By Dr. Teresa Peterson
Are you feeling spread too thin? Are you getting that feeling from your team, too, but you’re not sure how to help without piling more on your already-full plate?
We get it.
Several years ago, our team worked with a large organization that had a perpetual problem: the workload was always so high, the urgency was always so high, and everyone was always exhausted—not just a little, but chronically. Burnout had essentially become part of the job function, not even questioned. So they persisted. And persisted. And persisted. For years, they tried superficial solution after superficial solution and they’d never been able to get one to make any kind of difference long-term. That’s because they weren’t really trying to eradicate burnout so much as manage it as a necessary consequence of the pace they were running. Folks seemed to have been conditioned that this degree of persisting and perpetual exhaustion just “came with the territory.”
Some of the solutions they tried were robust, but they ultimately didn’t work because they weren’t addressing what burnout truly is: a symptom of something bigger. (For more on why this is true and how we got here, I recommend reading The State of Leadership Burnout Today [A Whitepaper].)
Then, in a meeting, a team member asked a question that changed everything: What if people just asked their managers what the real priority of some of this work is? Because if we’re being honest with ourselves, we know it’s not all equally urgent.
Whoa.
This felt like an inside secret had been revealed, that the company had either actively led people to believe everything was extremely urgent or, at the very least, didn’t try to interrupt anyone from believing it. Ultimately, it was an abuse of power. As an organization that often deferred to metrics, they’d also tried for years as part of their mitigation tactics to measure the rates of burnout, which implies that there is an acceptable threshold instead of addressing the root causes. The combination of these two approaches had a highly detrimental impact on team members.
The person who spoke up was absolutely right. Not every task has the same level of urgency, and it doesn’t have to take getting to your breaking point to start to make some changes based on this realization.
A Better Way
Now, it is true that this reprioritization approach doesn’t apply to every workplace. I would say that in an emergency room, for example, the urgency requirements of your role are a little different. But for your typical organization or company today, not every task in the workplace has the same level of urgency. That’s a simple fact. Treating everything as a top priority when it could really wait until next week, or next month, or next quarter is a recipe for burnout. Imagine standing in a room where each corner has something on fire. Where do you point the extinguisher first? What happens in your body and brain—and (secondarily) your performance—when you have to make that choice daily, even hourly?
Note that there’s a difference between a high workload and an unrealistic workload—a very important distinction. You can walk that line by telling your team—and yourself—the truth about what needs to be done now and what can reasonably wait. As Adam Grant wrote, “The best antidote to burnout is not teaching coping skills to handle stress. It’s redesigning work to reduce stress. To prevent exhaustion, we need to remove overwhelming demands and reject the norm of self-sacrifice. Healthy workplaces value well-being as much as performance.”
Bonus: Besides re-establishing your relationship with priorities and urgency, another helpful burnout reduction technique is making sure there’s an end in sight. There’s a big difference in rallying to get something across the finish line—which is perfectly normal in the workplace, as deadlines happen and things come up—versus working full-speed on multiple marathon projects that never seem to end. Humans need to celebrate wins, and to do that, the end has to be in sight at least some of the time.
What’s Next?
I invite you to question the beliefs and assumptions you’re holding about your work. If you have help available, are you choosing to ask for it or to take it when it’s offered? If you’re a leader, are you making sure your team has and feels empowered to utilize those “outs” and resources without repercussion or retaliation? Focusing on building a strong, deep bench of talented people is better than piling on a few of those talented people until they break. It’s nearly impossible to thrive in an environment of perpetual exhaustion.
Fun fact: Because I love a good origin story, did you know that the word priority was singular for about 500 years until it became “priorities” in the 1900s? It goes without saying that times are different now, but we can take something away from that, I think.
What is your relationship with priorities and urgency? What burnout prevention tactics have worked for you in the past? I’d love to hear your perspective.
Learn More
How to Lead Your Employees Through Burnout
A Conversation on Preventing Burnout with Carolon Donnally
The State of Leadership Burnout Today [A Whitepaper]
Dr. Teresa Peterson
Dr. Teresa Peterson is the Director of Learning and Development for Sarah Noll Wilson, Inc. In her daily work, she serves as Sarah’s key content collaborator. Teresa enjoys facilitating, researching, and is passionate about applying best practices for learning to make our experiences meaningful, engaging, and accessible for all types of learners. Teresa holds a Doctorate in Education from the University of Northern Iowa and brings over twenty years of experience teaching, facilitating, and leading to our team. Our clients love Teresa’s grounded energy, depth of thought, and ability to listen deeply.