Preventing Burnout isn't so Difficult After All

This article reminds me that setting reasonable expectations is extremely important as a manager because it has tangible - and often immediate - impacts on an employee’s happiness and engagement.

Right now I am working on three big projects at work that require lots of time and attention. This week I got a reprieve when the deadlines for one of these projects was moved months down the road from the previous mid-August deadline. I was on a video call with the leader who gave me this project, and she mentioned that I looked a lot happier at the end of the call than I did at the beginning before the project deadline shifted. And she was right. I have been happier and more engaged in the other two projects, and work in general, the past few days because she made my workload more reasonable. Burnout was setting in, she recognized it before I did, and did something to prevent it, providing a mighty good leadership lesson along the way too.