Top Takeaways Tuesday: Getting Beyond Burnout with Work-Life Harmony
The Knowing Self Knowing Others Podcast, Ep. 60 with Saieed Sadeghzadeh
Hello KSKOers
I had a really good conversation with Saieed Sadeghzadeh in episode 60 of The Knowing Self Knowing Others Podcast. We talked about authenticity and self-aware leadership, stress management and self-care, work-life harmony and mindset, burnout, self-reflection, and recovery and the importance of self-regulation. Here are my top takeaways…
1. Authentic Leadership and Self-Care: Saieed emphasised the crucial link between authentic leadership and self-care. He talked about the impact of leaders on organisational culture and like me, advocates for self-awareness and self-care as essential components of effective leadership. We talked about the importance of prioritising well-being to sustain authentic leadership, and decided that the concept of work-life harmony was more helpful and realistic that work-life balance.
Reflection question: How can you make sure that you prioritise self-awareness and self-care?
2. Overcoming Burnout with Energy Management: Saieed shared his personal experience of burnout and the impact of mindset on his recovery journey. He stressed the significance of energy management over time management as a way of moving beyond burnout, navigating fears, and improving energy to carry out tasks. He recommends journaling as a tool for addressing burnout, and talked about the power of being able to separate fact from fiction through the actual practice of journaling. If you’re new to journaling, my Reflections Journal can guide you through a regular practice
Reflection question: How can you incorporate journaling into your daily routine?
3. The Power of Self-Awareness and Self-Regulation: Saieed’s personal experience highlights the transformative power of self-awareness and self-regulation in his recovery from burnout. His journey stresses the importance of understanding emotional needs, triggers, and habits as a way of building a personal plan for recovery and initiate that personal transformation that is bespoke to you.
Reflection question: What can you do to practice self-awareness and action self-regulation to help you move beyond burnout?
4. Embracing Authenticity and Purpose in Leadership: Saieed advocates for leaders to prioritise authenticity and purpose in their leadership approach. He encourages leaders to nurture confidence, set boundaries, and align work with personal values to achieve holistic well-being that helps prevent burnout. This also helps foster a healthier organisational culture.
Reflection question: How can you i) embrace authenticity, ii) prioritise purpose and iii) cultivate a values-aligned environment for yourself and your teams?
5. Seeking Support and Guiding Others to Success: The importance of seeking support from mentors, colleagues, and coaching services is something Saieed highlights as part of his approach to helping himself and others address burnout and achieve personal growth. We talked about his experience of management support at work and how people need people: leaders need to be proactive in creating opportunities for people to open up about their fears and concerns.
Reflection question: What can you do to create opportunities for your colleagues to talk about the things that are worrying them, as a way of preventing burnout?
How can you use these top takeaways and reflection questions (TTRQ)?
Pick one of the TTRQs
Share it with you team
Ask for their thoughts and views. Reflect, discuss and debate
Get to know your own thoughts better. Help others to know their thoughts better. Get to know each other better.
Share your thoughts here with us on what you’ve discovered and learned.
Hope you enjoy the episode and find that these TTRQs generate interesting and awareness raising discussions!
Looking forward to having you on my learning journey!
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Nia is an expert leader who talks the talk and walks the walk. She is an academically awarded thought leader in self-aware leadership and practices self-aware leadership every single day in her role as a Director in a Children’s Charity.
Every element you list is critical to effective leadership. It is so easy for leaders to neglect self-care and self-awareness. The best leadership starts with a focus on the self and then spreads outward.