Leadership Derailers: Fatigue as a Badge of Honor
Leadership is challenging. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be.
Ego confuses fatigue with importance.
If you aren’t tired and stressed, you must not be important!
Leadership derailers: fatigue as a badge of honor.
The challenges of leaders require the intentional practice of self-care.
Superman and Wonder Woman only exist in the comics. Burning the candle at both ends makes you less than you could be.
Fools limit their potential with constant fatigue.
You might be surprised to learn that the very top leaders:*
- Get adequate sleep.
- Eat healthy.
Sleep tips:
Tired people can’t bring their best. Mental and physical wellbeing are built on adequate sleep.
Tired people have lousy relationships.
High performance is built on rest.
Try the spoon drop test to see if you’re sleep deprived. (BBC video 1:29)
6 sleep tips:
- Create a sleep schedule. Go to bed and get up at the same time.
- Pay attention to food and drink. Don’t go to bed hungry or stuffed. Avoid caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine.
- Create a restful environment. Limit screen time before bed. Make the room dark.
- Limit naps.
- Engage in physical activity.
- Manage worries and stress.
(Above list adapted from Mayo Clinic.)
Eat healthy tips:
My best eating tip: Eat all the healthy food you want and limit your intake of unhealthy food.
- Snack healthy.
- Go for walks.
- Avoid temptation. Don’t keep ice cream in the freezer.
Self-care is smart, not selfish.
Take care of yourself if you want to maximize usefulness and expand influence.
Self-neglect isn’t a badge of honor.
What’s difficult about self-care?
What’s one thing you could do to improve your self-care practice?
3 more derailers:
#1. Inability to gain advantage from criticism. Defensiveness derails growth and development.
#2. Being thin-skinned and easily offended. When you can’t resolve offenses, YOU become toxic.
#3. Unresolved anger. There’s no middle ground with anger. It makes you better or drags you to oblivion.
Bonus material:
How to Give to Others Without Burning Out (Berkeley)
Self-Care 101 (Psychology Today)
5 Ways to Practice Self-Care, Even as a CEO (Inc)
What’s difficult about self-care? Maintaining the commitment and not giving up. I can attest to the sleep tips, they work for me, many of them I used entire life, sometimes lax on some at times, such as beverage consumption. ( You know flavored water)
What’s one thing you could do to improve your self-care practice? Add more workouts.
Thanks Tim. It’s true. Sticking with self-care is a challenge. I slip in and out of good sleep habits. The strange thing is I know that I’m better when I’m rested, but I still return to bad sleep habits.
Dan,
I agree, as people who become so involved with what we do, sleep deprivation is surely many can attest to. Our lives become taken over, unless we find ways to disconnect?
Oh, wow! I saw the title on this one and had to open it right away. I can’t tell you how much of this I have seen over the years. There are so many cultures where “I’m crazy busy” and “totally exhausted” is said with pride.
I had one boss who would call every day and ask how are you “are things totally crazy for you?” And I came to learn that the answer she wanted was “yes.”
And over the years, I’ve learned that the truly successful leaders and entrepreneurs work very hard but don’t take pride in feeling out of control, or oozing stress onto those around them.
Thanks Karin. Great seeing you here today. I hope you are well.
There is pressure in some organizations to be frantic and stressed out. It pressures people into ineffective/inefficient behaviors.
Good news is there is a bit of a movement toward developing human organizations.
Wow, Dan …
You need to find a way to get this to all those “woke” folks, especially bonus derailer #2 :
“YOU become toxic when you can’t resolve perceived offenses.”
Wouldn’t hurt for Congress, either. 😁
(But who’s gonna listen to an old privileged white guy?)
Thanks Rurbane. I think backstabbers and politicians have turn being offended into an art form. It’s a ploy to gain sympathy and undermine opponents. Be well old white guy.
Well, your message still serves the woke:
“U do U.”
It has been my experience that “self care” is a topic often mentioned in leadership texts and frequently talked about in seminars and conferences, but inside busy organizations, not so much. It is almost as though the culture creates a sort of “peer pressure” to deny the importance of self care. As an administrator, I frequently had to order team members to go home, or to take a day off, when I noticed the onset of fatigue. I also had to be careful to practice what I preached, avoiding the temptation to slide toward recurring 60 hour weeks when the pressure was on. I often used the analogy of the family car, which might be able to run at 100 mph but is not designed to run 100 mph all day every day. If you try that, the car will soon fail and won’t be of use to the family. Same for our physical and mental health.
Thanks Jim. Good illustration. You can run at 100 mph for short periods of time, not as a lifestyle.
Your insight points out that if the folks at the top don’t are running at 100 mph, the people around them feel pressure to run at 110 mph.
As Warren Buffet reminds use—You only have one body and one mind–take care of it.
If you only had one car for your lifetime, you can bet you would take care of it and give it tender loving care!
Thanks Paul You took the car illustration to a new place. Powerful.
When ego tells me I am important, often others see me as impotent.
OUCH! But thanks Duane.
What’s difficult is that the resource to maintain self-care is under constant pressure/demand from other places. The number of organisations that want 100% of their staff all the time, and when the staff burn out, lose them and replace them, is scary.
Right on Dan, one thing I find myself doing is looking at others instead of what I need. What one person can see as a strength, i.e. their ability to burn the candle at both ends, is painful for me to sustain. The longer I’ve been in a leadership position, the more I realize that self care results in my ability to lead and support my team more effectively. This has been a personal struggle for the last couple of years that I’m now “recovering” from.
Thanks Thomas. You have my respect for being transparent. “…self-care results in my ability to lead and support my team more effectively.” Kapow! Self-care is good for us and good for the people we serve.
That’s the truth, Mitch.
I believe that “fatigue” as a badge of honor has always been accepted or implied but I’ve found that is just a wrong way to approach short term, medium term and long term success in ANY organization or endeavor. When I finally acknowledge this (after many years of fatigue) I was able take better charge of my duties, my responses, my successes and any team I either led or was a part of. When you take care of yourself first, energy, food, exercise, attitude, attention etc. you become a better happier individual and you are able to continue long term. If you don’t change from the fatigue approach you WILL burn out, you WILL die earlier than if you chose otherwise.
Thanks Roger. There seems to be a measure of self-confidence that enables self-care. Living to please others is pressure to burn the candle at both ends.
Your experience validates the research. We actually get more done..and enjoy it more when we are rested.
Things always look bad when it is cold, dark and I’m tired. Get sleep, warm & don’t read email too late as it will disturb my sleep.
Thanks Steve… Truth. I’ve found that rest is key to successfully dealing with any meaningful activity. I know that when everything is irritating, the problem is ME.
BACK IN DA DAY when I was a young howitzer section chief I would frequently get in trouble for not only letting, but requiring my Soldiers to sleep during the daylight hours. Our unit was supposed to have a sleep schedule allowing one section at a time to sleep. I learned quickly it NEVER worked, so I decided to start putting down two or three at a time to include myself. More than once and evaluator would chastise me for failing to follow the Battery sleep plan. Like everything in the Army, there was a manual about conducting 24 hour operations. I would pull it out and show them the part that talked about Sergeants developing and enforcing section sleep plans. They would get mad and leave. My Soldiers were better rested than other sections allowing us to train longer and safer.
Spoon trick is a great way to catch a quick power nap. Drink caffeine just before your nap when when you wake 20 minutes later, you will be rested and full of energy.
Great piece Dan.
Thanks for sharing your insights and experience, Chris. Very helpful. Don’t you love it when you’re right! 🙂
When I was a Company Commander in the Army, my Battalion Commander told me that as a Leader he required you get no less than 7 hours of sleep. He created an environment where Leaders were free to rest because, our greatest weapon was our minds and we needed clarity in order to make sound decisions.
Especially in Leadership, fatigue can destroy morale and create a lousy culture. When you are towards the top, the decisions you make have a very large impact. There is no room for fatigue!
Thanks Frank. It would be more beneficial if more leaders understood, “our greatest weapon was our minds and we needed clarity in order to make sound decisions.”
My other takeaway is to connect rest with morale.
Always a pleasure Dan 😉
Your comment about Super Girl and Wonder Woman made me chuckle because I sport a very muscular Wonder Woman sticker on the back of my hardhat at work. Ironically, I am constantly fatigued! I have always known that I need to take better care of myself. For me, it took a medical wake up call to realize how to take better care of myself. I’m about 2 weeks in and quite uncomfortable, so it feels like this article was directed specifically towards me. Heard!
Thanks Tanya. Many of us need wake up calls. Now if we can just listen to them… Or, a preferred options is to take care of ourselves before we break down. But, that seems to be too hard for many of us. 🙂 Best wishes!