Excerpt:
“According to a 2020 study about the drivers of work engagement, focusing on creating more job resources, rather than on decreasing job demands, increases the odds of preventing burnout. Beyond required tangible resources — finances, personnel, technology, and/or equipment, which may be beyond your control — consider these less obvious but no less important intangible ones.
1) Find aspects of your work that are consistently repetitive. Can any be made into templates for easy access and sharing? By not reinventing the wheel or starting from scratch each time, you’ll save one of your most valuable and finite intangible resources: time.
2) Learn lessons from previous challenges. Personal and collective stories about overcoming obstacles help to access positive emotional resources and point the way to applying their lessons in the future. Consider designating a few minutes during regular meetings for team members to share their stories.
3) Identify people internal to the organization that your team relies on to do its work well. I have talked to teams, for example, that don’t know that the group has a marketing professional to help them with messaging. Thinking you have to “go it alone” adds to your team’s workload and stress. By finding someone in a different functional area willing to help you meet a goal, you can leverage their expertise to create better outcomes and reduce burnout potential.
4) Promote a culture of learning on your team. A learning culture supports experimentation, innovative thinking, and risk taking, all of which can be encouraged using these ideas from recent neuroscience research. In addition, if there are existing training and development opportunities, make sure team members are aware of them.
5) Put someone in charge of monitoring your industry for early signs of emerging issues.
6) Determine how you will support each other when the going gets tough. Because everyone is affected by your team’s collective performance, it makes sense to reach out to another member when early signs of burnout start to show.