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Do You Zoom Out to Recharge?

Trigger Question #6

You’ve been under a lot of stress lately. Admit it. And admit that your role comes with built-in stress. Being on a pyramid, middle and up-wards, might give you a better view, but it seldom gives you a lighter load.

Stress is heavy. And in today's topsy-turvy environment, much of that heaviness comes not only from the workload but also from the emotional overload. (Social distancing - thanks to ongoing lingering virus lessons - does not stop your colleagues and employees coming much, much closer with their feelings, demands, fears, issues, insecurities, phobias, beliefs and even hopes - thanks to culture and political hostilities).

There are ways to deal with a heavy workload, but we have few tools to help us cope with emotional overload at work. Hence, the growing risk of burnout. Unless we recharge regularly.

So, what do you do to recharge?

You know it’s nonsense that you can’t leave your job for a well-deserved rest. But you don't take time off, do you? It’s plain stupid not to see the need to recharge your batteries. Even your laptop knows that!

Thanks to virtual meetings, we know you can zoom out just as easily as you can zoom in. It's your choice. The problem is that your role as manager has conditioned you to zoom in. To act, to make things happen, to get to the details, to fix things. This habitual zooming in will drain you.

You should zoom out more often. Even regularly. Zooming out gives you a bigger picture and offers you different perspectives. It's like seeing the forest while taking a break from identifying trees.

Here’s the leadership catch. If you are effective at dealing with individual trees because you naturally zoom in, your bosses will never consider you for promotion, for the opportunity to take care of the entire forest. Because you don’t show that you can zoom out when it’s needed.

Specifically, you don’t show you understand that zooming away from the daily details will recharge you. And you don’t show that zooming out to expand your vision will recharge your team and even your organization.

Instead, unlike your phone, you show a rash predisposition to run on empty.

Welcome to my side of the nonsense divide.

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I boost careers by helping people deal with the nonsense of pleasing a boss, playing nice with colleagues, making subordinates productive, and living a life. Read more​

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