We R Human

You're not a great leader for noticing burnout.

If all you do is keep pointing it out & complaining about it,

At best, you're a powerless empathizer.

At worst, you're virtue signalling & don't really care.

As the leader, you have to start doing something about it.

🕯️ Here's 3 tips to combat burnout:

1️⃣ 𝐅𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝟐-𝟑 𝐁𝐢𝐠 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬

🧱 All real value that every team generates can be narrowed down to few core actions.

Put all your effort behind creating excellent outcomes for those.

And allow your team to relax on all the others.

Because if everything's a priority, nothing's a priority.

2️⃣ 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐎𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐄𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐲

If you preach work-life balance, but send emails at 9PM...

Set a bold precedent by publicly signing off at the end of the day.

Or proudly annouce on Slack when you're taking a short break.

Your team will only start taking care of themselves,

⛱️ After seeing you take care of yourself & draw boundaries.

3️⃣ 𝐋𝐚𝐮𝐠𝐡 & 𝐂𝐫𝐲 𝐓𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫

Inject humor & vulnerability into conversations.

🤣 Find moments of playfulness with your colleagues & riff on it for a bit.

Seek opportunities to open up about your personal challenges & invite others to share.

What gets us through the toughest times is our friends in the foxhole with us.

🤜 The next time you see burnout, do something about it & don't just be a statistic.

As Jenny looked at last quarter’s flatlined growth rate,

She could feel anger gurgling inside of her.

After a year as the new VP, this was the 4th quarter in a row her unit was flailing.

One could cut her slack for the first 2 quarters as getting used to the gig.

But after seeing this latest report, she wanted to throw something at the wall.

Instead she sighed, 𝘐𝘵’𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘮𝘺 𝘧𝘢𝘶𝘭𝘵, 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘰𝘰 𝘵𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 & 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦’𝘴 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘵 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯.

𝘈𝘭𝘴𝘰, 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘱𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘮𝘦? 𝘐 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘯𝘰 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘻𝘪𝘯𝘨.

Feeling a bit better after saying that to herself, she shut the laptop & left for the weekend.

We all have bleak realities we have to face.

And when confronted with them, we generate good reasons for our sorry state of affairs.

If we were a trial lawyer, we’d make a strong compelling case & no one would be the wiser.

But the truth is that behind every excuse, legitimate or not.

There’s a deep rooted fear that we’re afraid of touching.

That fear is holding us back more than any constraints or obstacles in our path.

The barriers are temporary, our insecurities are eternal.

But if we can tackle & dissolve our fears, we can free up the mental space to think properly & problem solve objectively.

And once we have clarity on what needs to be done,

Our conviction drives our courage.

After finishing her favorite activities, Yoga with friends & an ice cream treat afterwards, Jenny was feeling happy & reconnected to her most authentic self.

Realizing that her old fear of being seen as a failure was clouding her judgement,

She started facing the facts.

Her old game-plan wasn’t working, and she had to admit as much to her boss & team.

𝘐𝘵’𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘶𝘭 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘵’𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘵𝘰𝘱 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘺.

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 & 𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘐 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴, & 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘤𝘩.

As Jenny felt a rush of relief in her new realization, she smiled broadly & barely noticed the ice cream dripping all over.

Transforming companies is hard work.

And there are only 2 ways to do it right.

1️⃣ Grow the leadership team to effect change top down

2️⃣ Build a strong cross-functional leadership cohort from the inside out

This past year, I got a chance to do the latter with with A Place for Mom.

If you gather the highest potential leaders from across your company.

And you put them in a 10 month leadership training program together.

▪️ Where they learn the fundamentals of leadership, teams & leading change.

▪️ Where they start the program by stating their biggest goals & challenges.

✍️ And have them work on themselves & track their progress each month.

▪️ Where they do routine 1:1s with each other

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 So that they can mentor each other & deepen their cross-functional relationships.

▪️ Where they work in small groups on big ideas that can change the company.

💡 And then have them present it to the leadership team at the very end.

If you do all this, you're not just creating a fun & helpful training program.

👊 You're creating the very heart of your company's leadership culture.

Big thanks to Rebecca & Andrea for all their support & opennes. I couldn't have done any of this without some of the best HR leaders backing me.

😁 Time for round 2.

How did the founder of Lego transform a small carpentry business in a remote Danish village

Into the most iconic toy company ever?

After the 1929 Crash, Ole Kirk Christiansen had to let go of all his carpentry employees.

To survive, he started making cheap wooden products like ladders, ironing boards & toys.

This scrappy diversified strategy started to slowly work.

But then one day, Christiansen did something odd.

🧸 He just focused on toys.

He applied for a huge loan to build a toy business & asked his siblings to co-sign.

🪀 They thought it was insane to fixate on kids trinkets in the aftermath of a recession.

💡 But Ole Kirk had an epiphany.

1️⃣ He discovered that even though he was a good carpenter,

He was an excellent toy maker.

2️⃣ He also realized that toys were like alcohol:

The darker the times, the more parents want to cheer up their kids.

3️⃣ Finally, he just absolutely loved sparking kids to ideate through "hands-on, minds-on" play.

He called his new venture LEGO, which is Danish for "Play well".

And even though he slid into bankruptcy,

his factory burned down

and his wife died,

he still persisted in his original mission: Helping children with his toys.

Leaders are too often hedging their bets & doing a little bit of everything.

But to truly succeed, identify

◾ What your business is great at?

◾ What's badly needed?

◾ What you all love doing?

And then dedicate all your focus & resources towards executing that.

Within a few years, Ole Kirk laid the foundation for one of the most successful toy companies ever.

🤜 Because he went all in on one fun decision.

Leaders often fail to set up Goldilocks goals for their teams.

🔸 As the new CEO, Sangeeta was an incredible storyteller.

⛰️ She knew how to get her people excited by charting an ambitious bold path for the company.

Yet a few months in, her team felt removed from their visionary boss’s objectives.

Knowing the business' actual constraints, they saw her goals as unrealistic & ignored it.

🍜 This is a big hot porridge bowl that teams don’t think they can finish.

🔹 Then there was the recently promoted VP of Products, Sarah.

👩‍💻 As a smart operator who was one of them, her team respected her.

In reality, her team meetings were just individual updates & her problem solving one leader’s issue at a time.

Without anyone real owning the cross business features & issues, progress was slow.

🍚 This is a small cold porridge bowl that no one thinks is worth finishing.

Instead, great leaders know how to bake the perfect performance challenge.

1️⃣ They craft goals hard enough to require their whole team to work together.

But easy enough to see meaningful results soon so that it doesn’t demotivate them.

2️⃣ They set up challenges with deadlines near enough to be urgent.

But far enough to give the team time and space to own the problem.

🔸 For Sangeeta, she needed to find an early win that the team could have taken to feel confident.

🔹 If Sarah had asked her team to solve the most pressing issues, they could have really rallied.

👊 Great leaders know how to feed their teams, one goal at a time.

Why did Obama never pick his outfits when he was president?

“You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits”

It's not because he was on a power trip.

🤵 It's not because he was sartorially challenged either.

It's because he didn't want to think about it.

As the president, Obama was forced to make an avalanche of decisions every day.

And with every judgement & choice he made, he knew that was a little less left in his tank.

🔋 Each of us has a finite amount of decision energy in the day.

Every time we decide, we degrade our ability to make further decisions.

🥱 Psychologists call this Decision Fatigue.

🛒 It's why shopping for groceries can be so exhausting.

😾It's why judges give harsher rulings at the end of the day.

To battle this, create a system where we:

1️⃣ Punt low value tasks to later or to someone else

Ex: Instead of collecting ongoing customer feedback ourselves,

Ask our team to do it & create summaries for us.

2️⃣ Identify & automate high-value, low effort actions

Ex: Instead of trying to find moments every hectic week to check-in on our biggest clients.

Schedule 60 minutes once a week on our calendar to study & reach-out to a few top clients.

3️⃣ Simplify decisions

Ex: If our team is always asking us to weigh in on decisions,

Ask them to give us a '3 Decision' summary where we can respond with Agree, Disagree or Let's Discuss

Great leaders remove their ego, trust others & build systems to decide faster.

⚡ To act more like the Commander in Chief, let's learn to protect our ability to decide.

Here's a story about the power of ownership from the Navy SEALs.

Too many leadership teams don't own their problems.

💥 The team always has a reason for their misfires.

⛔ The employee always has a justification for a shoddy job.

🚦 The executive in charge always has an excuse for the delay.

And those causes might be true, but ownership is a mindset more than an outcome.

It's where your identity is deeply tied to it's successful ex*****on.

And this story really helps illuminate that point.

A buddy of mine in college would say this every time he made a new friend,

𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘧𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵.

And whenever he said that, I would look at him like he was crazy.

One day, I asked him to explain this crazy theory.

He said, 𝘕𝘪𝘬𝘩𝘪𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘵. 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘧𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱.

𝘞𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭 & 𝘸𝘦'𝘳𝘦 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘣𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯.

𝘉𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘸𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘧𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵, 𝘸𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳.

And that always stuck with me.

⚔️ Most of us avoid uncomfortable conversations like the plague.

Any tension in the workplace just stresses us out.

And if we get "feedback", we feel attacked & exhausted afterwards.

🧐 But what if we reframed it in a different light?

🙌 What if we saw conflicts as our most authentic selves really meeting each other.

Then we wouldn't dread having a talk with a coworker who keeps letting us down.

We'd see it as a chance to understand what they're going through & to assert ourselves in a real way.

No matter how messy or volatile it gets, as long we're still respectful of each other

We're always going to come out of it a little bit wiser

A little more honest & true to ourselves.

👊 And believe it or not, a bit more closer with each other as well.

Don't lie, we all have our favorite direct report.

And most likely, it's the one we see in person.

💻🏢 As more companies head towards a mixed model of working remotely & in-person, tensions will arise.

🤼 It's going to pit teammate against teammate.

It's because managers give preferential treatment to employees who show their faces in the office.

The reason is because of proximity bias.

🏏 We unconsciously favor whoever is closest in time & space to us,

Here are 3 ways we might be playing favorites:

1️⃣ We prioritize their goals and needs

Employees in the office might find their projects being fast tracked or given more resources.

SHRM reported that 42% of managers forget remote workers when assigning tasks.

2️⃣ We are less frustrated when communicating with them

Remote employees will find themselves getting a little less time and patience when talking to us.

67% of managers believe remote workers are more replaceable than onsite workers.

3️⃣ We give them them more freedom

There will be more micromanagement of those who work from home than those who don't.

Even though they're 15% more productive.

🤜 If we want to lead better in the hybrid work world, let's check our biases at the door.

Many Americans thought that MLK Jr. was too aggressive.

In a letter from Birmingham jail, he defended his need to agitate.

At the time, many thought he should negotiate, rather than lead marches & sit ins.

Back then, like today, we don't like tense moments.

♨️ Whether it’s receiving passive aggressive comments from a friend.

🤼Or sitting awkwardly between teammates who’re aggressively arguing.

🤬 Or seeing glares & folded hands when announcing something difficult to our people.

Most of us avoid it like the plague.

But here’s why Dr. King thought that healthy tension was necessary.

1️⃣ Removes Problem Avoidance

He said that without it, people don’t confront the real issue.

This applies equally to our societal problems & our professional lives.

🌵 At the heart of each problem is an emotional root.

If we don’t directly confront that, we’ll never really understand the depth & nuances of the problem.

2️⃣ Spurts Development

MLK wrote that, “constructive, nonviolent tension is necessary for growth.”

If we can balance honesty with respect in a hard conversation, something magical happens.

Individuals start learning, groups start pivoting & societies start changing.

Research shows that teams that dissent more, make better decisions & solve problems better.

⛰️ Ultimately, MLK knew that one needed to nurture tension towards a great purpose.

“We will reach the goal of freedom... because the goal of America is freedom.”

Embrace tension, internally and externally.

✊ It’s what fuels excellence and revolutions.

Kind words from a great L&D leader.

We all need a little bit of encouragement when we're putting ourselves out there.

Thank you Nick Congelosi.