Executive burnout doesn’t always look like exhaustion. For executives, it often shows up as irritability, decision fatigue, or losing your edge.
3 Signs of Executive Burnout:
Irritability
Leaders are under constant stress to meet (and often exceed) demands of stakeholders, clients, board members, and employees. The saying “it’s loneliest at the top,” rings true for many leaders, who can’t share the burden of these demands. Compounding the feelings of isolation is the need to always be “on” – be available, be inspiring, be motivating – all day, every day. These demands, sense of isolation, and the performance required to be an executive leader often manifest as irritability.
Irritability can look being short tempered with loved ones. You kept it together all day, and when you get home you don’t have any more bandwidth for being relentlessly positive, running a household, or hearing about another problem (even if that problem is your kid’s math homework). Irritability often looks like anger, but it also looks like isolation. Leaders who are chronically frustrated may isolate themselves from their teams or their families in an effort to try to reduce stimulation; less interactions means less opportunity for that short fuse to be set alight.
Decision Fatigue
Being a leader means making constant decisions, even when they’re not fully conscious. Deciding to give grace, or hold someone’s feet to the fire. Deciding the strategic vision for the next 3-5 years. Deciding how to respond to a annoying email asking questions you have definitely addressed before. All these decisions add up, and your capacity to decide what’s for dinner once you get home may be completely zapped.
You may yourself with decision fatigue at home, or it may manifest more at work. Perhaps critical deadlines are looming and you feel paralyzed. Or maybe you’ve decided to be like an ostrich and bury your head in the sand when it comes to the performance of a team member. Avoidance is a key indicator that your capacity to make decisions has been reached.
Losing Your Edge
You may feel disconnected from your organization’s “why,” you feel like you have the same conversations over and over again, or you just feel burned out. If you’re wondering if you’re showing up as your best self every day, or you wonder if you can still stay on the cutting edge of your field, you feel like you’re losing your edge.
Actionable Step: Structure Your Recovery Time
One actionable step you can take today to help address executive burnout is to intentionally structure your recovery time. Everyone needs recovery time, even – or perhaps especially – the highest performers and those with the most responsibility.
- Schedule micro breaks: back-to-back meetings are the mind killer. Schedule 15 minutes in between meetings to use the bathroom, stretch, do deep breathing, or process through whatever the previous meeting was about. A micro break is not the time to answer as many emails as possible; it’s a time to let your brain catch up to what you’ve done today so far.
- Block your time: instead of answering emails as soon as they come in, or as quickly as possible, block your calendar and answer emails during that scheduled time. Being virtually available all day long can lead to overwhelm and burn out.
- Start your morning with self-care: black coffee and a Teams meeting while you drive into the office is not a burnout friendly routine. Start the day with something that fills your metaphorical cup. It may be exercise, journaling, intention-setting, or simply drinking coffee quietly on your back porch.
- Set a healthy boundary: create a firm boundary about when you stop working. Working 24/7 is not sustainable. Even if you’re wide awake at 3am, resist the siren song of your computer or phone! Consider an Outlook cut-off time of 7pm, or maybe a firm “no emails on Sundays” boundary.
If you want to explore structured approaches to sustaining leadership performance, I help executives build resilience that lasts. If you’re interested in executive coaching, visit my website to learn more. Schedule a call with me to see how I can help.
Are you interested in corporate psychiatry and leadership development services? Visit The Upwards Institute to learn more.