How To Avoid Burnout At Work And Maximise Your Energy This Year

Working in the change management space can sometimes feel incredibly demanding and stressful. Within high pressure environments, the successful delivery of large or complex change initiatives relies on many different factors, many of which are out of your control. 

Change managers can also feel responsible for the change and spend a lot of energy helping stakeholders navigate big emotions through the change journey. These are just some of the reasons why I believe change managers are susceptible to burnout, which is what I’m talking about today. 

I believe that intentional energy management is the key to helping us protect ourselves from burnout. This is why I developed the Energy Management Toolkit, a practical step by step model to help you protect yourself from burnout and maximize your energy. 

In this episode I’m taking you through this model and how you can use it every single day in really practical ways to increase your ability to be productive and make better decisions. When you know how to manage your energy, it leads to better outcomes for the entire organisation, increased engagement and a much more positive work environment for everyone. 

I share the two principles that underpin this model and discuss the 6 layers that contribute to the energy pyramid. I go into detail about 2 of the layers and how each aspect of the model forms part of the ecosystem of your energy management and ultimately, your performance at work in the change management space. 

Effective personal energy management is essential for folks working in the organisational change management space. Being intentional about this will help you have the capacity to navigate the complexities and challenges of the role and maintain a positive work environment for yourself and the team that you're working with.

Make sure you download my Energy Management Toolkit today to build out your personalised energy management plan. I’m convinced that energy management is the key to helping you avoid burnout this year and I know this tool is going to help you and your team immensely.

To download the Energy Management Toolkit, simply enter your details below and I’ll send it out as soon as it’s ready!

FULL TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] Kate: Hi. Hi. Welcome back to this week's episode of The New Way with Dr. Kate Burn. That's me. I hope that you had a great Easter break or just extra long weekend if you don't celebrate. I know lots of people are on leave at the moment uh, school holidays is happening. So if that's you, I hope it's going really, really well.

[00:01:29] I thought this would be a great time for us to talk about burnout and change managers and why there's such a relationship there. We all know that working in the change management space can sometimes feel really demanding and very, very stressful. Change managers and people working in that change management space often work in really high pressure environments.

[00:01:53] You might feel responsible for the change, but you are also likely to experience really frequent changes yourself, including changes in the leadership or the team that you're working in. Changes to the strategy, the scope of your role, and even the direction of the overarching change program itself.

[00:02:11] I bet that your role usually involves a really significant amount of emotional labor too. Because change managers are always needing to help impacted stakeholders navigate really big emotions through the change journey, as well as needing to manage your own emotions through that experience. It's a lot.

[00:02:33] Of course, change isn't possible without collaboration, and that means that you're working with a huge range of stakeholders. They each have their own point of view, their own agenda, their own stuff that's stressing them out as well. And of course, successful delivery of large or complex change initiatives relies on so many different factors and many of those, the change manager and people working in the change team just don't have much control or influence over, even if you feel like you are responsible. I don't think you are responsible, but I'm gonna talk about that and exactly that role, that difference about, you know, why we think we are responsible and what we should be doing instead in another episode.

[00:03:14] Anyhow, let's talk about burnout. You know, it can be a lot, and it's no wonder that burnout is really rife for folks working in the change management space. That's why I'm so excited to share a really useful, very practical step-by-step model that I've recently developed. It's gonna help you protect yourself from burnout and maximize your energy this year and hopefully every year thereafter. Now, by the way, you're about to discover as I go through this with you, there's quite a bit to this model, and I really want you to be able to understand it clearly and start applying it to your life straight away, today, even. Today would be a great day to get onto this.

[00:03:59] Burnout is horrible. None of us should have to experience it ever again. Just being on the path to burnout feels awful. The exhaustion, you know, the sense of disconnection. It's terrible. It interferes with your whole life, and of course it makes it really hard for you to do good work. I don't want that for you.

[00:04:19] So I'm really happy to share my entire step-by-step resource, the training that I did for our in-house team with you totally for free. That resource pack includes a practical deck. It includes a companion step-by-step training video, and a worksheet for you to create your own energy management plan.

[00:04:40] It's super easy to use. It's really fun to do, honestly. When you do this, when you give yourself the time to go through this, it's gonna feel like a breath of fresh air. Just to put yourself first for a second and to think about this stuff and you can complete it today. This has been a total game changer for our team.

[00:05:01] Oh my God, I, if you're listening to this, I really implore you to grab your copy of this resource now so that you can tailor my model that I'm just about to take you through right now, so that you can tailor it to suit your needs and you never have to worry about experiencing burnout again. You can go grab the whole thing over at everchange.com.au/energy. Now, I'm not a medical professional, and of course you always need to check this stuff with your own gp, but my experiences in the past with burnout and also from seeing others that I love go through it.

[00:05:39] It seems some really common symptoms of burnout include stuff like fatigue and exhaustion, and really kind of chronic. It's not just one bad day. It feels like you're dragging yourself through the whole week. Decreased productivity, decreased motivation, feelings of cynicism and detachment. That's a big one. It certainly has been for me in the past. I know other people have experienced headaches, stomach problems physical symptoms, changes in mood, insomnia, increased irritability, and a sense of being disconnected from others, not just others that you work with, but others in your.

[00:06:18] It is shit. Burnout is something that I've been thinking about a lot for these past couple of years, especially since Covid, I have seen so many great people working in the change management space, feeling burnt out, feeling resentful and exhausted, spiraling and kind of falling out of love with working in this space because of it, really dropping like flies. And I just think it doesn't have to be that way. I think that proactively and intentionally managing our personal energy is the key to helping us protect ourselves against burnout.

[00:06:53] Here's why. First, change management is inherently stressful. We all know that change is disruptive. It often requires really significant effort to implement. Managing change involves navigating very complex systems, processes, and of course relationships, all of which can be very emotionally and mentally exhausting.

[00:07:15] Another reason why this is so important is that change initiatives often fail because of a lack of energy. It comes down to energy. You and I both know that change initiatives can require a lot of energy, a lot of focus from the change team for a long period of time, as well as energy from employees and other stakeholders.

[00:07:36] And of course, I bet you already know, if you think about it, that energy is contagious. As a change manager, your energy and attitude can have a very significant impact on the energy of people around you. Everyone, all of the stakeholders. Another reason to focus on our personal energy management is that when we get it right, well, effective energy management can increase resilience.

[00:08:00] When you manage your energy well, you are better able to cope with stress. You can remain focused and productive and maintain a positive attitude in the face of all of those challenges that I know everyone in the change management space is facing daily, weekly. And of course, managing our own energy can help improve overall performance.

[00:08:22] What I mean by that is when we're managing our own energy levels, we're able to really increase our ability to be productive and make better decisions. It can lead to better outcomes for the entire organization, increased engagement, and a much more positive work environment for everyone. All of your colleagues. 

[00:08:40] Of course, burnout isn't always solely our fault, and it's not just about our personal energy management. Of course it's not the silver bullet. The fact is that work stress, modern life, are always on culture, capitalism, the patriarchy and all of the shit that we've each got going on personally, behind the scenes, all of that contributes to burnout in that context, proactive energy management is just one part of minimizing burnout. But it is the element that we have the most personal influence over. 

[00:09:14] I am absolutely convinced that effective personal energy management is really essential for folks working in the organizational change management space to help them, one, have the capacity to navigate these complex and challenging processes you know, everything to do with change management while at the same time, Continuing to be able to maintain a positive work environment for themselves and the team that they're working with.

[00:09:43] It's really important and that's why after looking into this topic, doing a lot of reading and thinking and talking with others in this space. I've recently created my own energy management model. I'm gonna share it with you, but before I dive in, I especially wanna credit Lorraine Murphy, Simon Ong, and Sandra Dalton Smith. Their work in this space has really inspired my thinking on this topic. 

[00:10:07] Now, I originally created this energy management model, like I said, specifically for our in-house team of wonderful humans, great change managers, communication managers, engagement leads, project managers, benefits managers uh, user experience specialists and trainers. All of those kinds of people that I work with at Ever change and communication. I could see so many of them giving their all to work, which is admirable. So much so that without realizing it, they could sometimes stop taking care of themselves. I could see it from the outside. They couldn't necessarily see it.

[00:10:43] They would, it was happening unintentionally without them even thinking about it. They'd get so focused on supporting others through the change and delivering that they'd forget to think about maintaining their own. And of course that meant that as a result, their energy would falter at some point. Sooner or later they'd be running on empty and then they keep trying to push through. They've tried to continue putting their foot on the accelerator, but honestly, that would just make things worse. And I don't want that for the amazing people that I work with. I don't want that for me ever again either.

[00:11:16] And I certainly don't want that for you. And that's why I wanna talk about this, and I'm gonna break down my energy management model with you, right? So there are two core principles that underpin this model. The first is that if work or life, cuz they're the same work and life all happen, you know, at the same time.

[00:11:37] So if work or life requires more of me, my energy requires more nourishment. And the second principle is burnout isn't the result of doing too much. It is a symptom of not doing enough of what lights me up. So here's the easiest way to understand this energy management model. Now you know that they're the two principles that are underpinning all of my thinking here.

[00:12:03] I want you to imagine a pyramid with six layers, with the bottom layer being the widest part of the pyramid, and the sixth layer or the level on the top being the pointiest one. Each layer represents a different crucial element Helping us to manage our energy, a different theme or category, a different set of activities that when we combine everything in the pyramid, they work together and support our personal energy management as professionals.

[00:12:32] Working in the change management space to be able to consistently turn up as our best selves and do great work we each need to do and have different things in place at each of those levels in the pyramid to be able to experie. And support our own sustained personal. while each layer of that pyramid represents a specific theme, the exact actions that you are going to take, the routines, the habits that you establish, the goals that you set under each category to bring that theme to life there that's tailored to you, your unique strengths.

[00:13:07] Your interests, your biology, your preferences needs, your phase of life and your circumstances. So starting from the bottom of the pyramid and then we're gonna go up to the top, each layer represents, the first is about physical wellbeing. The next one is what really matters to you personally. The third is rest.

[00:13:28] The fourth is fun. The fifth is your support network, and the one at the very top, the pointy layer is, Your professional work and some key parts of that, which I'm just gonna tell you about in just a second. to help make it comprehensive and really easy for you to tailor. When I was designing this energy management model, I drilled down to include some really specific sub elements and prompts for each layer of the pyramid.

[00:13:56] So, oh, this is a little tricky to explain without you being able to, you know, see the model in front of you. So hopefully you've already gone and downloaded that resource pack that I mentioned before that you can grab over@everchange.com.au slash. Hopefully you've grabbed it and you're looking at the worksheet right now as you follow along.

[00:14:16] But if you're not, it's okay. I'm gonna do my best and hopefully hopefully we'll still be on the same page. So depending on the specific layer of the model, sometimes those sub elements that I just mentioned, sometimes they all weigh equally. They sit side by side in that layer. They're all. But sometimes depending on the layer, those sub elements are kind of stacked one on top of the other to show the relationship and the dependencies between each sub element and the order that you always need to do each one in and to review them.

[00:14:51] So, for example, the first layer of the energy management model, the bottom of the pyramid that represents your physical wellbeing, there are five specific parts. Two, physical wellbeing here in this pyramid, sleep, movement, nutrition, hydration, and medical. So the idea is that when you're using the worksheet that I'm giving to you, you're gonna design your own tailored energy management plan.

[00:15:20] So you'd come up with your own ideal personal key performance indicators or goals for each part of those. Each one of those sub elements that I just mentioned and the word ideal there is important. That's part of it. So, for example, for me, person. Look, I can definitely function on about six hours sleep a night, but if I'm being honest with myself, I know that I feel best when I have a solid eight hours.

[00:15:49] Is it easy or convenient for me to aim to have eight hours sleep most nights? No, it's not. Not at all. But I know that when I do, I feel better. The next day I perform better and I have a longer fuse with everyone as well. So my, in my energy management plan, I have written down eight hours of sleep each night as my goal.

[00:16:13] Of course, there are things in my life, strategies and approaches, things I need to do, particularly the night, you know, in the nighttime to help me. To that eight hours of sleep. Now movement is the same. I feel good when I've managed to get, you know, about 10,000 steps in, especially if that includes walking outside in the sunshine during the day, or at least in daylight.

[00:16:38] I also know that I feel better if I do some kind of hard exercise three or more times, a. A look by hard, I'm in cardio and please understand before I'm doing it and in the moment, I hate cardio. I hate it. But afterwards I feel great and I know that ultimately it really, it does give me energy.

[00:17:06] Is it ever easy or convenient for me to get steps in the middle of the day when I'm, you know, in the moment when I would prefer to be sitting at my desks slogging away when I've got a lot of priorities and urgent things and meetings and people that want things for me. Is it easy or convenient to do cardio ever?

[00:17:24] The answer is always, no, no, no, of course. But in my heart of hearts, I know that this kind of movement really helps fuel my energy. It gives me energy and builds positive momentum for me in my days. So on my energy management plan, I've got down cardio for 30 minutes, three times a week, and 10,000 steps a day.

[00:17:48] I've got those written down as my ideal kpi. The other parts that make up the physical wellbeing layer of this model. Remember, we're still just on the base layer of the pyramid. The bottom layer is nutrition, hydration, and medical. For me, this includes goals like staying away from refined sugar unless it's Fat Friday.

[00:18:10] Fat Friday's an institution in our house, and I would never, ever. Fat Friday's always gonna rule around here. It also includes aiming for at least two liters of water a day and taking my supplements and my medications first thing every morning. Okay, let me give you another example of a different part of the model.

[00:18:31] The layer at the very top of the pyramid is called professional, and this theme includes. very important sub elements of boundaries, expectation setting, role clarity, and your schedule and work plan. This is an example of a spot in the model where these sub-elements need to be considered one after the other.

[00:18:54] They are stacked. They're not sitting side by side. They're stacked one on top of the other because there's a relationship, there are dependencies here. Now, when it comes to energy management and avoiding burnout, my take is that each one of those things that I just mentioned, boundaries, expectation setting, role clarity, and your schedule or work.

[00:19:15] Each of those depends on the other. For example, you can't possibly have any idea of knowing whether or not your schedule or work plan is on point. If you don't have role clarity, it's just, it's just not possible. Role clarity is all about having a very clear understanding of the tasks and the duties that you need to be focused on at the moment.

[00:19:39] Now, of course, change management roles are known to be extremely dynamic, so getting clear on the role that you need to perform and the requirements that you need to deliver. Well, that's not a once and done thing, is it? It's something that anyone working in this space is gonna need to revisit often, perhaps every quarter, maybe every month, perhaps even more regularly than that.

[00:20:01] Every fortnight, every week. And sometimes maybe you're checking in with your team and you're all confirming your role daily. You know when, when you're really at the pointy end of business. But in my book, we can't have role. Without having agreed expectations, and that's why I've called out expectation setting as an important part of this energy management model.

[00:20:27] Agreeing expectations is all about having open conversations with the right people. You know about current priorities, about what the needs are for deliverables at the moment and what the key challenges are, and I don't think it's. To ha get to the point where you've got agreed expectations, you know, with clients, with your manager, with team members, without an understanding of your own personal boundaries.

[00:20:54] boundaries are really key. They mean that we're gonna be able to create and maintain healthy relationships at work. And the key to that is knowing what we are willing to. The hours that we're willing to work when we have to log off, and the behaviors that we are not willing to accept in the workplace.

[00:21:12] That kind of thing. And that's why boundaries are an important part of the professional layer of this model. Okay. I know I went through that quite quickly, but I hope you can see how each one of these sub-elements builds on the other one. We've just talked about the bottom, the very bottom and the very top layers of this energy management model.

[00:21:34] There are four other layers that I haven't touched on yet. I hope this is getting you thinking about all of the different facets that feed into maintaining and maximizing your own energy at work in a really sustained way. You might have noticed. When I mentioned them all before that, some of the layers don't seem to be about your professional life, but let me assure you right now that even if you don't think they're connected, concepts like fun concepts like rest, they're all intimately connected to your energy, your resilience, and how susceptible you are to burnout.

[00:22:12] Every layer is part of the ecosystem of your energy management and ultimately your performance at work in the change management. space I am not gonna go into too much more detail on the model right now, but I do have a bunch more practical tips to share with you on each of these. So if this topic is of interest to you, I strongly make recommend you go grab your copy of the deck and the video training and the worksheet that I took our team through to develop and start using their own energy management plans so that you can do it too.

[00:22:45] Remember, you can go grab everything for free@everchange.com dot a. Forward slash energy. So go grab that training and that worksheet so that you can easily build out your own energy management plan step by step as you are completing it. The idea is to consider each layer of the model from the bottom to the top of the pyramid, start at the bottom, and that's because I really want you to have a solid foundation in place and to build up from.

[00:23:14] there If you don't, we've all been there. The energy that you're relying on at work right now, your performance at work, when you're dealing with challenging stakeholders and clients and the big emotions that you're managing through the change journey, all of that is going to be sitting on a house of cards, and that is a very, very risky place to be.

[00:23:35] Use the worksheet to go through each layer of the model turn and create your own personal management plan. Once you've captured your goals, your KPIs, your reminders, prompts for each part of the model, I want you to print it out and then stick your energy management plan somewhere really, really obvious where you're gonna be able to see it every day.

[00:23:55] Maybe that's laminated and up in your. Maybe it's on the fridge or maybe it's the cover of the notebook that you use every day. The idea is that you put it somewhere where it, you are going to see it daily so that you are reminded to intentionally engage with that plan and that you're regularly tracking your progress.

[00:24:16] You're checking in against your goals and your kpi. Anytime you're feeling overwhelmed or overloaded, look to your energy management plan to check in, go over to the fridge and check it out. Is there anything in your plan that you haven't been bringing to life recently? Is there anything you've let slip?

[00:24:35] Where are the gaps? What part of the plan hasn't been getting love recently, and what actions can you take practically to help you manage your energy from now? Now I've got one last really important tip I wanna share with you, and that is that I designed the model to help you diagnose the current gaps in how you're supporting your own energy management.

[00:24:57] And it also helps you figure out what steps to take, where to focus your efforts when you're feeling burnt out or when you're starting to feel that way. Ideally, we want to catch it as early as. Anytime you're feeling that way, look to your personal energy management plan and then identify which level or layer of the model you're missing out the most.

[00:25:19] You know, like which part is just not alive in your life the most right now? Then the key is to look to the layer underneath that one in the pyramid and take actions to bolster yourself there. So for example, let's say that you're feeling overwhelmed, tired, resentful, disconnected, a little bit angry.

[00:25:41] So you head over to the fridge or wherever you've got your energy management plan stuck up and you realize you just haven't had any fun. In the model, the theme rest is the layer that sits below the fun level or the fun theme. If you've gone through the video and the worksheet that I've given you, you'll know that you need seven different types of rest and You would've jotted down ideas and prompts for each of those seven different types of rest. So that's where you should focus your actions on first to build your energy up again so that you are ready for fun. I hope that makes sense now for the record, the idea is not to be perfect. You do not need to be perfect for this to work you're human.

[00:26:30] It's very unlikely that you are always gonna be doing a great job at everything on your energy management plan. That's just completely unrealistic. But the really good news is that perfection is not a requirement. In fact, I know from personal experience that you do not need to be perfect on every front.

[00:26:51] For this to work. You just need to be intentional about it and to keep your energy management plan top of mind. that's really what it takes to start building momentum. In a really positive direction. I hope that I've managed to convince you that energy management is key to helping you avoid burnout this year, and I really hope that you're excited to go complete your own personal energy management plan so you can head over to ever change.com.au/energy to grab everything you need to get started.

[00:27:25] Right. Thank you so much for joining me today. Let me know if you've created your own energy management plan using this model and this toolkit. I would love to hear how you go and if you're finding it useful, you can connect with me over on LinkedIn at Dr. Kate Byrne. That's where you'll find me easy peasy.

[00:27:46] He's to both of us feeling energetic in a really sustained way for the rest of the year. I hope that you have a great. And I'll catch you in next week's episode. Bye for now.

Download my Energy Management Toolkit here!

CONNECT WITH KATE:

Website: https://www.everchange.com.au/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ever-change-and-communication