Transcript from Video
How do we prevent or help our managers, not burnout? This is a really important question because as we know, manager burnout levels are at a record high around forty-three percent according to Slack's latest data. So this is a really important question. And one that anybody, I think, that's responsible for people who's got a management team, should be asking themselves because if you're not preventing your managers from burning out or actively providing the training, you're opening yourself up to a whole host of issues in your organization because if your managers have burned out, that passes down to their teams, they're not gonna enjoy themselves.
So you're gonna have poor retention of poor engagement levels, poor levels of collaboration and innovation, poor levels of productivity, it's just a horrible downward vicious cycle. So if you wanna have a good organization of people who enjoy working out where you get stuff done, where the levels of productivity are high and customers are happy. You've got to have engaged managers. Otherwise, it just stops there. But what happens with managers is there are the best people, they're hard workers, they've done a fantastic job throughout their career saying, yes, working really hard and just getting all the stuff. So we put them into a management position and we and what happens is they keep trying that approach, get on with everybody, say yes to everything, work hard, put your head down and look along. And it just doesn't work. It does not work in a management position because a manager's job completely changes.
The manager's job isn't to do a good job. It's to leverage a team to do a good job. It's not to say yes to everything, it's to be strategic and to say no to the things that aren't the right things, so the team can make progress and the things that are important. It's not about getting on with everybody. about inspiring leading people but also addressing poor behavior and anything that's not in line with your values. It's not about just working hard, it's about leveraging the team. So if you don't give them that development and the knowledge in those skills, they're gonna try the old approach. They're gonna burn out. So okay. Fantastic. What do we actually have to do to address it? Well, they really just need some basic, very basic development training in what we've just talked about.
And what they really need is to be taught what I've just told you, which is essential, your mindset is currently hardwired to work in a certain way, but you want our shifting from being a worker to being a challenger of a team and you need to have a change in shift, otherwise, you're gonna struggle. Another key thing is to highlight to them that it is gonna be a struggle. Nobody's gonna jump into a management role and just thriving at straightaway.
Maybe a few people, but most people will go through a phase of struggle because they're trying to adapt their approach to work.
But what they really need to learn is the mindset around being a manager and being a leader and they need to just be told that it's really not that complicated. They need to be given basic skills on how to strategically plan and prioritize, and they need to be given some basic skills around how to leverage their time and the time of their teams. There are other things as well, like coaching skills, PDPs, and all of this stuff. But I think the basics are mindset, strategic planning, and good time management, getting timing with your team. And doing that doesn't have to take three weeks or months of development, training, and qualifications. It really can be done in less than three days and really, less than ninety minutes on each one of those days as well.
That's our approach. But you don't need you don't even need to get an external provider just have that conversation with your managers around. You need to change your mindset and you need to give yourself permission to do that. So just doing that and having that conversation with them can be transformational in how your managers approach work.
Probably nine times out of ten just need to be told and given a mission to not just work hard over time and start working smart.
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Mike Jones Better Happy Founder
Mike founded Better Happy in 2018.
He now works with a variety of businesses ranging from small accountancies up to large organisations such as Travelodge on improving employee happiness. Mike's vision and the vision of Better Happy is 'Every employee happy, every business thriving'