From burnout to brilliance: How coaching can help accelerate performance

Most of the time, businesses are obsessed with results. Of course, this is the basis on which leaders and teams are judged upon. High performance promotes an environment where the workforce is focused on incremental improvement to be the best they can be in a given situation with the available resources. Desired results proceed this way, but an obsession with effects is not always the right way. You don’t win a game by saying you need to win; there are some objectives to achieve. Often short-term thinking leads to high performance, but in between, companies lose their employees to stress and burnout.

Yes, you read it right; high performance can sometimes lead to burnout. The obvious issue here is too much work and stress. On a biological level, human beings work better without stress and resistance. The same thing applies in the field of work- while at the peak of performance, it is important to avoid the sharp cliff of burnout.

 

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Understanding Burnout
3. The Role of Coaching in Combating Burnout
4. Types of Coaching Beneficial for Performance Enhancement
   • Executive Coaching
   • Leadership Development Coaching
   • Team Coaching
   • Virtual Coaching
5. Implementing Coaching Programs to Prevent Burnout
6. Conclusion

Issues that crop up if burnout is not addressed

Burnout takes a toll on employees’ physical and mental health, impacting their performance. And a struggling team can have severe implications on business performance. Researchers state that 625 million people suffer from depression and anxiety, and WHO estimates that around 1 trillion is lost in productivity yearly.

Employee burnout can cause poor confidence in teams and reduced employee engagement, which further has a devastating impact on job satisfaction relationships, employee retention, and overall success.

Impact on physical and mental health

It can lead to excessive fatigue and the likelihood of developing health issues like heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes. It can further lead to anger towards work and family, isolation from friends, and inability to fulfill responsibilities.

Impact on work

Leave the job: One of the most profound costs of high-performance employee burnout is that employee leave. Some departures are tracked when the employees leave because of feeling overworked.

Absenteeism: Initially, it begins with absenteeism. When the employees don’t get sufficient sleep or suffer from chronic stress, even the most ambitious ones take leave, which further leads to reduced productivity. Depression led to a loss of $51 billion in productivity and absenteeism.

Fatigue: Stress and exhaustion because of overwork can lead to employee health and wellness risks. It leads to an inability to do the job well and causes dissatisfaction. The impact of job stress is serious. Around 76% of respondents agree that workplace stress impacts their mental health.

Activities that help to balance performance and burnout

In today’s time, business leaders have begun valuing purpose over profit. Leaders at any company aim to prevent burnout and encourage employees to perform their best. Now is the time to put policies to support teams to perform better without feeling stressed:

• Improve communication

Keep employees updated to lead to more engaged teams. When employees can easily share their expectations and feedback, it significantly impacts avoiding burnout and increasing performance. Frequent communication help workers work towards what’s expected of them and plan for the future.

• Flexible scheduling and work boundaries

Managers should speak to employees about their flexible work arrangements to promote work-life balance and ensure the team feels engaged and supported.

When managers treat their workers with empathy and empower employees to make decisions, they help make teams more engaged.

• Recognizing and rewarding

Letting employees know their work is appreciated is an excellent way to motivate them to do the job. Financial rewards are also a good way to boost performance and eliminate burnout.

Apart from this, coaching also works as an excellent remedy for this. Here are some benefits of coaching to accelerate performance:

70% of coachees improve their performance, communication, and work relationships. The benefits of coaching are wide-ranging and can impact a person’s performance impeccably. Here are some of the benefits listed for you:

• Work towards accomplishing goals

According to a meta-analysis of coaching studies, coaching has a major impact on the coachee’s coping abilities, well-being, goal achievement, and performance.

Coaching helps employees realistically define their career goals. With the help of a coach, employees can set goals and work actively on them. Once the coach helps employees develop skill sets, they work on professional behavior to enhance their performance and dedication to work.

• Higher engagement

Coaching clients state that coaching helps enhance communication abilities (72%), work-life balance (67%), and performance (70%).

Coaching boosts engagement in the workplace. And engaged employees contribute more efficiently to the team and company. It further enhances retention rate and productivity

• Improve specific skills

Around 14% of employees choose to coach to enhance their skills. Coaching offers support to improve skills. If a company wants to accelerate the performance of its employees, it consistently needs to work on their skills, from communication and self-awareness to team building and persuasion.

However, it is important to pick the right program for employees.

Type of coaching that will prove useful

There are different models of coaching to choose from depending on your organizational needs, goals, and objectives:

• Executive coaching: This coaching is helpful when companies want to enhance the performance index of their leaders. It helps them work on the factors disrupting their performance.
• Leadership development coaching: This is done as a part of a more advanced development program with an objective to transform leaders and individuals. It lasts for less duration than executive coaching.
• Team coaching: Team coaching works best to enhance team performance at all levels. It can be structured to help team work collaboratively in an inclusive environment.
• Virtual coaching: This coaching helps teams to work as per their flexibility. Regardless of their country and time zones, coaches can conduct digital coaching through videos and mentors.

How uExcelerate supports organizations cope with this?

uExcelerate helps make it simple for companies to develop a coaching culture by offering simple and effective ways for coaches and coachees to connect and work together. uExcelerate brings the power of coaching to companies and develops high performance, engagement, and better workplace culture. Download the brochure to learn more about uExcelerate’s High potential development program.

The digital platform promotes virtual coaching by offering coachees the best-in-class resources. The ongoing coaching conversations and support helps teams to learn in the best possible ways at work and life and emerge victorious in their desired field.