The Founder's Guide: Stop Burnout & Build a Startup

Yet I knew in two hours I will have killed my loving wife and will be about to kill myself. And there's nothing I could change about it because Verdi and Boito had decided that way. And I wanted to be able to make a difference and to have some influence and therefore I changed from portraying human catastrophes to preventing them by psychotherapy or by coaching or by preventing burnout and other terrible things that happen to people.

That's why we are talking today about understanding burnout in teams, not only in you directly, but also if you're a founder in your leadership team. Can you give us a few early indicators of burnouts? What are warning signs and how can leaders differentiate between like temporary? Yeah, it's been a busy time or chronic burnout risks.

Only work seven days a week. And that's a first starting point when work becomes toxic in the sense that this person is already starting on the road to burning out. Now, we do have a little controversy or ambiguity in this field of burnout, because the process of burning out, burnout. And the result, the last stop, have both the same name. And since we can arrive at this final state also on four different ways, I prefer to call it voidness, emptiness.

You are void of every other interesting thing in your life than work. So you can also arrive there by bore out. You can also arrive there by dripping out and by draining out and by being burned off. But we are talking today only about this part, where you arrive in voidness by burning out.

which is pretty bad. Can you tell us a little bit what role leadership has in preventing a burnout?

burnout arriving in their group. They, as a leader, you must notice that we have been working on our limits now for a longer time. It's okay to go over your limits for a short period, let's say one or two weeks, but when a group is working way, way past its limits for several months, for example, you don't have enough people on your workforce, you don't have enough qualification for the jobs that need to be done, you don't have enough... People who can't care for the other people.

Then you will start to see that there are people going into sick leave, not because they are actually sick physically, but they just cannot bear it anymore. And they are usually the best, not the worst. Then you will notice a rise in the overtime, whether it is paid or not paid.

But you will see that you drive out of your garage at your work plant, and there are some windows which are still lit because people are still working there, somehow to fill their deadlines, somehow to do their actual jobs, and still because they think that their job is very, very important. And then they come to the next step where they think, if I don't put in the extra effort, then the whole company is going down the drains.

And this is overestimating one's necessity, one's being needed by the company. And once you're past that, you are really into the funnel which sucks you into this burning out process where you will finally land at being completely void of any possibilities, of any power, any strength, any interests, and just simply giving up. And this may be deadly. And now imagine you have, let's say, you have in a group a workforce of 10.

Now, one of them falls out because of burnout, which means that usually the work of 10 has to be done by 9, which, of course, puts an extra strain on all of the 9. Then the nine again, one of them gets a burnout, so all of a sudden the same workload is distributed to eight people. And I don't know how you can imagine to go down to finally having one person doing the job of 10. It's impossible. So you have to take measures very, very early and be very attentive.

The easiest way, of course, to find out whether people in your workforce are in danger is to sit down with them when they come back from vacation, if they have taken any, and ask them, well, how was your vacation? Tell me about your vacation. Oh, I was always thinking about the work and all the things we have to do, and I have a new idea how we could do this or that.

That person is in danger of burning out. If one of your employees hasn't taken a vacation for a year, that's a very, very bad sign. This person has to be sent to take a vacation and has to be taken care of.

But as you've already shown, when you go from a team of 10, you go down to 9, you go down to 7, that should really, really raise a lot of red flags. Could you talk about the leadership style here?

I think leading people is a person's job. You have to have the personality of the leader. And this is not something you learn in any management school, but this is an attitude you have to learn through personality development, maybe even personal training, but that is not what you learn when you follow courses of accounting and of all these numbers-based leadership styles. I'm also quite aware that right now there is a so-called Leadership 5.0, which is basing itself on artificial intelligence.

Sorry, a person does not want to talk with artificial intelligence. You don't want to go on a date with some artificial intelligence. You don't want to have your boss as artificial intelligence. You need a person because you work, and that is something you have to keep in mind.

You work with and for people. And latest research by D. Lloyd has shown that people, about 75% of our workforce, come to us because of the company's name, reputation, or because it's a very interesting job, or whatever benefits there are. But 65 to 70% of these people are leaving because of their direct superiority. Because they have not gotten enough attention, they have not gotten enough mental, emotional rewards.

And then there are again 30% who say the workplace atmosphere was so horrible, no fun, no puns, nothing just work, work, work, work, and they left for that. But when you ask them whose responsibility it is to have a good atmosphere in the workplace, they say it's the boss's responsibility. So at the 60 and then the 30, you arrive at 90% of those who leave us that are leaving us because of their direct superiors.

I think that basically our employees of today want to be respected as human beings, and they want to have a little say about what's happening in the company. So we at LeoVeen.com have developed a special tool for companies to get very good feedback from their employees, but not in the usual form, which is you as the employee fill out something and your boss gets it.

In our concept, in our project, employees are invited to fill out just 48 questions and grade them from one to nine and send them directly to our company. And we guarantee 100% confidentiality.

To, well, some improvement might be necessary to the point of there is urgent need of action where they can, provided the company agrees to that. Come to our coaches for advice. They just deliver a voucher that they have got from their company, but the voucher does not say to whom it belongs. So, and that voucher again is our means for laying out the fees for the company. So it is a very, very safe way of employees and employers getting good feedback.

Good feedback means it's useful feedback. You can do something with it. And therefore, we have been very successful with this. But since we are very much based on confidentiality, we also do not use our customers for our own advertising, which is something that might make it difficult in today's field of attractivity, where everybody is boasting with 500 acknowledgements and feedbacks. We don't do that. We invite the company.

First, usually it will be the HR responsible or it's the CEO himself, herself, to have the first personal meeting. Then we are very willing to come to the company and give a speech, a presentation on burnout and its dangers and its effects and present our model of the project. And then even after that there might be a vote among the employees or on the other hand on the management level yes let's do it or yes we would like to have this. It's all about trust and cooperation.

You cannot force anybody to be truthful because I say, please be truthful. No, please. Just be truthful. No, sorry, that doesn't work. That's what is called management style X by color, as opposed to Y, which is more lenient leadership.

And then of course some people think that they are in the wrong place. Now if, 30% of your employees think I'm in the wrong place, then definitely re-evaluating who is doing what is a very recommendable approach. While if everybody thinks they're in the right place and you evaluate again, that doesn't make any impact whatsoever. You know, it reminds me of an experiment that was done about 100 years ago. A big factory hall where women were assembling light bulbs.

And in came a group of researchers with their pads and everything, and they talked to the ladies, and then they gave the recommendation, let us increase the power of the lighting by 20%. They did it, and the output rose by 20%. Now, they said, well, why don't we raise it for another 10 percent? It was even brighter and lighter by 10 percent, and the output was 10 percent higher. And then they said, well, this cannot be true, that the output is a direct, relevant coefficient of lighting.

So let us reduce the light by 10% again and they did it and the output rose by 10%. And so they really got into researching this and finally they found out the output was not a result of the lighting it was a result of being asked about their situation, having somebody caring for them. And so in that case, they learned you have to care for your employees. You have to involve them in what's happening. You have to raise their self-esteem. But many other possibilities are there, too.

So I am still an advocate of either asking the employees directly, which might yield unwanted results, like pay me more, let me work less, as opposed to the truly relevant factors, which might be like having more freedom of action or having the information. I need at the time I need it and in the full amount I need it, those kinds of things. So then improving the information flow might prevent burnout.

Hey, guys. Thank you for sticking around. We are back with Imre talking about early detection of potential burnouts in your teams and the roles of leadership. We have just talked about how we can find and address these burnouts and what data-driven approach with feedback culture you are recommending. And we also talked about how to include this potentially in your company culture. Now, I would like to talk a little bit about addressing the overload and regeneration phases.

How should companies define healthy work rest cycle for employees? For example, I was once talking to an entrepreneur and he insisted that his people take at least one week off per quarter.

I think there is a big misunderstanding in general we have this expression work life balance and we think that on the one hand there is work on the other hand there is life and they should be in balance, in my perception this is a big mistake it's called work life balance That means in your work life, while you are at work, there must be a balance between, sort of stop and go, taking a rest and then getting to work again. You need these moments.

Resting, of getting your resilience going at your workplace, not wait until you are at home. And that is something that good workplaces provide, be it, I know of an organization here in Vienna where they offered half an hour of sports after lunch. So just gymnastics or throwing the ball or frisbee around or whatever was possible due to the weather.

But, of course, it was not just the people, okay, you can go out into the park now, But we have an animateur who is with you in the park and who will play all kinds of relaxing and at the same time mind-opening games with you.

What we say for unwinding here in Germany is let your soul dangle. Give it some time, relax it. That was what I had in mind when we were talking about that.

But if you let your people work as they think it's right for them, you will in addition get the quality, get the innovation, and also get the persistence. So it will not be broken in two days, but it will stay working for maybe decades. All that is part of why leadership should take care of these threats of burnout, also from an economic point of view. It's not just because we are so nice. It's not just because we like humans. Excuse me, we trap ourselves into this type of thinking.

It is very, very economic because it's not the weakest in performance who go to burnout, but the best. Those really carry your whole success. And therefore, I think it's like taking summer tires in a winter snowstorm, not to look after your employees', well-being in that sense, not to make sure that they can and want to stick around.

And therefore, maybe the idea is, now, I have been giving this person definitely too much work. Let's assume he will be back in one and a half or two years. Then this person will still have a need of a certain time to reintegrate. And for those two years, it's definitely feasible and sensible to get somebody else. And then when this person comes back, then we sit together and redistribute the workload. So it's always about not having enough people.

And replacing a person who is on sick leave is definitely a better investment than just to have the others burn out while waiting for him or her to come back.

You don't have more than 10, let's say, direct reports, and you have to have enough time to lead these direct reports consequently with all aspects involved. That is to say, we're talking to them at least once a year, this famous once a year evaluation in German called Jahresgespräch, where I have seen so many companies who have realized, yes. Bosses need to talk to their employees. And then when they introduced it, some of the supervisors said, why do I have to talk to them?

They know everything anyway. And others came and said, may I only talk to them once? I like to talk to them several times. But this is one basic conversation that only has three topics. Number one, what did we do well in our cooperation? You and I. Not the company, not the others. You and I. Secondly, what are we going to improve concerning our cooperation in the coming year?

And then we're talking about wishes. is, we're talking about needs, we are not talking about complaints, because the complaints have to be turned into future actions. And then the third topic is, where should, respectively, would the employee like to develop?

And that's all, not about paying, not about any other things, only these three topics, and take one and a half to two hours for these three topics, and you have done all you can do to plant the seed of trust between your employee and yourself. And then you will get honest and valuable feedback from your employee when he will tell you in time, listen, boss, this is getting too much for me. I need some other arrangement.

We have to talk about finding different ways of doing my work, or is there something I could let go of, which is the hardest thing for every employee to get, to let go of something, because the more jobs and the more chores you have, you feel the more needed and important. Not just to say powerful, but important.

about future trends in burnout prevention here. Do you see any potential with the rise of AI-driven workplace analytics that technology can be used to monitor and mitigate burnout risk?

I need to take one now, and then AI maybe shows a red flag right there to the employee rather than to the boss where many employees think they are being controlled by some machine or so. I think you may remember this big scandal in Germany where a company had name tags for everybody, but the name tag was at the same time a monitor that was registering every time you pass certain doors.

And so usually the company knew earlier than the female employee that she was pregnant because she was going to the loo more often. And so they had an increase in the frequency of her visits to the restroom, which told them, oh, maybe she's pregnant. I think we have to get rid of her before she goes on pregnancy leave. So examples like these stick unfortunately in the minds of our co-workers and give them a sort of fear, what if the machines control me even more?

So AI is seen usually as a means of being controlled and being manipulated. While put at the person's use and control, it may seem very helpful to say, listen, you haven't had your leave now for such a long time. Hey, you have gained 10 pounds in the last five months. You know the seats can be easy measures of weight they almost look like scales anyway if you sit in them at least mine does.

So very comfortable and at the same time you should tell me oh you gained again or I lost weight I mean so yes AI can be helpful if it is used openly and to the advantage of the employee and where the employee can understand, the meaningfulness of this measure. If not, then you will get very controversial results, like, imagine, Joe, I am your boss. And I come to you and I'm very open and honest and say, Joe, I would like to motivate you. Oh now tell me what's going through your mind I.

So the same thing goes for I want to look for your health. You're not my mother. I mean, I can look for my health myself. But if I say, listen, I have seen that your sick leaves are getting more and more, and I'm worried about your health. And let's see what we can do together to improve your health situation. That's something different, because also you must keep in mind that many employees are afraid of losing their jobs if they take too much sick leave.

And that would be exactly the sign for everybody. Wait a minute. Health is in jeopardy. And then in order to avoid that, they work overtimes and more overtimes, and that's straight into the funnel of burning out and into failing.

So we are going down the wrong alley there. And on the other hand, all the efforts to reduce human work to less and less mean that we need people who are higher and higher qualified. Now, the higher the people are qualified, the more it is a risk for a corporation that they burn out, because nobody can just come from the street and step in, as opposed to this famous movie with Charlie Chaplin where they just grab a guy from the street to do the struths.

Nobody can come in and do very complex and complicated work. Just, you know, I haven't done it before, but I've been a gardener, so I'm sure I'm good at cutting hair. It will not work.

forget about the numbers and work on your own personality. Make sure that you do not burn out by doing the wrong things and spending your energy there. A manager is a person who makes sure that things are done right. A leader is a person who makes sure that the right things are done.

So become more aware of your real role as a leader and that implicates that you have to have good health that you have to have enough time to reflect and think about your company where nobody disturbs you where you can talk to maybe a coach maybe several coaches, about how to proceed and where to proceed.