How to address employee burnout with compassion

- When someone's on the brink you need to act calmly and decisively. When I first recognized a colleague was on the edge of succumbing to physical distress of burnout, they were still pushing on at 100 miles per hour. Having that first conversation to tell someone, kindly and compassionately, that you don't think they're very well is tough. But if it wasn't hard, as I've often seen, things can come crashing down that much more painfully and disruptively. When coaching someone through burnout, intentionally choosing compassion is about being able to show that you understand the person is struggling and that you're there to support them. You don't need to understand what they're going through, or why they're feeling the way they do, although, that's sometimes can help you to express empathy to their situation. What's going on in the brain here? Well, compassionate states have been associated with activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex and the ventral striatum. Compassion activates particular neurobiological mechanisms, including effective and motivational states. You become enabled to show that you're there to support them in a way that neither belittles their difficulties, nor exaggerates them. Clear-sighted compassion means coming up with practical support strategies that help the person deal emotionally with the stress and burnout and really helps them on the road to recovery. Kindness is one of the most underappreciated prosocial skills to employ in the workplace. But situations involving stress and burnout, it's one of the most important. Kindness can release dopamine, serotonin and even endorphins. It's this cocktail that makes us feel good, it can be protective. When people are struggling there's often associated guilt. Being kind to themselves at that time is crucial for recovery. Try role modeling self-kindness by vocalizing ways that you might beat yourself up for things, but are trying to offer yourself kind words, you can show a struggling colleague how it might be done. This normalizes their experience and gives them an opportunity to see others who also struggle. Social buffering is the mechanism by which people around you help to buffer the stress that you're feeling. We all know the saying, "That a problem shared is a problem halved." And although it isn't often that simple in real life, the principle stands. This means that the compassion and kindness shouldn't just come from you as their manager, but also needs to come from other members of their team, because it could just be them in that situation tomorrow. What's more, we know that things like empathy and kindness are contagious in a good way. They percolate through teams and organizations in a positive spiral of prosociality, which can, when done right, change the culture of an organization, making it into a more positive and supportive place to work. As a manager it can sometimes feel like a weight on your own shoulders in having to support people. So seeking out support from others, or encouraging the person to also seek other sources of compassionate support, if appropriate, is often a good idea.