Laurie Guest on how leaders create their own burnout. Set clear off-hours, don't expect emails or texts at night, and let your team actually rest. Self-inflicted service fatigue is preventable.
At 5:00 PM, you are the type of leader who has been smart and created boundaries that say, Lori, when you punch out at 5 o'clock, you are off the clock. That is a boundary I'm going to respect unless the place is on fire, we urgently need something. You should not expect to receive a text message from me. You certainly don't need to be checking email. If there is something really urgent, which I don't expect, then I will call you. Then I, as the staff person, need to— what did I say? Take ownership of the fatigue. If I'm going to be checking for emails from you, my boss, at 11 o'clock at night right before I go to bed, guess what? I broke the boundaries. I've added a drip to my own service fatigue at my own self-inflicted boundary breaking, right? I want to repeat that: self-inflicted boundary breaking. I am finding that a lot. And the reason that people do it, the one that's in my shoes, the reason they do it is because they think it keeps them out of trouble. They believe it keeps them on top of things. They think that it's extra credit, like, I will do better, be better.
