Skillful Efforting to Achieve Leadership Success
Create a realistic work-life balance in the context of leadership and project management to achieve optimal performance and success. Apply it to your own life and influence those who work for and with you.
Leadership boils down to the ability to cultivate a positive mindset, relate well with others, and make effective decisions. To sustain a dynamic work-life balance requires all three.
What is the mindset that promotes optimal balance?
In a recent article, Jerry Seinfeld is quoted:
“It’s a very Zen Buddhist concept: Pursue mastery. That will fulfill your life. You will feel good.
The problem is, that developing a skill takes time and effort. Mastering a skill takes considerable time and effort, not all of it — or even most of it — enjoyable. ”
He recommends that you “Make ‘Did I get my work in?‘ your favorite question to ask yourself, and while you may not achieve every goal you set out to accomplish, you will definitely accomplish a lot more.” 1
The mindset here is 1) to expect to make an effort to get what you want and 2) that the way you make the effort makes a great difference in the way you and others feel and the outcome of your work.
Working Hard
In Working Hard but Not Too Hard I wrote
“Working hard is applying a high level of effort, being consistently focused, productive, and effective, and applying emotional, physical, and intellectual energy. Working hard is rewarding, it leads to personal and organizational success.”2 https://www.projecttimes.com/articles/working-hard-but-not-too-hard/
As wise individuals in our roles as performers, leaders, and managers, we recognize that hard work is necessary to develop skills and accomplish goals. Of course, working smart is highly valued, but it is not a replacement for working hard.
Overdoing It
We also recognize that we can overdo it. We can become so obsessed with succeeding that we forget our personal wellness and the wellness of those who are affected by our behavior. We work too hard.
If we work too hard, we get tired, disengaged, and less effective. If we miss the signs that we or our team is working too hard, stress levels increase, quality suffers, and we enter a spiral that does not end well.
Self and Other Awareness
This is where self-awareness and awareness of others come into play.
“Self-awareness is the ability to “step back” and observe yourself objectively to know your behavior, motivations, feelings, values, and desires. It is knowing your personality and the way you display it in your life.” 3 https://www.projecttimes.com/articles/self-awareness-a-critical-capability-for-project-managers-d23/
An effective leader is aware of how others – for example, your team members, clients, boss, significant others, and peers – are doing. Are they excited, motivated, and in the best shape to get the mission accomplished? Are they slowing down, or getting tired? Or are they past that stage and exhibiting the symptoms of over-work?
The Symptoms
The symptoms of overwork are easy to spot – more arguments and emotionality, an increase in errors, absenteeism, and lower productivity are the most common.
The quicker you see the symptoms, in yourself and others, the better. Catching overwork early gives you the ability to apply the least amount of effort to remedy it. Avoiding it is best.
Skillful Effort
The way you make the effort makes a great difference in the way you and others feel and the outcome of your work.
Ideally, the effort is effortless. As in Flow where skills and experience come together to perform optimally as if there was no one doing it. When that is not the case, be aware of tendencies to over or under-effort. The Buddha compared skillful effort to tuning a stringed instrument. Too loose, poor sound quality. Too tight, a broken string.
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Avoiding Overwork
Avoiding and remedying overwork begins with recognizing and acknowledging it. It can be avoided by consciously addressing it as an issue when planning and scheduling.
The more people are aware of the issue of overwork, the better. Make work-life balance a topic in team building. Acknowledge the degree to which there is an expectation of 24-7 availability. Will there be tight deadlines that lead to overtime? What are expectations about weekend work, and vacations?
Also acknowledge the influences of poor planning, cultural norms, personality issues like workaholism and perfectionism, and fear to push back against unrealistic demands.
When expectations are explicitly stated people can be better prepared and more accepting of what happens. Expecting a 9 to 5 arrangement and having 24-7 demands come as a surprise is likely to result in disruption at home and work.
If your project is going to require working intensively, build in practices that enable that kind of work – stress management techniques, breaks, meals, comfortable working conditions, a sense of camaraderie and adventure, and recognition when it is time for a rest.
If one intense project is followed quickly by another, beware of burnout. Take a lesson from extreme sports teams, there is an off-season for R and R, and the players get massaged and conditioned during the season.
Schedule realistically. You can add optimism to your mindset but consider it an aspiration. Hope for the best, plan for the most likely, and be ready for the worst.
Remedying
If you have not avoided it, and you, your team, or other stakeholders are suffering the symptoms of overwork, acknowledge it and treat it as you would a physical injury or sickness. Acknowledge it, seek its causes, relieve the symptoms, and remove the causes. And most importantly, take good care of the patients.
As we have said, poor planning, cultural norms, personality issues like workaholism and perfectionism, and fear of pushing back against unrealistic demands may be the causes. Each situation is different. There may be no options to eliminate causes, so all you can do is minimize the impact of the symptoms. Sometimes the options are severe, like changing jobs.
What can you do to reduce the symptoms and maintain the kind of motivation that will fuel success? The minimum remedy to explicitly acknowledge what is going on. That alone will reduce stress and discord.
Then find ways to institute the same practices you might have planned for to avoid the situation. Implement breaks, meals, comfortable working conditions, morale building, and recognition when it is time for a rest. Negotiate schedule changes, additional (or fewer) resources, and other means fir reducing pressure.
Action
If efforting – doing the work – is an issue that needs to be addressed, bring it to the surface. Correct imbalances among expectations and realities with self-reflection and candid communication.
Implement practices to avoid over-efforting and make hard work as effective as possible while sustaining wellness. Avoid the expectation that you can get what you want without hard work.
Recognize the real-world nature of your situation. If intensive effort is a fact of life, make it known so that people can make decisions to join the fun or opt for a less intense environment. Assess all the factors (family, physical and psychological health, career, finance, etc.) from multiple perspectives, considering short, medium, and long-term impacts.
Then decide what to do, when, and how to do it.