Leadership is in crisis in 2023.

"The myth that the more time we spend working, the more we get done, still dominates organisational culture. But when we consider just how abundant the workplace is - just how much we will never get to finish, drawing the line between work and rest becomes critical."

There is a crisis building in many of our organisations. Declining resourcing, employee engagement, wellbeing and performance. Accompanied by an acceleration in uncertainty, change, disruption and malaise. This perfect storm is hitting organisations like a tsunami and too often, leadership falls back on old ways of managing. Cost cutting and downsizing programs are implemented which erode trust and mutual respect. Fear breeds micro-management and blame. New change initiatives with sexy names and graphics formulated by consultants and senior executive are rolled out to an increasingly cynical workforce. The deck chairs on the Titanic are swapped around and new executives formulate a whole new raft of quick fix "solutions" that fail to turn the ship away from the iceberg but consume energy and time and resources.

Organisations need servant leaders. Leaders who see the true value of their people and continuously ask how they can serve employees as they improve the organisation. Power can corrupt the best intentions and cause leaders to become obsessed with outcomes and control and treat employees as a means to an end. This engenders a culture of fear, which cripples innovation, creativity and collaboration. Everyone is fighting to get on the life boats.

Top-down leadership is outdated, counterproductive and to be honest, lazy. By focusing too much on control and end goals, and not enough on their people, leaders are actually making it more difficult to achieve their own desired outcomes. The antidote is for leaders to adopt the humble mindset of a servant leader. Servant leaders view their key role as serving employees as they explore and grow, providing tangible and emotional support to realise potential. Helping our people to feel purposeful, motivated, and energised so they can bring their best selves to work and do their best work is the true business of the modern leader.

How to create a a culture of learning and authentic conversation and an atmosphere that encourages people to become the very best they can?

• Ask, then listen.?How you can help them do their jobs better? What do they need from you? How can you do better?
• Implement.?Small changes that demonstrate action from feedback create a virtuous circle of trust and engagement.
• Create safety.?Model a culture in which people can question and take risks without fear of repercussion. Encourage people to push on the boundaries of what they already know.
• Be humble.?Servant leaders give themselves permission to act like decent humans. To acknowledge that people bring their whole serves to work and wellbeing is a person's core purpose.
• Focus on causes not outcomes. Outcomes are the last link in the chain of cause and effect. The focus of leadership needs to be at the causal end of that chain.
• Be self-aware. Understanding fully your beliefs, mindsets, attitudes, feelings and emotions that are conditioning your response to the world from moment to moment lets you make intelligent responses rather than suffer conditioned reactions.
• Genuinely prioritise wellbeing. Wellbeing initiatives in the workplace often focus on giving tools and skills to employees to empower them to take responsibility for their own mental health and wellbeing. Managers are rightfully urged to be aware of signs of mental health difficulty, to plan and conduct informal supportive conversations with their team about wellbeing and to model healthy habits at work. But too often in reality, in can be perceived as difficult if not impossible for managers to implement the very strategies they are urging their staff to implement. Toxic workplace cultures that value face time over output, that “watch the clock” and count presence in the office as a sign of commitment and that expect 24/7 availability of leadership are damaging the psychological health of the people being charged with leading engagement, performance and wellbeing at work. Stop venerating activity and mindless busyness.
• Be ruthless with your time and energy. I have spoken with maybe hundreds of managers this year and they express a strong frustration with being too busy to work on the "people bit" of their roles, with diaries consumed by meetings, doing the work and fighting fires. But our time and money follow our priorities. By not investing time in our people, we are telling them they are not a priority. Imagine you have three buckets:

Red - the amount of time you spend actually doing the job

Green - the amount of time you spend developing your people

Blue - the amount of time you spend thinking about the business strategically

How much time should you theoretically be spending in each bucket? And then honestly ask yourself how much time you actually are spending in each one. In general, managers tell me that they should be spending the majority of their time in the green bucket but are spending most of it in the red, and nearly none of it in the blue. Doing the same things the same way but harder will guarantee the same results and is the definition of insanity. Ruthlessly re-architect your time and carve out space to listen and learn from those you serve and to think creatively about how to do things better. Humble leadership should never be confused with weak leadership. It is, in fact, quite the opposite.

Leadership burnout

High achieving executives are at perhaps the highest risk and their slow journey to complete burnout can impact entire companies and spill out into home life and relationships, creating a ripple effect of damage. Mental and physical exhaustion can compound denial as a front-line coping mechanism.?CEOs and executives can have very driven personalities and feel weak if they are not coping, fearing if they show signs of weakness, the culture at executive level will see them as vulnerable.

The human cost of burnout is unacceptable at any level of an organisation. Wellbeing is a person’s core purpose. The human spirit has not found its place in business. To be honest, it has not been particularly welcome. As a result, people are forced to leave their vulnerability, hearts, and intuition at the door, operating within a potential-limiting shell of their whole selves. This includes our leadership. Businesses and leaders need not cease focusing on business growth and profitability. Rather they might view valuing and developing people and building their wellbeing as a noble gateway to both. This has to start with culture and enacting the values that we preach. Self-care and self-compassion are core leadership skills not to just prevent individual burnout, but also to build a culture of genuine caring of people that humanises work again.

Seeking help is a sign of strength and good modelling, not a sign of weaknesses. You can’t lead effectively with an empty cup. The “burn-out” metaphor implies not only that somebody had to be “burning” (i.e. strongly liked his/her job, was strongly committed, etc.) before he or she would be able to “burn-out”, but also that once a fire is burning, it cannot continue to burn unless resources are provided to keep it on burning. Remember, you matter as much as your staff.

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