I recently sat in a room with 10 managers, in an organization where the Executive Leadership Team (Directors and CEO) are encouraging their management team to be effective leaders in the workplace and in modelling healthy work-life balance. An intensely emotional 45-minute discussion conversation ensued because of an assumption made by one (possibly more) of the managers that because her contract stated up to 10 hours of additional work per fortnight was considered ‘acceptable’ for a managerial position this was a requirement.
I observed how quickly everyone in the room was triggered and a passionate conversation explored covering the topics of workload, remuneration, expectations, inflexibility with an underlying sense of anger, frustration and resentment. Interestingly not one leader was able to hit pause and explore if the expectations being discussed were real or perceived.
The high emotions in the room were not targeted at anyone, although it was noted the Executive Leadership Team needed to be made aware of the extra hours the Managers were working and a commitment was made to capture the data to do this.
What I found interesting was that other than this one action, the group completely missed the need to be self-responsible and self-accountable in their own their leadership behaviour. They were unable to identify or acknowledge they had both the power and the responsibility to improve their own work-life integration by changing their work practices. I was reminded of the concept of learned helplessness and shared this short clip with them.
I felt a great deal of compassion and empathy for the individuals in the room because I have been there. But the reality is that changing personal behaviour is as simple as getting off the escalator. This might mean big changes like leaving the organization; or small changes like leaving on time regardless of what tasks are yet to be done. We falsely believe that if we work harder, we will get everything done. This simply is not true. The harder we work, the more we (and others) will add to our list and in turn, the more burned out, frustrated, angry and resentful we will become. How we interact with our work, our workplace and our teams is entirely in our locus of control.
Changing habits and patterns of a lifetime is not easy, our neuroplasticity pathways are strongly wired by our past behaviours and this can make change difficult. If you would like assistance to rewire your behaviours and support with change, please reach out. Elizabeth can assist with life coaching, leadership mentoring and equine informed awareness to help you grow personally and professionally.