Leading with Balance: 9 Strategies for Resilient Leadership

Leadership is a unique skill set focused on inspiring, guiding, and motivating others to achieve common goals. Core requisites include having a clear vision, an underpinning plan, and the ability to inspire and influence people. Necessary skills encompass flexibility, empathy, clear communication, and the ability to create a sense of belonging. Authenticity, honesty, and team spirit are essential values.

However, one crucial element often overlooked is resilience – the link between a leader's health and their effectiveness.

The Leadership Challenge

Good leaders use their skills to develop others, enabling them to perform at their best. Leadership roles come with increasing demands to deliver results, often with the expectation of achieving "more for less." Leaders must therefore make tough decisions, juggle multiple priorities, navigate regulatory requirements, manage budgets, and handle reputational challenges.

While successfully navigating these complexities can be rewarding, it can also come at a personal cost if not actively managed.

Burnout in Leadership

Burnout, recognised as an occupational phenomenon, affects more than 53% of managers and leaders during their careers with the increasingly pressurised corporate environment leading to a rise in prevalence. Burnout can lead to chronic physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion, insomnia, memory loss, impaired decision-making, apathy, and lack of self-efficacy.

In my previous post ‘Stress and Burnout: Differences and Risk Factors’, I covered some of the main triggers of burnout. Self-awareness of your circumstances, values and personal behaviours are all critical, and if you are a perfectionist, a rescuer or have high levels of empathy, as a leader you need to understand that you are at risk of burnout and take preventative steps.

The good news is that with personal commitment to your health, balance can be achieved to enable you to lead well, without fear of burnout.

9 Leadership Strategies for Avoiding Burnout

The following nine strategies should be built into your routine to build resilience, maintain your well-being, and avoid burnout, while effectively leading your team. I’ve grouped the strategies into two categories – personal management and corporate management.

Personal Management Strategies

1. Prioritise self-care

Ensure adequate sleep, nutrition, and exercise. Make time for activities you enjoy and find relaxing. Even 20-30 minutes of such activities can help lower stress levels.

2. Practice mindfulness

Research has shown that incorporating mindfulness into your daily routine helps reduce stress. Over time, daily mindfulness helps you control your reaction to stressors and improves your overall resilience.

So, incorporate mindfulness into your daily routine to reduce stress and improve resilience. Try meditation, deep breathing exercises, or simply focus on the present moment for 15 minutes daily.

3. Take breaks and use annual leave

Regularly step away from work and fully unplug during breaks and vacations. This allows you to recharge, gain perspective, and return with renewed energy and focus.

Set some ground rules for yourself. Schedule breaks between meetings, and make sure you lunch away from your desk. Use your annual leave allowance and don’t check in with work whilst you are off – trust your team to function and deliver without you, so you can recharge. It will make a difference.

4. Seek personal support

Build a strong network of peers, seek out a mentor, and consider using a coach. These support mechanisms provide outlets to discuss challenges, gain insights, and navigate your leadership role more effectively.

Corporate Management Strategies

5. Prioritise and re-prioritise

Develop a fluid, continuous prioritisation discipline. Use techniques like the Eisenhower Box to categorize tasks based on urgency and importance, and never forget those longer-term, strategic tasks – over time they will reduce the need to firefight. Tailor your schedule around priorities, energy levels, and peak productivity periods.

Eisenhower Box for prioritisation

6. Delegate effectively

Empower team members by delegating tasks - fostering trust, autonomy, and professional growth. Trust your team to handle responsibilities and avoid micromanaging.

7. Set clear boundaries

Establish and maintain clear boundaries for work-life balance. Be clear about your working hours and stick to them. Learn to say no when necessary and delegate tasks appropriately.

An important lesson… the more you offer to help others (or, put another way, the more you do tasks someone else should be doing), the more people come to depend on you to keep doing them. The greater your workload becomes, and others lose the opportunity to take ownership, learn and grow. Instead of taking over, support them to become capable and responsible for their own delivery.

8. Adopt a coaching mindset

Foster high-performance teams by using a coaching approach. Use questioning and feedback loops to elicit self-awareness and empower your team. This approach raises confidence and ownership, maximising individual and collective skills.

9. Foster a supportive culture

Create an environment where team members feel valued, respected, and encouraged to speak up. Establish open communication, provide clear and constructive feedback, and prioritise collaboration and teamwork.

Conclusion

Avoiding burnout as a leader requires self-awareness and a proactive approach both in and out of the workplace. Maintaining a healthy work-life balance maximises your personal resilience and capability while setting an example for your team.

Incorporate self-care, mindfulness, regular breaks, and a supportive network into your routine. In the workplace, set clear boundaries and foster an effective team through coaching and a supportive culture. An engaged, autonomous team that feels safe to learn and take ownership will reduce the burden on you as a leader.

Take time to reflect on your personal and leadership habits. Minor changes to your routine and building the right team environment are not only beneficial for your resilience – they're essential for the success of your team and organisation as a whole.

By implementing these strategies, you'll be better equipped to lead effectively without succumbing to burnout, ensuring long-term success for both yourself and your team.