Mental Strength: How to Build Confidence that Fortifies Against Burnout
Lack of confidence causes stress; prolonged stress causes burnout.
According to a Wall Street Journal article, a recent Harvard Medical School study revealed that 96% of senior leaders reported feeling burned out on some level, with one-third describing their burnout as extreme. That’s what happened to Paula Davis.
Symptoms of burnout:
Paula said, “I started to feel ineffective. I never lost confidence in my ability to be a good lawyer, but I started to think, ‘Why bother?’ and ‘Who cares?’”
Other symptoms* include:
- Alienation.
- Hopelessness.
- Increasing stress.
- Growing frustration.
- Headaches.
- Stomachaches. (Paula ended up in the emergency room with this one.)
- Avoiding work.
- Lack of concentration.
Why burnout**:
“I didn’t want to be perceived as a weak lawyer who couldn’t hack it.” Davis
We burnout when we don’t take breaks. But there’s more.
- Personality traits. (Obsessing over problems and catastrophizing.)
- Unrealistic deadlines.
- Excessive workload.
- Insufficient support.
5 steps to building team confidence:
Catastrophizers imagine worst-case scenarios. “… in five minutes, your brain spins a story that ends with you living down by the river in a van.” Davis
Replace catastrophizing with…
#1. Discuss what’s in your control.
#2. List resources including people and lessons from past experience.
#3. Explore how you might reduce the potential down-side.
#4. Discuss the upside. What good can come from this? Where are the opportunities?
#5. Design action. What can you do in the short term? Long term? What can you do today?
(Adapted from Beating Burnout at Work.)
The best confidence builder:
Catastrophizing increases fear. Action increases confidence.
The best way to build confidence is to act. Any small action will help as long as you have reasonable confidence it won’t cause harm.
(This post is based on my conversation with Paula Davis.)
What drains a team’s confidence?
What builds a team’s confidence?
**The Science of Why We Burn Out and Don’t Have To (worktolive.info)
What drains a team’s confidence? “All talk, no action” is big problem! From the Team aspect if items are identified and the controlling individuals or individual does nothing we are wasting time effort and knowledge that soon we become complacent and no one seems to care.
What builds a team’s confidence?
The action part is what needs to happen, process the knowledge, implement changes and move forward, if the Team has spoken then the Leadership needs to make it happen. Somethings may take time, others can be immediate. So the “Doers” have to make happen what the “Thinkers” agree upon or we continue to reinvent the wheel.
Thanks Tim. A no-action leader defeats a team that wants to make progress. Eventually the team gives up. Individuals become the walking dead or they find new jobs.
What builds a team’s confidence?
Having a competent leader.
Awareness and appreciation of the talents of the other team members.
Shared goals and a shared plan.
Small wins.
Learning new skills.
Preparation.
Eliminating negative self-talk and beliefs.
Hitting key milestones.
Success.
“…in five minutes, your brain spins a story that ends with you living down by the river in a van.” Yes! So I’m not the only one that thinks like this!
As we have discussed on this blog before, action makes teams more confident and makes it easier to make moves into the future. These actions as you stated about may be exhausted if a person is not responded to properly ad given the proper channels to let go of some of their fears and obsessions. Having good communication can really get some people out of their own way and allow for those small victories to continue on.
Thanks Adam. When I think about helping people get out of their own way, I’m thankful for people who have done that for me. It’s a wonderful gift.
Burnout? I have felt like a smoldering pile of ash for close to 3 years now. I can attest to 2-5 and 8 above. This is mainly because of such a huge amount of a quite varied tasks not only thrown at me daily, but what I choose to take on. I say choose because I recognize there are tasks I am doing that I have given the same high priority as others, and I should not. I also recognize there are others that can assist or do those tasks, or they are not as high priority as what I initially believe. Not all require a hair-on-fire response.
I find it is calming to decide I will do that task tomorrow rather than cramming it into today, which allows me to focus on priorities I have set for today and do a better job with them. It doesn’t always work out, but I CHOOSE to not let it bother me and just add it to the list for tomorrow.
As for teams, it would be good to recognize when a team is a team and not one person doing all the work burning them out. Want to build confidence in a team? Recognize the above and hold the team equally accountable for completing a project rather than letting one person do all the work.
Thanks Hot. I can’t help but think about the challenge of priorities in busy environments. We’re doomed to burn out if everything is a priority. Or as you say, lets put that off till tomorrow.
This is a great article and interesting read with tying confidence to burnout issues. I had a discussion with a retired upper-level manager from a large organization. This retired manager discussed the issues with burnout and health issues associated with it. He was in position to have the opportunity to move up to an even higher level of management in the organization, but decided it was time to retire at an early age. The organization was surprised by his retirement since he was next in line to move up, but he decided it was best for his health to retire. He reviewed information that discussed prolonged stress of upper management can take years off someone’s life. Burnout in upper leadership is an issue as described in the article mentioned in the blog post. This burnout can create many issues for an organization if not properly