Self-Care Is Important To Avoid Burnout

Hi there and welcome. It’s Kerstin Jatho here from 4Seeds Consulting, a transformational coach who shifts people from languishing to flourishing. In this video, I want to talk to you about the very hot topic of self-care, especially for leaders.

Just for a moment, visualise a party balloon that has been totally blown up. It’s bobbing around, it’s very happy, it’s full of joy and full of air. A few days later, that balloon has lost some of its air, it’s maybe even lingering on the floor, and you have the desire to actually pop it and put it out of its misery. That is actually what burnout is. You start off as a full balloon with the energy. And as days and times go, you start to lose your energy. You start to become exhausted, both emotionally, physically, and psychologically. And the term has been coined by Maslach in 1970. So, it’s a very old term, but it’s been something that’s become very popular in the workplace especially now in the last two years.

So, what has been happening is that a lot of responsibility is on leaders to do self-care. Hoping that self-care will remove burnout, but it won’t. Because burnout is way more serious than that. And to really work on burnout, you need to look over and above the internal component, which is you and all the things that you can manage, like your physical environment, your sleeping, and your eating. It is also a lot about your external working environment, your workload, your culture, your relationships at work.

So, there’s a lot more to self-care for leaders than just managing burnout. Some solutions for you to look into in the workplace to minimise burnout is really to look at the energy in the workplace. What’s the culture like? I mean, do you have quite a hard-paced energy and culture? Is it very competitive? Is it very relaxed? What is that energy like? And does that work for you? What’s your workload like? Is it just continuously one thing after the other with an overdue to-do list? How’s the delegation part going?

What’s your mindset actually towards burnout? Is it something where you go, ‘it’s okay? It’s all right. It’s actually socially acceptable nowadays to have burnout.’ It seems to be the norm, maybe even a Noddy badge to have, but you know, it’s actually not to have as a leader, you are a role model, and you need to manage your entire workload as well as your team’s.

So, think about the mindset, your energy, your culture, and is that supporting you as well as the team? So, self-care here is the answer, and really bringing that into your work and your life. I know you don’t have the time and you never will, but it’s really very important for you.