Published
The heatwave last week was a fitting backdrop to the Major Projects Association workshop on Avoiding Burnout – lessons from elite sport. The session was led by Manon Bradley, Development Director of the Association and World champion, World Record holding athlete; and Rob Coulthard, one-time member of the National Squad for Pentathlon and ex Modern Pentathlete, Triathlete who is now Managing Director of the Judgement Index UK.
Manon introduced the topic of burnout by describing how, over the past 18 months she had over-trained, over-stretched and had ignored warning signs leading to a shoulder injury which has wiped out the last 9 months of training. She described her typical year of ebb and flow of training and competition which, due to Covid, had transformed into day after day, week after week barrage of exercise. Made possible by having a home gym – accessible at all times.
She ended her presentation by asking participants to consider the parallels between her year of training and the past year of working from home during lockdown and extended periods of working in major projects.
Home working has put few barriers between people and their work such that they are “always on” in much the same way that having a home gym enabled her to keep training for longer and without breaks.
And the lack of foreign holidays has removed the natural break from work.
Rob then gave his perspective as a sportsman, coach and as someone who has seen burnout in hundreds of athletes and project managers.
He shared a number of cross-over lessons from sport to the workplace:
- The importance of periodization – planning your training or workload in cycles of peak and off-peak is more effective than ongoing maximum effort – which quickly leads to injury or burnout.
- Rotation – in (rich) team sports they will have multiple players for each key role to enable players to not have to play at every tournament – the same concept can be applied to teams in the workplace.
- Having a holistic review of performance – a perception of performance based solely on win or lose does not help to improve or progress – taking a holistic approach where every aspect of performance is evaluated is more effective.
- Active Rest can be used to give athletes or colleagues a break from full training / competition / workload without retiring them completely. An example of active rest for a footballer might be to play golf. For a project professional it might be to focus on a piece of research rather than being on the front line of delivery.
- Effective sports coaches undertaken regular analysis of the “total athlete” (mind, body and spirit). Effective leaders might want to consider the “total team member”.
- In sports such as weightlifting athletes do not start their lifting at their maximum effort. Instead, they take an incremental approach – increasing the volume and intensity of their training. The same approach can be applied in the workplace enabling relatively new project managers to gradually increase their workload stress in a manageable way.
- Having a culture based on transparency, honesty and openness is critical to communication and understanding performers and teams.
We are keen to hear the experience of other athletes within the Major Projects Community – do these lessons resonate with you and how have you incorporated learnings from your sport back into your project.
Forthcoming event
On the 25th August, the Association is hosting a workshop facilitated by Frederick Levy of Turner and Townsend, and Hannah Melville, coach, programme and change manager majoring on burnout: Wellbeing – What Influences Burnout in Major Projects.