The role of a leader is something of which meetings are an essential part – organising them, chairing them, being in them. At a certain point, it becomes a manager’s identity and a competitive advantage – whoever has the most meetings and missed lunches at the end of the week wins. For Midsummer, the winner is the one with the most signs of burnout.
I’ve heard time and again from aspiring leaders that their vision of leadership changed significantly after they became a leader. While until now the main role of a leader was thought to be to go to meetings and discuss things, when you take on the role of a leader yourself, you realise that working with people’s emotions and relationships is much more important than it seems from a distance. But after working as a leader for a while, we start to recreate that same identity of the meeting-goer. We become human doing and our human being fades away. We hide who we really are behind what I do, know, own, achieve and what others think of me. We lose our self-awareness, and as leaders, we also fail to help others realise their best potential by engaging and investing deeply in them.
The reference to meetings is not accidental. Meetings are just one form of being constantly busy . It has become an identity in its own right. If you don’t have enough on your plate as a leader, or you’re not in all the information circuits, or you haven’t been to enough performance reporting meetings, then you’re not really a leader.
The more management levels up, the more information there is ‘down’ that could be on the manager’s desk. Increasingly, your manager, owner or board of directors is becoming more demanding about results.
But being fast is nothing more than recreating the recognition of others and the corporate culture that disturbs us. Why is it that we are distracted by corporate cultures and want a more human approach. But who are the people who work there? People, after all.
Take a moment and pause reading this post…
… take a piece of paper and a pencil …
… and finish the sentence: “I am… .”
Hopefully those who do read on, because they are in a hurry and don’t have time to take a moment, at least thought for a moment about what that word or phrase might be instead of the three dots. Mom? Isa? Driver? Sister? A dog owner? Happy? Team leader? Husband? In all likelihood, many of us came up with a different role for ourselves. But we ourselves have often disappeared behind that role.
Humans are said to be different from other species because they are self-aware. However, according to another argument, 98% of the thoughts in our heads are repetitive and automatic during the day. Perhaps we have lost self-awareness, and it makes sense. The human brain consumes around 600 calories a day, and the natural search for resource efficiency seeks to optimise energy consumption through automation. Thinking consumes energy (why else do final-year writers have more chocolate for 4-5 hours of writing than they eat in a few years?).
Being in a hurry and jumping from meeting to meeting (or opening a new Zoom/Teams link) also creates a sense of security. I know what that means and it’s always nice to talk to the other participants at the beginning of a small talk about how many meetings it is today and how many days are left until lunch. Still, it’s nice to win when I have more meetings (and less contact with myself)!
I propose that the competitive spirits start competing instead on who has taken up more space in their calendar. A space to get in touch with yourself and to develop new insights on how to contribute to the success of your team members and your organisation!
Leaders are (and are expected to be) innovation, change, new ideas and the development of the organisation and its people. But something new can only come when the old has been kicked to the curb. Perhaps if there is no time to create a vacuum, there is no chance for new ideas to replace old ones.
New things don’t come from thinking, new ideas and flashes of inspiration come from creating (meaningless?) time for yourself without thinking. Just the kind of time where you’re not afraid to lose your rush identity.
Tommy Hellstein has written: “Speed occurs when a person makes such choices that he or she cannot stop for a moment. If you don’t have to stop, you don’t have to deal with the emptiness of your life and the immaturity of yourself. The greater the feeling of harassment, the greater the momentum.”
It’s a paradox that the less you do, the more you get done – your ideas and insights from within yourself or your team are just so much brighter when they’re not thought up in meetings, but opportunities for unexpected discoveries are created. Unexpected events that require a leader to have the confidence and will to change.
If the non-change is painful enough, the change begins. I believe that there are many leaders today who are pained enough by not changing. If you’re tired at the end of the day or week, chances are you’ve done too much of something that doesn’t feel like you. The only way to get off the bike is to really take time for yourself. Be it alone or with like-minded people in an experience circle.
If you are yourself(human being versus human doing) and also help your team members to find themselves, you will achieve more than just meeting attendance rankings.
The article was published by the Innowis Training and Development Centre. website .
