LEADERSHIP INSIGHTS

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Imagine sitting at your local park in your lawn chair, relaxed and enjoying a summer breeze as the warm sun lands gently on your cheeks.  You turn to see a familiar neighbor boy playing catch nearby and, to encourage you to play, he tosses you the ball.  What do you naturally do?  You catch the ball.  You’ve joined the game.

 

Now recall how a large percentage of us went into healthcare because we want to help people.  We went a step farther when we accepted our positions as leaders.  As servant leaders.  We want to continue helping to advance the mission of our team, our department, our organizations.  We derive deep pleasure from supporting and uplifting others.  It’s in our DNA.  But that DNA foundation also puts us at risk.

 

The risk is that we are wired to “catch.”  We assume responsibility to help, to fix.  As in, when someone throws out a concern, we pick up their burden and respond.  We join in.  When an employee faces a challenge, we automatically offer our expertise, guidance, time, and energy.  We make ourselves available, even when we may not truly have the capacity.  Occasionally we even take the ball and run with it, only to later feel stressed by the overwhelming number of problems we’re carrying and trying to solve.  It’s hard not to catch the ball, isn’t it?

 

Here’s my advice for you…you don’t always have to catch the ball. 

 

When smart phones first came out, I didn’t have one.  Despite good cell reception in town at the hospital, where I lived had poor coverage.  It was years before I owned a phone that I kept with me regularly.  During that time, my leadership colleagues and I would be in meetings.  They would get called out to respond to staff emergencies and started to notice that I didn’t share their same experience.  When asked why, I responded with, “I don’t have a phone they can reach me with.”  The hidden plus was that I had a team of problem-solvers, who grew more self-sufficient.  I trusted them to make decisions and offered permission to fail.  If the outcome wasn’t ideal, we’d learn a better option for next time.  My inability to be readily available worked remarkably—for me and for them!

 

Later in my leadership, I strayed from that practice of supporting others to critically think and solve their own problems.  I thought I was doing the right thing by always helping and found myself overwhelmed.  I wasn’t truly helping, however.  I was enabling dependence on me and restricting my team’s growth.  Attending a Monkey Management course at RWHC reminded me that I was owning more tasks than were truly mine to own.  I had been “catching” everyone’s challenges and carrying them with me.  They were weighing me down.  I couldn’t hold all the “balls” I was lugging around.  And by taking them from the employees on my team, I was keeping them from playing the game.  It was selfish of me and we were all paying the price.

 

Do you identify with any of these examples of too eagerly catching the ball?

• Responding to phone calls, texts, or emails when we’re not at work (even when on vacation)
• Reacting to criticism that doesn’t truly warrant our concern
• Offering step-by-step, side-by-side instruction when employees have answers available through procedure guidelines
• Taking and implementing the ideas of others instead of allowing them to develop the actions on their own
• Jumping into solving conflicts between peers rather than coaching them to hold their own crucial conversations

I’m not suggesting to never catch the ball.  Give consideration to whether or not you might be doing it too often. 

 

Try practicing one or two of these strategies over this next month.  Let me know how it goes. 

• Put boundaries on your time, availability, and energy so you avoid resentment and burnout.  Take care of yourself in a way that enables you to serve well for a long time.  Your cup only fills those of others when yours is full. 
• Delegate, teach, and enable your team to become action-oriented, critical thinkers with the safety to fail forward. 
• Choose wisely what you do and don’t respond to (and keep in mind: it is a choice!). 
• Evaluate each incoming task or request for your action.  Determine if you truly own all, or even a portion, of the work…or if it better belongs with someone else.

Make sure you and others on your team can play the game well into extra innings.  Put down the glove.  You don’t have to catch every ball tossed in your direction. 

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“Remembering that you don’t have to catch the ball is a very effective way to reduce the stress in your life.”  - Richard Carlson, Ph.D.

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Explore these workshops and programs offered by our RWHC Education Team to improve your skills of Playing Catch:

• Time Management: Prioritization, Distractions, & Email
• Win-Win Delegation: Growing Them While Helping You
• Manage Stress Before It Manages You
• Servant Leadership
• Monkey Management: Becoming an Effective Supervisor of Time, Energy, and Talent

To learn more, visit: https://www.rwhc.com/Services/Educational-Services/Leadership-Series or email me at csearles@rwhc.com.

 

Consider joining our Leadership Bites program: https://www.rwhc.com/Services/Educational-Services/Leadership-Bites

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Corrie Searles, MPT, Leadership Development Educator In Corrie’s role as Leadership Development Educator at the Rural Wisconsin Health Cooperative (RWHC), her aim is to empower leaders—formal and informal—to create positive influence that enables others to serve well.