How to Avoid Burnout During Crisis
March 2020
“In crisis, we make decisions that aren’t smart long-term… Don’t get painted in a corner!”
As a leadership consultant and creator of a burnout prevention program, the developments of the COVID-19 virus on our world worries me. Certainly there are complications medically, but this crisis worries me from a leadership perspective.
In the middle of a crisis, panic and a lack of preparation causes us to make decisions that aren’t smart for the long run. Stock prices change every hour, people hoard valuable supplies, and our view of the future becomes clouded with worry.
Worst of all, during crisis we double our efforts to hurdle obstacles. We work longer hours, feel greater pressure to perform, and lose sight of long term vision. All of these are ingredients that can cause us to burn out.
You don’t need me to tell you what a problem burnout can be, especially during crisis. Expect weak performance, poor strategic planning, a lack of innovation, and tunnel vision that keeps us from seeing new opportunities or forecasting new threats.
So here are some ways you can prevent burnout in yourself and your team during a time of crisis:
1) Triage With Your Team
Visit your local ER and most likely you will see a monitor with patient ID’s listed in various orders, rank, and color. This is a system called triage and it is used by the medical community to rank patients based on who needs to be seen first. Those with more critical or urgent needs are prioritized first while the guy who twisted his ankle might need to wait a bit longer.
Triage allows a team to quickly assess which things are of greatest importance and which are important but not urgent.
In order to keep first things first, take a moment and “triage” your needs with your team. At the top of the list are those urgent matters that directly threaten your team’s mission. Label these tasks in red. Next come non-urgent matters that drive your team’s mission and gets ahead of the problem. Label these tasks in yellow. After that comes everything else. Label these tasks in green. Display this list where everyone can see.
Update this triage list as new information comes available and inform your team to keep an eye on it. This exercise will help keep everyone on task, working toward a common goal, and it avoids wasting time on meetings or duties that are less critical during a crisis.
2) Learn to Let the Ball Drop
Not every fire can be put out.
If we have learned to triage our problems as a team, then we will clearly see what needs to be addressed first. Sometimes there aren’t enough hours in the day to get it all done, though. When this happens we need strategically let the ball drop.
On teams that are acutely aware of what is priority-first, the green-labeled items will usually get dropped first, which means we are at less risk of losing valuable ground to get out crisis. However, the only way we effectively know what can be dropped is to give everyone a clear picture of the team or organization’s overall mission.
Mission, which is one of the three underlying values that prevent burnout, gives us a sense of direction that informs everything we do. The more you invest in communicating a clear mission to your team, the easier it will be to let the ball drop on things of lesser importance.
3) Know Your Absolute Zero
There is a point at which things get so bad it is no longer rational to keep working toward your team’s mission. This might be when profits drop so much you lose money to keep the business open or it might be when a medical pandemic floods healthcare providers to the point where normal care just isn’t possible. I call this point your absolute zero.
Sit your top leaders down and together paint a picture of what this point looks like. Perhaps you are far from it still, but knowing the absolute zero point will help you know when it is time to pull the plug or restructure your efforts.
All of this is effective only if the three underlying values that prevent burnout – mission, attention, and energy - are addressed as well. For a program that will help you take on a proactive, holistic approach to burnout, go to TheCureForBurnout.com. There you will discover additional free resources on burnout as well as a training program for your team to stay engaged and resilient to whatever may come.