The Great Resignation can be challenging to understand. Questions abound. Who is leaving? Why are employees leaving their jobs? Where are they going? What can leaders learn from this unprecedented time of transition? These are good questions, and the quest to understand has spurred articles, conversations, and a great deal of research. While reading through some research on The Great Resignation, one statement caught my attention well before I began to dig into the data. Most people were thinking about leaving their jobs before they left.
Finding ways to tap into the motivations of your team and even yourself can be incredibly difficult. People react differently to different situations, but our responses have drivers that have many commonalities. These buckets of leadership styles allow us to know what the best teams look and act like. Great teams are not homogenous units with the same set of needs, expectations, and actions. Great teams have a diversity of thought, input, and style in leading people and achieving their impact. Diversity is crucial. The best leadership teams aren't "Yes Teams" caught up in groupthink. They are quite the opposite.
“Self-awareness is what enables you to translate the insights from an assessment into action. Self-awareness is getting to know yourself, moment by moment. Self-awareness is knowing what you are thinking while you think it and what you are feeling when you feel it. It’s the ability to keep your values in mind at all times. Self-awareness is the ability to monitor yourself so you can manage yourself accordingly.” R. Hougaard & J. Carter. The Mind of a Leader
“Self-awareness is what enables you to translate the insights from an assessment into action. Self-awareness is getting to know yourself, moment by moment. Self-awareness is knowing what you are thinking while you think it and what you are feeling when you feel it. It’s the ability to keep your values in mind at all times. Self-awareness is the ability to monitor yourself so you can manage yourself accordingly.”
R. Hougaard & J. Carter. The Mind of a Leader
Emotional intelligence helps us to commit to the people in our lives. Whether personally or professionally, we impact and influence people. So how do we lean into our relationships for more success? How do we create more winning scenarios for everyone? And how do we not sacrifice our work-life balance in the process?
Here are five considerations to refocus on the areas that you value:
It’s Tuesday morning, and you know what that means.
The Tuesday morning meeting begins the same way every week. Six people are seated around a spacious conference table with their chairs angled toward a screen mounted on the wall. Three faces are visible on the screen. The muted participants on the screen match the engagement level in the room. All nine people appear to be mesmerized by their phones.
No one speaks.
There’s no human connection.
How do I rest when my couch is also my office?
Should I be available 24/7? I feel like I have to be.
Is every week going to feel like a crisis?
Is it possible to change?
We often use a phrase at InitiativeOne: "Leaders must become comfortable with being uncomfortable." When I hear this phrase, my mind goes toward the discomfort of uncertainty. Uncertainty is somewhat of a fear of mine. The general idea of discomfort rarely scares me too much. I've found life quite uncomfortable for most of my memory, so it's almost effortless for me to rationalize that tension away. It's uncertainty that I find to be most challenging.
Many leaders want to be nice. There is something faux-admirable in such a pursuit. However, niceness doesn't carry the weight that we think it does. Its real-world application falls short of the mark when leading effectively or influencing others toward positive accountability or a common destination. On the other hand, kindness provides us with firm application and a benchmark to run toward in our families, organizations, and communities.
