Do You Need to Think About How to Avoid Manager Burnout?
We knew that employees were suffering from the effects of the pandemic, but our organizational culture assessment data tells us that most companies underestimated how much people managers were affected. And according to Gallup, managers are currently reporting higher levels of stress and burnout than the people they manage. Companies must do something to avoid manager burnout so that they can effectively lead, manage, coach, and engage their teams.
The Role of Leaders
If employees look to their managers for psychological team safety, who can managers turn to in order to avoid manager burnout? The short answer is their leaders. It is up to senior leaders to provide the organizational health, confidence, and leadership development that managers need to cope so they, in turn, can shore up their teams. As managers succeed, so do their teams.
Three Ways Leaders Can Alleviate and Avoid Manager Burnout
Based upon people manager assessment data and new manager training participant feedback, there are three fundamental ways leaders can improve how managers work with their stressed-out teams so all are better able to stay engaged. If leaders can support their managers and managers have learned how to support their employees, employee engagement and performance can only increase.
- Check In Regularly
Managers need to know that the leaders they rely on care about their wellbeing. Leaders need regular meetings with management so they can learn what an individual manager needs to feel fully supported and engaged and take action. The impact of engagement meetings is clear.
Our employee engagement survey action data found that almost 90 percent of highly engaged organizations conduct regular manager-employee one-on-one meetings and that 85 percent of disengaged people managers say they don’t receive frequent enough feedback and coaching from their boss.
Have you made one-on-one engagement meetings part of your team norms? - Assess Core Leadership Skills
For most, the ability to lead, manage, and coach is not innate. To avoid manager burnout, leaders should not feel over their head. Effective action learning leadership development programs thoughtfully assess leadership readiness, performance, potential, and skill gaps. This creates data-driven individual leadership development plans to set managers up for success.
The good news is that managers who follow the assessment-driven development plans are six times more likely to be retained and to be seen as a high-performer.
Do your managers have the support they need to avoid manager burnout? - Encourage a Mindset for Change
We know from change management simulation data that organizational change demands high levels of emotional and physical commitment from employees which can increase burnout at work – especially for leaders. While some change management consulting experts advocate for employees to be more resilient, we believe that organizations (i.e., leaders) must create an organization-wide culture that models, encourages, and rewards healthy change practices and rituals.
That means leaders must honestly and transparently acknowledge the impact of organizational change and visibly model and design ways to individually and collectively address change.
Do your leaders model and encourage a healthy change mindset at work?
The Bottom Line
Leaders owe it to their employees, customers, and their company as a whole to provide the support and guidance required to avoid manager burnout. Especially in trying times when employee disengagement looms, managers need empathy and skills to work in a positive, helpful way with their employees.
To learn more about how to avoid manager burnout, download Research Report – Relationship Between Employee Engagement and Manager Effectiveness
Recent Comments