When your leaders are passionate and driven, it is easy for them to become engulfed by responsibility. A study by the Harvard Medical School faculty (as reported in The Wall Street Journal), found that “96% of senior leaders reported feeling burnt out to some degree, with one-third describing their burnout as extreme.” This is a problem for your leaders, your employees and your organization.

Psychologist Michael Bader notes that when leaders feel burnt out “it undermines their energy, passion, and imagination. And it spreads like a virus through their workplaces and families. Almost every aspect of their lives takes a hit—health, relationships with friends and family, creativity, judgment, concentration, and moods.” Clearly, the ripple effect of leadership burnout is a significant hazard.

Energetic Leaders Increase Bottom Line

Burnout also impacts your organization’s profitability. Colin Hall, a well-known leader in South African retail circles, sought to understand the differences between loss-making stores and those that were profitable. He conducted the following experiment:

“What we did was we took our best performing store and our worst performing store, and we profiled the managers in both stores. And both of them, funny enough, were equally qualified to do the job. And so we thought, ‘Well, that’s not the answer. It’s clear that there’s got to be something else here.’ So what we did was we took the worst performing branch manager and we put him in the best performing store, and the best performing manager and we put him into the worst performing store, and we watched the results.

“And, funny, after six weeks, the best manager, technically, had managed to turn around the lowest making store, and the worst manager had managed to [LAUGHS] turn around the best performing store. And we conducted a whole lot of investigation into each of the managers, both having the same level of competency to run a business, but we realized that the one differencing factor was energy.”

This example illustrates that energetic and positive leaders inspire greater contributions from those around him or her. Your staff will follow leaders who know their direction and convey their belief that the destination is achievable and worth achieving. In contrast, leaders who appear to be beaten down by circumstances will inspire decreased performance.

Combat Leadership Burnout Every Day

Most leaders deal with frustrating situations—such as personnel challenges, budget issues and impossible deadlines—but they must find ways to maintain an upbeat attitude. A few simple ways for leaders to counteract workplace stress include:

• Share good news and take time to celebrate positive results.
• Set a personal goal of thanking at least one employee each day. This commitment will create a habit of looking for positive performance all day.
• When you hear negativity, respond with a constructive suggestion of something that can be done to improve the situation.

At The Ritz-Carlton, our employees are our most important resource—and that includes our leaders. The employee promise pledges that “The Ritz-Carlton fosters a work environment where … quality of life is enhanced….” Leaders must be hard working, but they must also be able to delegate, recognize a false crisis and trust employees enough to step away. In addition, leaders must be sure that they are getting enough sleep. Tired leaders tend to have less ability to self-regulate and less resiliency. Sleep provides the opportunity for regeneration and renewal. Well-rested leaders—as well as well-rested staff—tend to behave more like Ladies and Gentlemen.

Lastly, leaders need to remember that time away from work creates opportunities for personal connection, self-reflection and enrichment. Vacations that offer a true disconnect from the office enable leaders to return to work more refreshed. As a leader, you may be tempted to answer one more email, to spend one more hour at the office, or to give just a little more of yourself. However, turning off the computer and leaving the office behind for a bit may actually be the best choice for you, your employees, your family and your organization. ∞

The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center offers advisory services, courses and presentations to organizations that wish to benchmark the award-winning business practices of The Ritz-Carlton. Your organization can learn about The Ritz-Carlton methodology for customer service, employee engagement and leadership development. We also guide organizations through a multi-step process in order to achieve sustainable culture transformation.