QUIET QUITTING – THE ANSWER TO BURNOUT?

August 13, 2022

This trending topic is receiving a huge amount of attention which shows that it is really striking a chord. I want to explore it because it is just not in my psychology. I’m too black and white, either for something or against it. If I don’t like a work situation, I’ll leave. I’m probably more of a Great Resignation rather than a ‘lie-back’ person.

When I posted about quiet quitting on LinkedIn a few days ago, one of the people who responded wrote this:

“It’s heart-breaking to think anyone could feel the need to do this in any aspect of their life. ❤️‍🩹”
”Life is a gift 🎁 something so precious 🌟 that we only get to enjoy once & when it’s gone, there isn’t a re-run we can apply for 🙏🏼
”If “quiet-quitting” is as good as it gets for some people, what are they waiting for? ⏰ Who do they think will make the changes in their life & why don’t they see they deserve so much better?! 💪🏼
”I’ve heard of ‘controlling the controllables’ but if we don’t own our shit, then we leave the door open for anyone else to do that for us. And we all know people who will happily step into those shoes for us😠

“Rant over 😂 great post Hilary Rowland & a terrifying concept. I just hope anyone who is in this trap has the support around them to realise the stars are only a moment away 💫”

It got me thinking that, while quiet quitting, the art of doing no more than is required of you, may be the right response to burnout for some people in a few desperate situations, but to be emotionally and mentally healthy it should be intentional, thought through, a deliberate plan.

There are many people who are very burnt out and I recently spoke to someone who is intending to take time out of the workplace to recover. As the saying goes, ‘They who fight and run away live to fight another day.’ But that’s the point, it’s not giving up the fight whatever that represents. It’s regrouping, refreshing and recovering.

Perhaps those quiet quitters feel they’ve had too many demands made of them, been asked to do things that are not their fight and without support and recognition, and therefore why should they bother? I’m with them on that, but to really benefit from stepping back, it needs to be part of a larger plan for life, one where they own the direction.

There’s no doubt things are very difficult in many ways at the moment.

What do you really need? We can help you think it through. Our retreats offer the opportunity to step back, take some time out, decide what’s right for you. Act now.

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Walking the talk

by Next Chapter Retreats

May 30, 2022

This week I’m back on the Scottish island of Iona. I came here last year for a retreat feeling very burnt out like many others. It restored my soul and a sense of perspective.

When I look back over the last year, I’m aware that we now have an even greater focus on wellbeing together with our partners Cesar Gamio and George Anderson. I’ve written a White Paper on the wellbeing needs of senior executives and we’ve designed some programmes for them which involve both retreats and coaching.

I’m a great believer in eating my own dog food and having my own retreat is so important to be able to do what we do. It is a privilege and an honour to work with people so dedicated to their personal growth and to see the transformation in them and their lives. The changes seem to encompass so many areas:

Family – rebuilding and investing in relationships with partners and children
Business – building self-belief, valuing himself and his contribution so that he can ask for the fees he deserves
Discovering new abilities – who knew she had artistic talents?
Finding a network of people that have your back and will encourage you to keep growing.

It’s made me think about how I’ve invested in my own wellbeing this year and what has made a difference as I’m not going to Iona burnt out. A bit tired but not burnt out.

Setting aside time for a weekly meditation
Putting routines in place, having set times for writing and generating content
Keeping my mornings, when I have most energy, for important things and work which requires greater concentration. I keep afternoons for calls and meetings when I need the interaction with others to reenergise me
Planning my week every Friday so that I hit the ground running on Monday, not faffing around trying to work out what I’m meant to be doing
And finally, not a difficult one for me, exercise – cycling, swimming, walking and Pilates.

Iona is a very spiritual place which is one of the things I love about it. Spirituality matters to me as it does to a lot of us, but we don’t seem to feel comfortable talking about it, perhaps because of the fear that it will spill over into religion which can be so contentious. For me, it’s about the connection with something much bigger than myself, as well as what makes my life meaningful and significant.

What works for you in managing your time, energy and contribution?

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Your Wellbeing or Personal Indulgence?

by Next Chapter Retreats

April 24, 2022

This is a big topic at the moment. It attracts so much attention and creates so many headlines that it would almost seem to be a global obsession. It may have got to the point that people switch off when they hear the word even though the need has not disappeared. Tech companies seem able to sell any number of apps and gadgets to measure every aspect of physiological function, but for many people, does it go beyond measurement and the possible creation of even more anxiety caused by the results?

I know it’s important but that doesn’t mean I find it any easier to give it the right priority in my life. My toes curl slightly at the term ‘self-care’. If our wellbeing were a business, would we invest in it? If not, why not? Here’s the business case for the investment:

Protecting the company’s investment. Sports franchisees that pay top dollar for star athletes require them to exercise, eat better and take care of their overall wellness during the season. The same should be true for C-level employees as companies pay more for those roles, particularly the top job. Considering that the Economic Policy Institute estimates that average CEO pay is 271 times the nearly $58,000 annual average pay of the typical American worker, it could be said that the C-Suite should be held to a higher personal maintenance standard.
Supposing you depart suddenly as a result of ill health. Costs can mount quickly without an obvious internal replacement. The typical seven-figure severance package and six-figure retainer for an executive search firm are just the beginning. Board members might have to fly in on short notice for an emergency meeting. A small army of professionals — all of whom charge by the hour — begins to mobilise: communications consultants and employment lawyers, movers and relocation experts. The longer the clock ticks, the higher the figure on the meter. And those are just the hard, easily quantifiable impacts. They pale in comparison to the less visible costs. Turmoil and uncertainty at the top filter quickly down through the organisation, slamming the brakes on growth initiatives, hindering the closing of vital deals, and causing some valued employees to start looking for new positions elsewhere.
What is more difficult to quantify but a reality nonetheless is the cost of lack of efficiency, delayed decisions, and bad decisions as a result of ill-health, burnout or being generally sub-par.

What’s your level of investment in your wellbeing? Can you afford NOT to invest in wellbeing?

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What’s your state of wellbeing?

by Next Chapter Retreats

April 14, 2022

With most of us having had a break over Easter, it’s a good time to switch off but also have some time to reflect on our state of wellbeing.

There is no shortage of evidence to demonstrate that people at a senior level have been more adversely affected by the changes and working conditions brought about by the COVID 19 pandemic. Much as we might all have desired a return to ‘normal’, it would appear that working patterns have undergone a permanent shift with many workers continuing to prefer to work from home – another adjustment to make.

These pressures may have affected you in a number of ways. You may be

Thinking of leaving the workplace altogether
Seeking a new position
Finding that you are part of the epidemic of stress and burnout.

If you’re in this position, you have probably recognised the need to support employees who have been similarly, but not as badly affected by these conditions and put in place wellness initiatives in your companies. But what about you and your wellbeing needs? Many senior people don’t recognise this as a need for themselves and would rather adopt either a stoical approach or deny that there’s a problem.

This carries huge risks as the effects of your ill health can be far-reaching. Senior executives have huge responsibilities, hence the stress, and the implications for being sub-par on business effectiveness, decision making, and leadership are also great: a strong business case for their investing in your health and wellbeing. It will also have a beneficial effect on the rest of the company, your leading by example.

Why don’t you think about investing some time in yourself and the rest of your life by coming on one of our retreats? Giving yourself time to think about your direction, purpose and state of wellbeing could pay dividends for you, the family and the business.

Our next 5-day retreat starts on the 13th – 16th of June. We are having drinks in London on 27^th April at 5pm at the Eight Club for people who’d like to find out more. For those who can’t make that date, we are having a Zoom call at 5pm on 3^rd May. Please get in touch if you’d like to participate in either of those events.

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Is your senior management team in danger from “The Great Resignation”?

by Next Chapter Retreats

April 7, 2022

The ‘Great Resignation’ seems to be everywhere. I can’t open a newsletter in my inbox without reading about it. I’m not surprised. The effects of the pandemic are going to be with us for a long time and they are hard to identify and pin down. Generally, there is a sense of people being unsettled and the current war in Ukraine and economic pressures aren’t helping. While all the COVID regulations have been lifted, COVID is still very much with us, to an even greater extent if anything and it doesn’t seem as though there will ever be a point when we can wave goodbye to it.

In the management team retreats I’ve been leading I’ve found that many members of senior teams have been adversely affected. It’s happened slowly and unnoticeably to the point where burnout and languishing are ‘normal’ ways of being. Senior management teams have become quite dislocated and disconnected from each other, operating at a transactional level rather than in an effective engaged, committed way. Now, because of hybrid working and people retreating from offices again, there hasn’t really been the opportunity to recover and reset ways of working.

At a recent team retreat, I gave people the opportunity to say how they were really, rather than the conventional ‘fine’ – because retreats offer a combination of reflection and discussion both at a personal and at a business level. They valued being able to be honest which paved the way for further openness about issues that needed to be addressed for example how to increase productivity. Retreats are a great opportunity for the team to spot the gaps, see what’s not working and start to sort it out there and then, an opportunity to go below the surface and work out what the real issues are.

What has also emerged is the extent to which company cultures have been damaged. The opportunity to invest in a couple of days away to stand aside and reflect allows teams to identify aspects of the culture which have enabled them to perform at their best, that were there previously and may now have been lost. Many people are realising that cultures will need to be rebuilt. Retreats offer a rare and valuable opportunity for senior management teams to reconnect in order to do this.

What teams find difficult but also very valuable is being able to slow down and reflect. Our retreats offer time and space in an environment which promotes relaxation, being able to connect with others. We heavily discourage any looking at emails or business phone calls and while it’s hard to switch off initially, gradually people are grateful for being able to go off-grid for a few hours. One of our recent retreat participants put it: https://youtu.be/NBYTP9XWnVY

What’s the state of your senior management team? Drifting into a Great Resignation?

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What is Wellness?

by Next Chapter Retreats

January 16, 2022

Wellness is a word that’s on everyone’s lips and everyone’s mind these days, but what is it really? Why do we seem so obsessed with it? Why is it that tech companies seem able to sell us any number of apps and gadgets to measure every aspect of our physiological function? Is it the sense we have when everything is going well, as well as when we’re physically healthy? Can we have a sense of wellness when times are tough?

At its most basic and as defined by the WHO it is “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” The Global Wellness Institute adds three more dimensions, emotional, spiritual, including purpose, and environmental and those make sense too.

Most of us have heard of the psychologist Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs. For anyone who needs a reminder, it’s a triangle with our basic physiological needs at the bottom, then safety needs, love and belonging next, and then self-esteem. The last two are the Californian sounding ‘self-actualisation’ which is to do with our growth needs, wanting to achieve our full potential as human beings, doing the best that we’re capable of doing. Later Maslow added transcendence, what brings the individual “peak experiences” in which they transcend their own personal concerns and see from a higher perspective. These experiences often bring strong positive emotions like joy, peace, and a well-developed sense of awareness

I suspect this is where our interest in wellness comes in. Most of us have our basic needs met, though it’s not a case that they don’t bother us anymore.

Interestingly, much of the advice on wellness seems to focus on those basic needs, healthy food, exercise, sleep and they challenge us too. But there’s something more that keeps us looking, keeps us searching for that something that is going to unlock our best selves.

Bearing in mind that a lot of the time, life is tough one way or another, especially at the moment, how do we cultivate that sense of wellness or wellbeing? How do we concentrate on the upper levels of wellbeing? This requires us to embrace being proactive in pursuing wellness, preventative action, maintenance, taking individual responsibility and ultimately, thriving. For me, when I’ve got the basics in place, peace of mind is a large part, knowing that I can meet the challenges that come my way.

How do you pursue wellness and is it working? What are you missing? If what you need is some preventative action, a reset on your wellness, or starting to focus on your needs for growth, one of our retreats might be exactly what you need.

Burnout To Flourishing – 2-Day Retreat

by tncadmin

November 24, 2021

At the end of the 2 days, you will have a clear 12-month action plan that covers:

Wellbeing and wellness, science and principles,
Brain fitness, sleep,
Energy management, psychological recovery,
Stress management, resilience and adaptability,
Productivity, focus and attention,
Mindfulness and meditation.

Burnout To Flourishing – 2-Day Retreat

by tncadmin

November 24, 2021

At the end of the 2 days, you will have a clear 12-month action plan that covers:

Wellbeing, wellness, science and principles,
Brain fitness, sleep,
Energy management, psychological recovery,
Stress management, resilience and adaptability,
Productivity, focus and attention,
Mindfulness and meditation.

Blog

Why do business leaders find it hard to invest in their own wellness?

by Next Chapter Retreats

September 20, 2021

Recently a number of companies, Nike, LinkedIn and Bumble have announced that they are closing for a week to give their staff time to recover from the burnout caused by the pandemic, lockdowns and the negative effects of working from home. All well and good and the right thing to do, but what about you, the leader and owner of the business? There’s a lot to feel anxious about – hybrid working chaos, supply chains, staff shortages, inflation, OK let’s not depress ourselves too much! As a business owner myself, I know it is very hard to switch off from thinking and possibly worrying about the business and the future.

What would it feel like if you felt really rested and energised? What are the chances of that at the moment? Some of us have had holidays, but I was talking to someone the other day who had just come back from a holiday with the family (including granny and mother-in-law!) and he didn’t look and sound at all rested. You may have had a week in a tent in the indifferent weather we’re pleased to call summer in the UK. Not exactly the break you were hoping for.

Now the autumn’s here, how are you feeling? Ready for the upturn in the economy or anything the pandemic still has to throw at us? If there’s one thing that we’ve learned over the last year or so, it’s the extent to which the constant uncertainty and lack of control eat away at our resilience. Your holidays may have provided a change of scene and activity but may not have given you what you need to really renew and regenerate.

Why do business leaders find it so hard to invest in themselves and their health, mental or otherwise?

• They feel ashamed about asking for help especially as workplaces don’t support slowing down
• They often equate stress or burnout with a physical illness like a cold and think that a weekend away will sort it
• Investing in addressing burnout is a sign of weakness and that it’s best dealt with by working harder.

Left untreated, burnout can cause people to become depressed, anxious, and distracted, which can impact not only their work relationships but their personal interactions, too.

Time to do something about it?

One of the best ways of dealing with it is to take ourselves out of the situation altogether.

It’s hard to admit that we need help perhaps because there seem to be so many other people who are worse off, and that we’re being self-indulgent. How many people depend on your being at your best?

Take time to regain some perspective, take a proper break. An ideal way of doing this is coming on our next retreat which starts on 1^st – 3^rd November. Finding your focus and direction and reconnecting with your purpose and values are core ways to restore mental balance and improve your resilience. Your business, family and friends will thank you.

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Time is of the essence….

by Next Chapter Retreats

September 14, 2021

Is it just me or am I picking up that people are really struggling with managing time at the moment? I know that since the summer break I’ve been flat out. I’m also reading articles in the media about people doing 60 hour weeks, not taking breaks, checking emails late at night. What goes with that is an intense interest in productivity hacks such as getting up at 4am, not doing emails until 5pm, swallowing frogs….But wait – isn’t that just getting on to a productivity treadmill, to make you fitter for the other work treadmill to achieve what? What are you really trying to accomplish? Isn’t getting on that treadmill going to lead to burnout?

The problem with all the health and productivity hacks is that they look like shortcuts and could be silver bullets that have worked for other people. Even something valuable like mindfulness (which I’m not good at) can be a sticking plaster. With all of this, we’re merely snatching time for ourselves.

What does your work require and what conditions enable you to be at your best? I would put money on it needing creativity, especially in these uncertain times, leadership as other people look to you for direction, and at the very least, your good mental health. For all of that, you’ve got to
• give yourself time
• allow yourself to step back
• have time to think, go inside yourself to draw on your intuition
• find confidence that actually you do know the answers or can work out where to find them
• that you can draw on all your valuable experience and knowledge.

This is not something I find easy at all. I like fast-paced working environments, getting things done, ticking things off on my to-do list. However, I also know that to be creative, for example, to design a new retreat, I need to step away from my desk, which is what happened yesterday. As I relaxed, I had inspiration for something I had been thinking about and it started to fall into place. We have become conditioned to think that efficiency is the answer to being effective.

We need to become much more thoughtful about what kind of time we need to give to different parts of our jobs. Of course, much of it requires information gathering, analysis, intelligence and impatience, but to be creative, we have to be comfortable with a different approach to time, one which is characterised by patience, holding ourselves back and tapping into our intuition.

Don’t get back on the treadmill.

Keen to regain your time? Let us help you.

Places for our November retreat are limited so book now and allow yourself the freedom of thought and creativity.

QUIET QUITTING – THE ANSWER TO BURNOUT?

Walking the talk

Your Wellbeing or Personal Indulgence?

What’s your state of wellbeing?

Is your senior management team in danger from “The Great Resignation”?

What is Wellness?

Burnout To Flourishing – 2-Day Retreat

Burnout To Flourishing – 2-Day Retreat

Why do business leaders find it hard to invest in their own wellness?

Time is of the essence….

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