LEGAL professionals climbing the corporate ladder must balance their workplace demands with personal commitments and set firm boundaries to avoid severe burnout.
Speaking at the Fiji Law Society Annual Convention in Nadi on October 31, psychologist and holistic wellness executive coach Elenoa Ragg Lesuma warned that continuous workplace stress, coupled with personal pressures, severely threatens professional wellbeing.
“To go up the ladder in role or in partnership or in organisation, wherever you are, you have to work hard, and the burnout is pretty much attenuating stress, stress over time,” she said.
Ms Lesuma said that individuals often struggle to manage the multiple responsibilities they carry outside the office.
“Some of us, when we come into these organisational spaces and we speak to the burnout or the stresses that is happening in the organisation, what we are looking at also is how are we marrying the different hats that we wear in our daily life as a professional person.
“Most of the time, we do not address that problem.”
Ms Lesuma emphasized that lawyers frequently confront vicarious trauma, particularly in family and criminal law practices, making boundary-setting essential.
“Your professional person, your professional hat must stay back there.
“When you finish on the case, you can step away, you can then ask yourself, this is enough, I need to go home to my family.”
