The Founder’s Guide to Burnout Prevention in Startups
- Jörn Menninger
- vor 12 Minuten
- 26 Min. Lesezeit
Based on an exclusive Startuprad.io interview with psychotherapist and leadership coach Imre Marton Remenyi
🚀 Management Summary: Burnout Prevention in Startups
Burnout in startups is not a fringe issue — it's a silent and systemic risk to innovation, performance, and growth. This guide, based on an exclusive interview with psychotherapist Imre Marton Remenyi on Startuprad.io, explores how founders and leaders can detect early warning signs of burnout and implement sustainable strategies to protect their teams.
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Key Insights:
Burnout hits top performers hardest. The most committed employees often push themselves until they crash — quietly and completely.
Startups are uniquely vulnerable. Small teams, blurred work-life boundaries, and high emotional investment amplify risk.
Leadership style matters. Empathic, attentive leaders reduce burnout. Detached, metrics-only leadership increases it.
AI can help, but not replace human care. Ethical use of workplace analytics can flag overwork trends early — if done transparently and employee-first.
Culture is prevention. Encouraging reflection, feedback, rest, and autonomy isn’t soft — it’s smart economics.
What Founders Should Do:
Cap direct reports at 7–10 people.
Schedule quarterly breaks for all team members.
Create feedback-driven, learning-based cultures.
Use anonymized tools to detect burnout trends.
Address overload proactively with workload redistribution.
Invest in leadership coaching — it pays back in retention and innovation.
Strategic Value:
Preventing burnout improves productivity, reduces sick leave, and safeguards startup momentum. It also sends a clear signal to investors and potential hires: this is a place where people thrive — not just survive.
Understanding Burnout in the Startup Context
Burnout in startups is a silent killer of innovation. It doesn’t just happen to the weak—it strikes the most passionate, dedicated team members. According to Imre Marton Remenyi, a psychotherapist and founder of Leovine, burnout begins when driven individuals lose sight of everything outside of work—hobbies, rest, and even personal life. The result? Emotional voidness.
Why Startups Are at High Risk
Small teams carry heavy workloads
Leaders often lack HR training
Overtime is normalized
Employees may avoid speaking up
The Cost of Burnout: Impact on Productivity and Innovation
Burnout is expensive. From increased sick leave (up to 18 months) to complete loss of top performers, the financial impact is massive. One burned-out team member affects the entire workload distribution—10 becomes 9, then 8, and soon the whole team is at risk.
“Burnout often hits your best performers—the ones who carry your success.” — Imre Marton Remenyi
Recognizing the Early Warning Signs
Behavioral Changes
Watch for obsessive work patterns, withdrawal from social interaction, irritability, and growing cynicism.
Absenteeism and Sick Leave
Frequent absences without physical illness may indicate psychological strain.
Decline in Feedback Culture
Startups with poor feedback loops often miss early burnout signals. Consider anonymous feedback tools or third-party surveys.
Leadership Strategies for Burnout Prevention
Adopt Empathic Leadership StylesNumbers don’t lead people—people do. Move beyond management-by-metrics. Build trust through regular one-on-ones and focus on emotional rewards and human interaction.
Talk to Your Team Regularly
Keep direct reports under 7–10 individuals
Hold 1-on-1 meetings annually (minimum)
Discuss: What’s working? What can improve? Where do you want to grow?
Encourage Personal Reflection and Limits
Leaders must reflect too. “A manager ensures things are done right. A leader ensures the right things are done.”
Implementing Healthy Work-Rest Cycles
Quarterly Time Off
Founders should mandate a minimum of one week off per quarter for employees. If someone hasn’t taken vacation in a year, that’s a red flag.
Integrate Microbreaks and Flexibility
Don’t wait for burnout to encourage breaks. Offer mid-day sports, meditations, or “soul time,” inspired by Goethe’s famous quote: “Let your soul dangle.”
Leveraging AI for Burnout Detection
Data-Driven Monitoring (With Ethics)AI can assist—never replace—human leadership. Use it to:
Alert employees to overwork
Track time-off trends anonymously
Highlight feedback patterns
Transparency Is Key
AI must empower, not control. Employees need to feel it supports their health—not invades their privacy.
Building a Burnout-Resistant Culture
From Mistake Culture to Learning Culture
Shift from blame to development. Treat mistakes as learning opportunities.
Encourage Feedback and Autonomy
Let your team co-create workflows. Trust breeds resilience.
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Automated Transcript
Narrator Dorsey Jackson [00:00:05]:
Welcome to StartupRad.io, your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German startup scene with news, interviews, and live events.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:00:20]:
Hello, and welcome, everybody. This is Joe from StartupRadio.io, your startup podcast, YouTube blog, and Internet radio station from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Today, I would like to welcome Imre from Vienna here with me. Before we begin, could you briefly introduce yourself and your background in psychology, burnout prevention, and leadership coaching?
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:00:42]:
It will be my pleasure, Joe, and happy to see you again. I have so many things I could tell, so I'll make it rather short and quick and simple. I am a psychotherapist and teacher of psychotherapists. And, before that, I was an opera singer. And I decided to become a psychotherapist, because I was standing on stage one night as Otello, and I had just arrived from a very, very successful campaign beating the Osmanic Armada. Yet I knew in two hours, I will have killed my loving wife and will be about to kill myself. And there's nothing I could change about it because Verdi and Boito had decided that way. And I wanted to be able to make a difference and to have some influence, and therefore, I changed from portraying, human catastrophes to preventing them by psychotherapy or by coaching or by preventing burnout and other terrible things that happen to people.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:02:06]:
I kill I will kill my lovely wife and then, everything Kill myself. Kill yourself. Exactly. By the way, I'm a big fan of Puccini. Did did you ever, play Puccini?
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:02:20]:
Well, I sang parts of Tosca, not the whole opera, unfortunately. And I also was, cast for, Il Tabanro.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:02:30]:
Mhmm. Very good. Very good.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:02:33]:
Yes.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:02:33]:
Love Tosca even though it's a little bit dramatic. Talk talking about dramatic here, that that is actually a pretty good shift here. We are here today because I invited you as a guest. We get something like almost 20 pictures some days, and there, what caught my eye was avoiding and detecting burnout in your team. And I thought that would be something I could invite you over, talk about that would be of great use to our audience. That's why we are talking today about understanding burnout in teams, not not only in you directly, but also if you're a founder in your leadership team. Can you give us a few early indicators of burnouts? What are warning signs? And how can leaders differentiate between, like, temporary, yeah, it's been busy time, or chronic burnout risks?
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:03:30]:
Well, burnout, first of all, happens to those who seem to be most unlikely to suffer burnout because they are the strongest people we have in our teams. But they are also usually the people who do most of the work and put in the biggest effort. And so they don't notice the limit when they come from enjoying their work and doing good work to being driven by their work even to the point where work becomes the only topic in their life. No private life anymore. No hobbies anymore. Only work seven days a week. And that's a first starting point when work becomes toxic in the sense that this person is already starting on the road to burning out. Now we do have a little, controversy or ambiguity in this field of burnout because the process of burning out, burnout, and the result, the last stop, have both the same name.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:04:56]:
And since we can arrive at this final state, also on four different ways, I prefer to call it voidness, emptiness. You are void of every other interesting thing in your life than work. So you can also arrive there by bore out. You can also arrive there by dripping out and by draining out and by being burned off. But we are talking today only about this part where you arrive in voidness by burning out.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:05:39]:
Mhmm. When we've been talking about this upfront, I was wondering to my audience if they have ever noticed any increasing sick days error in really routine task or defensiveness in their teams. Let us know in the comments what was your first sign that something was wrong in your team. You you you already said there there are different ways of burnout that eventually arrive at the point where you cannot work anymore. And where, of course, also you in you lose the joy in what you're doing, which is pretty bad. Can you turn tell us a little bit what role leadership has in preventing a burnout?
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:06:24]:
Well, first of all, leadership ship has to be very attentive to the possibility of burnout arriving in their, group. They as a leader, you must notice that we have been working on our limits now for a longer time. It's okay to, go over your limits for a short period, let's say one or two weeks. But when a group is working way, way past its limits for several months, for example, you don't have enough people on your workforce, you don't have enough qualification for, the jobs that need to be done, you don't have enough, people who can care for the other people, then you will start to see that there are people going into sick leave, not because they are actually sick physically, but they just cannot bear it anymore. And they are usually the best, not the worst. Then you will notice a rise in the overtime, whether it is paid or not paid. But you will see that you drive out of your garage at your, work plant, and there are some windows which are still lit because people are still working there somehow to fill their, their deadlines, somehow to do their actual jobs, and still because they think that their job is very, very important. And then they come to the next step where they think, if I don't put in the extra effort, then the whole company is going down the drains.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:08:18]:
And this is overestimating one's necessity, one's being needed by the company. And once you're past that, you are really, into the funnel which sucks you into this burning out process where you finally land at, being completely void of any possibilities, of any power, any strength, any interests, and just simply giving up. And this may be deadly. And now imagine you have, let's say, you have in a group a workforce of 10. Now one of them, falls out because of burnout, which means that usually the work of 10 has to be done by nine, which, of course, puts an extra strain on all of the nine. Then the nine again, one of them, gets a burnout. So all of a sudden, the same workload is, distributed to eight people. And I don't know how you can imagine to go down to finally having one person doing the job of 10.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:09:43]:
It's impossible. So you have to take measures very, very early and be very attentive. The easiest, way, of course, to find out whether, people on your workforce are in danger is to sit down with them when they come back from vacation, if they have taken any, and, ask them, well, how was your vacation? Tell me about your vacation. Oh, I was always thinking about the work and all the things we have to do, and I have a new idea how we could do this or that. That person is in danger of burning out. If one of your employees hasn't taken a vacation for a year, that's a very, very bad sign. This person has to be sent to take a vacation and has to be taken care of.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:10:42]:
You've been you've been talking about from a personal and individual perspective. I would now like to to take a perspective, for example, from a, c level executive down to your managing level. Are there certain leadership styles that influence the burnout rate in their teams? Of course, they'll have some type of sick percentage reporting, some time some type of color indicator. But as you've already shown, when you go from a team of nine, you go, from a team of 10, you go down to nine, you go down to seven, that should really, really raise a lot of red flags. Could you talk about the leadership style here?
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:11:28]:
Oh, well, definitely. You see, any leadership style that does not listen very carefully to the sound of, their employees is prone to produce, burnout and voidness at the end. Also, leaders who think that, oh, I have so much work, and I don't see why my employees shouldn't have as much work as well, are also dangerous, leaders in the end. And third, I think, that any leadership style that goes by numbers. You know, just looking at the numbers, is way, way too far away from the employees. I think, leading people is a person's job. You have to have the personality of the leader, and this is not something you learn in any management school, but this is an attitude you have to learn through personality development, maybe even, personal training. But that is not what you learn when you, follow courses of accounting and of all these, numbers based leadership styles.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:13:05]:
I'm also quite aware that right now, there is a so called leadership five point o, which is basing itself on artificial intelligence. Sorry. A person does not want to talk with another, with artificial intelligence. You don't want to go and date with some artificial intelligence. You want to have don't want to have your boss as artificial intelligence. You need a person because you work, and that is something you have to keep in mind. You work with and for people. And latest research by Deloitte has shown that, people about 75% of our workforce, come to us, because of the company's name, reputation, or because it's a very interesting job, or whatever benefits there are.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:14:14]:
But 65 to 70% of these people are leaving because of their direct superior, because they have not gotten enough attention. They have not gotten enough, mental, emotional rewards. And then there are again 30% who say the workplace atmosphere was so horrible. No no fun, no puns, no nothing. Just work, work, work, work. And they left for that. But when you ask them whose responsibility it is to have a good atmosphere at the workplace. They say it's the boss' responsibility.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:15:05]:
So add the 60 and then the 30, you arrive at 90% of those who leave us that are leaving us because of their direct superiors.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:15:17]:
I was wondering when you've been saying about, the the managing by numbers, there are a lot of entrepreneurs, leaders who have organizations big enough that they necessarily cannot talk to all the employees, also thinking about international branches and so on and so forth. How would you recommend they try to avoid the burnouts in their teams without only looking at the numbers? Is it like regular visits, regular exchanges with leadership team, there on-site?
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:15:59]:
Well, that's a very good idea to start with, but, of course, that's usually not enough. I think that, basically, our employees of today want to be respected as human beings, and they want to have a little say about what's happening in the company. So, we at, leovine.com have developed a special, tool for companies to get very good feedback from their employees, but not in the usual form, which is you, as the employee, fill out something, and your boss gets it. In our concept, in our project, employees are invited to fill out, just 48 questions and grade them from one to nine and send them directly to our company. And we guarantee %
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:17:10]:
Confidentiality. Confidentiality. Much.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:17:13]:
Yes. So and then from that, we calculate this is numbers again. Yes. But it's an average. We calculate, how much the whole workforce is in danger, and we also provide the employer with, a possibility to see which fields of improvement would yield the best results. In addition to that, since, all the questionnaires are coded, employees get the first feedback which says, oh, congratulations. You have a very healthy workplace to, well, some improvement might be necessary to the point of there is urgent need of action, where they can, provided the company agrees to that, come to our coaches for advice. They just deliver a voucher that they have got from their company, but the voucher does not say to whom it belongs.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:18:30]:
So and that voucher, again, is our means for, laying out the fees for the company. Mhmm. So it is a very, very, safe way of employees, and employers getting good feedback. Good feedback means it's useful feedback. You can do something with it. And, therefore, we have been very successful with this. But since we are, very much based on confidentiality, we also do not use our, customers for our own advertising, which is, something that might make it difficult in this, today's field of activity where everybody is boasting with 500 acknowledgments and, feedbacks. We don't do that.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:19:34]:
We, invite the company first. Usually, it will be the HR, responsible or it's the CEO himself, herself, to have a first personal meeting. Then we are very, willing to come to the company and give a speech, a presentation on burnout and its dangers and its effects, and present our model, of the project. And then even after that, there might be a vote among the employees or, on the other hand, on the management level, yes. Let's do it or, yes. We would like to have this. It's all about trust and cooperation. You cannot force anybody to be, truthful because I say, please be truthful.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:20:36]:
No, please. Just be truthful. No. Sorry. That doesn't work. That's what is, called management style x by, by color as opposed to y, which is, more lenient leadership.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:20:56]:
You are already quite ahead of me what what I want to ask you. Let let me let me take one step back before we get into practical strategies for burnout prevention. We already know, you recommend, involving a third party, involving questionnaires. But before we get into that, can a company do something in terms of workplace culture avoiding burnout risk? How can they manifest, contribute to incurring in the culture, pieces that would avoid burnout that would minimize, not not completely avoid, but minimize the burnout risk? What would that be?
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:21:37]:
There are certain measures, but, you know, it's, it it makes a difference whether you just try something because you have heard that it worked somewhere as opposed to, I come back to what I just said, having a precise and clear cut feedback that says, most likely, for example, improving the feedback culture or dealing better with so called mistakes. So I don't call it a mistake culture. I call it a development culture or a learning culture. And, then, of course, some people think that they are in the wrong place. Now, if 30% of your employees think I'm in the wrong place, then definitely reevaluating who is doing what is a very, recommendable, approach. Well, if everybody thinks they're on the right place and you evaluate again, that doesn't make any impact whatsoever. You know? It reminds me of an experiment that was done, about a hundred years ago. A big factory hall where women were assembling light bulbs.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:23:10]:
And in came a group of researchers and with their pads and everything, and they talked to the ladies, and then they gave the recommendation. Let us increase the power of the lighting by 20%. They did it, and the output rose by 20%. Now they said, well, why don't we raise it for another 10%? It was even brighter and lighter by 10%, and the output was 10% higher. And then they said, well, this cannot be true that, the output is a direct relevant co coefficient of lighting. So let us reduce the light by 10% again. And they did it, and the output rose by 10%. And, so they really got into researching this, and finally, they found out the output was not a result of the lighting.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:24:26]:
It was a result of being, asked about their, situation, having somebody caring for them. And, so, in that case, they learned you have to care for your employees. You have to involve them in what's happening. You have to raise their self esteem. But many other possibilities are there too. So I am still an advocate of either asking, the employees directly, which might yield, unwanted results, like pay me more, let me work less, as opposed to the truly relevant factors, which might be like, having more freedom of action or having the information I need at the time I need it and in the full amount I need it, those kinds of things. So then improving the information flow might prevent burnout.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:25:44]:
Mhmm. I see. So if you ingrain this caring about your employees in the company culture, that will be, already a pretty good indicator that you try at least to minimize the risk even though we all know, unfortunately, this is not necessary always, 100 secure. Let us get to a little ad break. And when we're back, we talk a little bit about, addressing work overload phases and proactive leadership involvement and psychological safety. Hey, guys. Thank you for sticking around. We are back with Imre, talking about potential burn early detection of potential burnouts in your teams and the roles of leadership.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:26:41]:
We have just talked about how we can, find and address these, burnouts and what data driven approach with feedback culture you are recommended. And we also talked about how to include this potentially in your company culture. Now I would like to talk a little bit about addressing the overload and regeneration phases. How should companies define healthy work rest cycle for employees? For example, I had once, I was once talking to an entrepreneur, and he insisted that his people take at least one week off per quarter.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:27:23]:
Oh, I agree with that, gentlemen, 100%. And I think I said it before that if a person has not taken leave at all for a whole year, that is definitely a warning sign that, burnout might be already way on its way. I think there is a big misunderstanding in general. We have this expression work life balance, and we think that on the one hand there is work, on the other hand, there is life, and they should be in balance. In my perception, this is a big mistake. It's called work life balance. That means in your work life, while you are at work, there must be a balance between, sort of stop and go, taking a rest, and then getting to work again. You need these, these moments of, resting, of, getting your resilience, going at your workplace, not wait until you are at home.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:28:43]:
And that is something that good workplaces, provide. Be it, I I know of organization here in Vienna where they, offered half an hour of sports after lunch. So, just gymnastics possible due to weather. But, of of course, it was not just to to the people. Okay. You can go out into the park now, but we have an animator who is with you in the park and who will play all kinds of, relaxing at the same time, mind opening games with you.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:29:37]:
Mhmm. Actually, that that that really plays into what I've been learning about myself. When I started celebrate dot a o and I still do this, I work quite a lot. So, working until midnight is not uncommon, once or twice a week, but I realized I get much better balance if I do spend, in the meantime, more time with my family. Plus, what I tend to do like the old people do, I get out for a walk at least thirty minutes a day, and that helped me really very much. We try to to also communicate some German culture here. What we say for unwinding here in Germany is let your soul dangle. Let it, let it give it some time.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:30:21]:
Relax it. That was, what what I had in mind when you were talking about that.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:30:29]:
Well, actually, this letting your soul hand dangle is a quote from Johan Wolfgang Goethe where he already said, just line the medal and let your soul dangle, and, you will, find the most fantastic and amusing or even clarifying ideas. And, basically, you have to get out of thinking on always of your work in order to have better ideas for your work. So we know that you can get, the output you want in the quantity and in the time, timeliness you want by being strict. But if you let your people work as they think it's right for them, you will, in addition, get the quality, get the, innovation, and also, get the persistence. So it will not be broken, in two days, but it will stay working for maybe decades. All that is, part of, why leadership should take care of these threats of burnout also from an economic point of view. It's not just because we are so nice. It's not just because we like humans.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:32:13]:
Excuse me. We trap your ourselves into this type of thinking. It is very, very economic because, it's not the weakest in performance who go to burnout, but the best, those who really carry your whole success. And, therefore, I think it's, like, taking summer tires in a winter snowstorm, not to look after your, employees' well-being in that sense, not to make sure that they can and want to stick around. Mhmm.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:33:02]:
I was I was wondering when you talk about not only from the goodness of your heart would but would actually should drive your curious, your curiousness for human beings and should be already something you want to do. But, also, there is, of course, a financial, financial rule to this because it takes quite a long time for an employee to recover from burnout. I had this here around in Germany, and you can be sick up to eighteen month, and then you have a phase of up to half a year of reintegration. Can can you share your experiences with that?
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:33:38]:
Yes. This is exactly the number I have too. And I know that, it is a big, big loss for the con company because what do you do? You have no, guarantee that, number one, this person will come back at all. You don't know the exact time how long it will take that person to recover. So you cannot say, okay. I hire somebody else for six months, and, then the other person will be back. So you have absolutely nothing to go by. And, therefore, maybe the idea is now I have been giving this person definitely too much work.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:34:30]:
Let's assume he will be back in one and a half or two years, then this person will still have a need of a certain time to reintegrate. And for those two years, it's definitely feasible and sensible to get somebody else. And then when this person comes back, then we sit together and redistribute the workload. So, it's always about not having enough people. And, replacing a person who is on sick leave is definitely a better, investment than just to have the others burn out while waiting for him or her to come back.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:35:30]:
I was wondering for our audience, what strategies have worked for you in reducing burnout in your team in the past? Have you implemented any specific policies or initiatives that have made a difference? Drop your thoughts in the comments here.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:35:46]:
Okay. First of all, what worked very well was to, clearly define the number of people I am leading, and that number should not be more than seven. If I have more people because I'm building up the company, for example, that would mean that I already have to work in some sort of divisions system. So, generally, going from the top to the bottom, it's groups of sevens, maximum tens. And that means that these are your direct reports. You don't have more than 10, say let's say, direct reports, and you have to have enough time to lead these direct reports, consequently, with all, aspects involved. That is to say with talking to them at least once a year, this famous, one once a year evaluation in German called where, I have seen so many companies who have realized, yes, bosses need to talk to their employees. And, then when they introduced it, some of the, supervisors said, why do I have to talk to them? Why they know they know everything anyway.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:37:29]:
And then others came and said, may I only talk to them once? I like to talk to them several times. But this is one basic conversation that only has three topics. Number one, what did we do well in our cooperation, you and I? Not the company, not the others. You and I. Secondly, what are we going to improve concerning our cooperation in the coming year? And then, we're talking about wishes. We're talking about needs. We are not talking about complaints because the complaints have to be turned into future actions. And then the third topic is where should, respectively, would the employee like to develop.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:38:37]:
And that's all. Not about, pay, not about any other things. Only these three topics. And take one and a half to two hours for these three topics, and you have done all you can do to, plant the seed of trust between your employee and yourself. And then you will get honest and, valuable feedback from your employee when he will tell you in time, listen, boss. This is getting too much for me. I need some other arrangement. We have to talk about finding different ways of doing my work, or is there something I could let go of? And, which is the hardest thing for every employee to get to let go of something because, the more jobs and the more choice you have, you feel the more needed and important.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:39:48]:
Not just to say powerful, but important.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:39:52]:
We are a podcast also focused on tech entrepreneurship, Talking a little bit about future trends in burnout and burnout prevention here. Do you see any potential in with the right arise of AI driven workplace analytic that technology can be used to monitor and mitigate burnout risk?
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:40:17]:
Well, I'm not a great friend of AI, but I don't I'm also not a terrible enemy of it. I think that it needs to be used in a very human way, which is to say, what can be done by AI and not so well done by a human should be done by AI. And that is, to have one or two monitoring systems, but, never replacing the interaction between superiors and employees, but rather assisting also the employees so, that the employee can see, oh, wait a minute. I haven't had a a week of leave for the past twelve months. I need to take one now. And then I AI maybe shows a red flag right there to the employee rather than to the boss, where many employees think they are being controlled by some machine or so. I I think you may remember this big, scandal in Germany where a company had name tags for everybody, but the name tag was at the same time, monitor that, was registering every time you pass certain doors. And so, usually, the company knew earlier than the female employee that she was pregnant because she was going to the, Louvre more often.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:42:11]:
And so they had an increase in the frequency of her visits to the restroom, which showed them, oh, maybe she's pregnant. I think we have we have to get rid of her before she goes on pregnancy leave. So, examples like these stick, unfortunately, in the minds of, our coworkers and, give them, a sort of fear. What if the machines control me even more? So AI is seen, usually as a means of being controlled and being manipulated. While put at the person's, use and control, it may seem very helpful to say, listen. You haven't had a your leave now for such a long time. Hey. You have gained 10 pounds in the last five months.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:43:12]:
You know, the seats can be, easy measures of weight. They almost look like scales anyway if you sit in them. At least mine does. So very comfortable, and at the same time, you should tell me, oh, you gained again, or I lost weight, I mean. So, yes, AI can be helpful if it is used openly and, to the advantage of the employee and where the employee can understand the, the meaningfulness of this measure. If, not, then you will get, very, controversial results. Like, imagine, Joe, I am your boss. And I come to you, and I'm very open and, honest and say, Joe, I would like to motivate you.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:44:19]:
Oh, now tell me what's going through your mind.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:44:25]:
I would at first assume that, that he thinks right now that I'm not motivated enough. Right?
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:44:32]:
Yes. And how do I know that you're not motivated enough? Some machine or some super, surveillance must have told me. Mhmm. Right? Secondly, you will ask, okay. Let me see. How are you going to motivate me? There's no way. So and, unfortunately, in every business school, the second or third item on their schedule is learn how to motivate your employees. It's not your job.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:45:08]:
But the point is any, effort at motivating people is already a set, in the, inverse direction. So the same thing goes for, I want to look for your health. You're not my mother. I mean, I can look for my health myself. But if I say, listen. I have seen that you are, your sick leaves are getting more and more, and I'm worried about your health. And let's see what we can do together to improve your health situation. That's something different because also you must, keep in mind that many, employees are afraid of losing their jobs if they take too much sick leave, and that would be exactly the sign for everybody.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:46:09]:
Wait a minute. Health, is in jeopardy. And, then in order to avoid that, they work over times and more over times, and that's straight into the funnel of burning out and into failing. Mhmm.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:46:35]:
I see. How do you see the prevention of burnout and other problems at work? Because burnout is just the one we're focusing on here, evolving in the next five years.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:46:48]:
Well, I'm a bit ambiguous in my view. On the one hand, there are more and more leaders learning that, they can have the best company and the best technology, but if the workforce, is constantly ill, they will not be making any profits. That's why I think you see it too, all these offers of generating income without doing anything. You know, this famous automatic and automatized income. I think this is stupid because if everybody does that, who is going to do the work? So, we are going, down the wrong alley there. And on the other hand, all the efforts to reduce human work to less and less mean that, we need people who are higher and higher qualified. Now the higher the people are qualified, the more it is a risk for a corporation that they burn out because nobody can just come from the street and step in as opposed to this famous, movie with Charlie Chaplin where they just grab a guy from the street to do the strews. Nobody can come in and do very complex and complicated work.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:48:41]:
Just, you know, I haven't done it before, but I have been a gardener, so I'm sure I'm good at cutting hair. It will not work.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:48:53]:
We are already talking and learning for more than fifty minutes here. And I I was wondering for your final thoughts, call to action for leaders. If you could give one piece of advice to start up founders and executives about preventing burnout in the teams, what would it be?
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:49:13]:
It would definitely be to become a real leader, which is to say, forget about the numbers and work on your own personality. Make sure that you do not burn out by doing the wrong things and spending your energy there. A manager is a person who makes sure that things are done right. A leader is a person who makes sure that the right things are done. So become more aware of your real role as a leader, and that implicates that you have to have good health, that you have to have enough time to reflect and think about your company where nobody deserves you, where you can talk to maybe maybe a coach, maybe several coaches about, how to proceed and where to to proceed.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:50:23]:
Mhmm. Great. Thank you, Emil, for sharing insights on burnout recognition and prevention. We appreciate your expertise in helping companies build healthier and more resilient teams. Thank you very much.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:50:36]:
Thank you very much, Joe. And we supply this service to leaders and business owners at leovine.com, where they are free of any influence by employees or, coworkers or competition or any other people who mean just the best.
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:51:00]:
Thank you very much. We link down in the show notes.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:51:03]:
Thank
Jörn 'Joe' Menninger | Founder and Editor in Chief | Startuprad.io [00:51:04]:
you. Have a good day. Bye bye.
Imre Marton Remenyi | Psychotherapist and Consultant [00:51:06]:
You too. Bye bye.
Narrator Dorsey Jackson [00:51:12]:
That's all, folks. Find more news, streams, events, and interviews at www.startuprad.io. Remember, sharing is caring.
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