Article: Avoiding burnout

I was listening to a thought leader the other day – thought leader being the term popular for authorities respected for their specialist expertise and insight. She was a thought leader in the field of leadership and was paid by business to coach and train its leaders. She pointed out that leaders seemed to be getting younger – that it was more and more common for leaders to be young people. Very good, we thought. All that youthful vision, passion and creativity must be a good thing. But then she changed our perspective. She asked, Why is it becoming rarer for leaders to be old? What is happening to the old leaders? Or the young ones for that matter – why are leaders’ careers so short?

There must be many reasons leaders don’t last but one of the most significant, I reckon, is the same reason most things don’t last – they aren’t designed to last. Anything of any complexity that lasts, lasts because its design includes a maintenance / renewal plan.

Leader or otherwise, how’s your maintenance and renewal plan?

Unfortunately, dedicated leaders often focus on their task and / or those they are leading at the expense of their own sustainability. They are tempted to neglect their own need for rest and recreation for the sake of the organisation. And who’s looking out for the leader? Thanks to their dedication while the organisation they lead goes from strength to strength they go, well, nowhere. So one unpleasant decline later, along comes the next shiny young leader to take over from them.

One word coined for the conclusion to an unsustainable career journey is burnout. In, Coming Back To Me, Marcus Trescothick describes a journey: Initially, finding himself playing professional cricket, he is almost incredulous. How can it be fair for him get paid to do his dream job? This honeymoon doesn’t last. After years of touring for his country he reaches a point of exhaustion. To all observers he was still soaring – captaining his country’s side and scoring plenty of runs – but inside he was experiencing lonely terrors. International cricket, once his dream, was now his nightmare.

The relationship between Trescothick’s burnout, his mental health and the tension of being away from home and family is courageously and poignantly described in his book. It’s a highly enlightening read. In the book he writes not just about his own struggles. He also comments of the low morale of many other international cricketing friends and calls their unhappiness burnout. Not wanting to spoil the book I’ll leave off there but what makes him such a victor for me is his courage in working out and accepting his recreational requirements – the things he needed to sustain and renew his career as a cricketer.

Interestingly and sadly, it has been observed that some of those leaders who do last, last at the expense of the folk who sacrifice themselves for the sake of their organisation by enduring and absorbing the toxicity produced by unsustainable leadership. So be careful if you are proud of your leadership longevity – you may be leaving a trail of bodies behind you.

Your alternative to burn out? How will you develop a sustainable way of doing things? Will you have the courage and discipline to do the thinking, get the help and incorporate recreation of your every component into your ongoing life?

Questions:

1. Who cares about your recreation? What can you do to look after them?
2. How highly do you prioritise your recreation?
3. How highly does your organisation prioritise your recreation?
4. What could you do to change either of the above?
5. What will you do to change either of the above?
6. When will you do it?