Companies offer more and more complex services, internal and external relationships are more and more present at every level of the company, partners and clients are located in different parts of the globe, with a serie of consequences, communication is simpler and it’s a leitmotiv in everyone’s life, 24/7, thanks to technology. these promises given, the workload on the shoulders of every person in the company is much higher than in the past, and so the responsibility required.
This situation often brings people to the burnout, “a situation of stress lived in or deriving by the work environment.” that results in a a psychological and emotional strain, with demotivation, disappointment and low interest with concrete consequences in personal, professional and social life of ever person. (State of Mind, psychologic science magazine).
Out of the burnout: what can you do as an individual?
- Try to understand why you accept new tasks even when you’re already full of things to do: do you do it to maintain a reputation in the company? Do you do it for the fear of saying “no” and disappoint someone? Sometimes (almost every time, to be honest!) taking something and not doing it is worse than decline from the beginning.
- Always remember that if you say “yes” to something, you automatically say “no” to something else.
- Start comparing your tasks: there are little victories that require little time, but all of them summed up become a hard task, which you can get rid of, and there are bigger victories that require more time and effort but they bring more satisfaction and advantages.
- Always consider your role: when they ask you to get in a project, try to understand if your presence and help could be useful, necessary or not essencial, and then decide between joining the team or leaving that space empty for someone else who can be better for that role.
- Get rid of useless collaboration: to do it, define your role and organize your time and tasks around the development of skills that can be useful for that role.
- Define key objectives of your career, the path you want to invest energy and time in, values you want to pursue and talent you want to cultivate.
- With defined ideas about your role and your goals, talk with your colleagues, and keep them up-to-date: clarify that a missing answer to a certain kind of information, the decision not to participate in a certain meeting or the refusal to join a team for a certain project, is not a choice deriving from a personal problem with them, but a favor you do for yourself and for the company (therefore for themselves).
- If you’ve just arrived in a new company or in a new team or you’ve just joined someone for a new project, make immediately clear which are the requirements for a pacific and convenient collaboration for you and for the coworkers.
- Don’t be afraid to delegate: team working means entrust others’ skills and competencies, without the need to keep under control everyone’s work (here we go back to point 4: everyone had habits.
- Concentrate on the quality of your professional relationships, not on the amount of them: try to understand who are the people you can work better and produce more with, to always deliver on point projects.
Out of the burnout: what can the company do?
- Distribute the charge of work in the team, in a balanced way, right for the level of experience and responsibility of each one.
- Create moments of feedback, to strengthen coworkers’ relationships, and increase chemistry among team members.
- Communicate with clarity: explain the task in the best way you can do ut, give realistic objectives and choose a realistic deadline.
- Recognize the skills of your coworkers, and give value to the talents you already have in your team: people will take advantage of that, and team and company will do the same too.
- Let everyone express their point of view, in prefixed spaces and time to do it, so that you can make everyone feel like they’re part of a bigger organization that can heir energy from every root that sustain it.
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