How to lead energy and fight fatigue – practical tips for people managers

“That’s the sun’s pattern right there. If you’re worried, you can just touch it and get strong again.” In Nobel-winner Kazuo Ishiguro’s recent book, the protagonist is an AI girl, powered by the sun. Her human best friend Josie is ill, and the AI is intent on getting the sun’s power to cure Josie, too. This reminds me of the situation people managers are facing right now: with a workforce that’s tired, isolated, and weary after a year of remote work, how can they re-inject ‘power’ into their teams? And how do they do it in a team-centric way, instead of falling into the Ishiguro AI trap: assuming the team is energized by the same things as the manager?

Many moons ago in 1990, two researchers created a model for burnout prevention based on three elements: Demand, Support, and Control. In a nutshell, a ‘healthy combination’ is when a worker’s (perceived) control and support are high – in which case demand can be high or low. The dangerous combination is when demand (external from others, or internal from oneself) is high, and control and support are low.

So, what relevance do this classic burnout theory and Ishiguro’s book have for us now?

Working as a Hintsa Mentor and psychologist, it seems that people’s ‘lived experience’ of power has been changing over the last year. And when I say ‘power’, I mean a kind of deep, intangible life force. From fresh phenomenological research, power distills down to two aspects:

Every people manager should be aware of where they stand in terms of power – for themselves and for their teams. So, let’s use the Demands-Control–Support model to break it down and identify how to lead energy and fight fatigue. 

What powers you as a team and as individuals? Whatever this power source is: is it available, is it effective, or do you need to create new power sources? Right now, many people are reporting fatigue, weariness, lack of motivation, and apathy – our collective get-up-and-go got up and went. And one of a manager’s tasks is to support staff through these challenges. Discovering what powers each individual could help both you and them finesse their experience and performance.

Of course, not everyone is suffering – if you have staff who are thriving, ask what they’re doing: ‘Appreciative Enquiry’ is a well-validated psychological coaching method for finding the positive aspects of peoples’ experiences and performance. Note that as a manager, you may be a power source for your staff, helping them keep away from the ‘danger zone’. This in turn could drain your own power, which means a crucial part of powering your team is to keep yourself resourced.

How do we know whether we are powered up? Whether we are gaining or draining? We need to develop self-awareness of our power drains and power gains and act accordingly. If you don’t check in on yourself to notice early warning signs of fatigue, weariness, or overload – and act on it – then eventually your body will hunt you down.

So, learn your ‘overload tell’: what part of your body is your weak spot that acts as a warning sign for you to slow down, stop, or recover? For example, my overload tell is my lips.

Consider this advice as ‘self-cultivation’: a mix of health and personal growth. You may be sighing at the suggestion of growth right now, but challenging times do present an opportunity to increase our self-knowledge – what renders life meaningful for us, and what makes us tick. If we can get one thing out of this year, it could be greater awareness about ourselves, our lives, and our teams.

Make it a routine to check in on yourself twice daily whilst cleaning your teeth. Stand on one leg and while the muscles and tendons micro-adjust, reflect: how is my mental balance today? What is the balance of my team? What needs some dynamic adaption so that my body, mind, or team doesn’t unbalance and topple over?

Right now, everything is changeable, and as leaders and individuals we need to dynamically adapt, flex, and change – just like when we’re balancing on one leg.

Agentic power is the idea that we can create change in the world. Right now, many people report feeling less agentic and in control of what happens to them and around them. People also report having less ‘self-efficacy’ – the notion that “I can do it”. This resembles a psychological theory called ‘learned helplessness’. This theory suggests that after repeated uncontrollable bad events, people may accept their powerlessness and end up in a state of permanent distress.

If an individual is stuck in ‘learned helplessness’, a manager or coach can, with careful listening and skillful questioning, tease out where a person is experiencing control and agentic power. This is a good start. Where can you or your team effect change? (Again – this is the ‘Appreciative Enquiry’ technique).

Once even a sliver of the agency has been established, go for contagion – see how the individual can grow these feelings of perceived power, agency, and self-efficacy.

Every night before sleep, take note of your accomplishments from that day – even if it is just brushing your teeth standing on one leg and checking in on yourself!

Many of my clients have been baffled by their emotional repertoire over the past year. Many have experienced a myriad of uncommon emotions we psychologists love to label, such as ‘ennui’ (existential boredom with life), ‘anomie’ (alienation and purposelessness), acedia (listlessness, daunting apathy, and hopelessness), and ‘saudade’ (longing for something lost).

We are often controlled by thoughts and feelings we are unaware of. One of my jobs as a psychologist is to help people understand the richness of their emotional life. The better an emotion is recognized, named, and understood, the better a person can start to create agency around that emotion. Recognizing emotions can require patient questioning by professionals, but once emotions (and thoughts) are conscious, they become depowered and have less control over us.

Emotional and stress contagion may also play a part – emotions and stress (positive and negative) easily spread between people and become amplified. We are affected by and sometimes take on other people’s moods, behaviors, and feelings. Again, the best way to start dealing with this is awareness of anyone who is a source of positive or negative contagion. Remember, one person’s positive contagion can be another person’s negative contagion – we’re all different.

Make it a habit to deliberately give time and space for emotions and thoughts. The more aware we are of them, the less control they have over us. You can combine feeling and thought investigation with deliberately noticing your breathing, for example, whilst you are in the shower.

Along with helplessness, people are also experiencing increased hopelessness – like the world has changed and possibilities have diminished. Us humans crave hope: Snoopy is Barack Obama’s favorite cartoon because it is all about hope (and because there are no adults in it).

So how can we create hope? Psychologists would suggest careful goal setting, while philosopher Martin Buber suggests play – “Play is the exultation of the possible”. Life may not be very playful right now (and it’s not advisable to make it so in all situations), but ask yourself: how could you create play in your life and encourage your staff to do the same? Ideally, play with other people – many are experiencing forced solitude and we are a pro-social species after all. ‘Play’ doesn’t need to be organized fun – it can be as simple as factoring in a mood booster to the last call of the afternoon on e.g. Wednesdays and Fridays to end the day or week on a high note.

Introduce something novel into your day or week. The past year has severely reduced our opportunities for novelty, yet humans are wired to thrive on it. It can be something as simple as ordering a new type of food, reading a different type of book, watching a film from a different genre, or trying a new sport.

Suzy shared her views also on Technopolis Wellness Talks webinar "Fighting fatigue & Beating burnout – How to beat toxic stress, prevent burnout, and survive under pressure?", which was organized on March 15, 2023.

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