Ep. 28: Calling All Leaders: Yes, It's You. You're Causing Your Team (and You) Unrest

In this episode, "Calling All Leaders: Yes, It's You. You're Causing Your Team (and You) Unrest," host Dana Tenille Weekes talks about how work environments are breeding grounds for burnout and performative practices.

Dana calls in (not out) leaders to assess how they show up and the impact they make by walking through five approaches leaders take that cause unrest within their teams (and within themselves).

What You'll Settle Into

• Five approaches leaders adopt that cause unrest: (1) You do not model the standards you demand; (2) You recognize people's strengths, but fail to recognize their inherent value; (3) You say "yes" without understanding or recognizing the skills and competencies, time, resources, and cognitive load of your team; (4) You share with your team, but fail to communicate with them; and (5) You act as if your title is magical.

Key Quotes / Insights

• "Honestly, for my non-profit leaders out there ... too many of you claim you're fighting for the people, when you're actually shadow boxing. This is due to the normalization of performative culture that sacrifices the communities we are supposed to serve."
• When leaders' behaviors are inconsistent or contradictory, the line drawn is not one of respect and accountability but of likability (or worse, an us vs. them culture), because team members get to choose what to gravitate toward. And, often, people gravitate toward what they like, what is familiar, what makes them comfortable.
• "I would say the number one sign that your team is at the brink of burnout or beyond is when they believe leadership does not recognize their inherent value." 
• When most of your team continuously lacks skills and competencies, there are no true standards to meet. And, when standards are absent, what often fills the void is a patchwork mindset, rather than a problem-solving or creation mindset.
• A team is destined for burnout when they are stuck in crisis mode, but the crisis never needed to exist. In doing so, leaders create a reactive culture, which means team members will eventually be reactive toward your leadership as well.
• "Too many leaders either want to be seen or work toward a brand because they have advanced into leadership based more on relationships, association, and popularity. They've relied on others to achieve real results and often claim credit or exaggerate their role."

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Host, Dana Tenille Weekes

Editor, Sagheer Muhammad

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Often, when leaders' behaviors are inconsistent, contradictory, the line drawn is not one of respect but of likability, or worse, an us versus them culture. Because team members get to choose what to gravitate toward. And often, people gravitate toward what they like, what is familiar, what makes them comfortable? Respect for leadership and eventually the work becomes an afterthought, and unrest and performative practices now reign. Are you exhausted, on the brink of burnout, or beyond? Losing yourself to work, the demands of loved ones, and this dizzy world? Hello, I'm Dana Teneal Weeks, and on the Rest of Us Podcast, we hold conversations, challenge the norms of self-care, and laugh together to help you navigate your life where you embrace rest as liberation. Join us. Welcome to the Rest of Us Podcast, where we explore rest as a form of liberation as a community. I am your host, Dana Teneal Weeks. In this episode titled Calling All Leaders, Yes, it's you, you're causing your team and you unrest. I'm going to explore just that. See, the reason why is because burnout is real. And what's so real about it is that the World Health Organization calls burnout a workplace phenomenon, meaning that workplaces and their leaders drive burnout and must be responsible for addressing it. And the thing is, these very same workplaces have all these great perks. So you've heard about it, dinners for their team members, wellness days, fun retreats, rides home. But let's be honest, these perks mean nothing when at the core, teams are being faced with leaders who just cannot lead. Leaders who undermine my definition of professionalism, which is owning the truth and its responsibilities with the necessary skills and competencies, deep sense of care, and at the pace required. So, for purposes of today's episode, I want to explore truths some leaders are just unwilling to face that are causing unrest and are missing, truly missing the mark on my definition of professionalism. And here's why. What we're experiencing present day is what I call a pandemic, in which workplace environments are not ecosystems, but they're really breeding ground for our burnout and also our performative practices and our and outcomes. And while this is true for the corporate world, I'm going to be honest with you, it is also very, very, very, very, very true for the nonprofit world. Honestly, for my nonprofit leaders out there, I felt compelled to create this episode with more urgency because sadly, sadly, too many of you claim you're fighting for the people when actually all you are doing is shadow boxing. And this is due to what I call the normalization of performative culture that sacrifices the communities we are actually supposed to serve. So, what I'll talk about today is just the tip of the iceberg of this topic. In fact, I work with leaders and organizations to shift workplaces from burnout to thriving ecosystems. And what I can tell you is this the intent of this episode is not for you to find the solution. But the intent of this episode is for you to assess how you show up and how you make impact when you lead. So if anything in this episode feels like a message or mirror, share it with someone who is looking to think about rest differently. Let's settle in. So today I will share five approaches leaders are taking that are causing their team and also them unrest. And so the first one is this you do not model the standards you demand, not simply ask for. Again, number one is you do not model the standards you demand, not simply ask for. There are a few things here I want to unpack. One, forget all the keywords I just shared with you for a quick, quick minute. So forget model, forget standards. Let's just focus on the word demand for a moment. As a leader, when you demand something, you are not simply making a request. You are actually telling your team that an action or outcome is necessary. It must happen sooner rather than later. But here's the thing. Here's the catch with demanding something, especially standards. What you deem necessary and immediate for your team, you have got to. You have got to make that very same thing necessary and immediate for you to model. So if you demand that your team be responsive to emails that same day, then you've got to be responsive to email that same day too. Now, when I say this, I can hear some of you say that you have different responsibilities. Dana, I have different responsibilities and demands than my team. And so I can't always model these things. The thing is, modeling is simply the consistent behaviors you show your team, not tell your team. So if you typically model team standards, if that is your norm, when you can't, when moments pop up, there may be a crisis, there may be something going on in your personal life. So when you can't, your team easily views that behavior as an outlier of your leadership instead of labeling your leadership inconsistent or contradictory. I want to emphasize that I'm focusing on modeling because the lack of modeling by leaders is one of the primary factors driving burnout and performative team practices. And this is because what you model defines. It draws a clear accountability line in a work ecosystem. You show your team rather than tell your team how they must perform. And when the accountability line is clearly defined, that means the line of respect is drawn to. Often, when leaders' behaviors are inconsistent, contradictory, the line drawn is not one of respect, but of likability, or worse, an us versus them culture. Because team members get to choose what to gravitate toward. And often people gravitate toward what they like, what is familiar, what makes them comfortable. Respect for leadership and eventually the work becomes an afterthought, and unrest and performative practices now reign. So with that, I'm gonna move to the second approach that is causing you and your team unrest as a leader. And that is number two. You recognize people's strengths, but fail to recognize their inherent value. I think there has been a movement to have people rethink feedback as both constructive criticism and positive reinforcement, which is a movement I support. But here's the thing: when looking at the drivers of burnout, I would say the number one telltale sign that your team is at the brink of burnout or beyond, is when they believe leadership does not recognize their inherent value. There are studies on this that I talk about in my workshops. The reason I bring this up is that when you recognize someone's strengths but tie them to productivity, like you build over 2,000 hours or you cultivated 10 relationships, people still feel as if their inherent value is not being recognized. When recognizing someone's inherent value, what you are recognizing is how the person does the work with integrity and efficacy. You don't attach the person to the result. So, for example, you bring a critical analysis lens to all the advising you do, or here's another example, you have a way of connecting with people that builds trust with you. So, with that, I'm going to transition to the third approach that is causing you and your team unrest as a leader. And that is number three. You say yes without understanding or recognizing the skills and competencies, time, resources, and cognitive load of your team. I'll say that again. Number three is you say yes without understanding or recognizing the skills and competencies, the time, the resources, and the cognitive load of your team. For this episode, I will primarily focus on skills and competencies and also cognitive load. Sometimes we as leaders get a dopamine hit from saying yes to a client or a customer or community or a funder, or honestly, when an opportunity presents itself, that hit to say yes, that rush to say yes so quickly. And that dopamine hit shows up as excitement that drives an immediate yes without considering the present moment and your team's dynamic. When you say yes as a leader without understanding the dynamics by which your team is functioning currently in the present day, you're doing two things here. One, you're creating the possibility of dependency, or you're two, you're creating a performative team. And quite frankly, I see it often that when you say yes, you're actually doing both. Here are a few reasons why. One, your team as a whole, as a whole, is only capable of what your team is only capable of. Let me say that again. Your team as a whole is only capable of what your team is only capable of. A lot of this boils down to you being realistic and understanding your team's skills and competencies. And most leaders, I hate to say this, severely underestimate their team's skills and competencies, or, or they overestimate their team's skills and competencies. And so for this episode, for the sake of time, because I think we're going to talk a lot in this episode. So for this episode, I'm going to focus on the latter. If you keep saying yes to opportunities that require skills and competencies that most of your team members do not have, all the work will likely fall on one or two people. Likely the same one or two people that all the work always falls on. Remember when I talked about inherent value and its relationship to burnout? Imagine how these one or two folks feel. And as a leader, don't wonder. I know many of you wonder if they will burn out. That's not the question you should be asking yourself. In fact, you shouldn't be asking if anyone is burning out, if you know you are contributing to their burnout. You should be asking, what do I need to do about it? But as a leader, I don't want you to wonder if they will burn out. I want you to start asking the question of when they will burn out, because it's inevitable, it will happen. And this leads to my second point: creating a performative team. When most of your team continuously lacks skills and competencies, there are now no true standards to meet. And when standards are absent, what often fills the void is a patchwork mindset rather than a problem solving or a creation mindset. In a patchwork mindset, team members will do what is directly in front of them or only what is asked. That's it. They assume that their role is to hear, not listen, but to hear and just do the thing, as opposed to listen, process, and take responsibility for how their role moves the work forward. Not just what is in front of them, but how their role, how their responsibilities must move the work forward. They only seek results without understanding the impact and experience those results entail. And when someone approaches their work with a patchwork mindset, they don't grow. They don't even become stagnant. They actually regress because they are failing to use judgment and exercise discernment, which is necessary to transition from having a skill to a competency. And let me be honest, it is these folks who seek to advance the most and are the loudest. They are the squeakiest wheels because they measure themselves based on busyness and not impact, frequency and not growth, done and not complete, fixing and not problem solving. They are the folks who point to the fires, but often they are the ones who start them. And when people are allowed to operate in this way, your team culture becomes performative because the focus is on results that may be seen as immediate wins, but they do not advance your organization's mission long term. Okay, so now that I'm looking at my notes, I've realized I've gone a little too far, a little too long about talking about skills and competencies. So, for the sake of time, let me briefly talk about leaders' need to understand people's cognitive load. If your team is overloaded and overworked, they will slow down. They have to. They're human beings, they will slow down, and the work's efficacy will suffer because you do not account for their cognitive load. Judgment and discernment, which are necessary to work with nuance, are eroded when you ignore each team member's cognitive load. So I often advise that each week team members share their capacity with the people they report to, including their cognitive load, in a way that honestly respects their privacy. It could be as simple as a number system that they can email, whereas one, I cannot take on another task, two, is I have a good amount of work, but I am in a position to take on one or more projects and still perform at a high level. Or three, I have the capacity to take on projects and perform at a high level. Let me be clear. Not solely because of their cognitive load, but because they do not have the requisite skills and competencies to work effectively. And you will need to note that to discern that. But I digress. So I'm going to transition to the fourth approach that is causing you and your team unrest as a leader. And that is number four. You share with your team, but you fail to communicate with your team. I'll say that again. Number four is you share with your team, but you fail to communicate with your team. Let me be honest. Most leaders share with their team and say they communicate. Here's the thing: sharing is not communicating. It's just not. Forwarding an email or having a brief conversation about what needs to be done is often sharing rather than communicating. But I see that this a lot in workplaces or work environments. There is so much to talk about related to this topic, to be honest. And while I do entire workshops on this topic and want to share everything with you now, I just can't for the sake of time. Maybe I will unpack this in future episodes. So here are just four undermining and unresting practices to reflect on to see whether you're a communicator or a sharer as a leader. The first practice. And for what that and for that reason, you never focus on a timeline. A deadline is the date by which a project must be completed. But, but a timeline is the set of stages by which you want the team to meet the deadline and the integrity and efficacy of how they did the work are maintained, meaning that what is created by the deadline has and preserves the integrity and efficacy. For example, a timeline could include clear actions for review, feedback, and deeper collaboration well before the deadline. So if you're only communicating deadlines, but you're not communicating timelines with your teams, that is an unresting practice. The second unresting practice as it relates to communication, everything is urgent. Everything. Everything is urgent or last minute when it doesn't have to be. Which means you don't often communicate with your team, you share. If everything is urgent or last minute, it reflects your inability to manage priorities as a leader or even discern priorities as a leader. A team is truly and honestly, I can't state this enough, a team is destined for burnout when they are not creating and innovating, but rather they are stuck in crisis mode where the crisis never needed to exist. In doing so, you're creating a reactive culture when everything becomes a crisis, which means team members will eventually be reactive towards your leadership as well. The third unresting practice is you do not communicate with your team because you do not make clear how the work fits into the organization or team's larger strategy, including what the opportunities are and also what's at stake, which leads to the fourth unresting practice that really builds on this one. You do not make the project's objectives clear. And what I mean by objectives are one, how work should be informed that maintains efficacy and integrity, two, what outcomes should be achieved, and three, how people impacted or served will experience the process or work. Okay. So for the sake of time, I'm going to end there with communication versus sharing. And I'm going to transition to the fifth and last approach that is causing you and your team unrest as a leader. And that is number five. You act as if your title is magical. Let me say it for the people in the back. Number five is you act as if your title is magical. I'll be honest, too many leaders either want to be seen or work towards a brand because they have advanced into leadership based more on relationships, association, and popularity. They've always relied on others to achieve real results and often claim credit or exaggerate their role in the results, those outcomes, those meaningful outcomes that have been achieved. So when it comes time to truly lead, these leaders cannot admit they are in over their heads. So here's what they do: they not only believe their titles warrant immediate respect and compliance from team members, but they also, one, build systems, workarounds that protect their leadership at the long term expense of the organization. And two, they expect people to be mind readers about what they want and how. And these leaders also expect people to constantly deliver on unreasonable requests because they truly do not understand what the work. Entails. I see this all the time. I see this all the time, especially in DC, the epicenter of so-called power, where people gravitate towards these quote power centers, but still don't know what the true meaning of power is. People come out of administrations, off Capitol Hill, or from prestigious organizations and firms, and expect that their association with dignitaries or recognizable brands and names immediately translates into leadership. I'm not saying this is true for everyone. I'm not saying that. But what I am saying is that there are far too many folks who have not advanced due, or who have advanced, I shouldn't say not, who have advanced due to association rather than qualification. And now they cannot lead, but expect their titles to do the magical work of making them leaders. People need to do the work. And what I have found is that when most leaders either one complain that it is their team that's the problem, they usually do not recognize that they themselves contribute greatly to the core problem. And two, too many leaders tend to overly focus on branding and marketing because they gravitate towards association, proximity to popularity or seeming power. And those results come quicker than actual problem solving, especially when serving communities. So, my friends, I think I have talked about all five. We've gone through all five approaches leaders, and I'm not saying that this is a comprehensive list just for today's episode. I gave you five approaches leaders are taking that are causing their team and also them unrest. Number one is you do not model the standards you demand, not simply ask for. Number two is you recognize people's strengths, but fail to recognize their inherent value. Number three is you say yes without understanding or recognizing the skills and competencies, time, resources, and cognitive load of your team. Number four is you share with your team, but you fail to communicate with them. And number five is you act as if your title is magical. Again, the intent of this episode is not for you to find the solution. That's not the intent of this episode. The intent really is to assess how you show up and the impact you make when you lead. So, which one of the five stung just a little bit, or maybe the most? I want you to sit with that one. Well, my friends, we are at the end of this episode. If anything in this episode felt like a message or mirror, share it with someone who is looking to think about rest differently. Before you go, this is a gentle reminder to download and listen to our new segment of the rest of us podcast, which we are calling Poetic Interlude. When a new episode of The Rest of Us is released, we'll also release two five to seven minute episodes featuring poets reading a poem and sharing with you a reflection prompt on rest. Each poetic interlude holds space, including reflection prompts, to remind us that creative expression is a portal to rest as liberation. This week, I'm so excited about this week. This week, one poetic interlude episode will feature Ramika Bingham Rischer reading, In my best dreams, they are on the water from her poetry book, Rune Swept Room. I love this book. And the second poetic interlude that I'm also excited about will feature Maylin Hong reading Harvest Moon with Wildfire. That is, Harvest Moon with Wildfire, from her forthcoming debut poetry collection, Continental Drift. Until next time, rest, my friends. Thank you for listening to this episode and being a part of the rest of us community. My friends, let's build a community together. Here are some ways. Subscribe and rate the Rest of Us Podcast five stars or the top rating and leave a comment a good one. I'm grateful for you doing so. Follow us on Instagram at therestofus.podcast and join us on Substack to read afterthoughts, where guests and I will share our thoughts on select episodes. Or visit therestofuspodcast.com for information on every episode, including reflection exercises, background on our guests, and of course, the poetic interlude. You can also sign up for the podcast club and the rest of us email list to stay in the know about upcoming virtual and in person events. Until next time, rest, my friends.