The end of the year is always busy, but leaders don’t have to be consumed by it. Patience and going slow can be more effective than manic multitasking.
There isn’t an official name for it, but I’ve considered early November to be the beginning of hurry-up-and-relax season. Holidays are coming, and with them welcome breaks with friends and family. But because those holidays are coming, everybody is hustling to get everything done. All the things you promised your staff, your board, and yourself that you’d have done “by the end of the year?” Now’s the time for that final push.
Something I’ve been thinking about this go-around: Lean a little more into the “relax” part of the equation. I’m not alone in advocating for that: Many experts emphasize the importance of calm, mindful leadership, from the Dalai Lama on down. But if you’re not moved by “wellness” as a concept, it’s worth noting that there’s a business case for being a less-stressed leader. A recent article in Fast Company points to a Stanford University study that found that overwork doesn’t move the needle: “Productivity declines when people work more than 50 hours a week. Even worse, working 70 hours or more a week causes the person to get the same amount of work done as people who work 55 hours.”
The article proposes instead that leaders become aware about both their time management skills and their inner stress. Meditation, breaks, and other forms of relaxation aren’t means of disengagement. Rather, author Michelle Gibbings writes, “mindfulness practices improve your ability to understand yourself, others, and the situation. Over time, they elevate your ability to maintain perspective amid uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity and better decide the way forward.”
Do less. Prioritize ruthlessly.
Brendan Reid
In a recent piece in the Globe and Mail, career coach Brendan Reid shared some similar advice, which involves not just carefully managing your time but also reframing how you think about work—and zealously guarding time to do that thinking. Multitasking is unquestionably a workplace skill, but Reid notes that successful leaders strive to keep their focus narrow in the moment. “Do less,” he writes. “Prioritize ruthlessly. Do one thing at a time and do it well. Focus on big wins. When you’re in a meeting, be fully engaged. Demand the same of your team members. Raise your standard for quality and lower your expectations for pace.”
That pressure, of course, is more acute during hurry-up-and-relax season, which does have a few other names: end-of-year burnout, or, as a recent Worklife article puts it, “the Q4 crunch.” Productivity spikes in the last quarter of the year, and naturally so does burnout. The article includes some helpful advice for leading teams through the home stretch: Making sure you’re cultivating a culture where people can ask for support, and, somewhat counterintuitively, easing people’s workloads. The article quotes executive coach Arivee Vargas: “While employees want to finish the year strong, they do not want to be crawling to the end of it.”
Nor do you as a leader. The approaching holiday season is meant to be an opportunity to look back and celebrate accomplishments, not a time to dread all the things you’re not doing. It’s healthy both financially and emotionally to give your teams the space to close out the year on a positive note, and to afford yourself the same grace.
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