I see a pattern with leaders of high-performing teams: they are laser-focused on resourcing and empowering their people to do their best work AND ensuring they are happy in their work. Which seems great, until you realise that most leaders don’t offer themselves the same opportunity.
Challenges become blockers
They neglect their own happiness, usually with the deferral excuse: “Once I support the team through this challenge, then I’ll take a minute for myself”.
Except this challenge becomes the next challenge, which becomes the next one. That then becomes the next… you get the picture.
Suddenly it’s been 18 months since they had a moment of pure joy and fun.
And that, my friends, is the pathway to burnout.
Leaders sometimes need a reminder that they are human too. That they need rest, play, and time to lean into the “strange things that make [their] weird little heart happy”, to paraphrase Liz Gilbert.
That’s why almost every workshop I deliver has some kind of game, puzzle, or creative activity. This helps take leaders away from the serious business of caring for others and building the business, and gives them time and space to drop their shoulders, breathe, and laugh together.
Have I faced opposition for this approach? You betcha! One senior leader told me a board member questioned the value of my work because their people were “laughing too much” in our sessions. Later on, that same board member called them one of the strongest leadership teams they’d ever seen. The leader let them know that it was because of the laughing-too-much work that they’d become such a cohesive, aligned, high-performing team.
And that’s a pattern I see over and over. When leadership teams make space in the pace to come together and be humans first, leaders second, the results follow.
Play isn’t something for other people. It’s one of the most powerful tools in a leader’s toolkit. Because play reconnects us to our humanity, opens our creative channels, and delivers jolts of joy that make life feel worthwhile.
When was the last time you leaned into one of the strange things that makes your weird little heart happy? If it’s been a while, why not schedule some time for it this week?
