How Leaders Can Fight the Anxiety Epidemic and Address Burnout
Today, October 10th, is World Mental Health Day. It kicks off Mental Health Awareness Week, and in particular, a focus on Anxiety and Depression disorders. There has been a lot of attention lately on the topics of mental health and anxiety (including articles like this that I’ve been writing all year). With organizations such as the World Federation for Mental Health (https://wfmh.global/) whose mission is to promote awareness of mental health and the prevention of mental disorders, declaring this day, I hope it will inspire leaders and organizations to start (or continue) taking steps to address burnout and anxiety in the workplace.Why? Well to many, 2022 might have resembled what life was like before the Pandemic. Yet the facts are that our ‘recovery’ is not going so well because mental health concerns are at an all-time high — so much so that the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, a panel of medical experts that has been around since 1984, recently recommended for the first time that doctors screen all their adult patients under 65 for anxiety. It made the same recommendation for children and teenagers earlier this year, all with the intent to help prevent mental health disorders from going undetected and untreated for years or even decades to come. In other words, to help prevent the epidemic from getting worse!As I mentioned, this is an all-too-familiar topic coming from me, as I’ve written about anxiety and burnout in the workplace a few times this year, including in my blog on How to Become A Mental Health Ally. Well, here I go again because, although awareness and media attention around breaking the stigma of mental illness and health has improved (thanks in part to efforts by celebrities and social media influencers), the reality is that guidance like this means we are not making enough progress when it comes to beating burnout and addressing anxiety.In fact, the task force reported that from August 2020 to February 2021, the percentage of adults with recent symptoms of anxiety or a depressive disorder increased from 36.4 percent to 41.5 percent.And that’s not all. After conducting its own research of the global workforce in 2021, Gallup declared that employees around the world are experiencing stress at an “all-time-high level, and worry, anger, and sadness” are still above pre-pandemic levels. This is considered an “organizational risk”, they note, and, if leaders don’t pay attention to employee well-being, they can be blindsided by burnout of their top performers and high quit rates.Yet, leaders are struggling, too, and recent studies show that nearly 60% of leaders say they feel exhausted and “used-up” at the end of the workday.We can help leaders and teams address the organizational risks with our Addressing Burnout and Beating Anxiety Programs that range from Lunch-and-Learns for covering the basics, to on-site or virtual, interactive training and coaching programs that help build resilience strategies and beat anxiety.Burnout can lead to “Quiet Quitting; Leadership Development Can Help. Speaking of burnout, one big impact of not addressing some of the factors of this in the workplace is the trend to “quiet quitting”. That’s a new term given to describe “not taking your job too seriously”.We’ve all had folks on our team like this – the ones who do the bare minimum of work, or don’t go above and beyond, or focus more energy on life outside of work.Yet now, burnout is causing even some longstanding high-performers to Quiet Quit. They still show up from 9-5, but they are no longer “high-achievers”. Now they may display reduced motivation and do just enough to get through the day.
The issue of High Performers becoming Quiet Quittersdue to post-pandemic burnout may be new, but the solution is not… as I’ve been recommending all year, it includes:
- CONNECTION
- COMMUNICATION
- CLARITY OF PURPOSE
- *UPSKILLING
- *LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
*Both of which are even more important in this flexbred (flexibility+hybrid) world for Millennials, GenX, and GenZ professionals alike.Yet, those, too have become flexbred, as in-person conferences and internal training programs have all but vanished over the past few years. Organizations are either doing LESS to train leaders, or leaving it up to an individual’s manager, or to the individuals themselves.Current research in leadership development suggests that best practices for hybrid leadership development should, among other things, be iterative and experimental, supported by coaching, and span all forms of delivery, from all-virtual to fully in-person.Of course, it’s one thing to offer the Quiet Quitter the opportunity to build new skills as a way to address burnout, it’s another to make sure they take advantage of it (especially if it means one more thing to do).Research suggests that reframing the opportunity from ‘this will teach you to be a leader’ to ‘this will help you BUILD LEADERSHIP SKILLS’is the secret to motivating individuals to engage in leadership training.We can help with developing your leaders, too. Our 6-week, Assess. Act. Achieve. Introduction to Leadership Coaching Program, conducted via small peer groups of like-minded, high-performing individuals delivers on these best practice requirements.Message me, and let’s talk about how we can turn your Quiet Quitters into (anxiety & burnout-free) Powerful Performers!
