Most of us are familiar with the airplane announcement, if there should be a change in cabin pressure...put your oxygen mask on first before helping others. It makes sense that in an emergency, you need oxygen to stay alive. Only afterwards can you then attend to someone else’s needs. The problem is, too many of us wait until there truly is an emergency before we take care of ourselves. Managers, particularly middle managers balancing competing demands above and beneath them, struggle to take care of themselves. As a result, managers are burnt out, and this has downhill affects for personal wellness, productivity, and the employees they manage.
I remember this phase well as an early manager. Nearly a decade and a half ago I was in the throes of my early years managing a team, and I was struggling both personally and professionally. At the time I was also a new father with a toddler and a baby on the way. I had a demanding job both at home and at work, sleep was at a premium. This meant that I often wasn’t prioritizing the rest I needed in order to think clearly and make better decisions.
According to a recent HBR article about manager burnout, “when managers are burned out, it’s likely due in large part to an excessive, unrelenting volume of work, and as new priorities emerge, existing projects do not get de-prioritized. Everything has become important and stays on their plate, making the workload unsustainable.” My pace at the time wasn’t sustainable, and for me it required an emergency intervention. Shortly after changing leadership roles and launching a new team I ended up in the hospital. My health had caught up with me. Here I was, now with two young kids, a new important role, and humbled to experience the full limits of my capacity. It was a wake up call.
Afterwards, I developed a mantra, if everything is important, then nothing’s important. I started deleting emails and opting out of supposedly mandatory tasks. I began a quest to ruthlessly eliminate hurry from my life. I got clearer on what was truly important, and I learned how to prioritize my time accordingly. At the top of my list was time away to recharge and rest. Looking back over the years I can say that these behavioral changes have literally saved my life. And, bonus points, learning to take care of myself helped me to better take care of the people I coached and developed.
