Getting back to work after burnout
Most of the people I know have experienced a period of burnout, myself included! Some have even needed years off before they felt able to return to work.
Burnout is more than “just” overwork: it’s a set of unrelenting stressors over an extended period of time. While workload is one of them, a number of factors create burnout; autonomy, recognition, community, fairness, and values are some of them.
While workplaces are getting better at supporting staff who are experiencing burnout — such as offering reduced hours or workload — it is generally not enough. The set of underlying causes must be identified and addressed to avoid relapse back into that full exhaustion state. The good news is that taking steps to adjust the conditions and culture will bring an improved quality of life (and upswing in performance) for every member on the team!
Our blog post has more details on contributing factors to burnout, and some examples of adjustments that could apply. It also has links to sources of additional accommodations that might be helpful over the recovery period, if the stress has impacted cognition, such as memory or executive function.
Work is not meant to make us sick! Recognise what’s going on, and be kind to yourself. You can’t push through burnout.
~ Nicola
What’s been happening?
YOW! Tech Leaders Summit (Melbourne edition)
We'll be there June 19. Will you? Come say hi!
Group coaching
We have just concluded our first cohort of group coaching. Nicola and Elle enjoyed running this program and would like to thank the people who joined this first version. During the program we discussed topics such as team performance, dynamics, the importance of alignment and communication, creating resiliency in the face of uncertainty, and more.
We are gathering feedback on the recent cohort and will announce the next cohort soon. Watch this space!
Leading Engineering Teams workshop
This workshop is most suited to new, current, and prospective engineering managers and team leads. If you are new to managing teams or want a refresher on the basics, want to lead your team to the next level of effectiveness, and learn from like-minded people, this workshop is for you!
The next workshop is happening in August. To learn more and purchase a ticket, visit https://blackmill.co/coaching-training/workshops/leading-engineering-teams
What are we reading?
- Exploring Retrospective Meeting Practices and the Use of Data in Agile Teams — A retrospective for retrospectives! Although teams routinely collect project data, they seldom employ it systematically as part of retrospectives. This study provides insights into retrospective practices by exploring barriers to project data utilisation, including psychological safety concerns and the disconnect between data collection and meaningful integration of data into retrospective meetings
- Why stuff fails? (“The Thermocline of Truth”) — a big project starts, and the status reporting is green (good) across the board. Then the project reporting continues to show green until at some point it doesn’t — indeed it often goes bright screaming red instantaneously — and then it’s clear it had been going wrong all along.
- Psychological safety — What is psychological safety for teams? How do you know if your team has psychological safety? How can you increase your team’s psychological safety, anyway? And lastly, ten practical ways to foster psychological safety and trust
- FlashTags: A Simple Hack For Conveying Context Without Confusion — Dharmesh Shah with a simple convention to quickly communicate important context (either in a conversation or in an email thread).
- Why Sports Analogies Fail Software Teams — Vanessa Sant Anna flips the metaphor to explain why and how sports analogies aren't a good fit for software development.
A cuppa with Michele Playfair
1. What do you do? And what do you like about your work?
I’m currently an Engineering Manager at Ferocia and I love my job! It’s a great place to work: the leadership is very good, which percolates down. I’m working in a high trust environment, with no micromanagement, with good people, doing interesting things.
My role is mostly about removing blockers, greasing the wheels, connecting people, and basically getting out of the way so the team can get their work done. Due to our specific part in the business, my team has deadlines, so managing the team discomfort and stress is part of what I do. (Including telling someone that they should absolutely take their parental leave when they needed it and not wait just because we had a date to meet!)
Sometimes this looks like translating and diplomacy between two sides of the business: one side is still operating with a traditional big bank culture, and the other side is using fast moving digital practices. There’s a lot of building alignment and navigating different ways of working, and juggling things like test environments that straddle both sides.
I like that we are working on something that’s new. And I just know that the new software is going to be fantastic: it’ll be great for new customers, but it will be mind-blowing for people who are migrating off the old version onto this one. I actually recognise the old software, having worked with it 20 years ago and it is definitely showing its age! The stakeholders are happy and the end customers will be delighted. It’s going to be great!
2. What aspect of your work do you find most challenging?
Working in the space between two different parts of the business that work at different speeds in different ways can take a bit of patience. Helping both sides go from wondering why their counterparts would do something they think is deeply weird, to understanding why certain constraints exist, can take a bit of time! Slowly breaking down the “us” vs “them” mentality… on both sides.
Deadlines can be challenging, and I admit that I miss Jira. (I know, I know! It’s not great, but everything else is worse)
But these are such first world problems! I feel pretty lucky.
3. What are you passionate about?
Ok, so, first off, I don’t have favourites of things. If you ask me what dessert I like, the specifics change over time, like the day of the week or the temperature. One day it might be sticky date pudding, and another day it’ll be caramel slice, or icecream.
However, I do love food! Also, I recently moved to the beach, and I’m really enjoying that: swimming, stand up paddle-boarding, admiring the sunset over the water.
I am passionately against theme park rides. Not. My. Thing.
4. What are recent accomplishments you are happy with?
I am very, VERY happy to be hired into this job! It just sits so perfectly in all my areas of experience from big banking to agile digital, as well as the delivery and people management angles. And the team here are so great. Love it.
I also am pretty stoked that I’ve raised two humans to adulthood and neither of them have scurvy, and they are both still talking to us.
5. What is one mistake that you will never make again?
Never work for a sociopath! Do not recommend. I’d like to not have to do that again, but that’s tricky because their true nature isn’t immediately obvious. I still choose to trust people and give them the benefit of the doubt and risk getting back into that situation, though. The alternative of being more suspicious and always on guard seems much worse overall.
I learned the hard way that not everything out there in the world is for me. When you start your career, you don’t have a lot of exposure to other perspectives and you assume that everyone else is basically the same as you.
For instance, I went to the Philippine office once, after having worked online with the team there for a number of years. I had this lightbulb moment where I realised I would have been seen as terribly rude, because I just asked questions without any small talk over Slack (see https://nohello.net/en/), while I had been going slowly mad because they would start every interaction just with “Hello”. So now I am better about not assuming and just ask if something seems a bit odd.
6. How do you manage stress?
Massages are good! All the usual things, really: hug a tree, get fresh air and exercise, hang out with good friends. Coffee is also my friend.
Mostly I try to make things be less stressful to start with! I’m a bit of a planner, and my inner QA is good at looking at all the things that could go wrong and working out how to mitigate against it.
I think I’ve got a good perspective on life now. I know what’s actually important and don’t sweat the small stuff. I collect good people and work as much as possible in people-first environments. It makes it easier to look after each other.
7. What is the best advice you can give?
- Perfect is the enemy of done.
- Eat the elephant one bite at a time. (Chocolate elephants only)
- Deal with things when they’re small and manageable
- Find supportive people and don’t let them go!
8. What one thing would you change about our society?
Be more socialist. Bring in universal basic income. Smash capitalism and the patriarchy. Ditch the orange cheetoh.
Basically: we need more empathy and community tendencies, rather than capitalism pitting individuals against each other in a race for more money. 🫶
9. What are your goals or aspirations for this year?
I’ve got some work projects I’m looking foward to delivering!
I would like to reduce my tsondoku pile so it stops blotting out the sun. (This is an aspirational goal only.)
What are we cooking?
Dark chocolate caramel slice by Michele
This is so good that I permanently have the recipe stuck on my fridge.
Ingredients (contains gluten)
- 2 x 400g tins sweetened condensed milk
- 150g white flour
- 100g milk chocolate
- 100g dark chocolate
- 200g butter
- 80g brown sugar
- ½ cup shredded coconut
- 2 tbsp golden syrup
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 150°C fan forced. Lightly grease a 20cm x 20cm pan and line with baking paper.
- In a medium bowl, melt 100g butter, then combine 120g flour, 1/3 cup (80g) brown sugar and ½ cup (60g) shredded coconut. Add ginger or other spices if desired. Knead well until fully combined. Press mixture firmly into prepared pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes until lightly browned.
- Place 100g butter, sweetened condensed milk and two tablespoons of golden syrup in a medium saucepan. Stir briskly over lowest heat until fully mixed. Pour over base. Reduce oven temp to around 100°C Bake for 40 minutes until caramel coloured and slightly blistered and rubbery. Allow to cool (30 mins).
- Combine the chocolates with a couple of tablespoons of coconut oil and/or butter at very low heat. Stir until smooth, pour evenly over slice. Refrigerate. Cut into slices with a hot knife.
- Enjoy with people you love (or just by yourself)
And we’re out
Thank you for showing an interest in our newsletter and we hope that you enjoyed the read. Feel free to contact us if you have any feedback, a burning question, or just a recipe that you would like to share. Until next time, keep learning!
Everyone at Blackmill