Managing Leader Burnout: How to Lighten Your Load

Whether you’re the leader of your department or the leader of an entire organization, you are going to be prone to overload, simply by the very nature of who you are. After all, it has taken perseverance and aptitude to get to this place—if you weren’t a capable and talented individual, you wouldn’t have gotten where you are!

But eventually, even unicorns get burnt out. 

As a leader, you’re tasked with managing your staff, developing strategies, and closing big deals. But sometimes, people call you in for sales meetings. And, yes, you love to dabble a little (okay, a lot) in graphic design. The team asks you for help because they know you’re great at these things. Plus, it feels good to exercise those sales and marketing muscles again.

Before you know what happened, your calendar is packed, there’s a pile of work on your plate, and it feels like a hundred people are waiting on you to take action. Suddenly, you’re the bottleneck that is preventing work from getting done. 

No worries, you think, you’ll just come in a little earlier, stay a little later, work a little more after the kids go to bed. It’s fine, because your team needs you, right?

This is the temptation of highly motivated and skilled leaders, and it’s the double-edged sword that can hold back business growth.

In many organizations, one or two leaders often find themselves trying to shoulder too much responsibility on their own. When you are a capable leader who used to spend lots of time in the weeds on projects, it feels good to jump back into the trenches.

But when you as a leader are stretched too thin, you can’t focus on strategic oversight, driving innovation, or effectively supporting your teams. 

As a result, projects stall, opportunities are missed, and the team’s full potential remains untapped. This can lead to missed revenue targets, poor customer engagement, a decline in overall morale.

Ease Your Load and Unleash the True Strengths of Your Team

Even the most capable leaders can inadvertently undermine their team’s effectiveness by trying to do too much on their own. The solution lies in delegating responsibilities, trusting your team, and leveraging the collective strengths of everyone involved.

It’s possible that you have a powerhouse of a team, but their strengths are hidden. Some might be overshadowed by your own ambitious leadership. Others might be missing altogether from the table, leaving a gap in your team’s ability to be effective. 

Which roles are missing from your team? Where do you have overlap? In what ways are you trying to take on too many roles?

OneTable has identified nine key skill areas that must be addressed in order to have an effective business development team. You might not have nine different people filling these roles—Katy might be both the Leader and the Spokesperson, for instance—and you might have more than one person wearing the same hat. Perhaps you have not one but four Developers. 

In any case, a biz dev team needs all nine of these key skill areas to be highly effective.

• Leader
• Sales Leader
• Strategist
• Spokesperson
• Integrator
• Analyst
• Writer
• Designer
• Developer

By assessing your team to identify and fill these nine key skill areas, you can distribute responsibilities more evenly, relieve your own overload, and ensure that everyone is contributing where they are strongest. 

This not only lifts the burden off your shoulders but also empowers the entire team to execute with greater efficiency and effectiveness. In doing so, you can unlock new levels of performance and drive your organization toward greater success.

If you want to level up growth in your organization, this is a key area. Come in for a strategy blueprint with OneTable Strategy’s top strategists. We’ll help you clarify your business strategy and market position, set objectives, and assess your team’s roles to identify gaps and map out a plan to get the better results.

Relieve the overload burden you’re trying to carry by helping your entire business development team get clarity in their roles, feel empowered, and increase their performance. Schedule a blueprint today or request more information about our blueprint sessions to get started. 

We can’t wait to help you get the clarity you need to unlock growth in your business.