The Path to Recovery Part 2 of 4: People Leadership Post COVID-19
The Path to Recovery Part 2 of 4: People Leadership Post COVID-19 - Recover From Leadership Fatigue and Burnout in the Workplace #StrongerOnTheOtherSide
As the temporary measures that have been successfully put in place over the first few months are beginning to normalize, and initial back to work recovery guidelines are being presented, many leaders are beginning to experience fatigue and early stages of burnout with a potentially long and evolving recovery period around the corner.
Here are some factors and signs that contribute to leadership fatigue and burnout:
- Mental Fog and Heightened Frustration
- Increased Microaggressions and Cynicism
- High Anxiety, Panic and Emotional Reactivity
This can be a significant challenge for leaders who face increased inner urgency and external expectations to return to normal as quickly as possible. We see this outside the workplace with citizens rushing back out to parks and beaches and craving the nice-ety’s of the cafes and restaurants we miss as the temperatures begin to get warmer for the summer season.
For many business leaders, this means being motivated to quickly restart the economic engines of their businesses, then struggling as suppressed emotions and mental fatigue begin to express itself.
Mental “Brain” Fog and Heightened Frustration
Brain fog is an indicator of mental fatigue.
The clarity, inspiration and focus you have suddenly muddles into difficulties concentrating and connecting thoughts and ideas into something concrete and meaningful. You can experience forgetfulness, the inability to concentrate, and a lack of motivation.
Have you ever experienced that feeling of tiredness while driving on long stretches of highways with similar backdrops?
While new and emerging situations can get us to quickly sharpen our focus to handle chaotic situations - that level and expectation of alertness is difficult to maintain for the long term. The biggest challenge with this pandemic is that there isn’t a clear end in sight.
We are faced with questions like:
- Is there going to be a second wave, and if so when?
- When and how is the economy going to open back up?
- How different will consumer behaviour be post covid?
- How will employees respond to their previous working conditions after coming back from a normalized WFH situation?
It can lead us into a continuous cycle of unanswered, stressful thoughts running in the back of our minds that cause us to either overthink countless possibilities or begin to completely shut down. Even though it’s not at the mental forefront, all that unconscious processing is still exhausting.
The frustration begins to arise when we are put into situations where we need to lead and think clearly as we recover from this pandemic. While it’s no longer a life or death crisis situation, clear decision making is key to having a smooth recovery.
Combined with physical factors like poor sleep, diet, nutrition and even dehydration - mental fatigue can become very problematic.
While self care and prevention are necessary and ideal, when you realize the presence of brain fog, it's already an indicator that you’ve been ignoring self-care. Given the extended stretch of crisis management that has been required through this pandemic, many are likely already impacted.
Begin with taking a short vacation. During this time, managing your mental and emotional state will help you to relax your mind. The practice of meditation, stillness, going for nature walks and sleep are all good methods to help with recovering from mental fog.
A digital detox - refraining from your smartphones, computers, and social media for a period of time will also help. Be mindful and recondition yourself to stop the need of the micro-dosing of dopamine, our feel good chemical, that gets us addicted to our technology. You may experience a short period of withdrawal before re-regulating your body to re-adjust to periods of quiet, stillness and calm.
If you feel an intense struggle, you can access The Burnout Clinic’s free burnout relief line for our 20-minute relaxation therapy. It will help you get deeply relaxed and mitigate symptoms like anxiety and the compulsion to reach for your devices.
From an organizational stand-point, review your vacation policy during this time. Have managers encourage teams to take their vacation and have discussions around the importance of proper rest and mental and emotional well-being.
VacationFund.io is an example of a platform that connects company mental health initiatives by integrating employer dollar-matching with employee payroll so employees are incentivized to plan meaningful vacations at the beginning of the vacation-policy-year.
(Vacation.io: Employer Dollar Matching Platform for Vacations)
Other ways that organizations and managers can support their teams to combat fatigue include:
- Giving employees a break from one-too-many conversations on platforms like Zoom, as many are experiencing fatigue with repetitive information and pattern overload.
- Relaxing on 9-5 workday expectations and managing to deadlines and key deliverables instead.
- Increasing company communications so that employees aren’t left worrying and wondering about what’s going on.
- Sourcing ways to support your employee’s overall well being (such as through your EAP).
- Understanding and supporting employees through external stressors that may result in energy loss [LEARN MORE: How To Help Employees Balance Stressors and Stay Motivated].
Let’s look at a more subtle indicator of early stage burnout.
Increased Microaggressions and Cynicism
When it comes to workplace mental health and well-being, microaggressions are subtle and destructive to trust and psychological safety in organizations. We may experience it as passive aggressive comments and behaviours that trigger a subtle defensive response.
For example, managers who like to micromanage can project guilt and insecurity with comments like, “I really like your initiative in XYZ but you should have informed me so it would make the process smoother”. Language patterns like this send an unconscious signal that negates the positive compliments and sets a power dynamic tone that can make people feel a loss of autonomy just below conscious awareness.
As a result, people begin to install protective triggers which make them feel uneasy, uncomfortable and “walk on eggshells” at work. For some people, that may further lead to microaggression as a protective response, increasing unnecessary politics at work. Left unaddressed, it can perpetuate and spread as an acceptable behaviour at work installing itself into workplace culture. Overtime, it heightens tension, apprehension and unresolved conflict that breaks trust in the workplace.
Given the recovery period between work from home and return to office, it won’t be unusual to observe an increase of microaggression. Many times this behaviour is learned outside the organization, and with the blurring of lines with working from home, it can be easily brought into the workplace.
[LEARN MORE: 5 Strategies to Manage Working From Home During the COVID-19 Recovery Period]
Nevertheless, it’s an ideal opportunity to properly identify these behaviours and address the problems at the root cause.
Passive aggressive non-confrontational behaviour generally stems from the tension of not getting something you desire and sits as a surface level problem. The goal is to find the root need, release the negative emotion around it, and effectively communicate your needs.
If this is something you’re aware of and feeling, here is a simple journaling exercise.
- Exhaustively write and list down what you don’t want
- Identify and release the emotions and feelings behind it
- Identify what you do want
- Choose a positive emotion to achieve what you want
- Set a goal and take action
For example, “I don’t want to be treated like my contributions don’t matter” >> I feel angry and frustrated >> “I want to be appreciated and respected for my talent and work” >> I want to feel loved >> Share with your colleagues and manager your accomplishments worth appreciating.
While this seems like a simple re-framing exercise, it takes deep introspection and a deeper level of emotional intelligence. There are a few intermediate subtleties between those steps that can make it challenging for people.
- Connecting with and acknowledging your feelings and emotions
- Not “reasoning” away your emotions with coping behaviours
- Being honest and guilt-free with yourself
- Being creative and intuitive determining what you do want
- Being mindful of positive emotions you need to embrace
- Taking action
During this exercise, if you find it difficult to complete, that’s a clear sign there is deep rooted emotional baggage, mental blocks and blind spots that can make it difficult to resolve by yourself. Seek some professional support. Finding a professional coach, counselor or therapist can be very useful.
At the organization level, it’s a good idea to review your business and operational processes with your teams to identify energy draining habits and behaviours within your organization workflows. Understanding those can enable you to strategically intervene by automating draining activities, aligning headcount, eliminating work or layering in self-care activities to ensure peak performance.
Other areas where organizations can focus their attention include:
- Reinforcing company values
- Leading by example
- Training managers on Emotional Intelligence
- Linking individual output to purpose
- Ensuring role clarity
Lastly, here are some clear and strong indicators to be aware of when it comes to post-COVID fatigue and burnout.
High Anxiety, Panic and Emotional Reactivity
The fear of the unknown, coupled with the uncertainty of this pandemic can drive you into erratic action. As a natural built in survival mechanism, it can also paralyze you. As much as the practice of mindfulness can be useful to make clear decisions during this time, it’s the instinctive emotional override that can be very frustrating during times of fatigue and burnout.
Without properly releasing the emotions within the neurology; the opposite of suppression, two major effects that make it more difficult are: increased emotional volatility and pessimism. This can be both toxic for you and for those who surround you and perpetuate burnout in the workplace.
Like the analogy goes: Put on your oxygen mask first before you help others. Self care is important while navigating the pandemic in the workplace.
One strategy you can explore is giving yourself 24 hours to choose. In other words, by loosening the constraints of time expectations, it will open up mental and emotional capacity to manage the effects that follow with decision making. Otherwise it’s easy to fall into a reactionary position and perpetuate anxiety, guilt and blame as a ripple effect across the organization.
During this time, be sensitive to emotional triggers. Coming out of a crisis leadership position may lead to post-traumatic stress. Pay attention and notice any uncontrollable emotional reactivity, even in seemingly normal situations. This could be sudden bursts of high anxiety, panic, anger, sadness and guilt.
This is a good time to consider seeking outside mental health support to help properly process the emotions and trauma. Attempting to cope and even self addressing it can be very counterproductive as your unconscious behaviours easily overrides your willpower especially during times of fatigue.
At The Burnout Clinic, we use an effective evidence-based process called Mental Emotional Release that can release the suppressed emotions in traumas and phobias in as quickly as 20 minutes with no remission or need to relive painful memories.
From an organizational stand-point, during the recovery period be aware and prepared for post traumatic stress that could be revealed during this natural cool down period as suppressed emotions are being processed.
Here are some HR programs to consider and re-visit in your organization:
- Group benefit program with mental health offerings
- Mental Health First Aid
- “Just Because” Employee Check-ins
- Employee Pulse Surveys
- Time Off Policies
Make it an effort to communicate your priorities around mental health across your organization during this time. This can be done in the form of employee generated content campaigns, messages that demonstrate executive support, training and even mental health and resilience tools like Avail.app.
(Avail.app: Workplace Mental Health Tool with weekly evidence-based check ins and organization analytics to steer employees to support resources)
Unlike general mental health and well being, dealing with high stress especially when it triggers unwarranted behaviours is very individual and many times people will be hesitant to share it or admit it. It can also be difficult for People leaders and HR Professionals to detect it because it occurs within a much smaller population of your organization which requires much more targeted focus and personalization.
However with proper training and development of psychological safety and trust within your culture, it will make it easier for individuals to openly self-identify themselves for support, and have open and safe conversations with colleagues.
While this pandemic has presented itself with a magnitude of stress and uncertainty of what the future growth of your organization might be like, you don’t have to do it alone.
The team at LOFT Consulting and The Burnout Clinic are here to support you during this time.
With the recovery period phasing into both businesses and our cities, fatigue and burnout can lead to heavy burdens to set new stronger foundations for the growth of your organization. It can be lonely, and it can be paralyzing.
If that concerns you or it’s something you’re beginning to feel now...
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This piece was a co-written piece by Shari Angle and Duncan So.
About Shari Angle and Loft Consulting
Shari Angle is a foremost expert in talent management and leadership development. Her purpose is to inspire invested leaders beyond traditional success and satisfaction to true purpose and personal fulfillment.
Shari brings 20 years of Human Resources experience, with more than a decade of those at the executive level. She holds a Bachelor of Arts, Honours Sociology from Western University and a post-graduate diploma in Human Resources Management from Humber College. Shari has experience working directly within a large, multinational service organization, as well as a mid-size, growth-focused transportation company. Her skills and knowledge base are transferable between organization, industry, and leadership level.
Shari’s work is grounded in her personal experience as a leader and VP of Human Resources. Her focus is on aligning strong talent and leadership practices with a company’s vision and strategic focus. Shari’s clients experience a relationship that is founded on trust, expertise, and results.
About Duncan So and The Burnout Clinic
Duncan So, Founder & Executive Director at The Burnout Clinic. Duncan has been a child of corporate burnout that has led him professionally into the field of human flourishing for over a decade working on systemic social change projects. He’s a social entrepreneur and change agent, on a mission to create a more passionate world building systems and programs for companies and communities on the path of making social good.
Board Certified with the Association of Integrative Psychology. A Master Practitioner in Mental Emotional Release, NLP and Hypnosis.
At the Burnout Clinic, we help HR Leaders and Entrepreneurs develop and integrate burnout intervention programs within their organization. Our flagship 2-day burnout intervention program stops the cycle of high anxiety, fatigue, creative slumps, and burnout, and rapidly returns leaders back happy, productive and creatively engaged at work.