The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently described burnout as an ‘occupational phenomenon’ and updated its definition to, ‘a syndrome conceptualised as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed’.

“Many people equate high performance with working harder,” Ms Bennett says. “This can create a great deal of workplace stress, which can ultimately lead to burnout. We believe that high performance is not about working harder, but about making the most efficient use of personal energy. It is about taking a neural, mental and physical approach that combines neuroscience, psychology and sports training principles.”

A neural approach is about using brain science to perform in the most efficient way possible. “Every brain functions in its own unique way and once you understand a bit more about how your own works, you can start working with rather than against what’s natural for you.”

She says part of this is understanding personal pace. “Working at your natural pace allows you to be as productive as possible with as little effort as possible. It includes working to your natural attention span and using your personal energy efficiently, which is likely to reduce stress.

“Attention spans vary. Fast-pace people, those who naturally operate quickly, tend to focus for quite short periods of time. People who naturally operate at a slower pace tend to focus for longer periods of time. One is not necessarily better than the other and, interestingly, one is not necessarily more productive than the other. It’s just the natural attention an individual needs to apply to a task in order to produce results.”

Ms Bennett says working at a natural pace also involves understanding when you are most productive, so that you can use your personal energy effectively. “It could be as simple as reserving low energy tasks – for example, sorting emails – when your personal energy is low and tackling more complex tasks when your energy level is higher. This translates to a better use of energy, because you are working at a pace that suits you.”

While she recognises that in a work environment this it is not always possible, all of the time, she says people often have more control over it than they think they do. “If you can work in this way, even for as little as an hour or two a day, it can make a big difference because it will mean you won’t be spending energy unnecessarily.”

The mental approach is about having a mind set for high performance and this, Ms Bennett says, boils down to three things

• Personal accountability
• Deciding what you are going to change, accept and remove from your life
• Making sure that your beliefs are aligned to your goals

“Taking personal accountability may mean using neuroscience to build new neural pathways to short-circuit negative pathways that have become a habit.”

The Queensland Government recently became the first in the world to use neuroscience to help stop people speeding. The campaign was designed by a behavioural neuroscientist and includes exercises which are aimed at changing driver behaviour by helping them to focus their attention on their driving rather than operating on auto-pilot.

“Sustaining high performance is also about being physically fit and healthy. This means not only paying attention to things like eating well and training, but also self-care; treating yourself as a priority, spending time doing things that make you happy and renew your energy and – much underrated but very important – getting enough sleep.

“Avoiding burnout is possible – but it requires a willingness to use our brains and our bodies to work for us, rather than against us.”

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Do you focus on your team as a whole person – both inside and outside of work?

I still remember in my very first job with one of the big accounting firms that work started at 8.45am (or earlier) and finished at 5.15pm at the earliest. Lunch was from 1pm to 2pm. And definitely not 12.59 to 2.01. And that was for everyone – not just the new kids like me. And you would never dream of whipping out for any personal errands during work hours, even if the errand took way less time outside of the lunchtime or evening rush.

Any personal problems or issues that needed to be dealt with – well best deal with them in your own time. Leave your troubles at the door and get on with racking up some chargeable hours. And this was no bad reflection on this firm, all the other accounting firms at the time were pretty much the same. I certainly had a great time working there, I met some great people and am very thankful for my time there. And I’m sure they have all come a long way since then.

In fact, many businesses are now seeing that it’s not so much work and life these days, it’s really just life, and lots of things need to get done and more importantly we are seeing that things that are going on outside of work really do often impact the way we perform at work. And let’s face it, thanks to technology, it seems we all have a lot more going on dealing with issues surrounding kids, friends, family, aging parents, relationships, divorces, mixed marriages, the list goes on. We certainly seem to have so many more options these days, but with these options often comes a lot more decision making, stress, anxiety and increasing demands on our energy. And thanks to social media we often just keep raising the bar on what it means to be a great parent, a productive worker, a successful business owner, a loving partner and again the list goes on.

So all of these issues outside of work are taking some energy. And at Next Evolution Performance we always talk about energy mastery – the ability to increase your energy and learn how to invest it wisely. As a leader it’s important to understand that given the demands of living today – it’s no longer enough knowing how to master your energy at work, we need to help people learn how to master their energy in life as a whole. So like it or not, things going out outside of work will generally impact performance in the absence of great energy mastery techniques. And in all my years of leadership I’ve never met anyone who was going through issues outside of work who could miraculously “turn it on” at work. At least not sustainably.

Help your team master their energy outside of work…

It therefore makes a lot of sense to help people with ways to increase their energy mastery outside of work so that they can bring their best selves and levels of energy to work.

Now as a leader, you may find that you enjoy doing this kind of coaching with your team. Of course if you don’t have a fairly sound knowledge of psychology and neuroscience, you may feel you are a little out of your depth or perhaps you just “don’t want to go there”. And that’s a fair call, especially if that’s not where your energy is best spent. In cases like that it may make sense to bring in a performance coach to help you with this.

Being able to navigate energy around life issues and events is a skill desirable by any employer…

At NEP we have always focused on the whole person – both inside and outside of work – as it’s virtually impossible to increase performance inside of work if you don’t deal with what’s going on outside.

By Vanessa Bennett, CEo and co-founder

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Vanessa Bennett

The intersection of psychology and neuroscience demonstrates there is a lot that people can do to prevent mental health problems, according to Vanessa Bennett, CEO of Next Evolution Performance.

“Around half of all Australians will experience a mental illness in their lifetime,” Ms Bennett says. “However, in the same way that you don’t usually go from being physically fit and well one day, to being debilitated by illness the next, you don’t usually go from enjoying mental health to suffering mental ill-health overnight. It’s therefore reasonable to assume that many more than half of all Australians are either suffering a mental health problem or are somewhere on the spectrum away from enjoying mental health, and that’s too many.”

Ms Bennett says research reveals that each of us has a different level of natural mental fitness depending on a range of factors, including:

• genetic predisposition
• our experiences as a child and as an adolescent
• our innate reaction to physiological stress
• the way we naturally process information and the way we learn to process information

“However, despite any predisposition to mental health problems, there are a variety of tools we can use to help build our own mental fitness as well as the mental fitness of the people around us,” she says. “The biggest super power we all have is what we call attentional control.”

Attentional control is the ability to focus attention on helpful rather than unhelpful thought processes. “This is arguably the most powerful way to use neuroplasticity to increase mental fitness and therefore avoid mental health problems.”

Ms Bennett says we can train our brains to avoid mental ill-health, in the same way we train our bodies to avoid physical ill health and the tip is not to wait for a bad experience before starting that training. “That’s like waiting until marathon day before starting physical training,” she says. “We need to build mental fitness to help us cope with life’s challenges in advance of them happening. Prevention is better than cure.”

The World Health Organisation defines mental health as: a state of well-being in which every individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community.

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Vanessa Bennett

The Banking Royal Commission has brought down a set of recommendations, most of which look likely to be adopted by the Government, regardless of who wins the next federal election.

If adopted, these recommendations may force many financial services companies to introduce significant changes to their business models, within challenging time frames and this is likely to profoundly impact the mindset of financial services professionals.

Compounding this problem are other industry changes, the overall perception of the industry and the fact that all these issues must be juggled alongside the demanding day-to-day tasks of running financial services businesses.

“At a personal level, when first faced with having to deal with all that, people can feel overwhelmed,” said Next Evolution Performance (NEP) CEO, Vanessa Bennett. “It is never easy to cope with significant change, particularly when it is imposed and largely outside our control. It takes a lot of time, effort, energy and money.”

Ms Bennett said neuroscience indicates that when people feel overwhelmed, the amygdala – the part of the brain that detects danger – often overrides the rational thinking pre-frontal cortex, responsible for taking action.

“Unfortunately the amygdala hasn’t evolved to distinguish between a sabre tooth tiger and a possible threat to our business,” she said. “The amygdala asks one question all the time – ‘am I safe?’ The moment it senses danger it takes over, sometimes to such an extent that we give more energy to being stressed and anxious than to working through the challenges and problems. Productivity takes an instant and serious hit at the very time we need it most.”

When this happens, Ms Bennett said the brain needs to be immediately reset and the quickest way to do this is via diaphragmatic breathing – breathing deeply with the diaphragm, rather than taking short sharp breaths with the chest.

“After learning how to deal with short-term responses, we need to think longer term. We need to decide whether we can change anything and if so, how, what we are prepared to accept and what we simply have to remove from our lives.”

If the Banking Royal Commission recommendations are implemented, people may feel as if they are not in control of a major part of their business lives. This can wire the brain to be problem rather than solutions driven.

“If, for example, our brains are wired in such a way that we truly believe that the only successful way to run a financial services business is the way it was run prior to the Banking Royal Commission, then we will also believe that any other way will ultimately be unsuccessful,” Ms Bennett said. “The interesting thing that neuroscience tells us is that we can’t cut existing wiring in the brain, but we can create new wiring by challenging beliefs.”

Ms Bennett said the key is to question what might be possible if a belief were untrue, look for evidence that it is untrue, actively choose to create an alternate belief – in this case, that success is possible – and then act as if it is already true.

“We are certainly not suggesting it is easy, especially given the level of change facing the industry, but a changed mindset can help people better cope and begin working towards solutions, rather than feeling totally overwhelmed by the challenges.”

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