Sunday, Sept. 26, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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In my last column for the Sun, I dealt with why leadership, great leadership, is more vital now than ever.
Leadership is a passion for me, which is one of the reasons I wrote a book about it and spent the bulk of my 40 years of work life in positions of leadership. But one thing that is often neglected when the subject of leadership comes up is “relaxing and unwinding.”
Leadership evokes a perception of a hard-charging person, managing people, programs, strategies and having to work long hours to get the job done.
This is true, of course. No real leader gets by with a 9-to-5 mentality. Leadership means giving your all to your team, your organization, your company and to your stakeholders.
This is true whether you are in the public or private sector. But it has always struck me that no one talks about the idea of baking in relaxation and unwinding as essential parts of leadership.
My wife and I just returned from a glorious one-week vacation to Hawaii. We are both retired now and don’t have the stresses of having a job to go back to when on vacation. My wife was a flight attendant for 33 years and I was at both CIA and then Microsoft before I retired after a total of 40 years working. We often comment on how her job was different. Stressful at times, for sure, but she could get off work and not take work home with her, which gave her the wonderful ability to unwind. It was the nature of her job.
The nature of my jobs, and I suspect many of your jobs, is that you can’t totally go home and get away from your work. There is always another meeting to prepare for, another budget to plan, another HR issue to deal with.
Part of your mind is always thinking about work. Mine certainly was. But after a while, the constant thinking about work takes a toll on you in terms of stress and constant pressure.
As my wife and I were getting breakfast one morning in Hawaii, we noticed a woman sitting in one of the outdoor seating areas on a laptop. It was apparent she had finished her breakfast and was working on her laptop.
We left for some fun activities, came back in the early afternoon and the woman was still there. We did get the chance to chat for a little bit and while she was enjoying her vacation; she had spent the bulk of her day, in Maui, on her laptop. And from what we gathered, this wasn’t some emergency to deal with. It was routine.
To me, this is to be avoided at all costs. At home, yes, you still need to unwind after work, but some part of you is always thinking about work and sometimes you must engage in work off duty. That comes with the territory. But when you are on vacation, your main duty is to relax, unwind and recharge.
When I was still working, when on vacation, after working out in the mornings, I would get on my laptop for no more than 30 minutes — tops. That was mainly to delete a lot of emails, so I didn’t come back to an inbox with hundreds of messages. I didn’t send emails to my team or ask any routine questions.
After 30 minutes, I never looked at email again until the next day. This accomplishes two things. One, you are relaxing and recharging. You are no good to anyone as a leader if you’re burned out. Recharge and come back ready to tackle the hard things all leaders must deal with. Second, you need to be an example to your team. If you are constantly on email while on vacation, constantly barraging them about the status of this or that, then when they go on vacation, they will do the same thing. They’ll think it’s expected.
I’ve seen too many examples of this. I’m not talking about emergency situations or exigent circumstances where even on a vacation, you must engage. That is your job. I had many times on vacation when some emergency around the world necessitated me to engage with my team to manage a crisis. But barring that, I enjoyed vacation. Life, especially in this time we are living in, is plenty stressful enough.
As a leader, it is incumbent that you be an example to your team. Give them the opportunity to relax and unwind when they go on vacation. Leave them alone unless it’s a legitimate emergency. And do yourself a favor: Learn when to let go and relax. You’ll feel better about it and so will your team.
Mike Howard is the former chief security officer of Microsoft and spent 22 years with the CIA. He is the author of “The Art of Ronin Leadership – Strategy, Execution, Sustained Success.” He lives in Las Vegas.
