How to prevent burnout before it takes hold

You can’t shield your team from all stress. But you can support your employees through it.

Today, we’re talking about burnout.

If you lead a team, the issue of burnout is probably already on your mind. In the past few years, you’ve been navigating stressors on multiple fronts — from the pandemic, supply chain disruption, and climate change, to your own mental list of what’s keeping you up at night.

And if burnout isn’t already on your mind, it should be! Because burnout leads to employee attrition. And a company that is bleeding talent can’t scale.

Worse, even before employees leave a company, burnout can have devastating effects on culture and mental health. Teams experiencing burnout aren’t just exhausted — they’re disengaged. They start to doubt themselves and their abilities. Or they fall prey to cynicism, a feeling that can spread to the entire organization.

Some causes of burnout are well outside any one manager’s control, like the global challenges we're all facing together.

And others are part of the necessary life cycle of growing a business. There is no blitzscaling without the occasional massive work week or quick-fire sprint to catch a fleeting window of opportunity.

You can’t shield a team from all the stress all the time. But you can find effective and human ways of supporting your team through it.

This week’s featured episode:

Five ways to burnout-proof your organization

If you’re a leader right now navigating the global pandemic, supply chain disruptions, and your own mental list of what’s keeping you up at night, the issue of burnout is probably on your mind. You can’t shield your team from all stress, but you can support your employees through it. This episode highlights the best conversations we’ve had recently about stopping burnout in your organization before it takes hold.

Featuring BetterUp’s Alexi Robichaux, Upwork’s Hayden Brown, Merck’s Ken Frazier, Chobani’s Hamdi Ulukaya, director J.J. Abrams, Girls Who Code’s Reshma Saujani, BW4BL’s Tokunbo Koiki, and FuelFinance’s Alyona Mysko.

Listen now

Building on this...

HuffPost & Thrive Global’s Arianna Huffington:

“I was two years into building HuffPost and had fallen completely prey to the delusion that, in order to succeed as an entrepreneur and as a mother, I just had to sacrifice myself.”

Listen >>

Netflix’s Reed Hastings:

“I was coding all night, trying to be CEO in the day, and once in a while, would squeeze in a shower. And it turns out, that's not a good recipe for leading a large group of people.”

Listen >>

Action Item: Schedule Sleep

Today’s Action Item is called “Schedule Sleep.” And we’ll be doing just that.

It’s incredibly simple: Replace one hour of late-night work with one hour of sleep. Don’t just promise yourself you’ll try to do it, actually block off this hour in your calendar, starting tonight.

Make it explicit, to model this behavior for the rest of your team. After a week of doing this, check back in with yourself. How has this shift changed your mindset?

This Action Item appears in Day 26 of The Mindset of Scale course. You can find it in the Masters of Scale Courses app, available for iOS & for Android.

NEW on Rapid Response:

Rapid Response: How to decarbonize your business, w/John Doerr, partner at Kleiner Perkins

“Go for the megatons.” That’s John Doerr’s recommendation for how to combat the existential threat of climate change. Doerr, a venture capitalist and author of the book Speed & Scale, joins host Bob Safian to discuss decarbonization, which he calls “the greatest economic opportunity of the next century.” The book quantifies the six key ways we'll achieve a carbon-neutral world — and the critical role business plays in advancing that goal.

Listen here >>

Summit livestream tickets on sale now!

The Masters of Scale Summit is happening this October, and livestream tickets are on sale now!

The Summit will be the largest gathering of the global Masters of Scale community, convening a diverse group of leaders and change-agents for a business event like no other.

It's uniquely designed to deliver an exceptional experience for both executives in the room and their teams back home, with every detail intentionally designed to inspire and empower teams.

Livestream tickets include:

Access to beautifully filmed program sessions featuring an extraordinary lineup of speakers, thought-provoking content, and inventive formats. Each session is filmed via a multi-camera setup and produced to the utmost standards of quality.
A dedicated livestream host and ample opportunities to connect with other attendees, ensuring a seamless and community-oriented virtual experience.
An action-oriented toolkit with pre- and post-event materials designed to empower you and your team to bring new ideas to life within your organization.

Learn more here >>

Find this email useful? Forward it to a friend. (We appreciate you!)

Add us to your address book to ensure weekly delivery

Copyright © 2022 WaitWhat. All rights reserved.

Our mailing address is:
Wait What Inc.
305 West Broadway Unit # 229
New York, NY 10013

Thanks for subscribing to receive insights from Masters of Scale. We love hearing from you. Get in touch at hello@mastersofscale.com.

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.