing on your emails, and your meetings, and your calendar, and what I will call the the smaller consequen- in- inconsequential items versus your big strategic priorities, you're never going to get the big things done. But equally, you've got to be doing less to have more focus. The third piece that you can really tackle well here is learning how to delegate. And delegating is not just, "Here's a thing, can you go do that for me, please?" Delegating actually has a process. We teach a four-step process of explanation, demonstration, imitation, and practice. Which means after 7 to 10 times through that process with the person you want to delegate with, that they finally have absorbed the task you want them to do in roughly the way that you want them to do it, allowing for them to explore themselves. And they've been supported and transitioned through some of the variations that might come up through the variations of the scenarios that they're going to be facing on that thing you're going to be delegating. You're very rarely uh delegating a simple task. Do this, click this button, press this thing on the on the spreadsheet. Normally it's a variable process that has options and different ramifications if things go wrong or something can change. And so when you delegate, you also need to upskill them to allow them to do that. But equally, once you have delegated, it's time to step back, let them shine, let them learn, let them grow and experience things for themselves. Let them graze their knees if they need to. Because when you delegate, you also free up capacity. And just like a vacuum, when you free up capacity, that gives you a little bit of space and time to see, what are the most important things I should be focusing on? And then you fill your time back up with those new, more high impact tasks and priorities. So, the three things there to really go for is getting very clear on your purpose. What's your role, what's not. Getting very clear on your priorities. Where should you be putting your energy? And delegating and clearing space, making space for the activities that are going to allow you to have the most impact by handing some things off to other people. I really recommend you have a think about how you can achieve each of those three on a on a weekly basis, a monthly basis, and a quarterly basis to start to change the way you have impact. So, we've talked today a little bit about the concept of overwhelm. Overwhelm is something that creeps up on you. It isn't something that suddenly is there in front of you. It starts to chip away and chip away. And we kind of use the analogy of a whirlpool. You can get out of overwhelm really quickly when you're not too deep. But when you're really overwhelmed, it can be very hard to get out of and that can significantly drive you towards burnout. So, I hope that was a useful episode this week. I hope it was interesting for you to understand overwhelm a little bit more, three practical things you can do to start to reduce overwhelm, and make sure that you're talking to your boss, make sure you're talking to your team, make sure you're sharing some of these insights. And if you found this episode useful, please forward it on to somebody, or share it with somebody through a message or social media, because we really want to share this message of how can you become a higher impact leader, higher performing leader, and a leader who is less overwhelmed and less burned out. We want you to get that message out there and help us to share this message with other people. If you haven't already, as well, as I mentioned, Beat Burnout Ignite Performance is now available on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. Please head there and grab yourself a copy. It is a fantastic playbook which talks about this and many other topics, and I really recommend it. Speak soon. 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 bestseller, Beat Burnout, Ignite Performance. It's the leader's playbook for building a high-performance culture and is 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.