It’s Time to Redefine Leadership Tenacity to Prevent Burning Yourself Out
With all the challenges you face each day, it’s easy to feel like burnout is inevitable.
In fact, according to Zippia Research, 89% of workers have experienced burnout in the past year which includes physical fatigue, cognitive weariness, emotional exhaustion, lack of interest/motivation and lack of effort. This statistic includes leaders as well as employees!
As a leader, you have an opportunity to redefine how you work and what tenacity looks like for yourself and others. In doing so, you can begin to turn the tide of deep exhaustion everyone is feeling so that you can get back to doing great things in your team and organization.
At Tenacious Leadership Institute, we’ve chosen to focus on redefining tenacity as an entry point to help leaders rethink and reset how people they are operating.
The common definition of tenacity is to “hold fast, being persistent; having the mental or moral strength to resist opposition, danger, or hardship.”
While the common definition can sometimes be helpful, it is not sufficient for today’s leaders.
This antiquated definition encourages us to “tough it out”, which may work in the short-term but cannot be used as a long-term solution or as an effective response to the exhaustion our workforce is facing.
In order to change the current levels of disengagement, burnout and stress, leaders need to meet people where they are and begin to introduce a new definition of tenacity and how we approach work.
At the Tenacious Leadership Institute, we define tenacity as:
“The ability to cultivate a high degree of presence, focus, determination and commitment partnered with a set of practices that continually renew and revitalize you and those around you to help prevent burnout."
This more robust definition is the result of experience gained and research collected over the past 20 years working with leaders across the globe to help improve engagement and overall performance within their organizations.
Our definition takes the need for renewal into account in order to address burnout and stress, build more engagement, strengthen commitment and, ultimately, revitalize organizations and our world.
Here are three simple yet profound actions you can take in the upcoming week to begin shifting towards a more sustainable definition of tenacity:
1. Pay attention to how often you have a “push through” mentality and see if you can begin to envision a different way of leading.
2. Be aware of getting too far ahead of yourself and/or where your team is. If you notice you are stepping over key issues to try to forge ahead, slow down and address them.
3. Schedule at least one renewal activity for yourself this week. It doesn’t have to be a lot of time but should be an opportunity for you to feel present and renewed by the activity.
These are a few initial actions you can take to begin shifting how you understand and embody tenacity to allow for new possibilities.
If you’d like to explore additional actions to build leadership tenacity, hit reply and we can set up a call to explore which of TLI’s programs could be of service to you and/or your team.
Leadership Practice
Spend time this week noticing when you are “pushing through” or “white knuckling it” then allow yourself to pause, slow down, take a deep breath to begin resetting your nervous system and trust you can work without the push so that your neurobiology can return to baseline and stay out of a stress response.
About Athena
Athena Williams, Founder and CEO of Tenacious Leadership Institute, has been supporting leaders worldwide to become more tenacious for over 20 years. She has found that tenacity is the key to sustained leadership success in today’s ever-changing world. Through her coaching and leadership development programs, she helps leaders expertly handle change, complexity and other challenges so they can quickly get better results for themselves, their teams and their organizations. Take the first step to becoming a tenacious leader by scheduling a call with us.
