How managers break the cycle of overwhelm and burnout

Jimmy: you are in for a journey of transition as you build this trust, as you learn to delegate, as you start to reclaim your time. But if you don't do it, what you're going to do is keep accruing monkeys on your shoulder. 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 solo episode of The High Performance Leader. It's a wonderful opportunity to get to have these conversations with leaders all over the world where we get to dig a bit deeper on some of the things that you may or may not be doing which are holding you back from the real impact that you want to have. And this week we're going to be talking about exactly that: breaking that cycle from being overwhelmed to being impactful. And it's funny, you know, we've spent the last couple of years really digging in the world of burnout and what causes burnout and how that leads to impact negatively on the performance and productivity of organisations and the people that work in it. And what we found through that research was generally one of the challenges was some really overwhelmed managers in the organisational structure. They had too many things going on. They had too many plates spinning. They were involved in too many projects with too many priorities and it was just too much. And the simplest way that we can explain burnout is when your accountability for delivery is exceeding your ability to deliver. And often what we find is that when these managers are overwhelmed, it's because their ability is being hampered by the accountability. They've got too many things going on, they've got too many expectations on their shoulders, and they don't think that there's hours in the day or time in the week to be able to put everything to bed. And that can cause some real stress and overwhelm for leaders because they start to feel like, maybe I'm not good enough, or maybe there's no point to this, or maybe any difference I'm doing is just a drop in the ocean. And we want to change that. We want to help you become a more impactful leader so you can feel more satisfied and engaged in the work you're doing, but also that you can engage and get better results from the team that work with and for you. So I guess the first question we need to answer is why do leaders feel compelled to take on more tasks than they can handle? You know, there's a great HBR article, there's a fairly old one now, which a good friend of mine Eric Girard talks about all the time, and it's called "Who's Got the Monkey?" And it talks about the leader that whenever anybody brings a problem to them, they take that problem and they put it on their shoulder and they feed that monkey. And over time, the number of monkeys on the shoulders of this leader start to grow. And they become overwhelming. The amount of time spent feeding the monkey takes away from that person's ability to do anything else. Now, if you can imagine you being that leader, the one who's taking on all the answers to questions that your team might have, all the decisions that need to be made in the team, solving all the problems, swooping in to save the day and depriving those people in your team from the opportunity to learn and grow as they encounter those problems. This can be pretty counterproductive to the growth and the team dynamic that you're probably wanting your team to do. Often I meet leaders who are really overwhelmed and I hear statements like, "I just wish that my team could do everything I need them to do, but I always end up doing it", or "I always have to step in and solve all the problems because there's nobody in my team who knows how to do it", or "I wish they'd just do what I asked them to do. Instead they go off and do their own thing." And we hear phrases like this all the time. And it's because the leader is the one at the centre of all of the issues and the challenges, and people get used and conditioned to bringing their problems to you to solve them for them. They get used to you being the one who answers all the questions. They get used to you being the one who is the source and front of all knowledge and expertise, the best practices. And so they don't start to learn, they don't start to develop, in fact, they stagnate. So what can we do to reclaim your time? Well, number one is priorities. And we've talked a couple of times about priorities in the last few weeks, but the model that we like to use when it comes to how do I prioritise is the PVC model. So PVC stands for purpose, value, and capacity. And it's very simple to work through this in terms of looking at number one, the what's the purpose of this and the purpose of me being involved in it. And if you can't clearly define the purpose of this being done and the purpose of you being involved versus somebody else in your team doing it, then it's a no, we don't get involved in that one. The second one is the value. What's the value that's going to be created from this and by me being involved? So again, it could be that you're clear on the purpose of it and you're clear that you should be involved, but it's not a very high value outcome. So you've got to start thinking about do I need to be involved and is there any value to me being involved in it. The third question then we ask ourselves is capacity. Have I got the capacity to be involved in this? And if I am, how does that affect my capacity to be involved in other things that may have a clearer purpose or a higher value? And when we use this PVC model, it gives us the ability to say no. "So I'm not going to get involved in that project. I'm not going to attend that meeting, because my time and my value is better spent elsewhere." And what we see with the difference between really overwhelmed managers and really high impact leaders is the high impact leaders are able to say no and prioritise their time more effectively because they use their version, and I recommend you use whatever version works for you, but their version of the PVC model. Protect your time, protect your energy like it's a critical resource, because it is. If you don't and you start giving it away to everybody, you start to become the manager with all the monkeys on your shoulder. I really recommend you also try and free up some time for space and reflection and thinking. And I think I've told this story quite a few times in workshops, but we've worked with a very large American business that was working on their executive transition program and we said to the all of the executives in the room or want to be executives in the room, what we want you to do is take a notebook and pen for 20 to 45 minutes a week, disappear off to somewhere out of the office, leave your laptop and your phone behind, and spend just 20 to 45 minutes thinking about, what's the most important thing for me to do this week and what's the most important thing for me to do next week? Just focus on that for 20 to 45 minutes. And what we saw over the course of the year that we worked with that group was that the ones that really embraced that technique significantly outperformed those who poo-pooed the idea, who said, "No, this is not for me." So they outperformed them. They were also less burned out, less stressed out. We did health tests and blood tests on them, their stress hormones were significantly, statistically lower. We also saw them getting better results, better clarity, and better engagement across their teams. So by taking some time out to think and prioritise, you actually start to use your time more wisely. So what do you do with all the work that you don't get involved in? If you don't see the purpose of you being involved and you don't see the value of you being involved or it doesn't fit into your capacity matrix right now, what do you do with it? Well, number one is you need to start trusting your people to step up and empower and delegate them to take on some tasks. Now, we use the phrase "let them graze their knees, not break their legs", which means when people are learning stuff, the best way for them to learn is to stumble a little bit, is to make some mistakes, and they learn and grow much quicker than if you're the one who's trying to protect them from everything and solve all the problems for them. As I mentioned at the start, if you're the one solving all the problems, you're the one carrying all the monkeys. If you give them the problem back and support them through solving it, enable them, coach them, and check in with them whilst they're solving it, not only are they going to go through the journey of learning, but also if they make a mistake you can debrief and build their confidence. Now, then the argument is, "Well, we can't afford to make mistakes." Well, actually, you can if you start to have open and trusting conversations with them about what they're doing and helping them to see what might come up, but also start to have coaching conversations with your peers around how you're trying to work with your team to build their experience and grow. What I've seen over the last 20 years is that leaders who start to engage and say, "Look, I'm going to bring Fred along to this meeting with me because I want him to learn and grow to step in to manage this account or to manage this project", is that Fred is welcomed in. And over time Fred builds the experience to be able to pick up the knowledge and to be able to run that account, run that project, way more effectively than if I carry on doing it and I burn out, or I have to take stress leave, and then suddenly Fred just has it dumped on them. So building people up over time, working with them, and then gradually stepping back is a way more effective strategy for you and your sanity and your impact than waiting till you break and then everybody having to pick up the pieces. Equally, you need to start building trust in and with your team. So we have a variety of trust models and for those of you who are interested in going a bit deeper on trust, we actually run a trust master mind which takes about 90 minutes to take a team through, where we actually explore the four levels of trust and how trust is built to deeper levels, and the seven parameters that you can use, or the seven levers that you can pull, to be able to build trust through those deeper, deeper levels. But the key piece here is building trust is essential to you feeling like you can let go. Often what we find is, "I can't let go because there's nobody in my team I can trust. I can't let go because they won't do it how I want it done. I can't let go because I'm the only one who knows how to do this stuff." So start to build trust with your team and find out what their talents are, what their strengths are, what they want to be involved in, and work with them to start handing those things over. Now, this isn't an instant fix. This isn't something that can go, "Oh, I'm going to change my ideas tomorrow and everything will be fixed by the day after." You are in for a journey of transition as you build this trust, as you learn to delegate, as you start to reclaim your time. But if you don't do it, what you're going to do is keep accruing monkeys on your shoulder. What you're going to do is end up burning yourself out, and maintaining that feeling of overwhelm, of anxiety when you wake up in the morning, because you've got this enormous checklist of stuff, and you've got an inbox full of emails that need your answer. Or you could choose to start chipping away at this by start slowly starting to give away the monkeys and reclaiming your life, your time, and most importantly, starting to have the impact of a leader who really knows what they're doing and is really starting to get the the results and the recognition for stepping up, changing your game, and being much more impactful. So I hope that has helped. This episode of The High Performance Leader is all about how do I get rid of that overwhelm and how do I get more impact so I can really start to move into the type of role and the type of opportunities that I'm desperate to do, but I'm so overwhelmed right now with all the tasks I have to finish. And if you haven't already, and you're one of those leaders who is overwhelmed by all the plates you've got spinning, and you're multitasking like an absolute pro, head over to jimmyburroughes.com and click the yellow banner at the top of the page and download a free copy of my latest e-book, Escape the Multitasking Trap. In that book, we explore a fantastic journey of a CEO we worked with, Michael, who moved from being what he thought was a highly efficient multitasker to actually improving his productivity by over 40%, improving the engagement and uh productivity of his team by a similar amount by becoming an expert in focus and monotasking. And the book walks you through exactly how to do that from end to end and shows you all the benefits of taking on this new approach, which will help you when you're focusing on your using your PVC model. So head over to jimmyburroughes.com, click the yellow banner, grab your free copy, and for anybody who does grab that free copy, you will also get access to a very special training coming up in a few weeks' time, which will dive deeper into this topic and many, many more to give you some real behind the curtain insights on how you can become a high-impact leader. Speak to you 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 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.