Who Caretakes the Caretaker? How Managers Can Avoid and Overcome Burnout
Excerpted from “The First-Time Manager: Leading Through Crisis,” Appendix 2: Navigating Your Own Emotions Through Crisis
Managers spend so much time insulating their teams from stress that they often forget to protect their own capacity. Seeing that there’s no “HR for HR,” human resource practitioners, frontline operational leaders, business owners, and corporate senior executives must remember put on their oxygen masks first; otherwise, anyone they care for can easily go down with the ship.
In May of 2020, I wrote a time capsule piece for SHRM titled “Viewpoint: HR During a Pandemic in a Retirement Home.” My intention was to write about what life was like in the third month of the COVID scourge at ground zero in a retirement home. If you recall, COVID was first identified in the United States at a retirement home in Seattle. Because of the residents’ age and health vulnerability, the pandemic struck hard in the retirement community. In the piece, I was writing about closing the campus to new residents and patients, standing up an isolation unit, masking and social distancing, issuing “essential worker” notices to our staff members to ensure their right to work onsite in case they were pulled over by the police, the shift to remote work, and in our case at the Motion Picture and Television Fund—the retirement home for the entertainment industry—the welcome invitation of National Guard physician assistants and nurses to help us treat our ailing population in light of the many employee absences we faced.
I wrote about the feeling of “building the plane while flying it” and the “adrenaline junkie” nature of our work along with the decisions we made based on recommendations from the World Health Organizations, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, the California Department of Public Health, and local healthcare authorities in Los Angeles. Advice and recommended/mandatory protocols changed rapidly and often conflicted, while the vision of “death ships” in the New York City harbor impressed upon us how dire the situation was.
We received notice on a Friday afternoon at 3:00 that L.A. Unified School District would be closed the following Monday morning, and we had to stand up an onsite school room for kindergarteners through high schoolers to get our nursing staff to report to work. We saw our first residents and employees being placed on ventilators. And we were assigning unionized staff to the isolation unit in reverse seniority order—a heartbreaking exercise, especially since anyone entering the isolation ward could not see their families again until the unit was cleared of COVID and had to be housed in local hotels (a process that lasted six weeks in the first, initial wave of COVID). The level of anxiety, angst, and tension was through the roof and certainly nothing that anyone living had ever experienced before, especially since the last pandemic of this magnitude, the so-called “Spanish flu,” took place in Europe right after World War I in 1918.
It was during the COVID emergency that I learned the importance of perspective, compartmentalization, working with peace of mind, and giving those gifts away to others. Today, while not under the threat of imminent death, our workforce operates under a cloud of external pressures that extend far beyond the office walls, where persistent macro-inflation, rising interest rates, and soaring living costs relentlessly erode household purchasing power and real wage gains. Political instability, international conflicts, and financial uncertainty breed widespread angst and tension. In the past month, scientists within the largest AI development organizations have come out asking the U.S. and world governments to slow down further AI research lest the agents created become smarter than the human beings that created them and potentially destroy the planet.
Considering all these concerns and the upcoming midterm elections this November, companies frequently pivot or freeze headcount, leaving workers to absorb the psychological burden of perpetual job insecurity, sudden shifts in international labor markets, and the anxiety of navigating an interconnected world economy shaped by conflict rather than stability. In short, we find ourselves again at the point of building the plane while flying it. A “time capsule” article is consequently needed again, not just to track the challenges of the moment, but to help us all come collectively to the table to ensure we can breathe, maintain a healthy perspective, and avoid the sense of overwhelm and burnout that the moment demands.
I recently published a blog post titled “Dealing Effectively with Employee Burnout and Overwhelm.” It didn’t take long for people to ask that I write a counter piece that’s geared to the leaders’ wellbeing as well. That’s why this article is important: We need to learn to care for ourselves first and then tend to our teammates. Follow along for some ideas and insights that might change your perspective, help you achieve greater peace of mind, and serve as an objective and healing source for all in your care in the office or on the shop floor.
Navigating Your Own Emotions through Crisis
No one else is responsible for our emotions; we own them, and we must know how to handle them. Anxiety, fear, apprehension, uncertainty, and stress are natural outcomes when experiencing crisis. But improving our emotional self-awareness and responding in a more positive and constructive manner is within our control. Learning how to manage and strengthen your “EQ,” or “emotional quotient,” is akin to building new muscle. And unlike your IQ (“intelligence quotient,”), which is pretty much fixed by the age of twenty, EQ provides you the opportunity to understand, use, and manage your own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges, and defuse conflict. That’s why leadership books abound: building stronger EQ increases your sense of empathy, self-awareness, and otherness, which are some of the most important ingredients for successful managers.
Recognize that feelings and emotions go hand in hand. What’s critical is your awareness of when you’re being dragged down into a rabbit hole of emotional distress. It’s helpful to understand the linear progression of how and when this can happen:
Stage 1: The initial event occurs, and your immediate interpretation (or possible misinterpretation) is triggered.
Stage 2: The feelings you experience stem from automatic responses in your brain.
Stage 3: The triggering of your emotion occurs, which is a state of mind that results from your body’s physiological sensation.
Stage 4: Your reaction or overreaction to the event dictates your response and sends a message to those around you as to whether you are in control, confident, or self-assured about a new way forward or in a more reactive state of panic, worry, or fright.
So, how should you attempt to navigate your emotions through crisis? Said another way, how do you develop stronger emotional intelligence to lead more effectively through the sudden changes that crises often sweep in? The science behind emotion tells us that self-management techniques can be learned and strengthened to handle stressful situations more effectively. There are methods for preempting emotional flareups as well as for recovering from emotional hijacking, which might look like this.
Self-Management Techniques: How to Avoid Burnout
Step 1: Slow down | Pay attention to your physical body and self-talk. Emotions are hard-wired but not something that we can’t overcome with the appropriate level of self-awareness and self-discipline. |
|
|
Step 2: Avoid negative self-judgment | Recognize the emotion. Monitor your mental chatter for stressful thoughts. Acknowledge how you’re feeling without judging yourself. Ask yourself why you may be feeling a certain way. (Internal honesty requires a high level of self-awareness.) |
|
|
Step 3: Recast initial negative thoughts | Pay attention to your inner dialog, which tells you how you feel. Listen specifically for negativity in your self-talk. You can change negative self-talk into more positive thought, which leads to more productive and positive actions. Becoming more self-aware is about acknowledging and controlling your negative thoughts while focusing on solutions within your control. |
Step 4: Focus on solutions that are within your control | Use logic to reframe your emotions to neutralize negative emotions; shift your emotional state to think positive, not negative. Small wins are wins, nevertheless. In times of crises, focus on putting one foot in front of another. That’s about as far a line-of-site that you’ll need to redirect energy in a new and more positive direction. |
Step 5: See yourself in the eyes of others | Emotions strike hard and fast. You suddenly feel different. Leaving emotions unchecked can negatively impact your relations with others. Remember that self-management is self-control. Mindfulness stems from managing your emotions while showing empathy for others. Judge no one. When in doubt, err on the side of compassion. But help others find and restore their peace of mind to the extent possible. Follow the adage, what you want for yourself give to another. After all, the universe knows that you can’t give away anything that you don’t already have: giving away peace of mind away means that you already have it to give, reinforcing your self-confidence. |
Step 6: Compartmentalize | Compartmentalization is the psychological ability to mentally isolate intense stress and emotions so you can focus on the immediate task at hand. During a crisis, it acts as a temporary protective wall that prevents panic from hijacking your judgment and decision-making. By setting aside overwhelming feelings until you are in a safer space to process them, you can remain present, grounded, and clear-headed under pressure. Far from suppressing emotions permanently, effective compartmentalization is a deliberate control dial that allows you to manage volatile times without becoming emotionally overwhelmed. |
Self-awareness is the cornerstone of building emotional intelligence. Emotional ownership is a way of caring for yourself and noticing what’s happening in your mind and body to remain healthy. There are additional techniques that you can use to build self-awareness over time so that you are better prepared in an emotionally charged crisis to move from knee-jerk reactions to more thoughtful, deliberate, and confident responses:
Eliminate all-or-nothing thinking (by avoiding “always/never” mental constructs).
Be honest about your weaknesses: do you tend to overreact and become overly defensive? Do you avoid situations that you know you should address?
Learn how to master deep breathing (slow, deep beathing and visualization exercises calm the mind). Practice the 4x4 method used by Navy SEALs prior to engaging in military action: breathe deeply for four seconds through the nose; release the air for four seconds through the mouth. Repeat for four cycles to oxygenate your blood and clear your head.
Master meditation: tense and then relax all the muscles in your body, starting at your feet and moving up to your head.
Begin journaling: writing things down makes it safe to express your feelings and quiet your mind by gaining a different perspective. More importantly, it eliminates the need to keep thinking about something.
Incorporate exercise and personal hobbies into your life to decrease stress. Drinking water helps calm nerves in emotionally intense situations by decreasing stress hormones as well.
Look to professional mentors for guidance. Where mentors might not be available, mentor yourself by asking:
The best advice I could give myself is. . .
I’m grateful for. . .
The biggest change I want to make is. . .
Taking ownership of your emotions, becoming emotionally self-aware, and identifying your emotional triggers will go a long way in building your emotional intelligence muscle, especially during crisis situations. Adopting useful behaviors to help you manage disruptive emotions during crisis more effectively is an excellent way to lead through current crises and better prepare for future ones.
Leading others through turbulence doesn’t require you to be indestructible—it simply requires you to be human and intentional. By setting clear boundaries, practicing intentional compartmentalization, and making space for your own restoration, you aren't stepping away from your leadership responsibilities; you’re actively preserving your capacity to fulfill them. Remember that self-care isn’t a secondary task on your to-do list, but the very foundation upon which your resilience, empathy, and clarity are built.
When you choose to care for yourself, you do more than just protect your own well-being; you model a sustainable and compassionate way of leading your entire team. You can’t pour from an empty cup, nor should you expect to. But when you keep your cup full, you give those around you the strength, stability, and permission to do the same. Ultimately, caretaking the caretaker isn't just about surviving the storm—it’s about creating a culture where both you and your team can pull together and have one another’s backs. No one is left behind; we’re all in this together. By prioritizing your own well-being today, you lay the groundwork for a stronger, more resilient tomorrow.
___________________________________________________________________________
Please feel free to subscribe to my blog for similar articles by clicking the “Subscribe to Blog” link and entering your email address here: https://www.paulfalconehr.com/blog.
For more information on my books, please visit my #HarperCollinsLeadership author page at https://www.harpercollinsleadership.com/catalog/paul-falcone/.
You can likewise find my books on Amazon at amazon.com/author/paulfalcone or at Barnes & Noble at https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Paul%20Falcone.
For video snippets of my presentations, visit my YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@paulfalconeHR.
PaulFalconeHR.com Consulting Services
Management & Leadership Training | Certified Executive Coaching |
International Keynote Speaking | HR Advisory Services |
Corporate Offsite Retreat Facilitation | Expert Witness Testimony |
Comments