Can I Offer You Some Feedback? - Episode #74

Show Notes:

This week Sara gives a special feature episode of Research Revealed! This is where she provides the latest research on team effectiveness, leadership development, and organizational behavior. In this new episode, Sara reveals leadership research from O.C. Tanner on shifts in current responsibility since the pandemic. How do these results affect operations? Subscribe today so you never miss an episode!

Below we are offering a transcript of the podcast for accessibility and reference.

Episode #74: research Revealed: Expansion of Leadership REsponsibilities

Do you know what you don't know? Well, unless you're like me, you're probably not steeped in the latest research on team effectiveness, leadership development, and organizational behavior. I'd like to share with you a recent piece of research and reveal what it means for you. O.C. Tanner came out with a report recently showing that 61% of leaders have more responsibilities now than they did before the pandemic.

That's a pretty staggering figure right there when we're thinking about folks who already had leadership on their shoulders to now have an increasing amount of responsibility. They went on to find that that increase in responsibility resulted in a 21% increase in the odds of those individuals having anxiety, as well as a 520% increase in risk for burnout. Again, a staggering number.

Another piece of data they took for this is that engagement was likely to suffer more than 51% of the time for their teams and the organizations in which they were operating. Again, think about the shift in the amount of responsibilities that the individual leader had. Those increasing affected not only their internal anxiety, burnout as a professional, and thinking about the team engagement.

Each of these areas is pretty striking because I would say that most people that I talked to post-pandemic have had an increase in responsibilities without too much additional organizational support. Oftentimes it's pretty normal to consider that businesses ask us to do more with less, to keep growing and maintaining costs. But what we're really talking about here is an imbalance between the actual opportunity for the person to do the work and the time in which to do it. We're thinking about the responsibilities here for these leaders and it is showing some pretty clear impacts along the way.

Now, what can we do about it? One of the things that I recommend to folks when I do one-on-one coaching with them when we talk about all of the overwhelming responsibilities they have is to actually get it down on paper. What are all the pieces and parts and projects and different priorities that you have and should you really be the one doing them all?

Now, perhaps there are things that you can be delegating to others, perhaps there are things that aren't relevant to the business anymore. And there might be an opportunity for you to have a one-on-one conversation with your supervisor and confirm that the priorities that they've laid out for you are still the priorities that the business needs.

I've often seen it with senior leaders where they feel the need to keep their teams busy. And so they're giving out a lot of tasks, they're giving a lot of assignments out. There's also always some organizational change that's happening which adds additional burden. Of course, they're necessary but we need to think about, are folks oversaturated by change? Are there too many things on their plate? And are we diluting the focus of our goals by adding on additional labor?

So when we're thinking about each of these components, and again, the research is pretty compelling, it warrants a conversation. First with yourself, reflecting on the tasks that you have at hand and then considering, are there other people I should be bringing into this conversation? Either one-on-ones with the individuals whom I directly supervise, the other folks on my team to understand what responsibilities they're taking on, and then having an honest conversation with leadership about are these priorities really our priorities and does something needs to change. Again, lots of opportunities for conversation, but there are some compelling pieces of data that help us identify a 520% chance of burnout is something we should ignore.

This has been Sara with Research Revealed. You can reach me at podcast@mod.network. We would love to hear from you on what other research you'd like to explore. As always, give us a quick rating on your platform of choice and share this podcast with a friend. See you next time.