Avoid Float Center Burnout
Float center burnout is a real thing. Avoid burnout with these tips and extend the lifespan of your float center well into the future.
By: The Float Mind | January 1, 2020
Working at a float center is more than just asking people to strip down and jump in a salt-water tank for an hour or two. The part most people don't understand is that operating a float center requires a great deal of mental circuitry to manage all of the relationships that have developed while a float center is in business.
When our circuitry has limited space to deal with reality - managers experience stress, frustration and eventually burnout. Below are just a few suggestions on how to prevent float center burnout and increase your emotional intelligence.
1. Begin the Process of Replacing Yourself (Immediately)
One of the reasons why managers experience float center burnout is simply because they insist on doing everything themselves and hardly ever ask for help.
Sound familiar?
A float center manager must begin the process of replacing themselves immediately. Usually, the first place to start is: understanding the concept of replacing yourself.
Replacing yourself doesn't mean someone is taking your job away, it means you're offloading tasks and responsibilities to someone else so you can reserve circuitry to begin thinking about growing your business in other ways.
For example:
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Training staff to perform tank maintenance so you can spend more time outside the office.
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Training staff members in reception soft-skills so you can begin building an email marketing campaign.
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Training upper-level staff to build client relationships and train staff so you can focus on incorporating your float center into the community.
Once you have your people in place, you can begin spending time ON your business instead of IN your business.
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2. Have Honest Communication With Your Clients
A float center isn't always just about floating. A successful float center focuses heavily on its relationship within the community. After one is past being curious about floating, a client doesn't just pay for the float - a client pays for the entire float experience which includes building a relationship with the float center manager.
Unfortunately, managing a float center as well as the new and growing relationships takes a toll on our emotional wellness especially if our emotional intelligence is challenged or compromised.
For example, some clients like to blame, make excuses, argue, hide how they really feel, promote hate and simply lie (to name a few). Worst of all, they may come to float because they want someone to listen to them. Some days, a manager may feel more like a therapist than a float facilitator.
We can hope that a client uses floating as a tool so they can meditate and begin tweaking negative thinking patterns into positive thinking patterns. If a client doesn't understand that it's possible to see what one is doing (for example, blaming other people for their current reality) they will never have the motivation to change it. Instead, they come out of a float and begin to explain to the facilitator how much they hate their husband or wife, or how their boss is a horrible human being. Navigating through these types of conversations on a weekly basis is emotionally exhausting.
This is why having HONEST conversations with your clients is a must to prevent float center burnout. This doesn't mean telling your clients that they're idiots, it means being honest and expressing your real opinions on the matter. Your clients will respect you more, too.
3. Address the Elephant In The Room
Another way to think about float center burnout is by looking at it as exhausting brain circuitry. When a circuit board is overworked, it's fried. The same can be said for our brains. Our brains only have a certain amount of circuitry, so we have to constantly make space by addressing the elephant in the room. It's similiar to "getting things off your chest". Nobody likes walking through life with a weighted vest. The same can be said about having something take up all your brain circuitry. Get it off your mind!
When there's a problem in your external reality, it takes up mental circuitry in your internal reality. Imagine an elephant in the middle of your float lobby. This is the same for when a problem is taking up very valuable brain circuitry. If it continues to use up space, eventually we'll blow a circuit. At worse, this might be represented by a panic attack in our external reality. At best, maybe you'll forget to lock up at night.
Being a float center manager and avoiding burnout means constantly performing conflict resolution in all areas of the business. This means having those difficult conversations with your employees, holding the line and setting up boundaries with your float clients, and finding solutions to the problems that are keeping your business from operating at optimal levels.
By constantly addressing the elephant in the room, you can clear up brain circuitry for yourself and keep float center burnout from reaching your float center.
Summary:
Float center burnout is not a myth. A float center doesn't just promote relaxation, it's an important entity in your local community. A manager's duties include building relationships, having deep conversations with their clients and finding ways to grow their business. As well as the day-to-day duties of keeping the float center operational. This all can be very overwhelming.
Preventing burnout includes focusing on projects to grow the business by:
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Offloading tasks to trustworthy employees,
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Being honest with your communications with your clients, and
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Constantly performing conflict-resolution techniques to all aspects of your business.
These three concepts will help a float manager extend the lifespan of their business and keep float center burnout at bay.
BEFORE YOU GO
David Conneely gave a talk at the 2014 Float Conference on the subject of float center burnout. Sometimes floating isn't enough to keep burnout at bay, discussing the "hard to talk about" type of stuff with clients can help extend the lifespan of your business.
Watch as David talks about what he learned during his management position at iFloat in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
The Float Mind
The Float Mind is an online media content provider dedicated to delivering inforpublic on the benefits of flotation therapy and a media hub for float industry professionals.