What do you do if your communication skills are causing burnout as an executive manager?

As an executive, your employees appreciate looking into you also as a human being and not just as a senior official. In fact, it might be in your interest to establish the people connection. The best strategy is to accept the situation, create a plan and move forward. Any reactionary approach or excessive meetings will only exacerbate an existing burnout. Sometimes, it often helps to take your company out for a team building event, or address Q&A in a town hall style, where you are in a listening mode. Hearing your employees out is critical especially in times of stress. Introspecting your own attitude towards situation may be helpful. Lastly, I would recommend infusing some humor and pleasantries in your daily meetings.

Delegation is a cousin of trust. Building trust goes two-way. If you enjoy trust from your direct reports, be prepared to trust them too. It is great to offload communications to team leaders and members, but try handing over the portions they like to work on. If you hand them over the hardest portions of your communication, you may place them in a difficult situation as they may not have the full context of every issue in the company. At the same time, they need to feel a sense of accomplishment by taking on communication that requires creativity and planning. Lastly you need to share critical priorities and be courageous enough to highlight your own strengths and weaknesses in solving them. Employees need an opportunity to feel useful.

Embracing technology can infuse objectivity into an otherwise overly human dialog involving personalities, viewpoints and attitudes. A balance of (emotion + logic) can do wonders. If this balance shifts asymmetrically, you will observe the consequences. Technology can help organize the logical and analytical aspect of communication. For instance, on a bad day, you as an executive could arrive late in the meeting and start off with: "Everything's in a mess.". This may not be helpful for your team. Alternatively, you could be specific and ask: "Have we identified the root cause of the data breach?". Asking a question is lot less intimidating than making a statement. A question can never be right or wrong, unlike a statement.

This may be theoretically valid but highly unlikely because the denial aspect of it all is super strong. You minimise your real mental health issues or cling onto them. Just by adding a layer of consciousness on what you experienced may help you kick-start a precious change process: NOT change who you are but the way you perceive yourself. This is one of the main reasons why I became a certified hypnotherapist.

My suggested strategies: 1. Limit the number of channels used for communication to avoid overload. 2. Block out periods during the day where you focus on deep work without interruptions from calls or emails. 3. Active listening can reduce misunderstandings and the need for follow-up communications. 4. Understand the perspectives of others to communicate more effectively and build stronger relationships, which can reduce stress. 5. Regularly ask for feedback on your communication style and be open to making adjustments. 6. When possible, use asynchronous communication to allow for thoughtful responses and time management. 7. Consider communication skills training to learn new techniques and strategies for effective communication.