An In Good Company podcast with Sahar Muhsin Laufman, Equity Alchemy
How can leaders prevent burnout?
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to stopping burnout. Resilient leaders adapt quickly and bounce back. Empathetic leaders can tune in to their employees’ needs and support them. Human-centred leaders can support their organisations through the biggest challenges and enable them to thrive.
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Sahar Muhsin Laufman joins us to talk about wellbeing, resilience and mitigating burnout. Her conversation with Dan covers the individual, the leader, the leader of a team and the organisation. How can you create a healthy culture and what are the individual skills that can make the most difference? She ends her podcast with a five-minute exercise that you can easily do at your desk, on the move or whenever you might just need to take a pause. Here are some snippets of their conversation, and you’ll find the full episode in the links below.
Managing stress and leading a team
Stress is a state of being that we all experience in life. What I find helpful is being aware that everyone else also has felt stress at one point. The cognitive or emotional overwhelm that comes from repressing stress and shifting away from the discomfort, either for fear of judgement from others or scapegoating and projecting onto others, is where the problems arise, especially in teams. A great tool for those in leadership positions to mitigate this overwhelm is relationship building. When you create a stronger emotional foundation, you're better able to ride out the waves of stress. When others prefer to lean towards you as a person, not just in your role as a leader, this will support team cohesion.
Creating a supportive environment as a leader
Leaders should recognise that every interaction with another person has the capacity to burden them or unburden them. And when you're going to burden them, it's important to get some token of consent. Even the way you modulate in tone. The nature of how you broach the subject really supports people to get a sense that they are collaborators and not just subordinates. How do you find out what people need to meet those expectations? Do you have a relationship in place that allows people to tell you when something is not functioning properly inside work? Or to say, hey, my dad died or my kids have been really sick and receive a response where they don't regret sharing their wider life? This often really assists individuals in feeling seen and being able to be more present, involved and engaged in the workplace.
How to recognise the signs of burnout
The best approach is preventative, not curative. Ask some critical questions like am I happy? Do I feel fulfilled in what I'm doing? Do I feel a sense of dignity and respect in the spaces where I am? Ignoring negative answers to any of these questions will lead to burnout. You don't have to make a big change; you don’t have to quit your job and move to Bali! But it will help so much if you know that you need more and that you can be trusted to prioritise that for yourself. Building self-trust is a huge part of resilience as what you resist persists.
Listen to the podcast on Spotify
Watch our interview here:
Listen again
023: Shiny penny syndrome with Ségolène Brantschen, Ageas Group
Coming up
025: Learning and leadership culture with Dani Saadu, Wavemaker
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