#21 - Leading While Stretched Thin: How to Protect Your Energy Without Dropping the Ball

Bigger team, leaner resources, and somewhere along the way you stopped taking lunch. If "do more with less" has quietly become your job description, this one's for you. I share three practical moves to protect your energy and stop being the bottleneck — without dropping the ball on your team.

If you're feeling stretched to the edge right now, come work through it with us inside my Skool community, Lead With Brenden, before it turns into burnout.

Transcript

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Leading your team while you're stretched thin. How many of you listening to this know exactly what that feels like? Those days where you just had enough, you've got no organization left, you've got no structure, you're completely burnt out, and you've still got to lead that team. Over this episode, what I'm going to talk to you about is how to protect your energy so this does not happen. So I've obviously had a situation with this before, as you would have had in the last episodes or the previous episodes on the podcast and on the YouTube. But I am really protective of my energy now. And what I've learned pretty quick is that pressure, external pressure, generally just means that you're not organized internally. You're not doing all the right things, the white percenters throughout the day to make sure that you can protect your energy. You're mentally overloaded, you've got no mental clarity around your decision making, your decision-making ability drops off completely when you start to become burnt out. You start actually making more decisions, but they're less less impactful. You want to go down the path of making less decisions, but they're more impactful rather than the other way around. You don't want to make decisions that are you're doing 20 decisions in one day, but the impact of those decisions are quite minor and not really effective. And you're really it's going to panic the team out, you're going to panic yourself out, your nervous system's going to go through the roof, and you're going to be completely firing all day. There's a couple of things that can cause this early on, especially when you get into your leadership role. So the first thing that can cause it is when you're a manager on the team and you get into a leadership role and you're not equipped or you're not trained to lead a team. Two vastly different things is management and leadership. Leadership is designed for that person to guide the vision, guide the structure of the team, guide the teaching of the team, and so on. The manager is delivering on that vision, getting the work done, getting the stuff with the team, rounding up the team together and getting the task done out of the ground. And what starts to happen is because you're so fixated on doing the best that you can, you start to skip your lunch breaks and you start to do all these things that's you're sacrificing your own well-being, physically and mentally as well. Because this is just not sustainable. That approach is not sustainable. I've done it, I'm telling you now, it doesn't work long term. Skipping lunch breaks, working overtime, hardly eating, things like that. I haven't had time to eat today. What do you mean? You've got to be able to eat, you've got to be able to look after yourself. Otherwise, how can you expect anyone to believe you when you say to them that you're going to look after them? If you're not looking after yourself, you've got to practice what you preach, and people need to see that through action. The most recent workplace data that I've the most recent workplace data that I've rounded up is that manager burnout is happening much more frequently. And it's not in established leaders, meant in earlier leaders or new and emerging leaders as well. People that are just getting into the job, they're burning out just as quick or quicker than other leaders in the industries. Here are some early signs that it's starting to catch up with you, and you're starting to burn out. So I will say some topics here and suggestions. So I will list here some pain points, and if it does resonate with you, then it generally means that you're on the path to burnout. Every day that you start doing your work, you always feel that you're behind. That's a big sign that you're not keeping up with the workload, and something needs to change. There's no point continuing to just chase that. You've got to restructure your approach because what you're doing isn't working. Yes, when you're in high-end leadership roles, when you're in big jobs, there is always going to be a workload, and it's going to be a big one. You've got to accept that as a part of the job. But what will never change is that workload. So the only thing that can change is the way that you manage yourself and the way that you go about it. So if you have no organizational structure, you've got no principles that you go by, no mantras that you follow, no protective of personal interests or physical well-being, mental well-being, you will burn out. And it'll all be at the detriment of your own position because ultimately you'll actually feel like you're getting less done, but you feel like you're working more. So if you feel that this is you, then you've got to make some changes. You're always the one to log off last in the afternoon, but always the first to log on in the morning. So I used to think that it's a big heroic thing. I was always first on site and last to leave. Why? The only reason you're doing that is because you're behind. You've got to you've got to if you're well ahead of your task and your job lists, there's no need for you to stay that late. There's no need. And you'll be actually more, you will be more productive throughout the day. A big one for me that I noticed when I was starting to burn out is I stopped doing the extra stuff that I knew that I loved to do. So I love to think of new ideas and innovative ways to make things better, more efficient, smoother, more involving the team, and so on. Well, I felt for a while there that I couldn't do that. I was so focused on just getting the job done only, and I lost track of that. And what starts to happen is your team will start to drift and it drift away from you as a leader, and you'll feel that you're starting to chase them as well. Then you've just got another whole can of worms you've just opened because you're not giving the team enough time. I had to myself, I'm going to be available for the team more often than not. I put that first over my work. Did I do that? Every day I write down okay, what are the top five priorities that I need to get done today? If there's only two or if there's only three, perfect. Some days there's been none. Some days I've had a good couple of days to start out the week, and I'll get to Wednesday or Thursday, and I can actually concentrate. I'm just purely thinking of better ways we could do things, improving the organizational structure. Is there more things I can do for the team? And so on, because I've knocked out the priority tasks at the start of the week through that structure. So you don't want to have ideally, you wouldn't want to have afterwards or more than five higher priority tasks to get done for the day because that generally means you're not allocating your work properly. So allocation is a big thing here, and allocating the right amount of time to each task, you've got to be able to distinguish between is this task worth two hours or is this task worth 45 minutes? And I think I like to micro-dose as well. So micro-dosing are the workload. So if I have a priority task that I know is going to take me two weeks to complete, I might even just commit 45 minutes a day to that and just get it done gradually. And then some days I might be more free, and then I knock out another arrow on it. So it's more about having a two-week plan and breaking that down and actually giving yourself an opportunity to get through each task. You always feel guilty for taking time for yourself. If you feel like you need a day off, or you feel like you need a rest or a holiday, you feel guilty. Now, this is another problem of burnout because again, you probably feel that you haven't caught up with your workload, you're not keeping up with it. Anyway, I could go around in circles and circles, but the common theme here is structure in your workplace, and you have to be able to prioritise what time is needed for each task. You have to no one else can do that for you. And I think the dangerous belief of being a leader is you think that you have to absorb everything bad that goes on in the workplace. You've got to absorb a lot, right? You already have to absorb a lot, you've got to absorb everyone's interests, you've got to absorb managing people, managing the task, project, deadline, budget. You've got to absorb a lot. So you don't want to add another layer to that. So it's really important in this moment to trust your team. If you have a senior leadership team, you've got to spread out that ownership as well because they're there to help you. It's not all about you. Just because you're in the leadership role or you're running the team doesn't mean that you take on every single thing of that workplace. You've got a team, so trust your team. And one final thing that tends to happen, and this can be increasingly frustrating for your team perspective towards you as a leader. If you're not organized, if you're always chasing your tail, you end up becoming the bottleneck where people are waiting for you to get shit done. They're waiting for you to action steps on certain tasks that they're waiting for. If they write a report for you or if they have asking you a question as a follow-up to get their task done, they're waiting constantly just waiting for you, then that's going to be a problem because you're the bottleneck to the progression of the team. And then what starts to happen, they start to drift away from you again. So it all starts with your organization, your personal calendar, your personal schedule. This has to be in the absolute best shape that it possibly can be. Otherwise, you'll lose your team. So a couple of solutions here that you can start to work on, you can start to introduce into your team. Delegation. So a lot of people view delegation as you're just you just delegate everything, you don't want to do anything yourself and all that kind of stuff. As a leader, yeah, that's correct. Because I have my own stuff that I've got to do, and I've got a team for a reason, and everybody wants some level of accountability. That's just natural human tendency. People want purpose, people want something to work on. So give them that. And you don't have to delegate in a way of dumping your work on people. You're communicating to the team that this is all a part of achieving the common goal. So can you do this? Can you do that? Can you do that? Let's all help each other to achieve the common goal. At the end of the day, you're a team. It's not about you and them, you are all one. So it's really important to change your mindset with that around delegation as well. Don't be afraid to delegate. There are some things that I have to delegate to my other senior leadership guys, and it's never a problem because of the way you communicate it. Hey, do you mind just give some hair with this and just getting that done? If you need anything, reach out, any questions, ask me, I'll help you out. But otherwise, I'll just have that done with the end of the week. No problem. Born out of my head. Don't need to think about it anymore. And thirdly, this is really important too to block out a little recovery moment throughout the day. So whether it's your lunchtime or something like that, if you're in your own office and it's your lunchtime, and that's your time to just get some space. I wouldn't say do this every lunchtime, but I'm just using this as an example. Close your door, just take a half an hour or 45 minutes just to have a bit of time out, get some quiet time, reset a little bit. Okay, let's go to the second half of the day. Obviously, you don't want to do that every day because I think it's good to have lunch with your team and just talk about different things outside of work, but the purpose of that solution is create a block in that day, in your work day, that's almost like a recovery block, and treat it like as an important meeting. And you could even put it in your outlook calendar if you want. I've got a 45-minute recovery block coming up, and no meetings get scheduled in that time frame. That's always blocked out. That's your time to just have a bit of a reset. I like to do it around 12 o'clock or 11:30 because I can get onto the second half of the day and reset and just think about what we want to do for the next day and so on, and be more available for the team as the day goes on as well. So, a couple of things you can do there, and I personally like doing that. I think scheduling and actually a 45-minute recovery block in your Outlook calendar and actually don't have any meeting in that time. Another thing I like to do as well is completely look after myself. So when you go into the best way to think of it or how I like to think of it is when you're say, for example, you have a board meeting, right? I like to prepare my report at least two one to two weeks before it and have it ready to go. So preparation is always important there. So you look you think as sports players, sportsmen, they're always about preparation. How do I prepare the best for this speech? You understand what I'm trying to say. So why not do that with yourself and the way that you perform every day? So how I treat it is if I want to do exercise or something for myself of an afternoon, I'm preparing myself to do that. So I have a good sleep, and then the next day I've waken up fresh and ready to go because I've done that work, I've done the preparation, I've looked after myself outside of work. I find if I lose my routine with that, I don't actually do that, then I find I perform better the next day, so worse the next day, much worse, and then it starts to compound. So the second day I'm not feeling as great, I'm a bit bit lethargic, haven't got much energy, not eating enough, not eating well because my metabolism's slowing down because I haven't been exercising, starts to compound. Decisions get worse, more short, temper gets shorter, stuff like that, and you're not really in the route to talk to anyone, which you can't bear like that. So it's important to understand that you you can't pour from an empty cup, and neither can your team. So you need to be filling your cup outside of work and you need to be looking after yourself. Putting yourself in the best possible position to deliver an execute is really important, and this is where the main shift needs to start with looking after yourself outside of work and then the rest will follow through that. If you do like this content, I'd actually teach this more in my school community. Leadership with Brandon is the name of it. If you don't have school, if you just go on Google and search school skill, you'll see the link pop up. Type in the discovery, leadership with Brandon, click that, it's free to join, and I'll actually talk about this stuff a lot more in a lot more detail on a weekly basis.