Get to the root cause of your burnout

If you’re feeling exhausted, overwhelmed and depressed at work, you may be burned out. The first step to remedying the situation is to understand what’s causing it. Try tracking how you spend your time for a week. For each block of time, write down what you’re doing, whom you’re with and how you feel on a scale of 1-10, where 1 means angry or depressed and 10 means joyful or energised. This will give you a sense of which activities and people are diminishing your energy, so that you can start limiting your exposure to them. The goal is to decrease time spent on tasks, people and situations that drain you and to increase time on those that replenish you.

(Adapted from Steps to Take When You’re Starting to Feel Burned Out, by Monique Valcour)

Don’t share office gossip with your new co-worker

It might be tempting to bend your new co-worker’s ear and let him in on all of the office dirt. But sharing the ins and outs of office politics with the newcomer isn’t always advisable. Doing so could reflect badly on you and bias him against his new co-workers. You can help your new colleague get acclimated to the office, but check your motives first. Are you trying to make life easier for him, or get him on your side? Even if your intentions are positive, carefully choose the information you share. After all, you don’t know what your new colleague might tell others, exposing you and possibly damaging your reputation.

(Adapted from How to Talk About Office Politics With a New Colleague, by Karen Dillon)

Counteract a negative relationship with your boss

We all want to feel respected by our managers, but over half of employees say they don’t. What do you do if you’re in that unfortunate majority? Try these three things:

— Manage your energy. Sleep, exercise and stress management can help to ward off the negative effects of being disrespected by your boss.

— Seek positive relationships. To offset the drain of people who pull you down, surround yourself with a small group of energisers — the people in your life who make you smile and lift your spirit.

— Thrive outside work. If you’re happy in your non-work life, you’re more likely to thrive at the office, no matter what your boss thinks of you. This is because enjoying yourself outside work increases your emotional reserves.

(Adapted from How to Succeed at Work When Your Boss Doesn’t Respect You, by Christine Porath)

Create an ad hoc leadership circle

When leaders need innovative ideas to grow their company, they often turn to their direct reports for guidance. But this group represents the current operating units, which often have a status quo to defend. So when you need creative thinking, try forming a leadership circle, an ad hoc team of 15-18 people from throughout the company who can work together for about six months. The circle should focus on the future, and healthy debate should be encouraged. Within the circle, each member should hold equal status and should not feel that she is being asked to represent the point of view of her home department. Most important, whatever ideas come out of a leadership circle should be handled in the same way they were generated: They should be rigorously and systematically debated.

(Adapted from To Seize the Future, Create a Leadership Circle, by Joseph Pistrui)

Structure your team meetings better

Next time you lead a team meeting, take the time to carefully structure it so that the duration and content align with the objective:

— Define the work of the team. What specifically do you and the attendees need to accomplish?

— Divide agenda items into categories. We aren’t good at changing the pace of a conversation once it starts, so don’t try to combine different types of discussions. Instead, categorise similar items together.

— Determine the length. Figure out how much time you need, based on a fair estimate of how long each agenda item will take. Don’t let your calendar app decide the length — if you only need 15 minutes, don’t schedule 30.

— Plan for overflow. If you run out of time, don’t cram agenda items into the end of the meeting. Set up a time to address topics you don’t get to.

(Adapted from A Step-by-Step Guide to Structuring Better Meetings, by Liane Davey)

Published in Dawn, Business & Finance weekly, September 19th, 2016