How Top Leaders Reduce Workplace Burnout and Stress: 5 Tips
Workplace burnout is no ‘case of the Mondays.’ Rather, it’s a serious issue that can harm your team’s wellbeing at work and your organization’s progress toward its goals and vision. Unfortunately, burnout is all too common nowadays—but the flip side of this bad news means that collective wisdom around prevention is on the rise.
In this article, we’ll walk through 5 tips from seasoned leaders and therapists alike to help you reduce workplace burnout and stress among your staff, including:
Practicing self-awareness
Taking micro breaks
Setting boundaries
Getting exercise and rest
Practicing mindfulness
Let’s beat burnout together.
5 proven ways to decrease workplace burnout and stress
Learning how to spot burnout is one thing—but what if you could take a preventative approach instead? You could stop it in its tracks before it even gets started. This strategy is one that renowned leaders like Arianna Huffington have dedicated their life’s work to.
*It’s critical to note that the ideas we’re about to cover are individual solutions to stress and burnout. Cultural and systemic causes of workplace burnout disproportionately affect groups seeking equity, such as those who identify as women, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and BIPOC individuals.
For example, “43% of women leaders are burned out, compared to only 31% of men at their level,” according to Forbes.
There is still a great deal of work to be done on the equity front. As we all do our part to create a more equitable world, keep these tips in mind for yourself and your team members.*
1. Practice self-awareness and self-regulation
The more self-aware you are, the more attentive you’ll be to your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. Think of it like tuning a radio from noisy static to a crystal-clear frequency.
As you and your team members cultivate greater self-awareness, you’ll be better positioned to recognize the early signs of workplace burnout and more capable of handling pressure, Harvard-trained clinical psychologist Debbie Sorensen recently told CNBC news.
Self-regulation is the next step after self-awareness. When you begin to feel stress creeping up on you, Sorensen recommends pausing, asking yourself what’s causing the feeling, and choosing how you want to respond to the situation based on your personal values.
2. Take micro breaks
Burning the candle at both ends is out. Micro breaks are in.
What exactly is a micro break? It’s a short amount of time in which you step away from your work and give yourself an opportunity to rest and recharge. It’s also a great way to combat workplace burnout. Business leader Arianna Huffington calls the practice “Thrive Time” at her company, Thrive Global.
“It means taking time off to recover and recharge after you’ve met the deadline. It could be a few hours, a morning, a day or more. And it doesn’t count as paid time off. That’s because we want to make it clear that recovery isn’t separate from work. It’s an essential part of work,” she told USA TODAY.
3. Set boundaries with others and yourself
If you’re like most leaders I work with, you’re empathetic toward your staff and unlikely to infringe on their personal boundaries. However, other people (read: bosses) aren’t always the problem when it comes to boundaries. Rather, your employees may actually be their own worst enemies, unwittingly putting themselves at risk for burnout.
Learning to set boundaries with others and with yourself is key to reducing workplace burnout. This can look like keeping your commitment to yourself to attend to your own priorities at work before helping someone else with theirs. It can also look like learning to say no when needed.
Remember, it’s not unkind to set boundaries, and saying ‘no’ to something can allow you to say ‘yes’ to yourself. For example, declining a social invitation could give you the opportunity to do something to care for yourself, like taking time alone to reflect on your week or work on a creative project.
4. Get adequate exercise, rest, and sleep
Moving your body regularly is an excellent way to care for your wellbeing. You don’t even have to go to the gym if that’s not your scene!
“Try getting outside for a walk. Even when you don’t feel like it, just move—and move doing something you love,” clinical psychologist Kevin Gilliland told HuffPost.
Exercise isn’t the only thing your body needs to prevent burnout, though. For adults, getting less than 7 hours of sleep a night is scientifically proven to put you at risk for burnout, according to the Sleep Health Foundation. So, make sure you’re also getting lots of rest and deep sleep.
While exercising regularly and clocking 7+ hours of sleep a night aren’t revolutionary ideas, they still have a profound effect on your wellbeing, so don’t dismiss them as ‘too basic’! Sometimes the simple changes we make are the most powerful.
5. Practice mindfulness
Beyond encouraging your employees to try the previous tips (and modelling the behaviour yourself), you can bring the fight against burnout straight to your workplace.
Incorporating mindfulness practices, including guided mindfulness meditation, within the workplace is a highly effective approach to burnout prevention. By providing mindfulness training, you can help your staff build resilience for handling pressure and guide them toward greater wellbeing at work and in their home lives.
Try this free meditation
A guided mindfulness meditation is a simple yet impactful way to begin experiencing how mindfulness can help reduce burnout.
With my free 5-minute meditation, Start Your Day With Calm, you’ll experience a quiet moment to yourself to become present, a practice of acceptance that can lead to more relaxation, and a mindset shift to help you orient yourself toward inner calm.
