How to prevent your middle level leaders from burnout

A strong middle manager is 5x more likely to prevent employee burnout than a mediocre one.  In fact, research tells us that your manager has almost twice the impact on your mental well-being than a healthcare professional does.  So the role they play in ensuring the well-being of our workforces is significant – and with it, the onward impacts on corporate performance, productivity, and profits.

The problem is that managers are burning out at a faster rate than the teams they lead – and according to Gallup, this problem is only getting worse. 

According to Christina Maslach, Professor of Psychology Emerita University of California, Berkeley, burnout is defined as “the end state of long-term chronic stress” and is characterized by three main factors;

• Mental fatigue or emotional exhaustion can impair a leader’s executive functioning (aka burnout makes you dumber). They struggle to think critically, their judgment is impaired, and they struggle to handle complex problems.  This means they are more inclined either to stand still – paralyzed by uncertainty, escalate to you more frequently, or make poor decisions.  Mistakes missed opportunities, and misguided initiatives are likely to increase due to leadership levels of burnout.
• A sense of cynicism or negativity toward their colleagues or workplace is a critical risk for organizational culture and team dynamics. In short, a burned-out leader can have a toxic impact on culture.  Burned-out Leaders reduce their focus on supporting and inspiring their teams, leaving employees to feel demotivated, neglected, and unsupported which ultimately leads to low morale and attrition.
• A decrease in feelings of personal accomplishment. Burned-out leaders don’t feel they are achieving anything, and this pointless listlessness can quickly – and dangerously – infect their teams as they fail to communicate direction, fail to inspire, and fail to motivate those around them.

So if you’re identifying your mid-level leaders as ‘dumbing down’, being cynical or paranoid, and exhibiting a lack of purpose or drive, you are heading for the triple-whammy of culture, performance, and attrition which can take years for a business to recover. 

Your mid-level leaders need your help, and as a senior leader, there are some quick wins available for you to consider:

Permission

In our extensive work with mid-level leaders, we note a significant gap between executive expectations and middle-manager understanding.  Executives know that capacity is a finite resource and expect negotiation as a key element of execution.  However, middle managers tend to say yes first and stress about capacity later.  You can change this hurtful habit by giving them permission to negotiate expectations with you – when you can compromise on time, cost, or quality, then tell them so.  Negotiation is an important pressure valve that most of them have not mastered yet, especially when it’s negotiating with someone more senior. 

Priorities

When priorities are unclear and continually changing, and their mental acuity is declining, becoming overwhelmed is easy.  Taking a few minutes each week to reaffirm your key priorities to your middle managers will remove a layer of their brain fog and allow them to focus their thinking around the outcomes that really matter – and to push back on the rest.

Expectations

Pleasing their senior leader is often a major contributor to middle manager stress.  They spend a lot of time second-guessing your needs, and that may be something that you have historically prized – that they can work you out.  When burnout is looming, this ability will deteriorate, so address that by being clearer with your expectations from the outset.

Standards

Mid-level leaders tend to assume that the gold standard is required for all work requests, and we all know that’s not necessary or realistic.  Give them a helping hand by explicitly stating when you do want the gold standard, or when silver, or even a quick, rough bronze version will do.  You’ll create capacity that they’ll be grateful for.

Post-pandemic working is harder.  Leaders have more responsibility than they used to, fewer resources, and greater societal stress to deal with.  It’s little wonder that they are 26% more likely to report burnout than the people they lead.

Which leads me to you.  The most senior executives in the business are not immune to burnout either. How are you doing?

Written by Rebecca Houghton.

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