Whether you have personally experienced burnout or not, one thing is for sure – burnout happens to a lot of talented people. If it hasn’t happened to you during your own career, you probably know a talented individual who has experienced it. Maybe it’s someone you know professionally or even a key person on your own team.

Not everyone knows this, but Hallie Warner, who joins me pretty much every week on our podcast Business Meets Spirituality, actually left our company after seven years because of this exact thing. Thankfully, in her time off, she discovered what she really needed was more alignment and to make some professional and lifestyle changes, and ultimately, she came back to the company. Now she is thriving in the Chief of Staff role. But there were hard lessons learned for both of us along the way. Because of that experience, burnout is something that she and I have spent a lot of time reflecting on together – she, as a top-performing, high-achieving employee who experienced burnout, and me, as the leader who missed the warning signs.

As leaders (whether it be of an entire company or an individual department), we have to keep an eye on our team – that’s our role as a leader. And when you work for a start-up or high growth company, you have to keep an eye out specifically for burnout in your employees. We must manage our employees’ energy, their work-load, and what they are focused on. We must pay attention to when they need a break and need some rest and recovery time. It’s not as simple as time “on” and time “off” though. It’s more nuanced and complex than that.

What Is Burnout?

Burnout is defined as the mental or physical collapse caused by overwork or stress. The piece I want to focus on here, specifically, is stress. It doesn’t happen from the number of hours worked or even from the intensity of work. Burnout happens from prolonged stress for a few keys of reasons:

• When you are not growing
• When you are out of alignment with your natural behavior
• When you are not having success for an extended period of time

So if you’ve got a company or team how do you help them avoid burnout?

Help Your Team Members Grow as Individuals

First, make sure you have a clear understanding of your direct reports’ goals – personally and professionally. Who are they? What are their goals inside and outside of the office? What drives them every day? This means that you need to meet regularly, and when you do, it’s important to discuss their goals beyond the latest project or key metric. Are you encouraging them to take on a new project and pushing them to get out of their comfort zone? When people aren’t growing, they’re dying. If your team members start to feel stagnant or feel there is no room for them to grow at your company, then it’s easier to burnout on the work they are doing every day. Make sure you have a clear growth plan for each of the positions in your company and communicate that often. Not everyone will take you up on it. But knowing that growth is available is often enough to help people see more opportunities for themselves.

Make Sure Personalities Align With Roles

Do you understand the natural behavior of each of your team members? Do you know how they respond to stress? Do you know what work environments they thrive in? Do you understand their communication style? If you answered “no” to even one of these questions, it’s time to do a deep dive into your team members’ personalities and behaviors. There are a ton of free assessments on the internet – check out the DISC or 16 Personalities to start. Once you have a clear understanding of their behavior, you’ve got to ask yourself if they are in the right position in your company to achieve success. For example, if you have a High I personality (see DISC profile), and they are in a data entry position, with little people contact, that is a complete mismatch. Now, any intelligent individual can learn and perform a job, but that doesn’t mean they are going to be fulfilled. When someone’s doing the wrong job for their personality type, they are going to be stressed each day operating outside of their natural behavior, and if that goes on for too long, it can lead to burnout.

Again, burnout isn’t just about numbers of hours worked, but the result of time spent on projects, tasks, or in a job that is not the right fit. Matching natural behavioral styles with the behavior needed to thrive in a position is the cornerstone of our hiring practice. However, occasionally, mismatches occur. If you know your team, you can spot this and avoid burnout by shifting staff or tweaking job descriptions. In my opinion, the fastest way to burnout is if people are in a company that they love, but a role they hate. And if your team isn’t aligned with the mission or vision of the company or their leader, then burnout will happen much, much faster. Make sure people are not only aligned with the right position for their behavior, but with where you and the company are going. Evaluate this regularly. What was a fit in year one of your company, may no longer be the right fit for you or your team member in year five.

Set Your Team Up for Success – Especially When They Really Need a Win

Burnout also occurs when an individual is failing over and over and over again. Okay, okay, yes, I am a proponent of failure and failing forward. But there comes a point where a team member can just be banging their head against the wall, trying to get through, and nothing seems to be working. Failure like this, for a long time, with no clear wins can be exhausting, deflating, and can cause burnout. This is where you need to step in. Does your employee need to step back and take a day off? Do they need some additional training? Do they need to be taken off the project or have someone else come in to help? Is it simply too much work for one person? Does your employee have the skills to accomplish what you are asking of them? Do they need help re-prioritizing or chunking down the project into bite-size pieces so that they can accomplish one small part and have a victory and then build upon that? Going too long without any success, no matter how small, is discouraging and stressful, which leads to burnout. Help your team members get a win that they can build on.

Burnout can happen to the best of us. And as a leader, it is your responsibility to keep an eye on your team, watch for signs of burnout, and mitigate it as much as possible. When your employees are burned out it can have massive financial repercussions for your company in the form of costly mistakes, missed opportunities, or having a skilled employee leave. For your team members, the cost could be even greater with effects on their mental and physical health. When your team members have got their heads down, getting the work done, it’s your job to keep scanning the room, the company, spotting the signs of burnout and redirecting focus for the good of your team and your company.

Have you experienced burnout or seen it show up in your company? What were the warning signs? What are you doing as a leader to mitigate burnout in the future?

Want to hear Hallie’s story about burnout from a high-achieving employee perspective? Head on over to the podcast episode How to Avoid Burnout When You’re a High Achiever and listen in to get the full scoop.