Jayne Morris shares her top three tips to support yourself and your team
As a result of carrying the weight of multiple responsibilities and contending with demanding schedules, when boundaries are blurred, board-level executives often find themselves on the brink of burnout. However, they don’t operate in isolation. Executive Assistants (EAs) play a pivotal role, not only in supporting their executives but also in ensuring the well-being of the entire C-suite team. To do this successfully, EAs face multiple challenges, including prioritizing their own self-care.
In this article, we’ll explore my top three tips for EAs to support both themselves and their C-suite colleagues.
Understanding Board-Level Burnout
Board-level executives contend with a unique set of daily challenges, including the pressure to perform, to make high-level decisions, and to circumnavigate complex organizational dynamics. The stress associated with meeting continuous demands can take its toll cumulatively on physical and mental well-being, leading to burnout if a considered approach is not applied. A 2022 study conducted by Future Forum indicated that close to 50% of all workers in the UK, USA, and Europe are close to the brink of burnout. For C-suite executives, the figure is a staggering 70%.
To operate at their optimal potential, executives must be aware of the importance of setting and maintaining boundaries between professional and private life, to avoid work seeping into every moment of their day.
In the role of an EA, it is essential to communicate the need for whole-team strategies that strengthen resilience and sustain productivity, gaining buy-in for their implementation and supporting the team in being accountable collectively for maintaining boundaries and prioritizing self-care. It is also important to be able to recognize signs and symptoms of burnout within your C-suite team so that you intervene early and mitigate effectively. Burnout affects everyone differently, so the best way to determine these signs in your team is to ask each member:
“What do I need to look out for as an indicator that you need to re-prioritize self-care?”
and
“How would you like me to approach that with you?”
In doing this, you gain an insight into the most significant symptoms to look out for, as well as identifying each person’s preferred way to have your observation brought to their attention. This is important because key signs may otherwise be overlooked or deflected.
As an EA, recognizing the signs of burnout in your C-suite team is essential. Burnout affects our physical, mental, energetic, and emotional health. Symptoms will appear cognitively, behaviorally, emotionally, physically, environmentally, energetically, and intuitively. Everyone experiences burnout differently, with a unique combination of contributing factors and resulting symptoms. The most common symptoms include headaches, dizziness, unexplainable stomach aches, irritable bowel, heart palpitations, excessive sweating, general fatigue, increased irritability, and loss of joy in things that formerly brought pleasure.
As a result of these things, some may feel ungrounded, anxious, or constantly ‘tense’, with an experience of decreased productivity, tearfulness, inability to access gut feelings and creativity, decision fatigue, and/or a sense of detachment from work. Often, people experience sleep disruption due to feeling ‘tired but wired’ before bed and finding it difficult to settle to sleep, or they fall asleep quickly and easily, but may wake extremely early or throughout the night, or feel tired upon waking due to poor sleep.
By staying attuned to these indicators, you can intervene early and implement strategies to mitigate burnout effectively.
1. Prioritize Communication and Collaboration
Communication lies at the heart of supporting both yourself and the C-suite team. Foster an open and transparent dialogue with the team, encouraging them to express their concerns and challenges openly. This may take time, since being comfortable with ‘being vulnerable’ is not a behavior in typical corporate cultural conditioning. Introducing a coaching approach can significantly help to support this. By listening to understand workloads and priorities, you will better anticipate people’s needs,as well as alleviate some of the day-to-day pressures they face. Additionally, facilitate collaboration within the C-suite by organizing regular meetings or think tank sessions where executives share insights and support each other. As an EA, you can serve as the linchpin, connecting the various members of the leadership team and fostering a culture of care and mutual support.
2. Promote Work-Life Balance
Encouraging a healthy work-life balance is paramount in combating board-level burnout. As an EA, you can play a pivotal role in promoting this balance within the C-suite team. Be sure to build time in for breaks and relaxation, encouraging the team to prioritize self-care. Lead by example: this may be the most difficult part, but it is the most impactful – put boundaries in place and respect your own work-life balance. By prioritizing well-being alongside professional responsibilities, you set the tone for a culture that values sustainability and resilience, ultimately reducing the risk of burnout for everyone involved.
3. Implement Effective Time-Management Strategies & Incorporate Nature
Time management is critical for board-level executives who often find themselves juggling multiple priorities simultaneously. As an EA, you can support your C-suite team by implementing effective time-management strategies. Utilize tools such as calendars, task lists, and scheduling software to help executives organize their workload and prioritize tasks efficiently. Encourage them to delegate responsibilitieswhere possible and to avoid overcommitting themselves. Experiment with standing meetings, as these tend to reduce meeting length and serve to boost energy.
Additionally, consider implementing time-saving measures such as streamlining meetings, setting clear agendas, and minimizing distractions. By optimizing time-management practices, you empower your executives to focus on high-impact activities while reducing unnecessary stressors that contribute to burnout.
Wherever possible, book meetings in naturally well-lit spaces with plenty of plants and access to nature. Encourage the team to meet outdoors when able and/or to take breaks outside to help reset everyone’s nervous systems and to punctuate the day.
Conclusion
Board-level burnout is a pervasive issue that affects not only executives but also their support staff, including EAs. By understanding the unique challenges faced by C-suite leaders and implementing proactive support strategies, EAs can play a vital role in mitigating burnout and fostering a culture of well-being within the organization. Prioritizing communication with a coaching approach, promoting work-life balance, implementing effective time management, and encouraging the team to harness the benefits of nature to help everyone to regularly reset are just a few ways that, as an EA, you can support yourself and C-suite team in navigating the pressures of corporate leadership.
By working together, EAs and executives can cultivate a resilient organizational culture that empowers everyone to flourish.
