As we look toward the future, what do we see? We see mountains to climb and challenges to conquer.
We work in a corporate culture completely focused on the uphill climb and setting ever-more ambitious goals. We consider ourselves and our companies in crisis if we’re not “winning,” even though companies are now able to reach wider audiences than ever through technology, track their interactions with more specificity than ever before and to grow their sales and revenue numbers to gargantuan levels.
To keep up this level of intensity, we build lofty plans that show how hard working and relentless we are. We create catchy slogans about driving toward success.
They’re not working.
Our people are getting exhausted and burning out. Consider these numbers:
- 77 percent of workers reported experiencing work-related stress
- 57 percent reported specific symptoms associated with burnout (emotional exhaustion, lack of motivation, lower productivity)
- Employees are 10x more likely to quit if they consider their workplace to be toxic
Where’s the Crisis?
Surely if we are pushing our people to this point of exhaustion, burnout and fatigue, it’s in service of something greater. Surely, it’s because our companies are in crisis, right?
Wrong. The idea of a workplace crisis is often an imagined concept.
Leaders stress and push their teams because they expect aggressive, linear growth. They create pressure to win and keep achieving, even when they’re not exactly sure what winning means.
What are the Effects of Feeling in Constant Crisis?
From a purely physical perspective, functioning in crisis mode leads to chronic stress. Stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol flood the body and affect every major body system, leading to fatigue and illness. When the brain perceives constant stress, it reallocates resources to manage the perceived danger, often at the expense of other important bodily functions such as digestion and reproduction.
The same thing happens at the organizational level. When we force leaders on our teams to respond in crisis mode, we focus their energy on playing defense and we shut down their critical functions of creativity, strategic thinking, and true leadership.
We take the talented, competent people we recruited, and we tamp down their capacity by making them serve as the middleman between leadership demands from above and frustrations of people below.
If your best leaders are playing defense, who is leading innovation and growth?
Sticking to the Vision. Adapting the Plan.
We’re struggling under the burden of today’s work culture and expectations. We’re weighed down by the expectations and the complex plans that we build to show that what we’re doing has value.
And in doing so, we’ve lost our vision and our way forward.
I recently wrote about the COVID impact. In the aftermath of an unprecedented pandemic, we wanted to create new workplaces and new ways of working. We told our people their innovation and their productivity mattered, but we’re living differently.
When we’ve seen the fallout, we’ve tried creating new policies to come up with a solution for the exhaustion and burnout we’ve seen. However, if sustainable performance strategy only rests on policy, we will inevitably lose to companies who fortify their cultures through deliberate, everyday practices to enable and inspire their workforce.
Instead of aiming for outrageous goals and pressing forward at all costs (including human costs), we need to create ways to shift out of crisis mode and adapt. We can help our people focus on our vision and goals without pushing them until they are reactive, worn down, and unable to function at their best. Ways to do this include:
Reducing distraction.
The workplace becomes exhausting when people do not have the tools to create an environment of sustained focus. Pressure, political divisiveness, stress, and technology can all contribute to energy drains that reduce effectiveness and stunt wellbeing.
How leaders can adapt: Increase time for deep work, which is the antithesis of distraction and crisis mode. When you’re in deep work mode, you can ensure a focus on vision and priorities, instead of on putting out the latest fire.
Commit to caring.
Companies often show their gratitude to employees with small perks. However, gift cards, pizza days, and fun outings are a band-aid, a quick fix for companies that want to do good by their people but don’t know how. They don’t get to the root of the problem.
How leaders can adapt: The best gratitude is genuine care and concern that values wellbeing. Leaders do good for employees by caring enough to change their way of working, and by recognizing the connection between performance and recovery.
Develop people.
When companies ask their leaders to manage crisis and to be on defense all the time, what happens to the actual leadership part of their roles?
Many companies use their leaders in this way, then to outsource their leadership. They wait until things are broken and then try to bring in special resources to patch things up without getting to the root of the issue.
How leaders can adapt: Instead of taking a burn-them-out approach, leaders can spend time NOW developing a support network that will make their teams successful. Investing resources into preparing and coaching gives your people a better chance of knowing what they’re up against and how to make changes. Show your leaders the work of coaching and developing teams is a critical component of leadership and emotional and mental wellbeing.
To be successful in today’s fast-moving business world, we must make a transformative shift in the way we work and interact.
We can push toward goals but lose our people’s loyalty and engagement along the way. If we take this approach, we hollow out our team and we’ll end up crashing when we need it most.
Or, we can adapt and realize people are our most critical and valuable resource. When we build a people-centered culture that incorporates rest and performance, we create a long-term strategy that strengthens our organizations and provides the capacity we need to competently and sustainably perform.
