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Before an individual becomes an Exhausted Hero, they’re usually someone who’s excelled as a rock star. Their supervisor notices and gives them more responsibility. Then, at some point, as the responsibilities add up their team grows, and their personal growth stalls—due to lack of support or direction from leadership, lack of understanding on how to develop on their part, or both—and they’re unable to move on from being just a rock star. They’ll continue to do double-duty as manager and rock star, but it’s a struggle. And the struggle will continue. If they don’t develop into a strategic manager, then they risk burnout by functioning both as a rock star and as a manager.

We all know this individual. We may be an individual like this, struggling to balance it all. Always playing firefighter and never feeling like they have control of their work, this leader feels the pressure to be strategic, while feeling the pressure to deliver results, while feeling the guilt of the responsibility of being a people manager.

Symptoms include being the first person to work and the last one to leave. Gaining recognition for getting things accomplished—then rewarded with more projects. Running from meeting to meeting and never feeling like they are accomplishing anything. When they are in their office, they are quickly trying to manage their emails while dodging their employees who often stop by with questions. The reason they come in early and leave late is that is the only time they are not bothered and can get their work done. And they are the individuals that senior leaders trust with all the big projects so their workload continues to be over capacity.  These individuals feel stuck and don’t feel there is a choice of another way…but there is another way.

If you are an Exhausted Hero, it isn’t too late.  Hire an executive coach to assist you in improving key leadership behaviors like creating a vision, influencing change, or coaching.  Or work with an executive coach to learn more ways to delegate effectively. Or if you are part of an organization that has an exhausted culture involving countless Exhausted Heros, let me know!  I would love to come facilitate a workshop to assist in elevating the culture. 

Delegation is Essential for Leadership!

A 2015 Gallup study of the entrepreneurial talents of 143 CEOs on the Inc. 500 list showed that companies run by executives who effectively delegate authority grow faster, generate more revenue, and create more jobs.

But why is delegation so important?

I call the role of being a leader and manager a Strategic Manager.  With this role, it is critical to conduct the following behaviors:

• Create a Vision:  Assist your team in seeing the path forward, the end goal.
• Influencing Change: Assisting others in awareness, understanding, and adoption of change.  Using different skills and processes to gain buy in and alignment to change.
• Coaching Others:  Providing guidance to others by helping them think through challenges and identifying a mutually agreed upon path forward to gain positive results.

These are three behaviors that should not be delegated.  These are the key behaviors for the manager/leader. And these behaviors can’t be done in the leaders “spare time.”  We all know that doesn’t work. We must be focused on the vision, the change, and coaching others to be successful.

Therefore, it is critical that leaders learn to delegate any and all tasks that can be handled by their direct reports or teams.

Take some time today to review your to-do list.  What can be delegated to someone else? And what needs to be added to your to do list to help you drive a vision, influence change, and coach others?

According to John C. Maxwell, author of Developing the Leaders Around You, “If you want to do a few small things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things and make a big impact, learn to delegate.”

Listen to More than Yourself

What is that you said?  Listening is important? In today’s fast paced world filled with tons of communication through hours of meetings, 140 character tweets, social media, and a full inbox of emails, it is easy to not hear what is going on around you. 

As an executive coach, the number one topic I help executives with is listening.  Some leaders are technical experts and immediately rush to internal listening, listening to their own response to the question being asked.  Some leaders are so busy that they aren’t listening for the signs that their team is exhausted, unaligned, or disengaged. Other leaders are just so busy that they are avoiding any interaction with other human beings and therefore not listening to those around them.

The Co-Active Training Institute, where I received some of my executive coaching training,  in their book “Co-Active Coaching”, breaks down listening into three different levels of listening:

Level 1:  Internal Listening – the awareness is on ourselves.  We listen to the words of the other person, but our attention goes to what it means to us personally.  This is when you start to think about what you think about the situation, what you feel, and how it impacts you.

Level 2:  Focused Listening – a sharp focus on the other person.  We listen to how it is impacting them, what they think, and what they feel.  This is when you lean in, you reflect on what they are saying, and you truly listen to their words

Level 3:  Global Listening – this includes everything you observe around you as you listen.  It is body language, the environment around you, it is the mood of the room.  It is when a difficult thing is said, and you feel the “air leave the room”.  

To be an effective leader, you need to use all three levels of listening.  Many of us are really good at Level 1.

This week, take some time to practice Level 2 and Level 3 listening.  Focus on turning off your internal listening.

Listening builds trust, collaboration, engagement, and often better thought through solutions to challenging issues. 

Are you listening?

Coaching for All Levels! 

Executive coaching is not just for the top level anymore.  Middle managers and other rising executives are also engaging with executive coaches to elevate their leadership skills and proactively prepare for bigger roles within the organization,  

I know what you are thinking … I can’t get budget approval for that.  Here are some ideas that will make coaching more economical for your boss and budget, but still gain great coaching that will provide you with an experience to achieve higher leadership results. 

1. Don’t 360, just 180.  For a c suite executive, it is critical to conduct a 360 degree feedback assessment either through interviews with the coach or an online assessment.  For middle managers, you might be able to skip this expense if you and your boss are aligned on your developmental goals 
2. A three month engagement.  For a c suite executive, I highly recommend a six month coaching engagement as the challenges to shift leadership behaviors can take time to overcome.  For middle managers, a three month engagement can provide clarity and tools that can set you on a path to development.
3. Offsetting expenses.  After recent coaching engagements, some of my clients have decreased employee turnover, decreased overtime, elevated employee engagement, or have recommitted to the organization.  Replacing an employee costs on average 200% of their salary. Coaching is way cheaper than that!

Many companies are reinvesting in middle management development.  Some are hiring consultants to build customized leadership development programs.  Others are focused on individual development through executive coaching. Don’t miss out on these opportunities to develop and advance your career.  Have a conversation with your boss today!

Don’t Be Too Tired to Influence a Better Life

In a recent article in Forbes, the article quoted studies showing that 45% of U.S. workers consider themselves to be modern workaholics. And a recent Gallup study of nearly 7,500 full-time employees found that 67% of employees reported feeling burned out at work sometimes, very often or always.

Many blame technology which allows our emails, texts  and phone calls to always tether us to work. Others blame the executive leadership teams who are demanding more work on faster timelines. Others mention the challenge of semi-recent headcount reductions that have decreased staff but not decreased workload.

Stop waiting for someone to fix these.  I believe the real cause for the modern day workaholic epidemic is a lack of the ability to influence change.  That is something you can actively do to defeat the workaholic epidemic!

Influencing change is about identifying when a project, a person, or an organization are headed down a bad path, and being able to redirect to a better path by partnering with others effectively.  

Think about it.   If you are an Exhausted Hero who is a workaholic:

• Have you courageously had a conversation with your boss about your exhaustion?
• Have you prioritized the work and adjusted due dates?
• Have you asked your team for their ideas or have you taken it on by yourself? 
• Have you delegated work appropriately or are you hoarding work?  

Through many executive coaching engagements at companies of all sizes, I have come to the following conclusion.  Corporate Exhausted Heros tend to try to take it all on. But Strategic Managers take time to influence change. Corporate Exhausted Heros tend to act as fire fighters, reacting to the challenges in real time.  Strategic Managers tend to act as fire chiefs, as they plan for the fires, prevent fires through inspections, and mobilize their teams to effectively fight the fires as they appear.

Tell your boss you are exhausted

I spend a ton of time in executive coaching sessions helping people practice having these conversations with their boss. It’s intimidating to say, “I need help to do the role you think I’m doing. I’m not doing well. I’m struggling.” Those are not great things to say to your boss, but sometimes they need to be said. And when a boss hears them and sees the exhaustion, they usually open up and meet the exhaustion with support.

I’ve coached a few individuals who’ve asked for that conversation, whose bosses pretty much said, “Dig in and just make it happen.” Within six months, those people tend to leave the organization, because that’s not the kind of organization they want to work for. They don’t want to work for a boss that isn’t going to support them. They ended up leaving.

It’s important to note here that no matter what type of boss you have, at least have the conversation. Sit down with your boss, share your exhaustion, and give them the opportunity to help you come up with a solution to elevate you to strategic manager. 

In the corporate climate of 2020, a lot of people are jumping jobs right now. There’s a theory that the job-hopping is because the recruiting market is so strong, and you can pick people off with just a little bit more money. I have a counter-theory: I think more folks are leaving jobs because they’re not feeling the support that they need. Instead of having a hard conversation, it’s easier to just walk out the door—with a little increase in salary as the cherry on top.  And the job hoping continues as individuals find themselves in the Exhausted Hero trap again at the new company. The grass is not always greener!

Companies experience turnover when their employees are leaving looking for more support, more ability to find balance, more resources to be able to do their job, and more reasonable timing. If you can give them all those things, you can rescue your exhausted people, and you can save your company thousands of dollars in costs just replacing that one individual.

Exhaustion is a shared decision

Let me make sure there is NO confusion:  Building Strategic Managers and eliminating Exhausted Heroes is the responsibility of both the individual leader and the senior leaders of the organization.  In the workplace, it’s common for everybody to look at somebody else to solve any given challenge. Stop pointing fingers and start working together to solve the problem!

When you look at executives, they look at the high potentials or those people stuck in an Exhausted Hero role, and they say, “Well, they’ve got to figure it out.” If that’s the case, then the executives aren’t taking responsibility for their own development.

Go online and read the Glassdoor reviews page of any company out there. If you find comments from tenured employees saying something to the extent of “these young people need to suck it up, this is business, not a playground,” then that’s a sign the company culture and senior leadership are out of touch with their own responsibility.

At the same time, because Exhausted Heroes are so exhausted, they’re more likely to look for an outward cause, rather than inward. They’ll wonder, “Why am I not getting help? Why am I stuck here? Why does my boss not understand this?” They likewise have a projection out, for somebody else to take responsibility for their exhaustion.

Both sides aren’t taking responsibility. We can really look at this situation as an opportunity for better professional development. When it comes to an individual’s development, executives and Exhausted Heroes must sit down together and say, “Okay, what is our intention? Where are going? What are we trying to do? How are we trying to get there?”

It needs to be a mutual responsibility, because it’s really hard to do without both parties actively participating. The executive who says, “Hey, middle manager, figure it out,” is now putting responsibility on somebody who might not have the resources do it, and will then leave. If you are the middle manager who’s saying, “I need the boss to figure it out,” you may get really tired of waiting and leave. Those are two ways to really quickly create employee turnover with future leaders with high potential within your organization. Instead, sit down together, show your engagement, show your investment, and execute a game plan together.

This approach of mutual responsibility creates higher retention within these leaders. It creates better leaders who are going to be able to take on more work, continue to take on more responsibility, and continue to lead their teams in a way that will continue to grow profits for the organization.

How to Hire Strategic Managers?

When interviewing and recruiting, we must ask ourselves, “What does somebody need to have to be a director? Or a VP? Or an executive vice president?” Most look for experience in operations, or in finance, or in marketing. Then they describe a list of technical experience requirements, like “need to have managed a large P&L,” and the description ends there. Technical experience is good enough, right?

We are missing a huge opportunity if we don’t hire someone with experience in the four big-ticket items that make a strategic manager:

1.      setting a vision,

2.      driving change to achieve the vision,

3.      influencing others, and

4.      coaching and developing their team.

When you bring on a director or VP to run a team, you’ll create another Exhausted Hero if you’re exclusively looking to hire only based on technical experience.

Instead, hire the Strategic Managers who can tell you how they set a vision for their team, drove the transformation to achieve the change, influenced other stakeholders outside their team in the change, and developed their team members as they went along.

We must prioritize these four qualities when we interview candidates. The question is no longer, “Do they know how to technically make us more money, technically improve this product, or technically drive the sales organization?” The most important question is: Do they know how to lead?

Coach Your Team

One of the core behaviors to focus on is “coaching your team.”  Many supervisors, when they think of their responsibility to coach their team, think that’s outside of their job description—“I’ll just delegate coaching and providing feedback to HR,” they think.

Many executives, as they’re looking to develop their high potential talent, hire an external coach or someone to build a high potential program so they can simply check “develop my team” of the to-do list, because those experts will take care of it. Unfortunately, that’s the same thing in my opinion as throwing a high potential employee into the deep end and seeing if they’ll swim.

There is a benefit to external coaching and workshops. But on the job, how they actually complete their work is the responsibility of their supervisor. And it always will be. The supervision part of supervising has more of an impact on learning than even an executive coach or a leadership program can have. Together, these integrate into the Game Plan that makes sure that an individual elevates successfully.

Yes, it’s important to have an executive coach to help you. Yes, it’s important to have a leadership program that helps teach new leadership skills. It is the responsibility of the individual and their supervisor to implement these learnings on the job for practical purposes.  This partnership and sponsorship—from the executive team to really make sure that their executives are going through the elevation zone, and that they truly are helping them on a day-to-day basis, giving them feedback and reinforcement to help them be successful.

The reality is, outside coaching can only get your direct reports so far. You can’t delegate your role as a supervisor.  At the end of the day, you have to continue to coach them as well. 

New Year, New Hope, New Choices

January.  A New Year.  A new decade. 

Do you have new year’s resolutions that look something like this?  

• More time with the family
• More time at the gym or yoga
• More time reading
• More time on vacation

All of these goals are about finding better balance.  But I believe these goals create more exhaustion. All are requiring more of your time, which is something you don’t have!  By adding more tasks to an already busy schedule, will it really create balance?

If you want these resolutions to stick,  it is also important to add the leadership goal to “elevate from Exhausted Hero to Strategic Manager”.  First, delegating individual contributor work to create space for more strategic work. Next focus on getting ahead by managing your team, not managing your tasks.  You should spend over 50% of your work week focused on planning for the future by setting a vision for the months ahead, planning to avoid future roadblocks, and positively influencing the change for your team.  

As a leader, you need to get ahead and stop feeling like you are always reacting.  Choose to lead. Choose to delegate. Choose to create a path forward for your team to follow.  Choose the proactive leadership approach that will create more time for family, your health, your development, and your being.