Research shows that stimulants are reasonably effective at reducing the effects of sleep deprivation on standard, rule-based tasks, but they are not helpful when it comes to tasks that require creativity or divergent thinking. You might argue that your venti coffee is all you need to perk yourself up again. At the very least, sleep loss hinders your cognitive capacity by degrading your alertness and attention. There are lots of reasons to shortchange your sleep that seem very reasonable on the surface. Your reasons for forgoing sufficient sleep might seem logical: Before going to bed, you need to respond to the emails that came in while you were in meetings all day you need to cut off an hour of sleep in the morning to read the material for your 8AM meeting with your boss you have to schedule a conference call with the Hong Kong team at 11 PM. If you’re in a stressful managerial role, I suspect you’re among that group. The CDC says that one-third of American adults don’t get sufficient sleep. If you are an important asset, how could depriving, devaluing, and depreciating that asset by running it in harsh conditions, powering it with improper fuel, and neglecting routine maintenance possibly be good for your organization? Let’s cut to the chase: It’s not. It’s time to take those hackneyed words, “our people are our greatest asset,” to heart. Is that true for you too? You know that sufficient sleep, proper nutrition, physical exercise, human connection, and time to relax are important, but do you carve out time for them? Or, like many of the leaders I advise, do you tell yourself, “It’s so busy, I can’t afford to…(spend seven hours sleeping, or stop to get lunch, or keep up with hobbies).” That framing, which casts investments in your resilience as contrary to the best interests of your organization, is doing both you and your organization a great disservice. In sum, you need tremendous fortitude.Īlthough most leaders I interact with have a sense of the fortitude, energy, and stamina they require to be successful, few of them make investments to bolster those things.
And you need the endurance to be present, patient, creative, and controlled day after day and week after week. You need the self-control to be open and vulnerable without losing your team’s confidence. You need the wherewithal to be creative instead of defaulting to tried-and-true approaches. You need the patience to be empathetic when facing resistance from your employees.
You need the energy to be fully present even as you’re fretting about the 72 emails piling up in your in-box. Investing in your resilience isn’t indulgent it’s mission critical.Īs a manager, leading in this era of change, urgency, and accountability requires so much.
When you invest in proper sleep, nutrition, exercise, and play, you’ll have the self-control to manage your own reactions, the energy to be fully present for your team, the patience to listen and empathize, the wherewithal to make good decisions, and the stamina to keep it up for weeks or months. If you are an important asset, how could depriving, devaluing, and depreciating that asset by running it in harsh conditions, powering it with improper fuel, and neglecting routine maintenance possibly be good for your organization? Your resilience is a high-priority business issue if you’re leading a team through the stress of our fast-paced world. Many leaders tell themselves: “It’s so busy, I can’t afford to…(spend 7 hours sleeping, or stop to get lunch, or keep up my hobbies).” This framing, which casts investments in personal resilience as contrary to the best interests of an organization, is doing both you and your organization a great disservice.
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