Lisa Werner headshot for DDI sponsor blog post

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Lisa Werner

Burnout is pervasive in today’s professional world, particularly among leaders. In fact, DDI’s research reveals that 72 percent of leaders report feeling used up at the end of every day, with rates even higher among women and minorities. It’s no wonder given the relentless demands they face—balancing packed schedules, coaching teams, executing initiatives, and shaping strategy—all on top of personal responsibilities.Given these pressures, HR professionals cannot afford to ignore burnout. Its long-term effects can be damaging for your leaders and organization: retention drops, quality of work declines, and for leaders, physical and mental health can suffer.The good news is that burnout isn’t inevitable. By providing the right environment and tools, HR can play a critical role in supporting leaders and preventing burnout.Ahead, we’ll explore three important ways you can prevent leader burnout: cultivating psychological safety, providing personalized training and support, and developing a strong leader pipeline.Build a Culture of Psychological SafetyTo create a resilient workplace, begin with culture. An organization’s culture profoundly influences how people behave and feel about their work.Protecting leaders from burnout requires cultivating an environment where they (and their teams) feel empowered to give candid feedback, collaborate effectively, and voice dissenting opinions without fear of retaliation. These behaviors thrive in a culture defined by psychological safety, empathy, transparency, and ethical integrity. Between deadlines and high-stakes presentations, occasional stress is unavoidable. However, when organizations lead with empathy, they see higher employee engagement and productivity, and lower rates of burnout.HR should establish and maintain workplace norms that encourage psychological safety and empathetic leadership.Strategies for HR to foster a psychologically safe culture include: Consistently champion and reinforce organizational values.Model vulnerability and transparency from leadership. Implement processes for safe escalation of concerns. Hold all employees accountable for ethical standards. Celebrate actions that reflect the desired culture. Provide Personalized Development for LeadersDeveloping capable leaders is another powerful way to prevent burnout. The key? Start by assessing each leader's strengths and growth areas to focus on development needs.Today’s leaders can’t wait for comprehensive 360-degree assessments that only appear every few years. They need immediate, objective feedback on exactly what to continue doing and where to adjust to support their development. One-size-fits-all training that doesn’t target specific needs only contributes to their time crunch and burnout risk. With real-time assessment results, HR can provide highly relevant, targeted development, giving leaders tools and a safe environment to practice their skills ahead of challenging situations.DDI’s research has identified seven critical skill areas that are associated with lower rates of burnout: Empathy Coaching and Delegation Influence Leading Change Leading Virtual Teams Driving Inclusion Developing Future Talent HR is uniquely positioned to help leaders address skill gaps to not only improve their capabilities but also reduce burnout risk. Finally, consider incorporating peer learning into your development program. While leadership can be isolating, bringing together leaders who face similar challenges helps build empathy, strengthen networks, and encourage mutual learning and coaching for shared growth.Develop the Pipeline of Emerging LeadersA plan to protect leaders from burnout wouldn’t be complete without designing a strategy to cultivate future leaders within the organization.As experienced leaders become overburdened, HR can ease their workload by building a robust pipeline of emerging talent. Nurturing future leaders not only provides growth opportunities that retain top performers but also ensures a steady supply of skilled leaders who can step in and share the responsibilities. Try these strategies to strengthen your leadership pipeline: Leverage a strategic, data-driven approach to identifying high potentials.Identify and develop high-potential talent at all levels.Focus on leadership potential—not just performance—by carefully observing critical skills like interpersonal skills, coaching, and building trust. Roll out development initiatives to nurture emerging leaders, including formal training, stretch assignments, and coaching.ConclusionHR's role in preventing leader burnout extends beyond crisis management. By fostering psychological safety, offering tailored development, and cultivating a strong talent pipeline, HR can proactively build a sustainable, high-performing workplace where leaders truly thrive.For more on preventing leader burnout, visit our blog, Understanding Burnout Culture: 10 Ways Leaders Can Reduce Workplace Stress, and discover how leaders can fight burnout at work.

3 Keys for Preventing Leader Burnout

 We live in a world of social networks, permanent reachability, and easy travel. The dream used to be that these would break down organizational silos.  Yet, establishing trustful, productive relationships across boundaries is still difficult—maybe even more so than in the past.Indeed, new tools and technologies do not automatically eliminate boundaries. For example, over reliance on email often creates boundaries between departments and is an ideal breeding ground for misunderstandings. The result: silos are well and alive.  So, what can we do?Start with structureSergio, the CEO of a global financial organization, stresses the importance of “horizontal governance.”  Historically his organization has operated very bureaucratically and fragmented across many constituencies that differ in language, culture, national particularities, and so forth. This created a very slow and “siloed” organization.According to Sergio, “Nature is divisive; people just see their own little piece. To correct this we needed to enable people to see our goals and processes holistically. That is why we implemented horizontal governance. It allows us to understand business urgency across horizontal boundaries.”He continues, “Regular meetings are very helpful. We have special forums every month for middle managers to collaboratively identify any silo-related problems, conduct planning and performance review exercises, discuss cross-functional issues and come up with solutions, and then communicate back to their superiors and constituencies.”Elizabeth Greene, former director of organizational learning at Make-A-Wish® International explains how that organization used a similar approach: “We launched CEO-level regional roundtables in April 2012 to break down silos and facilitate quick learning across the globe.  All CEOs are invited. Each roundtable is focused on a different topic, based on the simple action of reaching out to them ahead of time with a short survey.“This produces a list of topic ideas, of which the group is then asked to identify the five most important. After the in-person discussion has been completed, one-hour webinars are scheduled and held to continue the conversation and address any topics that may not have been addressed.”Focus on common customersBeyond structured processes and meetings, customers are a critical driver in breaking down silos. For example, a key customer that everyone has in common is our boss’ boss.  Amanda Parsons, deputy commissioner at the New York City Department of Health gives this practical advice: “Every month my executive team meets as a team with my boss, Health Commissioner Thomas A. Farley. It breaks down silos across my team if they have to all meet with my boss and address his questions and needs.”John Baker, former COO and SVP of the Retirement Services division at American Express (a $200MM global operating unit with 1,500 employees), took this idea to the next level. “We broke down silos by linking everyone’s goals to customer goals. For example, technology people typically reports on their technology agenda, and HR has HR goals to meet. Yet, everyone was focused in some way on making the customer profitable and successful. This united focus made sure that if a technology person and HR person needed to collaborate, it wouldn’t be battle about whose priorities to focus on—they would both be focusing on customer priorities.”Birds of a feather must NOT flock togetherSometimes we just end up spending time with similar people. Werner Eikenbusch, manager of apprenticeship and associate Training at BMW’s U.S. factory had to address this to break down silos.  He explains, “In the U.S., the impetus for better results was ultimately given by the president of BMW’s U.S.-based manufacturing plant, Josef Kerscher. He tasked the vice presidents of quality, engineering, and production with coming together to figure out what they could do to accelerate  the pace of improvement.  What they realized was that engineering sat together, logistics sat together, and so forth. Functions even ate together.”So, what did BMW do? According to Eikenbusch, a change in office assignments helped. “Each function had a representative move near the production line. Let’s assume I have eight planners and each planner supports one portion of the production line. Instead of the eight planners sitting together, each planner now sits with a production person. So now you had a cross-functional team sitting together. They started to have common meetings in which they would discuss issues. They would talk about their targets across departmental boundaries. It’s really all about teamwork, decentralizing, and working together,” he says.However, BMW had to take it further to performance evaluation. Eikenbusch describes, “We are a very target-oriented company. When we introduced this cross-functional approach, it became clear (particularly when conducting focus groups) that everybody was thinking, ‘Yes, that all sounds great, but at the end of the day, who’s going to evaluate my performance? If supporting this production team is not on my target sheet or my supervisor doesn’t care about it, then ultimately, I can’t really be held accountable because I’ll be evaluated against different standards.’“We realized this was going to be a big obstacle to cross-functional collaboration. So we said, okay, we need to work on getting agreement on some basic targets for which everybody will be jointly responsible. After we had agreed on those baseline targets, managers from all the different groups signed off on them and agreed to be held accountable to support the targets.”It is a problem of human contactThere is no harder place to break down silos than across culture in the context of war.  Erick Hoversholm, planner and operations officer for the U.S. Army, shares a story about when he was recently stationed in Afghanistan. It is a perfect example of how it takes human contact to break down silos.Hoversholm explained that there was a group of five Afghani locals who lived right outside the gate of the Army compound. They would greet the Americans in the Afghani way: They’d bow or put their hand across their chests to say hello. At first Erick didn’t know how to respond, but soon he started to mimic their gestures. This was met with appreciation.According to Hoversholm, “I would try to use words and gestures and they would laugh. They enjoyed watching us stumble through. Then they were more willing to work with me. When I left for R&R, this one guy was really upset and it seemed to be that he was going to miss me. Before I left he came up to me and said ‘Thank you very much’ and shook my hand. This was a completely foreign ritual for him. Based on my trying to reach out to him, he was now trying to learn my customs and reach out to me. This one moment deepened my level of respect for and appreciation of these people with whom I interacted every day.”Busting silos is not a mystery Partially, busting down silos is the result of the ideas in our previous articles on building business acumen and creating a innovative culture.  When you add in creating structures, meetings, and measures that support common goals, collaboration will become as natural as shaking your colleague’s hand.

Making Human Contact—and Other Approaches to Busting Silos

Tech headlines for December 2013 include: Saba Study Shows Two-Thirds of Companies Are Using Social Learning Technology, Google Books Ruled Fair Use, Learning Insights 2013 Released, Voted Most Trusted in Cloud Hosting, New Hope for Abandoned Open Source Projects. New Study Shows Two-Thirds of Companies Are Using Social Learning Technology While adoption remains a challenge for some, more than 65 percent of respondents are using social learning technology, according to "State of the Industry Study: A Pulse on Social Learning,” a new research report from Saba, in partnership with HCM Advisory Group. The study, which examined how businesses are leveraging social learning, the areas of success, and some of the challenges faced when adopting it, surveyed more than 500 decision makers at companies of various industries and sizes. "As companies adapt to today's new world of work, it's now more important than ever that they focus on connecting people and content with social technology," says Emily He, senior vice president, marketing at Saba. "Based on the results of this study, a majority of businesses are already leveraging social learning to foster a culture of collaboration and innovation. As a leading provider of social learning technology, Saba is committed to helping organizations to develop their most important asset, their people." Key findings: Nearly half of respondents cite that the greatest success is achieved through increased collaboration and improved communication between management and employees.Nearly two-thirds of organizations are motivated to use social learning to support a culture of learning, even though half of responding organizations mention challenges with adoption and uptake by employees.Discussion and communication are the primary drivers, with 59.5 percent of organizations using discussion forums, 57.9 percent using internal blogs and 54.9 percent using secure instant messaging.More than half of organizations are using social learning to support communities of practice, with 35.7 percent of organizations planning to develop communities of practice via social learning during the next two years. "The evolution from social media to social learning is where forward-thinking companies are moving to accelerate the development of their people and better accomplish business goals," says Sarah Kimmel, director, research and advisory services at Human Capital Media Advisory Group. "As employees and learning leaders become more comfortable with social learning and the value it can add to an organization, the challenges with adoption will ease, allowing for even more creative and productive use." "State of the Industry Study: A Pulse on Social Learning" further illustrates the need to provide social learning technology to enhance people development, allowing for real-time communication of knowledge across the entire organization. For more information, download "State of the Industry Study: A Pulse on Social Learning.” Google Books Ruled Fair Use After nearly a decade, U.S. Circuit Judge Deny Chin dismissed the lawsuit from the Author Guild, ruled that Google Books falls within the bounds of fair use in U.S. copyright law. Through Google Books, Google scanned some 20 million books in full and built a web service that allowed anyone to search the digital texts. However, users can only view “snippets” of a book if the rights holder hasn’t given approval. Fair use rulings focus on four factors. Of these, the most important is whether the use of the work is "transformative." Chin ruled that Google Books passes this test easily. "Google Books digitizes books and transforms expressive text into a comprehensive word index that helps readers, scholars, researchers, and others find books," he wrote. "Google Books does not supersede or supplant books because it is not a tool to be used to read books." Another factor weighing in Google's favor, in Chin's view, is that Google Books expands the market for books by helping consumers discover books they would not otherwise have known existed. In a statement sent to WIRED, a Google spokesperson said the company was “absolutely delighted” with the ruling. “As we have long said, Google Books is in compliance with copyright law and acts like a card catalog for the digital age giving users the ability to find books to buy or borrow.” Indeed, most agree that the ruling is a victory for Google, copyright's fair use doctrine, and online innovation. Learning Insights 2013Kineo collaborated once again with U.K.-based e.learning age to produce its annual Learning Insights report. They interviewed more than 20 learning leaders in major companies, including Vodafone, Barclays, BBC, British American Tobacco, Sony, The Co-operative, Boots, Network Rail and many more.The report sets out 10 trends for learning technology that learning professionals can’t afford to ignore. Some key findings:Learning is becoming more pervasive.Learning must move at the need of speed.We must design higher empathy learning.Learn more about the 10 trends—and what you can do about them—in the report, downloadable here. In the meantime, let Kineo walk you through the report insights in this animation:Voted Most Trusted in Cloud Hosting The digital marketing and design agency Total Product Marketing has released its first “101 Trust Leaders in Cloud and Hosting for 2014.” The list encompasses many well-known trust leaders from the cloud and hosting sector in a variety of segments, including independent software vendors, service providers, research analysts, media, government, and venture capitalists. A sampling from the 101 Trust Leaders include individuals from software giant Salesforce.com (Marc Benioff, CEO), service providers Amazon.com (Werner Vogels, CTO), IBM SoftLayer (Lance Crosby, CEO) and Rackspace (Lanham Napier, President and CEO), managed hosting provider INetU (Chris Kivlehan, VP Account Management) and service provider Telx (Joe Weinman, VP Cloud Services and Strategy). “In a few short years, cloud computing has gone from a misunderstood and overlooked sector to the forefront of I.T. and computing,” says Philbert Shih, managing director of the hosting and cloud research firm Structure Research. “Today there is unprecedented activity in the sector as I.T. infrastructure shifts to a cloud-based delivery model. Organizations from the small business to the large enterprise are looking for ways to take advantage of the cloud and providers are positioning to tackle an opportunity that still has its best days ahead.” Total Product Marketing’s list will allow organizations to have the right information at their disposal to make decisive business, technology, operational and marketing decisions. New Hope for Abandoned Open Source Projects In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software. The problem is that open source projects are often abandoned.

Lisa Werner

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