How to Screen for Burnout in your 1-on-1s

It’s no secret that burnout is rampant these days and it’s one of the primary challenges facing leaders and organizations. Here are some ways you, as someone in a leadership position, can use the weekly or bi-weekly 1-on-1s you already have in place to catch burnout early and nip it in the bud. Wait, who am I kidding? At this point the burnout is probably very old. In that case, it’s time to chart a new, more sustainable, path forward and start putting the frayed edges back together.

Here are three recommendations for how to screen for (and begin to address) burnout in your people.

1. Set up a simple structure for your 1-on-1s. You probably have some implicit norm that you and your direct report fall into each week. I can imagine it’s a a quick ‘how are you,’ some small talk about the weather or the kids or the pandemic. Then you dive into the work, sleeves rolled up, until you realize you’re over time and you have to go to the next meeting.
   
   What if, instead, you gave your time together this simple structure below (for more thoughts on structure in meetings, check out an older post). In doing so, you will give permission to spend some time on how the human across from you is really doing. That’s the time where you might coach or mentor (some of your roles as a people manager).
   
   1) Check in how they are doing. This is time to truly listen and inquire about the whole person across from you. You may need to ask some good questions to get them to trust that this conversation is a safe place to get support. And by support, I don’t mean solving their dilemmas. Listening, empathizing, relating — these are excellent forms of support. Stay out of fix-it mode!
   
   2) Work related issues and questions. This is the normal work you do together that I probably don’t need to say much about.
   
   3) Next steps. These can be next steps around anything that arose in either 1 or 2. It’s a way to move forward intentionally and with some accountability. It’s a way for you to continue supporting your people in between your 1-on-1s. Giving this its own time block means you can go calendar something, or start an email draft, or put the actions on a list somewhere where you won’t lose them. You create space for this necessary minutiae.
   
   4) Close. In addition to just saying goodbye, see if you can acknowledge your direct report. Show them that you see them in their hard work, in their doubt, in their quest to align their inner needs with the external forces in their life, which include you.
   

2. Look and listen. Now that you’ve got a structure that will hopefully become a high-level rhythm that makes it normal to spend a good chunk of time attending to your direct report as a whole human being, that doesn’t mean they’re going to spill all about their overwhelm and exhaustion. You may have to look and listen for it on a more subtle plane. In other words, looking and listening for burnout becomes part of your management strategy for high performance.
   
   You might consider directly ask about burnout. Something like:
   ”Are you getting enough rest?”
   ”How full does your work plate feel?”
   ”Any upcoming PTO that you’re excited about?”
   ”How’s your burnout level these days?” (My favorite for its directness.)
   

3. Make burnout a topic that is on the table. I recently finished listening to the podcast, Nice White Parents, and one of the points that stuck with me near the end was about a school district that was getting racial integration right. What the journalist pointed out was that in this school, integration was a topic that was talked about. The symbolic importance given to the value of integration came simply from speaking about it. That symbolic importance set a cultural overtone that translated into micro actions and macro programs to address the problem.

   If something is important, it should get talked about. Enough said. Simply making the topic of burnout a thing that gets mentioned within the culture of your team can go a long way in addressing it. Natural action will just happen if people feel heard about their burnout and a sense of permission to do something about it.
   

The personal, team, organizational, and societal cost of overwork is too high to ignore. We’re human. We need to rest. The best thing you can do right now for your people’s performance is to support them as a whole human being that has finite energy and attention.