Preventing Burnout in Leadership Roles

• February 14, 2020

In my Executive Coaching practice, I am seeing a pattern of burnout across all industries I work with – Oil and Gas, Construction, Retail, Health Care and Entrepreneurs of all types. I started seeing the same trend a few years ago in my corporate role as a Senior Vice President of Human Resources.

My observation is that the people who are most at risk are the highly committed.  Exactly the people organizations can’t afford to lose.

As I was in a recent coaching conversation with a CEO client of mine, he showed me his calendar for the upcoming week.  From my perspective, he was incredibly overbooked.  No time for thinking, no time for flexibility in his schedule, little time for himself.  When we were talking, I asked him what the most important responsibilities he had in his role.  His answer was business development, client work, staff development, and business management (budget, process improvement, etc.)  When we looked back at the calendar, it was clear it lacked balance.  So, my client resolved to make sure his calendar had the appropriate balance of those four key responsibilities going forward.

The next thing that occurred to me to ask my client was “what feeds your soul?”  He paused for about a minute.  His response was, “I’ve worked with coaches before, and no one has ever asked me that.”  We then had a great conversation about the activities that fed this man’s soul.  Because planning and being organized was so important to this client (he likes his calendar), his idea was to put a “soul-feeding” activity on his calendar every week.

Now, in our coaching conversations, one of the things we do is look at last week’s calendar and talk about balance and feeding his soul activities, and their impact on his well-being and business.

These were such break-through conversations that I asked the same question to a doctor I am working with who is also experiencing burnout.  Again, we had a great conversation about feeding her soul as a strategy for mitigating burnout and creating more fulfillment in her life.

So, I have three questions for my readers:

1. What feeds your soul?
2. How can you do more of those things to create more fulfillment in your life?
3. What impact will it have on your career, your well-being, your important relationships?

Best wishes for success and fulfillment.

Mark Hinderliter, Ph.D. is an Executive Coach who works with C-Suite Executives and their leadership teams.  He is the host of the podcast “Real Business in Real Time” – conversations with business leaders about their greatest lessons along the way.