How to prevent burnout

In a recent post, I shared what you can do in the midst of a season of burnout. I hinted a little about what causes burnout and how you can move from a season of burnout to a place of rest. However, the main goal is to prevent burnout from happening in the first place.

As a technical leader, it’s your responsibility to prevent burnout for yourself and your team. Here are some things you can start doing right now to help prevent burnout.

Work from a place of rest

Your work is important because of who you are in Christ. You have important work to do and your work is good, but it’s broken by sin. You’ll be tempted to choose work over family and friends or use work as a means to make a name for yourself. You might even love your work instead of using your work to love your neighbors and the world.

You must maintain a proper perspective for your work. How will you work from a place of rest? What does rest look like for you? You need to spend time with Jesus, outside of production, so you don’t find your identity in your work. Remember who you are in Christ and work from a place of rest.

Take regular time off

In order to maintain proper perspective on work, you and your team need regularly scheduled time to get away and rest.

At my church, we have a rule where each person on the production team has to have a least 1 week per month where they’re not serving. Whether they go on vacation, visit another church, play on the worship team or even just attend a weekly service, they have to be away from production at least once a month.

What does your team’s schedule look like? Are there limitations? Do you keep track of how often your team serves? Are there certain people working too much and should take a break? It’s your responsibility as the leader to make sure your team has healthy habits and rhythms of serving.

As a leader, you also must take regular time off for yourself. In order to do this, however, you need to do the hard work of training others, which brings me to my next point.

Train others who can take your place

Our most important job as technical leaders is to help others grow as technical artists and disciples. This is also how you create time for you as a leader to be away and rest.

Find someone who can lead the team in your absence. This might be through an internship or apprenticeship, relying on team leads, or even having volunteers fill the TD role on a weekend. There’s no shortcut here, you have to do the hard work of finding someone to replace you.

As you work on training other leaders, there are some amazing benefits you’ll start to see:

You won’t feel stressed when you’re away, which means you can be present with your friends and family.
You’ll break the mentality that services can’t happen without you.
Your team will flourish. Our leadership can overshadow others, preventing them from doing their best work. Sometimes the best thing you can do for your team is go away.
You’ll learn to trust your team.
You’ll become a better leader.

In order to see these benefits, you have to do the hard work of finding someone to replace you. Who is someone you can start investing in as a leader?

Remind your team how valuable they are

Burnout is not about how many hours someone worked, it’s about whether he or she feels valued and appreciated.

It’s your job to regularly encourage your team and remind them how important their work is. Don’t wait to encourage your team when things go well. Have regular times where you cast vision for your church’s production ministry. Tell them you see and appreciate them and thank them for their work.

It doesn’t have to be complicated. Do you value your team? Of course you do! Think of how you appreciate your team and make a point to tell them regularly.

Preventing burnout doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s simply a matter of knowing where the tough spots are and creating rhythms so you and your team stay healthy and rest.

What steps can you take right now to prevent burnout? Maybe you need to go schedule a week away for yourself. Do you need to take someone on your team out to lunch? Maybe you need to send a text and let them know you’re thankful for them. Choose one and take the next step in preventing burnout.