Why Founders Burn Out & The Support They Need Not To
Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash.com
We live in an age where we’re on the go 24 hours a day, non-stop.
Whether it’s answering emails, attending meetings, your best friend’s engagement party, sorting out your taxes, catching up with that new tv show, talking to your kids about what happened today at school, hiring new team members, scrolling through TikTok, talking to your accountant….you get the picture. We are the generation of entrepreneurs who are bombarded from all sides, at all times, by everything.
Part of this quickening is due to the automation of products and services, which has made the world operate at a much faster pace. Once it would take a few weeks to receive money from someone, today it can done in matter of milliseconds. As such, attention spans have also shortened, and people are working longer than 8 hours a day, and not in a linear fashion either.
All of this has completely destroyed the boundaries which once sat in place and enabled people to switch off from work, and in that destruction, it is causing a mental health crisis amongst many of the entrepreneurs and founders of the world.
A Slippery Slope
Bad mental health will ruin a company. Simply because the leaders of those businesses will push themselves to keep going to somehow keep pace with the world, but this is impossible because humans don’t work the way computers do, and computers are setting the pace right now. Humans need breaks and space to breathe.
Unfortunately, many face constant pressure from their teams and VCs who are pushing them to fail fast, which is good when it’s the ideas which are being tested quickly, not for the CEOs themselves. You don’t want to wake up three years from now burnt out, facing an exhaustion that can’t simply be fixed with a weekend away.
Burn out pushes your emotional compass all over the place, which is not useful to a founder, who needs to be making decisions from an emotionally balanced place. This can especially effect female founders, as they often sit on intense emotional ladders, increasing the risk of burnout. It’s also traumatic to experience such levels of intense emotion, and once in it, it’s hard to get out of it.
I believe entrepreneurs deserve seven balanced days and seven sleeping nights. They deserve 52 adventurous Saturday’s and 52 amazing nothing Sunday’s, they deserve four to six weeks vacation in peace and they deserve 12 months of joy. But this can be difficult to achieve without the support of the people around them. As high performing people, a founder’s failure has a much wider impact than a single employee ‘s does.
If the founder falls, it’s like an old tree in the forest falling and taking half the forest with them. It’s a big problem, and it can make a big noise. So avoiding burnout is key, and to do that a founder must manage their mental health as a priority.
How to spot the founder with severe burnout
Investors, team members, family and friends, you can do your part to support a founder by keeping a keen eye on them, especially when they are being pushed past their limits. Watch out for the following:
Lack of personal time
Always checking emails/completing work late into the night
Changes in personality - less energy and more negative
Become too isolated or withdrawn
Constantly seem tired or look drained
Increased self-doubt
Taking longer to make decisions
Cannot handle the amount of work they could previously
What to do to help
More AirHelp them to create space in their life, put time in to help them get some outside air regularly. This could include walking meetings, team retreats, encouraging a meditation practice, taking them out for a scenic coffee and encouraging them to talk about how their feeling.
Empower HRHR is about more than just money. Our modern day culture officers are there to improve working lives. A big part of this should be about the mental health of employees, which includes your CEO. Make mental health a priority across the business starting with the founder.
Mandatory VacationEven founders need to switch off. Help your leaders to take their breaks, and really allow their minds to switch off. To cool the computers so to speak. This includes regular breaks in each day, and over the year. Sometimes you may need to tell them to stop verbally.
Encourage HobbiesMost entrepreneurs are highly focused on their passions, so they abandon their own hobbies pretty quickly when a business becomes successful. This is a mistake because their hobbies are one the best ways to take their mind off it. Encourage your founder to pick it back up and make it a weekly priority.
What not to do
It may seem obvious, but the number one goal is not to add more work onto a founder whose already on the way to burning out. If you’re not sure how they’re coping, then have a real conversation about the pressures of the businesses and how they’re feeling.
Many women entrepreneurs will take their worries to a doctor, and be diagnosed with every mental health condition under the sun before the doctor will suggest burnout as a possibility. Make sure mental health support is one of the things you regularly check-in with them.
I'll leave you with a poem I wrote, which reflects this sentiment.
Fifty-Two Saturdays
A looming deadline, a performance's call,
The weight of expectations, disappointment's fall.
Is it the role you play, the identity you mold,
The relentless pursuit of silver and gold?
Customers to keep, goals to meet,
Sleepless nights, family times in defeat.
Chips carved from life, just a few more,
Five minutes linger, a second to implore.
"Can it wait?" you often say,
A job, a task, your health at bay.
A fragile thread, ready to snap,
In the whirlwind, your sanity's trap.
Yet, amid the whirlwind, a truth so rare,
You, the entrepreneur, founder, visionaire, aware.
For seven nights of rest, seven days without fear,
Fifty-two Saturdays, adventures unfold,
Followed by Sundays, where nothing is foretold.
Four to six weeks, a peace so divine,
Twelve months adorned with joy, a treasure to find.
In the midst of it all, a truth so rare,
You, the entrepreneur, founder, visionaire, aware.
So, take a moment, let go of despair,
Maybe, just maybe, what you need is air!
