What is the one skill that most leaders still have difficulties with? It’s a thing so fundamental, that it makes the difference between getting good results with a lot of hard work and getting great results with a good work-life balance. Since the pandemic, more and more people are having difficulties with it. Before telling you what the skill is, let’s look deeper into why post pandemic trends lead to a huge flaw for many at work.
When the pandemic hit, suddenly a lot of new things were possible. Digitalization got an enormous boost, which allowed some projects to be done faster than was thought. Also, managers started to trust their employees more and control them less. So all the changes that were already happening, got accelerated, for better and for worse.
Because of digitalization, everyone is becoming more and more connected to each other. Technology has allowed us to stay in touch 24/7, which has a lot of benefits, but as you know, also a lot of downsides as well. During the pandemic, even though digitalization made a ton of things possible, people were feeling more and more disconnected from their organization, their teams, and themselves. The lack of boundaries between work and private life, combined with the lack of small informal social moments (like at the coffee machine) made this disconnected feeling possible.
Just a couple of years ago, when I was interviewing directors and asked them what their priorities were, every one of them talked about their financial objectives and some of them about growing people. But for a couple of months, after asking the same question, I got different answers. The directors start to realize that purpose and values matter! Not only do customers value purpose, but in order to attract new talent, having great company values is important!
Despite people working two hours more on average per day, 75% want to work at least part-time remotely. Most leaders don’t want to have to come to the office every day. This trend is happening worldwide! For the moment, because the hybrid model is still in its early stages, it will enhance everything that was already present. This means that if you had problems with empowerment, these problems will only get worse when working remotely. But if your team was functioning great before the pandemic, chances are it will be working even better now!
For most people, these trends are leading to more work than before and many people just can’t take it anymore. Even though we have many tools and possibilities to work less and make our lives easier, leaders are still running and running and working and working. Because no matter how much you get done, the to-do list never ends!
This brings me to my secret: stopping!
Learning to stop is harder than you think! You have been programmed since childhood not to stop until the task is fulfilled. The problem is that, in our fast-changing complex world, the task is never fulfilled! This conditioned behavior leads many people to burn out because they cannot stop working. And stopping has many benefits! It allows you to get your energy back so that you can focus more afterward. It allows you to analyze problems so that you can solve the root causes instead of symptoms.
Many people know that stopping is good, but keep telling themselves:
“If I reach X, then I’ll have time to stop.”
But you have to realize that you have to stop first, and then your desired result will follow!
Stopping doesn’t have to belong, in fact, I’d like you to stop before your next meeting and simply take a couple of minutes to breathe in a comfortable position and think about what you want to accomplish in that meeting.
I hope you learned how beneficial stopping can be in this episode.
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