Are we Burned out

Are we Burned out

Raise your hand if you’re burned out. Step forward if you’re worried about your own uncertain

future. Shout if you’re feeling a little lost and unclear about where your career is headed.

Stand up if you feel like your life is out of balance and you’re running out of steam. Now look

around you and take comfort in the fact that you’re not alone.

The world has become hypercompetitive and change moves at a dizzying rate. More and more

is demanded of us each day. In our “high performance cultures” it sometimes feels like a contest

of who can burn themselves out the fastest.

And as we scurry along through a mind-numbing array of meetings, progress reviews, and

workshops we lose something along the way—we lose sight of what’s important. We miss seeing

the damage we’re doing to ourselves and our people. That’s not leadership. That’s failure.

It’s hard for people to trust their leaders when

“they feel like they’re simply a cog in the machine

We Talk Funny.

Many of us resort to using fancy words and frameworks to demonstrate our mastery of leadership. We synergize, leverage and optimize so at the end of the day the sum of our value

added activities maximizes shareholder value, engages employees, and propels us to a bestin-class premier position in our industry.

That’s a bunch of crap.

The words sound great but what do they mean? Would you trust a boss who spoke like this all

the time? Neither would I. If that’s the case, why do we speak to members of our teams this way?

Everyone wants to be authentic. It’s one of the most overwrought concepts out there.

Fortunately it’s incredibly easy to be authentic simply drop the pretenses and be yourself “

Is leadership a Thing of the Past

What has happened to leadership? With all the crises and challenges we face, and the

increasingly risk-averse environment in which we operate, leadership has become generic,

short lived ,bland and no longer important .

We have devolved from leaders into managers. Admiral Grace Murray Hopper said it best,

“you manage things, but you lead people.” The problem is we’re no longer leading. We’re

hiding behind committees and pointless meetings. We’re using the crutches of process’s  and procedures  to make our decisions  for us. We blame policies and corporate culture for the problems our teams face rather than delivering the tough messages with a sense of ownership.

The result of all of this is our people don’t trust us anymore. Work has become a burdenl.

They do the work and we pay them. It’s a fee-for-service mindset. When they find someone

who will pay them more for their services, they’re gone. And when we no longer have need of

their services, we simply cast those people aside. It’s a toxic environment. It’s hard for people

to trust their leaders when they feel like they’re simply a cog in the machine.We Must Change This and we must change it Now.