7 Ideas To Fight Leadership Fatigue

This is a kingdom talk as well as a cultural transformation talk.  Mental exhaustion hits us all in some way or another.  The important thing is what do you turn to or do to keep you sane or to find some comfort and release?

7 Ideas to Fight Leadership Fatigue
Now,  here are some useful ideas to help you fight leadership fatigue:

1. Create an Artifact to Remind Yourself Daily of Your Real Purpose. The daily challenges in our organizations/ministries can be all consuming. Chasing the urgent consumes much of our time and the urgent-unimportant has a way of filling any openings. An exercise I’ve used for years now to help leaders, pastors, ministers remind themselves is to develop and make visible their own personal leader’s purpose/mission. A simple morning re-read of this framed purpose hanging on the wall or sitting on a shelf provides a powerful reminder of your real role and the opportunity you have to build others, equip others and your business or organization with every single encounter in the upcoming day.

2. Cultivate a Beginner’s Mind. Approaching issues by suspending judgment and seeking first to understand is a remarkable way to change the tone and tenor of every day. Beginners learn to ask questions and viewing people and teams and challenges from a fresh perspective can lead to an inner calm and a perpetual journey of discovery. The wisest leaders I’ve worked around understand that with every person and every day they are beginners. Be willing to learn.

3. Keep it in Context. Remember, you have the privilege of helping people and helping your employees or members every single day. Each day is a blank canvas that you get to fill-in with positive encounters, helpful ideas and productive interactions. Problems and issues represent opportunities to serve and to teach. Recognizing and reminding yourself of this privilege of serving helps to tame the stress.

 4. Engage in the Moment—One Encounter at a Time. Instead of focusing on the noise and heat that you expect to encounter every day, reign in your focal point to the person, group or issue immediately in front of you. Much of our angst is over the expectation of what will happen. The act of focusing on what’s happening in the moment versus boiling the ocean of uncertainty over what may happen or what’s happening in the background is liberating. You get to create the future one controllable moment at a time. Trust God!

5. Get a Mentor. I love the idea to of a great mentor for all of the wonderful wisdom they bring to our issues and they provide the help for us to see ourselves and our situations with a level of clarity that we are unable to gain on our own. Great mentors peel back the layers of complexity and help us identify our core problematic and strength-based issues and then they give us a push (or sometimes a kick) in pursuit of resolving or strengthening around those issues.

6. Manufacture “You” Time. Finding time to think deeply about what you are doing and what you need to do is priceless. Our always-on world and our omnipresent devices don’t make this easy. Something as simple as 15 minutes of reading (in your profession, in your discipline, pure escapism… whatever) gives your brain both a much needed stress rest and a jolt of energy and creativity.

7. Don’t Be Afraid to Push the Eject Button. While it may sound like I’m suggesting you give up, there are absolutely circumstances where enough is enough. I tripped and stumbled a bit with my own eject activity, however, I would do the same thing all over again. The transition helped me refuel and regain much needed context. Importantly, it set the stage for some of my life’s best work. Sometimes a new adventure is just what the spirit needs to revitalize. Of course let it be a peace within and a leading from God.


No Need to Suffer in Silence
Here’s what I’m saying….  I’ve encountered too many people suffering in silence in their roles responsible for others. Nothing good comes of this martyrdom…for you for or for those around you.
Pick a strategy to recharge…try a variety of approaches until something works or, cultivate the courage to go do something else. The only mistake is to stay locked in irons, making yourself and everyone around you miserable.
Leading others is too important to be left to someone out of gas and out of heart. Given our challenges in this world, we need all the leadership energy and heart we can muster.


Blessings,
Cultural Transformation Network


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