Arthur C. Brooks identifies five ways leaders accidentally cause burnout: demanding sacrifice of personal relationships, suppressing emotions, micromanaging tasks, unclear roles, and too many meetings. Small shifts in each area reduce burnout's physical and emotional toll.
Are you inadvertently burning people out? If you think you are, here are the 5 things I'm going to ask you to do. Number 1, don't ask people to sacrifice all their time in their relationships for their job. I know that you are, just because you are, is not right for you to ask other people to do it. Second, let people say what they feel at work within rational limits. It's important that people have a sense of voice and a sense of control. When they don't, they'll bottle up, and that bottling up per se will lead to the physiological manifestations of burnout. Number 3, give employees more control. Let them have more control over what they're doing. Number 4, make sure your employees know what their job is and that they feel supported. That kills a couple of birds with one stone. And last but not least, get rid of as many meetings as possible. It's really important. Kill the meetings, kill the meetings, kill the meetings. Watch morale grow. I mean, maybe you need some, but only at the base level.
