Stop the Whirlwind and Deliberately Lead Energetic Teams: 9 Things to Consider when Burnout Leaders are Managing Burnout Employees

Getting to the Root of Your Burnout Part 2:

Somewhere along the way, you've gotten distracted from the things that matter to you. With so much coming at you, it is valid to feel like you are in a whirlwind, so it's critical to pause and get back present to what you're thinking, why you're thinking it, and if you don't like it, to change what you're thinking. The reality is that we desire to be fruitful, and we hope to reap the fruit of our labor. However, we feel drained, defeated, and concerned when we don't. Below, I have outlined nine different fruit, which I want you to read through to determine what's missing and a few guiding principles to experience the fruit, claim back your time, and gain peace of mind.

9 Fruit that will help you Manage the Whirlwind and Reduce Burnout (Sanders, 2020):

1. Love: leading with love at work is not about telling people you love them or regularly communicating how much you love them. It's not about thinking you're protecting this other person by not sharing the truth about their performance or demeanor in fear you'll hurt their feelings. Your honesty is love.

If you're in a place of feeling like you have no time to do anything else but work or can't seem to get a break from work, the fruit of love may be the thing you're missing. 

Three guiding principles to experience love at work:

• Gather with friends and inform them of what's happening in your life
• Keep the friends you can be vulnerable around (those you can cry in front of without judgment) closest to you
• Sit quietly to assess how you really feel about what you're going through

2. Joy: leading with joy is not about being happy. It's about having a fixed focus that allows you to endure a situation no matter the circumstance. It's about commitment and trusting that everything will work out. Joy allows us to display a posture of confidence and hope. 

If you're feeling angry and have a keen sense of what's causing you hardship, stress, or anxiety, the fruit of joy may be the void you're experiencing.

Three guiding principles to get your joy back are:

• Be clear, concise, and specific about the work; this includes understanding who, what, and how. Don't be shy to set or clarify expectations
• Be empowered to own the work you have, confirm your ownership, and reassure others that you own it
• Assess if you feel joy while doing the work, and if not, think about what's creating the lack thereof

3. Peace: when you are struggling, having disagreements, or in conflict, you need peace. 

To have peace, we must get present to what's worrying us, making us afraid, and causing us to struggle.

Three guiding principles: 

• Remember, peace is a way of being, so the question is who are you being, and is that who you want to be
• Have faith that you can let go of the worry, fear, and struggle, knowing that it'll all work out for your good
• Peace is internal, which means you already have access to it. Stop looking for peace, and instead, receive it.

4. Patience: leading with patience is about being calm. It's when you calmly wait, which you can do when you're clear about the outcome. 

If you find yourself wishing your situation was like someone else's, feeling jealous or envying what others get, have, or do, you lack patience. 

Three guiding principles on how to calmly wait are:

• Understand that what you are going through is an opportunity for growth. It's a test that you can either pass or fail
• Be still and know 
• Don't try to get through this. Just trust that you will. 

5. Kindness: showing kindness is not about being nice to those who are friendly to you or pleasant to be around. Kindness is a disposition of grace, requiring you to be kind to people you feel don't deserve your pleasantries.

If you're struggling to extend grace to those around you and constantly finding fault in what everyone else is doing, displaying kindness will help you get in the right frame of mind to have productive conversations.

Three guiding principles to help you display kindness are:

• Separate yourself from the group so that you can see a different vantage point.
• Know that the grumbling of others doesn't matter; your kindness towards them will always overpower your confrontation with them
• Don't be quick to judge. Always choose to show mercy and forgive the person no matter how big or small their mistake is

6. Goodness: goodness is our ability to serve, to provide excellent "customer" service

If you are experiencing dissonance or find yourself in contradiction, displaying goodness may be the missing fruit.

Three guiding principles to display goodness at work:

• Think about how you are showing up. Are you conducting yourself in a way you would want others to model?
• Look at your actions and ask yourself what's causing you to act this way
• Be mindful of the tension and conflict your actions are creating

7. Faithfulness: requires us to be fully confident and committed to what we have faith in. When you're in need but have no clue how to achieve it.  

Apply faith by following these three guiding principles:

• Speak it, 
• Believe it, 
• Expect it to happen. 

8. Gentleness: is not about being weak or a pushover but rather how to have strength under control. Gentleness represents our ability to take the good with the bad and appreciate the experience.

Suppose you feel upset about a situation due to dysfunction that leaves you in a place of frustration, hopelessness, and ineffectiveness. The people around you will start to regard or treat you like you're the problem, which distracts you and them from the solution and impairs your ability to move forward.

Three guiding principles to walkout gentleness at work:

• Get with a small group you feel comfortable and safe with to share your burden with
•  Take a step back to assess where you are in the situation and then determine how to proceed
• Focus on why this is critical to solve and stay present to the importance of the fulfillment 

9. Self-Control: having self-control is about behaving in a submissive, humble, and obedient way. To do this, we must understand our impulses, emotions, and desires and how they influence our behavior. 

If you actively oppose or feel hostile toward someone or something, displaying the fruit of self-control may be what you need.

Three guiding principles to help you show self-control are:

• Be willing to submit by choosing to allow the person you are in opposition with to lead
• Remember, your title doesn't matter. Your service does
• Understand that your actions affect those around you and that the decisions you or them make influence what happens

As you contemplate these nine ways to manage the whirlwind, note what's resonating with you. Explore whether it could genuinely adjust how you think about your current situation 

When you started reading this article, you may have thought you only had two options, (1) wait it out or (2) quit. If you still feel that way, that's ok let's further explore. 

When faced with the reality of waiting it out, you're not changing how you feel right now or providing a cure for the exhaustion you're experiencing at the moment, so the question becomes, can your health, mentality, and family afford to wait? Secondly, you can quit and gain immediate relief, but what happens when onboarding for the new role is over, and you're back to the point of feeling overwhelmed, repeating the cycle of drain and defeat? These two options are reactions, the choices you think you have due to being in this whirlwind. Don't allow your situation to dictate your choice. Instead, choose to respond, and decide what needs to be different for you to have the energy, courage, and vigor to deal with the whirlwind you're experiencing. Please note that I am not saying the response isn't to be patient or find a more rewarding job. These responses are active and conscious, whereas "waiting it out" for them/ it to change or "to quit" because you're looking for a way out is passive. So as you think about your burnout and all the advice you're getting to reduce or manage it, please ask yourself is this a response or reaction, and then choose to respond. You are empowered to lead yourself, and when you lead, you influence others to do the same. 

I hope this helps you, and if you want to learn more about how to walk out the fruit at work, you can order "The Fruit of a Spirit-Led Leader."

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References:

Sanders, K. (2020). The Fruit of a Spirit-Led Leader: Characteristics of Jesus Displayed in Business through the Power of the Holy Spirit. West Bow Press a division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan.

Note if you missed Part 1 of this article, you can find it here at the following link to read: Getting to the Root of Your Burnout Part 1