"Affirm Yourself"

Photo by Katrina Wright on Unsplash

Greetings -

I hope you, your families and friends are well! My wife had the great pleasure of a short visit with our daughter in Utah this past weekend. They had a ball! I had the great pleasure of watching it rain all weekend here in Healdsburg, as I prepared for professional development coursework that I continue to find fascinating :) More to come on that in the coming weeks.

This edition's reading and listening focuses on the themes of self-care, boundary management and how to develop effective ways to better manage ourselves. There is quite an eclectic range of thoughts and points of view to consider.

As always, happy reading and listening! 

Be well, take good care of your families and community. 

-kj

PS - (Missed a newsletter? Past editions can be found here: https://www.kevinjordan.coach/blog. And if you hit paywall on an article(s), feel free to send me a note and let me know what you need. I have subscriptions to many of the sources that I cite.)

Featured: How to Sustain Your Empathy in Difficult Times by Jamil Zaki

As our work landscape continues to evolve, so too has the role of leaders and what it means to successfully lead in today's workplace. Leaders are expected to leverage the power of our digitized environments to innovate, transform and strategically execute. They are required to exude agility, inspire discretionary effort and facilitate deliberate and sustained shifts in power, skills and structure. Service oriented, team-centered and coaching-focused, leaders must be empathetic, active listeners who cultivate exceptional team experiences. 

Faced with unremitting professional and personal demands, increased pressures and expectations and anxiety about the future, leaders and their teams are struggling to mitigate burnout, exhaustion and entropy as they navigate these many demands. The questions are not what are the issues; rather, they are how best to address them. And, am I enough?

Separating the signal from the noise is paramount to finding appropriate, specific paths to restoration and rejuvenation contextualized to our unique circumstances. In doing so, we have the opportunity to shift our current mental models of work-life interconnectivity. Most importantly, we can then create the space and energy to reframe our approach to establishing new, positive and sustainable changes.

As Zaki notes, "our tumultuous times have saturated organizations with anxiety and exhaustion. Employees of all types are burned out and desperately need empathy from their leaders. But leaders are burned-out too, and may feel as if they’re pouring from an empty cup. Fortunately, through the right practices—self-compassion, empathic tuning, and building healthy habits of mind—managers and employees alike can make their empathy sustainable. These practices are key to becoming the leaders most of us aspire to be."

Articles 

Harvard Business Review: How to Be a Purpose Driven Leader Without Burning Out. "Servant leadership brought us to a more compassionate, human-centered work environment. It’s time for us to make the next leap. In today’s environment, burned-out leaders endlessly trying to serve will struggle to drive the innovation, resilience, and sense of meaning required for future growth. Elevating the lens to noble-purpose leadership has the power to unite employees and managers in the pursuit of making a difference."

Harvard Business Review: Why We Glorify Overwork and Refuse to Rest. "Given how much overwork is rewarded in our culture, it’s reasonable to expect some anxiety to arise when you give yourself time to rest and renew. Rather than racing back to work, see if you can simply sit a little longer with those feelings. The more you can simply observe the part of you that’s anxious, the more you’ll discover it isn’t all of who you are. Your worst fears about not working won’t come true, and your capacity for non-doing will progressively grow. When it comes to combating burnout and mitigating workaholism, even a little self-care goes a long way."

Harvard Business Review: How to Fix Your Company’s Culture of Overwork. "The research is clear. Work cultures that enable overwork are suboptimal. The Covid-19 pandemic was a major development in our realization that the work devotion schema may need adjusting. The success of four-day workweek trials was another. More and more organizations see the value of changing their workaholic culture. You can, too. No more excuses."

Psychology Today: To Eat, Perchance To Sleep. "When you eat, perhaps as much as what you eat, has a direct impact on sleep and wake cycles set by the brain."

Harvard Business Review: Don’t Underestimate the Power of Small Breaks During a Busy Workday. "Many people operate from the belief that there’s too much to do and they can’t afford to pause during their workday. But taking effective breaks is essential to preventing burnout."

Harvard Business Review: The Restorative Power of Small Habits. "Increasing daily resilience not only helps with everyday well-being, it also helps leaders stay effective in crisis situations because it builds the skills to be mindful of their energy and methods to keep it at optimal levels."

Blog Posts & Opinions

Seth's Blog: Boyle's Law. "One way to change the pressure of work is to expand or contract the size of the container that holds it. It’s a trap to embrace a productivity shortcut that isn’t a shortcut at all–simply more time spent."

Ryan Holiday's Blog: The Indiscipline of Overwork. "Moderation. Being present. Knowing your limits. This is the key. This takes just as much discipline as pushing yourself hard. The body that each of us has is a gift...Protect the gift."

Mentor Lead: Not For Me...Rethinking Boundaries. "Ultimately, communicating a boundary – even as simple as 'not for me' – fuels self-respect."

Psychology Today: What's Holding You Back? Wish yourself good morning, celebrate, and touch water. "How to manage the mental fatigue of nonstop overload."

Podcasts

HBR IdeaCast: When Small Stresses Lead to Big Problems. "...Sometimes the stresses that cause the most hurt are the tiny, everyday ones that build up over time into a much bigger problem because we don't take the time to recognize and manage our reactions to them. Former HBR editor Karen Dillon and Babson College professor Rob Cross studied the most common types of 'microstress' and the ways in which they impact individuals, teams, and organizations. They explain why, if left unchecked, microstress can lead to mistakes, burnout, damaged relationships, and poor mental and physical health. But they also offer advice for better handling it -- and helping others to do the same."

Freakonomics Radio Network: No Stupid Questions. How Can You Be Kinder to Yourself? "How do you practice self-care if you don’t have time for a break? Is it weird to talk to yourself? And does Mike need a bag of Doritos — or just a hug?"

WorkLife with Adam Grant: The Science of Recharging on Weekends and Vacations. "Many people don’t use all their paid time off from work — and struggle to relax and recover on nights and weekends too. What does it take to make our breaks more restorative? Adam examines the evidence on recovery and burnout, explores how workplaces can reimagine vacation policies, and highlights what kinds of hobbies are best suited to different times of day."

TED: The Way We Work: How rest can make you better at your job. "Yes, you need to take breaks at work. Not only is resting good for your brain — it might even make you more creative."

WorkLife with Adam Grant: You have more control over your emotions than you think with Lisa Feldman Barrett. "Emotions are like opinions — everyone has them...We know that it’s possible to transform our feelings by changing how we think and talk about them...In this episode, Lisa and Adam bust myths about how emotions are constructed in the brain and experienced in the body. They discuss the surprising evidence that language doesn’t just describe emotions — it shapes them. And they examine how managing your emotions is easier than you may realize."

Arts, Music, Culture & Humor Corner

The Atlantic: A Trove of ‘Lost Basquiats’ Led to a Splashy Exhibition. Then the FBI Showed Up. "Why is it so hard to root out fakes and forgeries?"

The New York Times: Michael Stipe Is Writing His Next Act. Slowly. "How do you reinvent yourself after being a global superstar? The former R.E.M. frontman is still figuring that out."

The New York Times: Does Portland Need a Soho House? (Does It Even Want One?). "The status-conscious social club has landed in the Pacific Northwest’s crunchiest city. Some locals wonder: Why?"

The New Yorker (David Sedaris): How to Eat a Tire in a Year. "Walking and talking with my friend Dawn."

Reflections

“The planet does not need more successful people, but it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind.”~ David Orr

“It is neither work nor play, purpose nor purposelessness that satisfies us. It is the dance between.”~ Bernard de Koven

"There is a connection between freedom and self-confidence: When you are kept from expressing your deepest needs and wishes, you lose trust in their validity and in your own judgment. You survive by finding out the rules and following them, thus hiding what you really want. You make it your purpose in life to please others rather than to affirm yourself." ~ David Richo