The Reality Behind Leadership Stress and Burnout
- Barbara StClaire-Ostwald
- Jan 22, 2024
- 9 min read
Updated: Oct 11, 2024
The reality today behind stress and burnout is that they are the number one mental health dysregulator in our personal lives and in the workplace. They can come from management or co-workers, or be due to working long hours and job insecurity which, cumulatively, leads to more anxiety, depression and illness. They can be as a result of environmental pressures and other global pressures which we cannot control such as the current economic impact on our lives.
Unlike previous decades, today’s Leaders are at a much higher risk of reaching complete burnout. While leaders have a role to play in alleviating organizational burnout, they need to consider and reflect on their levels of burnout. Their journey into this unknown, known has been creating ripple effects throughout companies, business, family life and the bottom line! Leaders are very driven. Leaders are visionaries. Leaders don’t always have that ‘switch-off’ button or may not want to use it simply because they do not want to be seen as showing signs of weakness, that they are unable to cope, and do not want to be seen by others as vulnerable. However, a sign of strength in Leadership is being able to seek help. No one person is an island.
This Chapter will explore the reality behind leadership stress and burnout and how leaders can help cultivate supportive and psychologically safe work environments that support flexible, inclusive workplace and organizational systems and practices to help prevent workplace burnout.
What is the Difference between Stress and Burnout?
The grey area between Stress and Burnout is blurred and often difficult to distinguish between the two. Stress comes in two forms, positive stress when your pulse races and your adrenal glands release adrenaline but there is no threat or fear; such as riding a roller coaster. Negative stress, commonly known as distress and which ultimately has an end but the journey may be challenging.
Burnout is more than stress alone. Burnout is an accumulation of built-up and unchecked stress over a long period of time and requires professional help and support to manage the symptoms.
What is Leadership Burnout?
Senior management and high performing managers tend to overburden themselves with work and neglect to spend time on their wellbeing. Often, they feel isolated and both physically and emotionally exhausted. Burnout goes beyond just feeling exhausted. In 2019, The World Health Organization defined burnout as “an occupational phenomenon” in the International Classification of Diseases’ Chapter on “factors influencing health status.” Burnout is the result of chronic workplace stress, uncertainty, long hours and missed vacations, causing discomfort and anxiety among leaders. If left unchecked these symptoms can lead to profound exhaustion, disassociation, depression and eventually burnout. The high cost to leadership wellbeing and burnout, including indicators to look for, can be characterised by the following:
Energy depletion: Exhaustion, feeling restless, lack of enthusiasm, unable to perform at your best
Increased negative feelings towards the job: Erratic mood swings, unable to keep your emotions in check
Reduced professional efficacy: Brain fog, loss of perspective, missing appointments, forgetful
The Development Dimensions International Global Leadership Forecast 2023 reveals that signs of burnout are growing among leaders, with 72% reporting that they often feel used up at the end of the day, an increase from 60% in 2020.
What Causes Leadership Burnout?
There is a reason why Leaders are known to feel “lonely at the top!” Leadership often comes at a personal cost, and this cost is, amongst other things, loneliness. Some of the causes leading to Leadership burnout are:
Feelings of isolation and lack of meaningful and frequent contact with others
Loss of focus – leaders often get trapped inside their own heads by constantly searching for the next best possible outcome
Senior leaders can become trapped in a vicious cycle of unhealthy responsibility for others, which often leads to burnout because they feel unduly answerable for the success of their businesses
Multi-tasking versus delegating leading to working longer hours, resulting in prolonged stress due to high expectations, including being immediately available day and night
General Leadership Burnout Statistics: Deloitte 2023
“77% of Deloitte survey respondents say they have experienced employee burnout at their current job, with more than half citing more than one occurrence.”
Women are more likely to suffer from burnout than men, at a rate of 32% to 28%.
Over half of the women in leadership positions say they feel burned out on a consistent basis.
Employees are more likely to feel burned out if they’re also caring for young children. A study on parental burnout found that 68% of working mothers are burned out, compared to 42% of working fathers.
Their survey additionally found that many companies which responded may not have been doing enough to minimize, prevent or alleviate burnout. This included not providing initiatives or offering programmes to prevent or alleviate burnout.
The most frequently cited factor of burnout in the survey was a lack of support or rcognition from leadership. Followed closely by millenial retention due to burnout.
Tips to Avoid Leadership Burnout
An essential tip for leaders is to take that difficult and challenging first step of admitting to themselves that they may have a problem. By acknowledging burnout symptoms and behaviours they can start on their road to recovery.
Asking for Profession Help from a Mental Health Professional, a Coach, or Counsellor should be considered. These Professionals can provide Leaders with coping strategies and other treatment options.
Leaders can join various leadership networking platforms.
Learning to delegate more effectively and empowering team members.
Learning to set boundaries and not overcommit. Over-commitment can rapidly lead to burnout.
Research in Neuroscience has proved that getting the right amount of sleep and exercise can not only benefit the body but can benefit the brain. For example:
The neuroprotective aspects of sleep are known to improve memory recall, regulate the metabolism and reduce mental fatigue
Sleep helps the brain learn and stay flexible, increasing critical cognitive functioning
Self-awareness: understanding the self and being aware of one’s emotions, behaviours, triggers, reactions, perceptions and how these impact others.
Self-reflection: having time to think about the work they are doing and being able to connect the company’s strategic objectives with thought innovative solutions.
Self-awareness and Self-reflection are essential to have in the leadership development toolkit – leaders are more likely to fully engage and feel a sense of purpose in their work and job fulfilment.
Mindfulness – practicing mindfulness involves breathing methods and relaxation to help the body and mind and reduce stress. It helps focus on being aware of what one is sensing and feeling in the present moment.
Exercise which can be as simple as taking a walk in the park. Joining a running club, swimming, golf, squash, or any form of physical activity you enjoy!
Can Leaders Make a Difference in Addressing Employee Burnout?
There is another well-known saying about why employees leave their companies and organizations. Employees don’t leave companies, organizations, they leave because they have an ineffective boss or leader. Employees will perform their best when they trust their leaders.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic many employers worldwide have been investing more in mental health and wellbeing. However, while many of them are not employing a systemic approach to burnout, the improvements could have been more robust leaving them paying a high price for failure in addressing workplace factors which strongly correlate with burnout. One of the pivotal factors that a recent Global Survey by McKinsey Health Institute (MHI) observed was the disconnect between employers and the increasing challenges faced by employee mental health and wellbeing, including the frequently overlooked workplace factors underlying these issues in organizations worldwide. This “disconnect” is similarly found in organizations which tend to focus on individual-level interventions that attempt to remedy symptoms rather than attempting to resolve the causes of burnout.
“McKinsey research (across 15 countries globally) showed that when employees were asked about aspects of their jobs that undermined their mental health and wellbeing, they frequently mentioned:
Feeling of always being on call
Unfair treatment
Unreasonable workload
Low autonomy
Lack of social support
Toxic workplace behaviour”
Toxic workplace behaviour was found to be by far the most significant predictor of burnout symptoms with the intent to leave the organization by a large margin. In fact, the research established that:
“One in four employees report experiencing high rates of toxic behaviour at work. At a global level, high rates were observed across countries, demographic groups – including gender, organizational tenure, age, virtual/in-person work, manager and non-manager roles – and industries.”
Fundamental to the success and progress in recognizing employee mental health and wellbeing as a strategic priority is for leaders to acknowledge and listen to their employees’ needs, questions, and concerns. Giving burnout equal importance to other key performance metrics such as safety/quality and employee turnover, will create meaningful change, help eliminate the stigma and shame surrounding burnout, and promote a more psychologically safe culture.
With a shrinking global workforce, organizations around the world and their leaders need to take the time to honestly focus on the causes and not the symptoms of burnout. The focus should be on change, because to succeed in retaining valuable employees and attracting new talent, companies who continue to overlook toxic behaviour and stressful work environments will no longer have a good return regarding improved outcomes in their organizations. By collaborating with their employees, by having a shared commitment, leaders and organizations can make a meaningful difference in the lives of their employees and the growth and success of their companies.
The Benefits of a Corporate Wellness Strategy
Simply put, this is a comprehensive corporate wellness program to promote the health and wellbeing of employees in the workplace. The goal of this strategy is to support employees in achieving a healthier work-life balance both mentally and physically. The program would include:
Promoting healthy habits such as stress management, taking a vacation, taking up a sport, or a form of relaxation can reduce chronic diseases caused by stress and burnout.
Employees who feel supported in their wellness are more likely to have higher job satisfaction and be productive and engaged at work.
Investing in employee wellbeing reduces healthcare costs, absenteeism, illness and employees are more likely to remain with the company thus reducing turnover costs.
Conclusion
A “perfect storm”: as leadership exhaustion sets in, employees have rising expectations of their leaders. What do leaders need to do? Leadership is challenging and increasingly demanding. Good leaders understand this and have learned to manage their lives to avoid burnout but, even the best leaders still get burned out. Leaders need to start putting themselves first when it comes to self-care, they need to learn to “put on the oxygen masks first before they hand them over to their employees”. Leaders need to learn how to be more present for their employees. What do companies need to do? First, there is a need to create better models for high-quality Leadership which means “soft skills”. And, better communication and engagement to help retain employees will help the already overburdened leaders. Among the organizations which have the highest quality rankings for their leaders there are five key strategies in place by HR:
They develop leaders in critical leadership skills
They employ people-forward talent practices focused on development and career growth
They implement a common leadership model and strategy across the organization
They offer high-quality development across their entire pipeline of leaders
They focus on promoting leaders internally more than hiring from the outside
Although high-quality Leadership might look different depending on company culture, and where the business is situated in the world, there is some common ground in how leaders describe outstanding Leadership across all industries and cultures. The word they used was empathy. Empathy and being empathetic now dominate leaders’ perceptions of great Leadership and how leaders’ model good behaviours by example.
The DDI, Global Leadership Forecast 2023 observed that “organizations that are already succeeding with these practices have an average of 42% more high-quality leaders than their peers. They are also 3.4X times more likely to be rated a best place to work by their leaders.”
Source: DDI, Global Leadership Forecast 2023 (by permission of DDI World)
In today’s increasingly competitive market, the DDI survey found that to be effective as an organization, leadership development programmes when provided at all levels were found to out-perform single limited initiatives.
“While many companies may focus initial efforts on one level of leadership, the data shows that companies see increasingly better returns as they create cohesive leadership cultures that span the entire organization.”
Source: DDI, Global Leadership Forecast 2023
*Source: DDI, Global Leadership Forecast 2023 (by permission of DDI World)
Organizations who have a more holistic and systemtic approach internally with leaders who listen and respond with empathy, who provide opportunities for team members, who care about but importantly inquire about their employees wellbeing, encourage and challenge perviously established procedures, and who recognize employee contributions and successes are already on a path to creating a more stress freee and safe environment. It is still true that leaders often fear that displaying vulnerability may be interpreted as weakness. But according to the data presented by *DDI it “is clear that leaders who are self-aware about their imperfections build stronger relationships with their teams”.
References:
World Health Organization:
Aflac WorkForces Report
Deloitte Burnout Survey 2023
McKinsey Health Institute
The Neuroprotective Aspects of Sleep
DDI World Global Leadership Forecast 2023
Comments