Think Like a Leader
The fallout from the global pandemic is one of the most significant challenges facing today’s leaders, rippling through to many aspects of organisational life. Its toll is not just in death and sickness rates, nor in the destruction of many of the business models we had come to take for granted. It is in the mental toll it is taking on your family, friends, staff and customers – and yourself. I came across an old leadership article written just after the financial crisis a decade ago where the author was advising his readers that it was time to ‘hit the refresh button’. But can your mind be cleared enough to be able to do that?
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Feel Like a Leader
Do you remember the fizzy sherbet taste of ‘Refreshers’ a popular sweet? They are still popular with children – no doubt because of the tingle on the tongue? In our work it is hard to feel that zing of excitement, enthusiasm and interest when just keeping going feels like a major achievement.
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Act Like a Leader
Without taking conscious and intentional actions, it is even harder now to feel refreshed. For many the distinction between home and work life has been badly blurred. Or the pressure of ensuring safe working environments may be making you hyper-vigilant and finding the ‘off-switch’ seems impossible. Are you modelling the right behaviour to your staff, taking the deliberate actions essential to being a balanced leader? Knowing your own ‘off-switch’?
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Tom Henschel has been presenting the monthly podcasts ‘The Look and Sound of Leadership’ for almost 15 years. His deliberate and thoughtful productions are always clear and relevant. The title says it all –The Exhausted Executive.
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This HBR article, by Laura M. Giurge and Kaitlin Woolley is of the usual high Harvard standard. “Spending weekends or holidays working undermines one of the most important factors that determines whether people persist in their work: intrinsic motivation. People feel intrinsically motivated when they engage in activities that they find interesting, enjoyable, and meaningful.
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Make the time to relax and watch this! Bec Heinrich tells a very personal experience and reflects on her time leading a social enterprise.
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Looking at sparkling water always relaxes me. There is something entrancing about staring into the water as it swishes over the strange shapes of the rocks with the sun catching the movements and swirls in the rocks.
And these are unusual rocks. They are at the western end of the Highland Boundary Fault in the Firth of Clyde. In geology, a fault is a ‘fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movement’ (Wikipedia).
So, the irony of such a calming rock formation is the turbulence required to form it over aeons.
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Hit Refresh The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone by Satya Nadella and published by William Collins, 2017.
Although this is a book about a business being refreshed, its focus is on giving this colossal company a soul, about doing ‘good business’. When words like ‘trustworthy and respectful, people’s dignity, empathy, creativity, judgement and accountability’ are being used it shows how values and purpose can play an important role in business.
Microsoft is again becoming a company that can be admired, not just for the quality of its products but also in how it operates.
Nadella is the CEO of Microsoft. Additional resources here
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...without a little reflection, there is no Insight Added.
"You have to really use your imagination to refresh your daily life."
Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt
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Lead well
Graham and Lesley
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