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Notes from research high pressure project and metal health

Things I've done to aid with high conflict high pressure 10 months project as EM

During the roughly 8-10 months I was in a project that was going through a really tough time, we had a lot of pressure, no rest, and everyone, including me were facing extreme acute work stress. This is what I did to address the situation

  1. Understand what burnout is, by reading research. I found this book particularly helpful, especially because it explains the different areas that might influence work-related burnout, and what can you do at the individual level, and at the organizational level: https://www.amazon.com/Managing-Burnout-Workplace-Professionals-Professional/dp/1843347342 (understanding this helped me to figure what kind of questions would I ask in the 1:1s with my team members to understand what was the cause o their burnout - this could be a complement of the recommendation of Vaidehi in her article)
  2. Do a self analysis on where I was, and what the causes of my stress were, in my case was: role ambiguity and that I had higher expectations. I addressed these actively focusing my mental health, taking breaks when I felt it was too much, and set for myself early signs that told me when I had to take a break. For example: Ending the work day being exhausted, or starting a week being irritated.
  3. I preached a lot that our goal was not to lose anyone to early stage burnout, and that taking a break due to stress, was encouraged, we started to see it as if you had a cold. If you have a cold (in Germany, where I leave) you have to take a day off to rest. In the same way we adopted this mindset when anyone was too stressed.
  4. The 1:1s were the key, they were focused mainly at understanding where the frustrations where, and figuring out what could we do to address them.

  5. Depending on what the cause was, I shared resources with my team members, such as: walking meditations, how to say no, etc, as complement of what they were doing already.

    Additionally, there is a nice website (https://yerbo.co/), that has a survey that you can do with yourself, to figure out where you are with regards of burnout: https://burnoutindex.yerbo.co/