Changing Our Lives Starts at Work

How can the 40-50 hours we spend at work every week, along with the people we work with and for, not impact the other areas of our lives? Our personal and professional lives are two parts of one holistic life where the parts are interrelated and not separate. 

In August 2018, Gallup reported that employee engagement was on the rise in the U.S.this is good news and yet only 34% of employees were engaged. The remaining 16.5% were actively disengaged and 53% not engaged. Translation, for most of us, “work sucks”. 

***Highly recommend Adam Grant’s podcast WorkLife, he explores how to make work not suck.***

Three areas of our lives that are impacted when work sucks. 

1. Self

I used to find myself caught in patterns of negative self-talk because I had a rough day at work. It took years of being stuck in this pattern before I realized that my day at work disproportionally influenced how I felt about myself. What are the things you say to yourself after a long day at work?

2. Energy

Too often I came home feeling lethargic and constantly yawning. The simplest chores and errands felt like impossible tasks to complete. Let’s not even bring up going to the gym, going out for a simple walk or doing volunteer work. What are you not doing because you do not have any energy after a long day? 

3. Relationships

Are you ready to engage with your loved ones when you get home from work? I rarely was ready to engage with my partner and most days needed at least an hour to decompress because I still had work on my mind. How are your relationships being impacted?

Although we are all responsible for our workplace environments, I am going to focus on what leaders can do. Leaders who are self-awareand care about serving others rather than their own ego can influence and impact others in a way that team members often cannot. 

• Build real relationshipswith the people. Learn about what they do and who they areand show people who you are. Help people feel safe to bring their complete and authentic self to work. Care about the person and relationship and not just the job title.

• Show people they are valued. Give people autonomy, flexibility, and involve them in decisions that impact them. Seek their opinions and learn from them. Just because you are the leader doesn’t mean you have the best ideas.

• Help people make meaningin the work they do. Align the work with the values that people care about and show how it contributes to the organization and the people you serve. Show people the importance of “why” and not just the “what” and “how” per Simon Sinek. 

Work doesn’t have to suck. When we can work better, we can live better. 

What's Missing in Leadership? Who You Are Is How You Lead

Leaders of organizations disproportionately impact culture and the employee experience. Yet leaders don't spend enough time on getting to know who they are. My intention is not to argue against the operational and adaptive skills development (aka soft skills) that leaders need but to emphasize the importance of knowing oneself as it relates to being an effective leader.

In a Harvard Business Review article, Dr. Tasha Eurich shares the following,

"...although 95% of people think they’re self-aware, only 10 to 15% actually are."

Organizations need to invest in helping their leaders and staff better understand who they are in deeper ways so they can be better leaders. Without this critical insight our leaders will be well intentioned but will suffer from self-preservation and the coddling of their ego rather than being effective. What is the cost of bad leadership? What are all of the unintended consequences creating

Here are some areas where we can start:

1. Strengths: Positive organizational psychology isn't fluff and stuff. We've always worked from the perspective of deficits and how has that worked? So why not begin to consider strengths and how they can use them to meet needs. If you haven't been thinking about strengths, then it will not be easy to rattle them off immediately. Identifying and then owning the strengths we have takes practice.

2. Styles: Do we know what we are naturally inclined to prefer in terms of styles of working, communicating, etc.? If not, then we are setting ourselves up for misunderstandings and inevitable conflict. A tool like Everything DiSC is a wonderful way to explore personal preferences and tendencies in order to more effectively communicate and lead yourself and others. Common language is key so whatever the tool, keep it consistent otherwise you'll be creating the Tower of Babel.

3. Unconscious Bias: We all have them so we need to start talking about them. Where did they come from? How have they impacted the decisions we make and the people we lead? What are we doing to support our leaders to mitigate unconscious bias?

4. Personal blindspots: Blindspots aren't a get out of jail free card to demonstrate bad behavior and then say "I didn't know". As leaders, we have to identify our blindspots and engage those around us, especially our direct reports, in order to grow and become better leader. Like unconscious bias, we all have blindspots and the responsibility of a leader is to know them and work through them.

5. Personal limiting beliefs: The person we talk to the most is ourself. Many of the conversations we have with ourselves reveal to us our limiting beliefs. What's the part of yourself that is telling you a self-defeating narrative? Have we explored where this came from? How it has impacted our careers, personal lives?

To be a leader people want to follow, organizations and leaders need to invest in the hard work of knowing thyself. Work isn't a social club or the therapist but that doesn't mean we should not be intentional in creating the time and space to do the self-work that is required to be a good leader. If you are a leader who wants to make an intentional investment in your development contact me edward@measuredleadership.com