Leadership Reflections & Insights
with Dr. Michele Nealon

You’ve always enjoyed your job. You’ve loved leading a team, setting an example and being part of something bigger than yourself. You’ve relished the adrenalin rush of pulling out all the stops to achieve high expectations. Until recently. Until you’ve gradually realized that getting out of bed on a Monday morning is downright excruciating. That your day —once filled with enthusiasm and energy—is now bogged down with irritation, frustration, and pure exhaustion. That the joy of completing both daily tasks and long-term planning has been replaced with unbridled cynicism. You’re burned out. Like millions of other Americans, you’ve succumbed to the toll taken by the pandemic, and the changes in work-life balance that have required longer working hours—often in a makeshift home office, fewer vacations and nagging concerns about job security. As if the additional work demands aren’t enough, you find yourself struggling to keep myriad other balls in the air: helping your kids navigate remote learning, ensuring that family members are healthy and safe, worrying about the mental heath consequences of a year lived in relative isolation. You’re not alone. Burnout has been recognized by the World Health Organization as a legitimate medical syndrome, caused by chronic workplace stress that has gone unmanaged. It is characterized by the very things you’re feeling: exhaustion, growing mental distance from your job, and feelings of negativity or cynicism related to your work—all of which reduce productivity. Burnout depletes us physically, mentally, and is associated with a number of health risks— hypertension, digestive issues, and depression, to name just a few. This didn’t happen overnight. The road to burnout can be long and meandering, depending on the source and level of stress we have faced and the amount of physical and psychological energy that has gone into coping with it. It typically starts with a slow but steady sense of detachment, a gradual awareness that what used to inspire and energize us at work now exhausts us. The exhilaration we once got from work-related contributions and success now just numbs us. The sense of mastery and achievement that we once chased has become ever-more elusive. If you’re in a leadership position, those embers of burnout are layered with those of your employees. As leaders, we are especially vulnerable to burnout as expectations grow, marketplace competition tightens, and employee motivation begins to flag. We are presumed to be supermen and superwomen—experts in our space, capable of delivering the bottom line no matter what challenges lie before us, the solvers of all problems, the doers of all things. We need to be socially relevant, the standard-bearer of the organizational culture and intuitive to the needs of our workers. It’s a lot to ask of anyone. The act of keeping a stiff upper lip while encroaching burnout creeps up on us, along with the exhaustion involved in being “on” 24/7, is bound to catch up with the best of us, especially when the world around us is facing the cacophony of unexpected challenges the past year has brought. It’s easy for those first sparks of detachment to erupt into full-blown, stress-induced burnout before we realize what’s happening. We know that we’ve reached that stage when we become decision fatigued halfway through Monday morning, with little steam to get us through the rest of the day, much less the remainder of the week. In the United States, we are acutely aware of the toll that stress can take on our lives, our work, our relationships, and our health. The American Psychological Association annually publishes a report on “Stress in America” that measures attitudes and perceptions of stress among the general public, identifies leading sources of stress and chronicles the impact of stress upon our lives. The reports document a worsening trend, one that casts into stark reality the immediate and long-term consequences of unaddressed stress. Yet, as aware as we are of the dangers that accompany stress, we fall back on the time-worn perceptions that those who are not up to never-ending, constantly increasing demands of leadership are weak, or in over their heads. American culture talks wellness and balance, but it doesn’t always walk the walk. So, it’s up to us. It’s up to me to manage my own stress, and it’s up to you to manage yours. Start by knowing the warning signs—those first niggling indicators that your job has lost its luster. 1. You’ve lost that get-up-and-go morning motivation. Even after a good night’s sleep, you feel drained of the energy that used to fuel your morning routine. Inspiration has turned to dread, motivation to cynicism. 2. You’re simply exhausted. This is different than being tired. It is something deep inside you, at the core of your being. You can almost reach inside and feel it, it has become so powerful. It sucks you back to bed, it drags your very soul. 3. You find it difficult to maintain a steady emotional state, especially when it comes to work. You find yourself feeling irritated about tasks, schedules, and people. You move up and down from your baseline emotions, even expressing negativity toward valued colleagues and employees, snapping at the slightest problem or provocation. You know you’re not in a good place, yet you can’t seem to shake it. Does any of this sound uncomfortably familiar? If so, take a few steps to prevent the early symptoms from developing into an out-of-control inferno that results in total burnout. Don’t wait until you truly feel a sense of burnout; by then, it has already taken a firm grip on your psyche. The firmer the grip, the more challenging it is to reclaim your energy and passion. Ease up on your schedule . Avoid back-to-back meetings with no time for a rest, no opportunity to recharge, not even time to eat or stretch your legs. Even superhumans can function better with a ten-minute break here and there. Build structure and consistency into your day. Predictability and order are an essential means of steering clear of a reactive mode and preventing a non-stop routine of putting out fires. Take charge of putting order and consistency in place. Value it and practice it. Avoid multitasking. Focus on doing one thing at a time. The tendency to check email and answer texts while in a meeting adds to a sense of chaos and mental overload. Schedule time for each of these activities and put the others aside while focusing. You can do this, and you don’t need to apologize for it. Take control of your mental wellbeing. Leadership is stressful. There is a lot at stake and much to worry about. Stress, high stakes, and worry are emotionally draining and a harbinger of burnout. Get to the bottom of what is overwhelming you. Is it too many responsibilities, the pressure to create unreachable goals, or just not enough hours in the day? Are you taking on too much yourself rather than delegating, or up against problems that are especially difficult to solve? It will take resolve and courage, but once you own what is causing the overwhelm, you can begin to develop plans to solve each of these issues, one at a time. Know when to get help. A leader cannot be the be-all and end-all for everything and everyone, nor should you expect to be. Dig deep into the skill sets and expectations you need to thrive as a leader. If your role demands a lot of communication and that’s just not your thing, get the help to become a good communicator. If your role requires you to delegate and you find yourself micromanaging and taking back control, seek the coaching you need to develop and follow through on delegating skills. Whatever it is, feel empowered to identify your needs and find the help that addresses those needs. Focus on self-care. Explore the strategies that work best for you and that will help you restore the balance you are missing. Whether it is exercise, yoga, mindful breathing, meditation, a spiritual practice, or journaling, engage in it enough until it becomes a habit. Turn to it when you feel yourself slipping toward the downward spiral into burnout. What about your employees? Rest assured, you’re not the only one struggling with these issues. Employee burnout is omnipresent—both for those who still commute to their workplaces and those who are doing their old jobs in new, often less-than-ideal, locations—the kitchen table, the bedroom or whatever nook can be transformed into an ad hoc home office. Employees need emotionally intelligent and empathic leaders, while leaders understandably want to get the job done. Here too, there needs to be a balance. Constant pushing toward a project goal, especially in these stress-ridden times, can backfire. As leaders, we need to remember that employees’ lives are complicated too, that their lives have been upended and their attempts at work-life balance more precarious. We need to think beyond avoiding the burnout spiral ourselves and continue to support workers in their individual quests to contribute and achieve—for the organization absolutely, but also for the realization of their own passions and aspirations. What does that mean? Here’s what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean expecting employees to work around the clock, or to stay tethered to their electronic devices 24/7, or to spend endless hours on Zoom calls with few breaks and little time to attend to required tasks. Just because their offices are their homes, they shouldn’t be expected to be “on duty” at all hours. We need to continue to consider employee-friendly policies that empower workers to do their best while balancing their efforts with the rest of their lives. They need time off, and real, uninterrupted vacation time, just like we do. We need to get to know our employees, how they work and the conditions under which they thrive. We need to find a balance between the old-fashioned leadership values of kindness, empathy and flexibility and the more contemporary values of employee empowerment and personal responsibility. Most importantly, our employees deserve our respect and our willingness to build authentic, empathetic relationships with them. They will give back, over and over. And we need to talk openly about burnout—with our teams and with our fellow leaders. Burnout is very real and, during this unprecedented upheaval that has transformed the world in which we live, we need to be aware of its threat and the toxic consequences that can result from allowing it to get out of hand. Take care of yourselves. And take care of your employees.

What makes great women leaders? And what, exactly, makes those women have to fight harder for their leadership roles than their male counterparts? It’s a debate that has already spanned decades. Research has dissected the skills and experiences that lead to the C-Suite and has tried—in study after study—to quantify the degree to which each gender embodies those abilities. You’ve heard it all. Confidence, ambition, business savvy, risk-taking. Communication style, empathy, consensus-building. These are all attributes that are stereotypically associated with either men or women. And that’s before we even consider the time-worn assumptions about work-life balance and which gender shoulders the lion’s share of family obligations. I have written and spoken often about the unique and treasured aptitudes that women bring to the workplace. I believe wholeheartedly that ours is a gender that is inherently nurturing and empathetic, that seeks to find balance and build consensus in situations that involve multiple perspectives, and that is driven by an adherence to personal values. I think we are wired to connect, to build relationships, to create collaborations, and to be fiercely protective of our humility, our compassion, and our humanity. What I find particularly interesting is that, while acknowledging these differences that distinguish the genders, women attribute them to societal expectations, while men attribute them to pure biology. The key point, though, is that many popularly held notions have settled on gender differences as the primary reasons for workplace inequities. Too often, it is suggested, women begin their career advancement journeys with leadership deficits, while men are blessed with leadership strengths. I don’t agree, and what’s more, the research doesn’t agree. The real problem—the reason that so many well-aimed stones lobbed at the glass ceiling fall short, while men grab more than their fair share of leadership posts—lies within the organizations themselves. We must dig deeper into the structure, culture and long-practiced patterns of interaction that define the respective paths that women and men must follow as they ascend the leadership ladder. Yes, men and women are different, but it is not those differences that explain their comparative records of success. It is the ways in which employers view and use those differences that give rise to gender inequities and determine myriad career paths. A Pew Research Center study analyzed the contrasting pressure points that men and women experience, finding stark differences in the perceived expectations placed on each gender. Men were viewed as driven by the need to support their family financially and to achieve career success, while women were thought to face pressure to be an involved parent and to be physically attractive. The same survey found that society places a higher premium on masculinity than it does on femininity. With these assumptions in mind, it is not surprising that managers fall back on the antiquated belief that men are better cut out for leadership, or that they allow deeply ingrained company culture to reinforce those faulty assumptions. Women might begin their treks up the career ladder by conforming to traditional (i.e., masculine) leadership styles, yet eventually adopt a more dualistic approach that combines male and female leadership characteristics. Employers that fail to recognize their unique value also fail at giving them the opportunity to thrive and to reach their true potential. It is not just a loss for the women who historically have been underestimated or passed over; it’s a profound loss for the organizations that have allowed this to happen. We need to think beyond the gender differences that have informed the identification of future leaders; more to the point, we must learn to view leadership potential through a gender-neutral lens. There is great power to be realized in the act of identifying, developing, and mentoring employees—regardless of whether they are men or women—who exhibit the qualities and skills necessary to guide their respective organizations. Some organizations of all types—education, business, healthcare, and government—are making well-intentioned commitments to reduce inequities. But it’s not an easy set of practices to reverse. We cannot simply decide to start next Monday and—with the wave of a wand or an eloquently written directive—even the playing field for valued workers. We must go beyond the temptation to fill quotas or establish arbitrary diversity requirements. What is required is a deeper dive into our (often entrenched) culture to identify what we have traditionally considered the hallmarks of potential leadership, and the development of a greater understanding of the perspectives and experiences that women bring to the table. We must think long and hard about what our organization needs for success and align its priorities and strategic direction with the skills needed to carry them out. We must be willing to take a hard look at our structure and examine long-held practices that have resulted in a historical male-dominated hierarchy. And then we must be willing to invest the time, energy, and resources to follow through with training, mentorship, and coaching for promising leaders-to-be, regardless of gender. Inclusion is a buzz word that has worked its way into stated hiring practices and employment statistics. But it’s not a word to be tossed casually into the company narrative without developing a true understanding of what it means and how it informs the decision-making process and becomes embedded in the culture. Only then can an organization’s top leadership embark on a courageous agenda of change. Companies must ensure gender diversity at all levels and in all areas, not just those most visible to external audiences. Same-sex role models are crucial for emerging women leaders. Differences in leadership are socio-culturally driven; it doesn’t make sense for women to try to mold themselves in the image of male bosses or colleagues. They must have the opportunity to see members of their own sex successfully wield their unique skills and experiences for the benefit of both the organization and their own future. Women’s career aspirations are too often suppressed when they see only men in positions of leadership, experiences that reinforce a long history of discrimination and intrinsic favoritism that has thwarted the advancement of women at all levels for generations. We have a long road ahead of us in our struggle to balance the leadership scales for women. We must, at the highest and deepest levels of our organizations, develop a laser focus on equity—equity of opportunity, and equity of pay. At our current rate, we have decades of needed growth before us. Research projects that white women won’t achieve pay equal to white men until 2055, while, not surprisingly, black women face an even more daunting challenge; their pay equity won’t equal that of white men until 2119, almost a century from now. There will always be differences between women and men—distinctions that can influence their leadership skills. But employers are missing the boat if they focus on those differences as filters for identifying future leaders and providing the training and mentorship opportunities that can lead the way up the organizational ladder. Women don’t need “fixing” any more than men do. What needs fixing is our organizations themselves.