Burnout is a persistent workplace issue that doesn’t seem to be going away, despite being talked about for decades. In a recent webinar from agile42, coaches Regina Martins and Pascal Papathemelis tackled this thorny problem head-on.
They shared personal stories illustrating how burnout can manifest in very different ways depending on the individual, team, and organizational context. For one person, it was a toxic manager-employee relationship that led to alienation, lack of motivation, and eventually quitting. For another, it was being promoted into a leadership role without proper support, training, or boundaries – leading to overwork and disillusionment.
While the stories were different, some common themes emerged around causes like chronic busyness, constant firefighting, and mismatched needs around factors like status, autonomy, and relatedness. The coaches highlighted the importance of self-awareness to spot warning signs in yourself, such as lack of motivation, journaling feelings, or mapping what provides a sense of fulfillment. Read more
Yesterday’s Solutions No Longer Solve Today’s Problems
/in LeadershipOur approach to work and the demands regarding ‘the job’ have fundamentally changed in recent years. Traditional methods, consulting services, and training programs heavily relied on personal interactions and hands-on participation. In our new world of remote and hybrid work environments, we need a new mindset and a commitment to innovative solutions to address both familiar and new challenges. Read more
Burnout: A Persistent Workplace Challenge
/in CultureBurnout is a persistent workplace issue that doesn’t seem to be going away, despite being talked about for decades. In a recent webinar from agile42, coaches Regina Martins and Pascal Papathemelis tackled this thorny problem head-on.
They shared personal stories illustrating how burnout can manifest in very different ways depending on the individual, team, and organizational context. For one person, it was a toxic manager-employee relationship that led to alienation, lack of motivation, and eventually quitting. For another, it was being promoted into a leadership role without proper support, training, or boundaries – leading to overwork and disillusionment.
While the stories were different, some common themes emerged around causes like chronic busyness, constant firefighting, and mismatched needs around factors like status, autonomy, and relatedness. The coaches highlighted the importance of self-awareness to spot warning signs in yourself, such as lack of motivation, journaling feelings, or mapping what provides a sense of fulfillment. Read more
The Great Resignation
/in LeadershipWhat is the Great Resignation?
The term Great Resignation defines the elevated rate at which employees started to voluntarily quit their jobs beginning in early 2021: during that year more than 40 million people left their jobs in the United States alone. Management professor Anthony Klotz coined the term and then a number of other names came to describe the same trend: the Great Renegotiation, the Great Reshuffle, the Great Rethink. Klotz believes that the rise of hybrid and remote work helped cause the phenomenon; he says: “How we spent our time before the pandemic may not be how we want to spend our time after.” And it hasn’t affected everyone equally: women have been more affected by the Great Resignation than men, and younger age groups more than older ones.
CONTINUE READINGLeadership Styles
/in LeadershipGreat leadership is, at its core, the ability to master multiple leadership styles to be able to adopt the one that fits the specific context and the team’s expectations. Because of the dependence on context, expectations and relationships, there are no leadership behaviors that are inherently positive or negative. It is more helpful to describe leadership behaviors as either more or less helpful within a specific situation. The way the leadership behavior is perceived by those affected is important in a given cultural context.
Being an effective leader does not mean using a coaching leadership style in every circumstance since this can be unhelpful, (or even harmful) in certain situations. An example is a crisis situation, or working with a team of people that expect clear directives. In both of these examples, a leader using a directive or demanding style can be a gold example of servant leadership. This is because they are intentionally adopting that behavior in a specific moment in the service of empowering them to be better and more autonomous.
Read moreLeadership in Today’s World
/in LeadershipIn the fast-changing environment of our modern world, building and maintaining a thriving organization is a huge challenge, no matter if the company is big or small. It’s always been necessary for managers and leaders to understand the business very well, but today there are new challenges too. Organizations need to be adaptable, innovative, and engaging for people. To be successful in the new environment, a leader not only needs to learn a lot, but unlearn a lot too. There are new and different behaviors, skills and tools needed to nurture successful teams and organizations. This is where an agile approach to leadership can make a meaningful impact.
Read moreEmotional Intelligence in the Workplace
/in OrganizationDaniel Goleman was the first to popularize the idea of emotional intelligence and demonstrate evidence of its impact within organizations. He passionately argued for recognizing the relationship between someone’s emotional state and the actions driven by it, and how those actions in turn impact others and the organization (essentially the people they work with), whether positively or negatively.
Read moreServant leadership
/in LeadershipThe future of work has arrived faster than we could have imagined in our post-pandemic world. One of the defining characteristics of this modern workplace is a shift away from traditional decision-making hierarchies. In today’s workplace, it makes more sense for decisions to be made by those individuals closest to the problem at hand. Teams are self-managed, meaning they decide what to work on, when to work on it, and how to best achieve the requested outcome. This shift comes with new demands on leadership, and effective leaders cultivate the values of servant leadership.
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