Hard work is…hard work. High achievers, however, are not afraid of undertaking big jobs. In fact, the strongest members of your team seek challenges, living for the intrinsic high of doing big things.
It is not work that fatigues the mighty. Rather, it is the labor created by dysfunctional human dynamics that drains us. A sample from the list of taxing, broken interpersonal behaviors plaguing organizations include:
- Lack of alignment among power-hungry leaders
- Team members who do not know how to collaborate (and therefore attempt to do so too much)
- The inability (or unwillingness) of some people to see beyond their function or personal agendas.
“Those are the aspects of work that kill me,” a leader in a global organization told me. “They are the dynamics that keep us from doing meaningful work – and rob us of the joy of saying ‘That was a productive day.’”
Beware: The system wants you to rationalize that you are destined to endure such working dynamics. To do so, however, is to violate your values and integrity.
What is more: Just as a leader who overspends their budget is deemed irresponsible, so is the leader negligent and reckless who implores their employees to “be resilient” in the face of constraints which can be removed.
Your team is working hard. Allow them to know the rich exhaustion of realizing their potential – instead of the fatigue of human failure.
The reward goes to those who operate in humanly connected organizations.
