Leading a team is rewarding work, but it can also be challenging. Your mental health may be shaky after dealing with management stress. These are a few mental health tips for managers experiencing burnout who need new tools to find more balance in their lives. You can use these ideas to find your way back to inner peace without compromising your professional responsibilities.
1. Save Five Minutes For Yourself
Managing people often means that team leaders give all their time and energy to the workplace. When it’s time to go home, you may not get to recharge because you have to continue giving your energy to your family.
Start saving five minutes for yourself at some point throughout each day. Whether you sit by yourself while drinking coffee or relax with a book before bed, you’ll get a few minutes to recharge and feel rested for tomorrow.
2. Learn How To Delegate
It’s tempting to attempt to handle everything when you’re a manager. People look to you for all the answers. The pressure might make you want to prove yourself by taking on more responsibility than your mental health can handle. That’s when it’s time to start delegating.
There are a few signs you can delegate work that you might currently miss. Reflect on your workload and see if these factors apply to your job:
- Someone else has the experience to lead a project.
- Specific work could help one of your team members grow.
- Your schedule can’t accommodate more recurring work in a healthy way.
Discuss potentially delegated work with your team to decide who can handle which responsibilities. Give them a period of trial and error to figure things out. If they can’t shoulder the work well, you can always delegate it to someone else. Your mental health is more important than pretending you can be a superhero with your workload.
3. Form Better Work Relationships
Sometimes burnout occurs when managers don’t know their team members personally. When people know their supervisors well, it facilitates a greater sense of trust that improves the workplace. Your leadership will become more effective because you know how to help everyone thrive. In return, your team will trust your decisions and follow you anywhere.
4. Take Work Breaks
What happens when you can’t delegate your responsibilities or change your daily routine? Your stress may stem from a lack of workday breaks.
You don’t need to split your lunch break into segments and spend it throughout your day. Put everything on pause and take a deep breath using the Pomodoro technique. Every 25 minutes enjoy a five-minute break before diving back into your work. The technique’s creator found that it improved his overall productivity because he felt better after returning from short breaks.
5. Find A New Hobby
Hobbies are always a good outlet for pent-up stress causing your burnout. Find a new activity that you can enjoy after work. Knitting, painting and even exercising will release any anxiety caused by your job. You’ll walk away from your hobby feeling restored and even get to know yourself more profoundly.
6. Eat A Healthier Diet
Stress affects people in more ways than their mental health. It also affects your physical health. Use your diet to combat burnout by eating more nutritious meals and snacks. Research shows that individuals who eat whole foods like vegetables, white meat and fruit experience less daily stress than others who eat processed foods. The processed ingredients increase cellular inflammation, intensifying symptoms of burnout by increasing your physical stress.
Improve Your Mental Health Today
Consider these mental health tips for managers experiencing burnout when you’re ready to make positive changes. Stress doesn’t have to ruin your professional life or make you feel disconnected from who you are. Simple things like delegating, eating healthier foods and even connecting with your team members will make you happier and a more efficient manager.