I DARE YOU TO ASK A COLLEAGUE--"AM I BURNED OUT?"

It's tough for a top leader to spot his or her own burn-out.
One of the reasons it's tough is that most of you are determined to do a good
job against all odds.  No matter what you feel.  Another reason is that you view it as your job to set an example for everyone in your company.  Always on, never lagging onward and upward. You get used to living with "grueling" as your steady state of being.You are in adrenaline overdrive most of the time with no respite to ask yourself how you are doing.  REALLY, how are you doing?

Here's what I have seen and experienced as signals of burn-out.
See if any are familiar.

-You are beginning to feel both overly challenged and bored at the same time

-You create new task forces for the same ole problems

-Your outside corporate citizen work feels restful to you

-Vacations are irritating

-Your HR executive asks you about your calendar overload and your focus

-You face your key meetings with dread and obligation

-You can't take your hand away from the flame be it a problem or a growth possibility or a talent issue. 

-You talk a lot about your commitment and energy for the company.  It feels a little like "you doth protest too much".

-You wait too long to take action on key issues and then the action is too extreme

-There is a sense of staleness and repetition to major organization events

-There is a treadmill quality to your work instead of momentum

Burn-out is insidious and quiet and sucks vitality from your company.
When you have a whole top team that is burned out, it is mutually reinforcing.
No one sees it.
Check yourself for the intimations of burn-out and welcome the voice that mentions it bluntly.

              YOU --NOT THE BUDGET--SET THE SPENDING THERMOSTAT FOR YOUR COMPANY 

It is the rare CEO who treats his budget and expense account exactly as she or he would a budget at home.  Most of you remember the thrill of your first company car or the initial first class flight with the sense of undeserved abundance or well earned perk.  But it quickly becomes second nature and money is easily spent without the kind of twinge that happens when you do personal spending.  The comfort and ease become habitual. The bottles of wine become better quality.  The meeting sites get more luxurious.  Everyone gets unspoken permission for spending creep.

  It's repugnant to police people.  Especially peers. Don't.  This is the supreme walk the talk moment.  How you spend, the company spends.  How you spend is shared and gossiped about.  How you spend decides if you have a caste or class based company. 

Simply assume there is a YouTube video watching you spend company money.
What would you immediately do differently?

  

SEE ENERGY AS TANGIBLE AS YOUR P&L

SEE ORGANIZATIONAL ENERGY AS TANGIBLE AS YOUR P&L STATEMENT

I get agitated when people tell me about the boring, non-productive, rote,
poorly organized, non-focused meetings and retreats and workshops they have to attend.

Let's start with "have to".  What if all meetings were voluntary?
State the purpose and see who shows up. That would tell you where organizational energy really is.  Where does people's energy go?
Too often it goes to figuring out what the heck is going on with the top executives.

I have seen meetings become a resting place. People enter a trance.  
"Thank goodness, I can rest and hide in this cocoon of a meeting?  Hope my numbers are right.?  I'll do my part and then wait til this washes over me.
Where's my Blackberry?"

OK,not all meetings, but way too many.


Coming together away from the flow of work should create energy not kill it.
And not just for the moment of the meeting or event.
It should create a battery full of energy for the work that every one wants to do--that this particular organization wants to do.
"Wants" to do.  Hello.  "Wants to do"
That's where energy comes from.
Wanting to do something.
So its your job to involve people with the something to co- create the "want"
"To do" or action comes from that want.
After that let the energy flow.
It will find its way to the result or goal  IF the organization "wants" it.

Meetings should ignite and reignite the desire to get something done.  
Tie everything you do back to that basic "want"
What does your company "want" to get done.
People should leave your meetings with more energy and focus and optimism than when they entered.  


Everything else is waste.

ON THE OTHER HAND, COLLEAGUE RELATIONSHIPS CAN BE SOME OF THE BEST IN YOUR LIFE.

I say "on the other hand" because I talk a lot about top leaders, especially CEO's,  needing to accept the distance of their formal role from most people in the organization.  This helps creates the highest level of  fairness in a company and lessens skewed perception--the blind spot for top leaders that I talk about.  And it  also allows associates  to project onto the top leader the qualties they most want and need in a leader.  This in turns pulls from them the qualties of their best selves.  I don't mean fakery and pretense. But I do mean not  letting the organization join you in your sloppiest, worst, flawed intimate characteristics.  Human-- yes.  Repulsively real--no.

However, a top team of true colleagues is one of the richest most satisfying experiences a leader can have.  Under pressure, in a crisis, working together, creating new direction is so satisfying with good team colleagues.

You know one another well. 

You forgive faults because the goal demands that you focus on strengths. 

You support stronger bolder action because you are not in it alone.

You ignore personal slights, bat them away, because you know they don't matter in the larger scheme of things and you trust that they were not vindictive--just part of bumping into one another as you move fast and decisively. 

You speak your truth and have at it with one another and it is invigorating not debilitating or political.  

You make big glorious mistakes that are not held against you. Later they become hysterically funny. 

You rescue one another in bad moments.  There is a fundamental trust that is palpable.  You can lean into it.  You know that it is rare and you don't mess with it.  You honor and protect the trust. 

Triumph is shared and magnified because it is shared.  Big fat failure is shared too.  And both happen again and again.  And the colleagiality matures and can handle more.  What could be better? 

The art is to keep this kind of colleague relationships from becoming favoritism or too intimate.  

Not easy in practice. 

But colleague relationships can be some of the best in your life.