¿Cómo puedes proporcionar retroalimentación efectiva a un aprendiz que lucha contra el agotamiento?

Be proactive. Not everyone is able to ask for help when needed. Sometimes, it takes someone offering support for one to open up about how they are feeling and what they may need. Listening can only be done when one is open to speaking. As a mentor, make sure to frequently provide your mentees with opportunities to speak up. Check in with them. Once they are comfortable speaking up, listen assertively and actively. Show that you are listening by restating what you heard.

As a mentor, there are some critical steps to support struggling mentees. Acknowledge their efforts, express understanding of burnout, and offer constructive feedback. Suggest strategies like setting boundaries, prioritizing tasks, and seeking peer support. I encourage self-care and emphasize the importance of balance in maintaining personal well-being.

It involves creating a supportive space where they can openly discuss their challenges without judgment. It's crucial to actively listen, acknowledge their feelings, and validate their experiences, emphasising that burnout doesn't define their capabilities. Help them identify stress triggers and encourage self-care practices.

My mentor saw me burning out, let me know that he saw it, and stressed the value that I brought to him and his organization. That support iommediately helped me take all the rest of what he said seriously. When the roles are reversed you need to do the exact same.

Mentor should be mindful about giving feedback to the mentee. Feedbacks are rather more effective when given at the right time, in right circumstances and under right mental status. It also matters how it's received and perceived. Feedbacks should better be constructive and should contribute to upgrade/ update the mentee.

You can't necessarily expect that your mentees will speak to you right away. It's like the client of a personal trainer with a diet problem. Instead you should question them about what they're involved in and how that process is going. Then you're on ground where you can listen and empathize where needed.

When we identify signs of burnout it’s important that we encourage the mentee to open up and speak up. By asking the right questions it would give them more chances to speak out. This way we could emphasize and also share our personal experience and challenges we once went via. Always giving them that sense of feeling to just pick up the phone and reach out for assistance is a sense of comfort we need to instill in a mentoring journey. As the saying goes “Be the senior you once wanted when you were a junior”

I have found that one of the best things we can do for someone is to hear them, see them, and validate them. A mentor needs to be available to their mentee and be an active listener when needed.

Active listening is essential in order to build a relationship of trust between the mentor and the mentee. The mentee needs to feel heard and validated, even if their mentor isn't able to solve their problems for them. Asking open questions to show you're listening can really help show the mentee that you care and encourage them to explore what has led them to burnout with you in a safe space.

The ultimate goal of helping a colleague or mentee who may be struggling with burnout is to listen, empathize and allow them to share their experiences and where the sources of burnout may be coming from. Often, just the act of verbalizing and identifying the source of burnout can allow for greater interpersonal reflection and problem solving that creates changes for the good. As a mentor, helping a mentee prioritize the greatest purpose for their work and the most important tasks that need to be done, while maintaining a good work/life balance, will go a long way towards building strong resiliency skills and healthy work/life boundaries, and help a mentee not feel alone in their situation.

Goal-less mentor and mentee situations are about as useful as leadership jobs without goals, teaching jobs with goals, and student educations without goals. Begin with the end in mind. We all walk these roads together by knowing the destination that we want to pass.

Goals should be clear and useful. They do not need to be easy but they should be something that a mentee can get excited about. For example "If I develop stress management techniques, then I will be able to deal with the uncomfortable parts of my job in a successful manner". Goals take time to develop. They are not just words on paper.

Your role in goal setting is to help determine a goal(s) that is realistic and that will drive towards the long-term goal of being an excellent (long-term) educator. With our continued teacher-shortage, we need to make sure that we are supporting our novice teachers to build sustainable habits so that they will continue in the profession for years to come. *Also knowing that systematic changes need to happen alongside sustainable teacher goals.

The key is providing consistent support. If someone is struggling, it's important to make it clear that you are available and prepared to do the work with the individual. This may include modeling and a real hands-on approach.

To collaborate and set goals is the best way, in my experience, for a leader to place yourself. Burn outs are signs of any type of exhaustion and thus leaders need to take the lead reconsider actions and work together.

Being a supportive mentor is an adaptive skill because it is more than regular check-ins. You need to know your mentees, build trust and then know how to flex your time and resources to best support all of your people. I have found that you can build an adaptive skill like this through a technical solution. If you are not great at checking in on your people, then schedule specific time with each person for several weeks to build the habit and the you will be able to adjust based on needs.

In addressing mentee burnout, consistent monitoring and follow-up are crucial for recovery and progress. Regular check-ins, creates a rhythm that the mentee can rely on. Review the goals set previously, assess progress, and discuss any obstacles faced. It's important to celebrate small victories to boost morale and provide encouragement. Listening to their feedback on what’s working and what’s not helps tailor support to their needs. Be adaptable; if a strategy isn’t helping, be ready to change it. Remember, the follow-up process is not just about tracking progress but also about reaffirming your commitment to their well-being and growth.

The only way you can work to support someone is if you check in regularly. In this day of automated digital products there's an idea that you don't have to check in but the secret is that checking in is how you find the best success in most avenues of education, from teaching to leading to alumni follow up.

Following up and checking in shows the mentee that you care and that you are invested in them. With regular check ins it is easier to keep forward momentum towards goals you are trying to reach.

After the first leading action of recognition of a burn out, the leader must work together and present solutions to relief the problem. Once that is done monitor and follow up your results. Planning is a good way to set a target ahead and focus on.

People, for valid reasons, may not want to own up to seeking professional help. Make sure you know information that allows people to seek it independently. It isn't negative to your organization if they don't go through you. Trust is difficult in the attention based world that thrives on scandal.

Know when we as mentors are out of our depth.. unless we are trained psychologists or counsellors, sometimes using the strong trust and relationship we have with others can set us up to share other resources to assist mentees. Sharing our own experiences in doing this, if appropriate and relevant, can help too. Don't overshare, but connect that we, too, have had to reach out to professionals. Share how it helped, but don't make it about you, keep it focused on your mentee.

Encouraging is often the best medicine for burn outs. Push a little back on pressures, give a better time window, understand the process and encourage with positive actions and words.

Particularly important to refer on to professional help before things escalate. It is important the person finds something that works for them - this may be counselling but could also include CBT, coaching etc.

Being true and open about mental health. Workers aim to please the system why forgetting they are the system. Remember your goal is to provide a service and you can’t provide a service when you burnt out. Focus on your health and life outside work, focus on your family, your work and your personal goals.

Sometimes people are not in the right role; if administrative responsibilities are causing burnout, go back to your comfort zone and just teach. If teaching has left you desiring to "fix" what is broken, then find administrative roles in which you can contribute to fixing what is broken. In some cases, people may also be too far gone with the burnout. In this case, they need to either retire or find a different profession.

This is a stage that is often missed in the busy world. Reflecting on how the support and encouragement went is really important

It is important to look at the day to day things that have been co tributing to burnout, and also to look large scale to see if any systems or processes night be leading to burnout.

One thing I'd suggest here is that reflection would be ongoing, not just towards the end. As mentees get clarity on what they really want, where they are currently at in comparison to this, and what steps they can take to move closer to their goal/aim/best hope, every conversation with their mentor should encompass reflection - not necessarily at the end. Starting a conversation with what's changed since the last conversation or what's worked well, or what they've noticed can really assist, too.

Support their sense of emotional safety within the organisation first and foremost. Feeling emotionally safe within the workplace is in my experience the glue that secures all other workplace pressures into manageable components.

Be aware that they may present symptoms of 'burnout' but not actually know that it is a real thing! I was overworked so much as a newly qualified teacher and the word burnout was not in my vocabulary. direct them to a quick burnout quiz to see where they are at. See Steve Walters (Walters Index) here on LinkedIn. Ask them what tasks they need help with, do they require deadline extensions or better training? Try to take things 'off their to-do list' whilst they learn to prioritise and become more productive. Often , tools like #chatgpt can be used to make many aspects of the job quicker and easier. I have a Chatgpt guide giving step by step instructions for teachers on how they cab use AI to speed up lesson planning- as one example.

Often people do not recognize they are experiencing burnout. Exhibiting signs of anger and frustration are underlining symptoms of fatigue and burnout. Help folks you mentor identify and recognize these behaviors in themselves. Help them get to the "root" of what is causing it. Some may just need to utilize holidays or intermission periods as rejuvenation opportunities. Some may need to realize that they have taken on more projects or assignments than they can handle simultaneously and need to step back from some of them or at least take a subordinate role rather than a leadership role. As educators we often wear many hats. Not all of us are able to balance administrative roles with teaching roles. Some of us are better as one or the other.

I’d co-regulate and share my calm, helping them feel safe enough to be curious enough to explore why and why now.. I’d help them understand how their nervous system is working and how it has got stuck and what they can do to help themselves, how they can get support from others and how they can optimise their environment to support recovery and wellbeing.

Take a step back and see what the underlying causes are - not just for that pain but at organisational level. Can things be put in place to support others (prevention) and can changes be made so that this is less likely to happen.