Stress Awareness Month: How Comms Leaders Can Reduce Team Burnout

Back when I was an anxious Account Exec at a PR agency, we used to hear the expression “It’s PR, not ER” – a phrase we clung to as we tried to soothe our thudding hearts when the coverage didn’t land. I get it – we don’t operate under life-threatening conditions, but, whatever the comms crisis at hand, your body doesn’t have the rational understanding that you’re not about to die. All it knows is that something’s wrong, and it’s doing its best to trigger the right response to keep you alive.

Today, the nature of the job, the changes the industry has seen in such a short space of time and the financial pressures have created a heady cocktail that’s driving pressure at some agencies to unsustainable levels. Industry stats reflect this; last year, 91% of UK PR professionals experienced poor mental health and 33% of UK PR professionals were diagnosed with a mental health condition – up from 25% the previous year.

Reading this as a comms leader, you may worry that talented individuals on your team could leave due to the pressure. In fact, 44% of PR professionals have left their jobs due to stress and burnout. So how do you tackle the very real commercial and emotional challenges of stress as a comms leader and avoid burnout in your team?

Why traditional stress-busting tactics only scratch the surface

Well, you might send managers on a mental health course, bring in an expert on calmness, encourage meditation, introduce no calls over lunch or early Friday clocking off. The likelihood is you are already doing your best to implement some proactive measures like these to tackle stress head-on, which is great.

But here’s the reframe: what’s needed to genuinely reduce stress in the industry is an individual and collective journey to learning about the triggers, habits and behaviours that are actually fuelling a high-stress culture in your team. With these insights, team members are better placed to catch themselves in a stressful moment, understand why they find this situation stressful and notice and share their own needs, rather than pinning the issue on external factors they can’t control. 

For instance, a Press Officer who does all the doing in your team will need to find out: “What is it in me that makes me not ok with leaving this one thing unfinished, even though my health is suffering as a result?”

By contrast, your Content Manager, who is determined to leave on time although the work isn’t done, may need to ask themselves: “How important is work to me this month? What are my personal goals in relation to my career path and how is leaving on time supporting these goals?” 

And, most importantly, you, as the Director of your team, are required to look inwards and discover “What’s my part in the resource crunch we’re facing?” “Am I modelling taking on too much? How might this be impacting those around me?” “Why am I stressed about challenging the CFO about budgets and how can I change this?” 

These are deep reflections. They deal with the beliefs, behaviour patterns and identities that we label ourselves with, because that’s what it really takes to understand your own stress and that of your team. By progressing your own journey of self-mastery over your own stress responses you will learn where you are acting from a place of your “Adult” instead of your “Child”. Slowly, this behaviour will mirror itself in your team, particularly if they’re supported with powerful one-to-one reflective coaching from independent professionals at crunch points.

Self-awareness is the real superpower this Stress Awareness Month

Communication and vulnerability come into play here too in a way that many team leaders are not prepared to embrace. Especially when everyone is stretched thin and stuck in a constant state of freeze, fight, flight, or fawn. But it’s amazing how workloads, resources and solutions present themselves when you’re open to learning about yourself. 

I’ve seen this in my coaching time and again, with Comms Directors discovering they’re able to better advocate for their team once they believe in their own value; or readdressing their own personal priorities and communicating their needs to allow others to step up; or transforming a relationship with an important senior stakeholder by defusing their own triggers. 

It might seem overwhelming to explore triggers and change behaviour patterns, but just think of the time you’ll save on dealing with the consequences of losing team members to burnout – and the benefits of an environment where everyone is calmer and able to handle the stress that will inevitably flare up in this line of work. 

If you believe change is possible – and you want it – then as a leader, you absolutely have the power to create this kind of culture, no matter the external pressures or intimidating challenges. You can even enjoy the process, learning about yourself and your team in a way that empowers you across all areas of your life and makes work – even in ‘stressful’ times – more enjoyable for everyone.