As I write this, my wife and I are currently on a river cruise on the Rhine River. The ship is wonderful and as with most cruise ships, the rooms have access to satellite TV. The other day, I was fiddling with the remote control for the TV and found out that half the channels, all the news channels, were not accessible. This was a short lived glitch but it got me to thinking about the gist of this blog post. Here I am, on a cruise, and for a brief nanosecond, I got upset that I couldn’t have access to all the bad news in the world!

There is something I have been preaching for years when making speeches or being on panels on leadership. And that is how you, as a leader, need to know when to let go of work and relax. Simply put, when to be lazy and unwind.

I, like many of you reading this blog, are Type A personalities, many in very fast-paced, stressful and all encompassing careers. You were hired because you had the skills, knowledge and personality to work hard, get results, innovate and create positive results for your companies. Folks like us thrive in these environments. We often complain about having to deal with a myriad of problems when you are a leader e.g., Budget/HR/Personality issues on top of the daily issues you have to deal with in any given profession. Mine was (and still is to a certain extent) Security. Though most of us won’t admit it, we thrive when confronted with problems that we and our teams can eventually solve. After all, how do you test yourself, your resolve, your intellect and your imagination, if you don’t have problems to confront and overcome.

However, this way to live and work hard to overcome problems and further your career aspirations, is a double-edged sword. Because many leaders don’t know when to turn off their Type A jets and unwind and “be lazy.” Now I am not talking about being a sloth (though my wife finds sloths cute and wonderful creatures!) What I am talking about is learning to savor and use your down time wisely.

In my previous life as CSO at Microsoft, even on vacations, you had to make sure you were connected as invariably, some security incident would occur just as you were about to enjoy your first margarita (in my case, a Vesper) of the vacation. But that comes with the territory. Those are exigent circumstances.

What I am talking about is not routinely answering emails while on vacation or during your off hours. How many of you are guilty of not only responding to non-urgent emails when off duty, but pinging your direct reports on email, text etc., when you should be offline. I’ve been guilty of that and earlier in my career, was called on it by some of my directs who told me that I was on vacation and that I should stay off email – that they were taking care of the fort and that I should enjoy vacation. They were right!

Leaders need to learn the art of being lazy and relaxing when they can. You are no good to anyone if you are constantly frazzled, stressed out and up tight. Not only are you not doing yourself any good, you are not modeling good leadership to your troops. Leaders who constantly bombard their direct reports with non-critical email, texts etc., when your direct reports are on vacation or enjoying their weekends, will only emphasize to your directs that this is the proper way to behave, and it isn’t. They will feel like they too, have to be “on” and available to answer silly emails 24/7. They will then not only not be able to relax themselves, when they should be recharging their batteries, they will instill these same bad traits to their directs when they become people managers themselves. It is a vicious cycle.

It just amazes me that how many leaders don’t get this and sadly, never will. I’ve had leaders myself who would pester me on weekends and holidays over non-critical issues and would in effect, ruin my time off. That is being selfish. Just because you, as leaders, haven’t learned the discipline of taking your time off wisely, doesnt mean you have the right to impose that lack of discipline on your team and get them on edge.

Real leaders need to model this behavior. Yes, when emergencies happen, and they will, its all hands on deck, whether you are on vacation or not. That is a given. That is the job. But in non critical situations, I challenge managers who want to be real leaders, to really use your down time to unwind and recharge. And just as importantly, not to unduly affect your team’s down time by pinging them with unnecessary communications. Let them have their time off with their friends and families and leave them alone.

And for you non-people managers out there, the lesson is the same for you too.  Take your time off.  Don’t you also get in the trap of working when you should be taking time off.  I used to emphasize to mentees all the time that any entity, whether it be the CIA, or Microsoft, do not love you.  They give you wonderful careers, experiences, friends for life, health benefits etc.  But at the end of the day (and I would tap the wall of my office for emphasis) these entities don’t love you and will use as much of you as you allow them too. They don’t care if you work every weekend and on holidays.  And at the end of a 20-30 year career, you may look back on a successful career but one where you missed too many birthdays, anniversaries and special occasions due to your always “being on.”  You don’t get those days back. You never will.  

Life is short. Time is short. Work hard but learn to be lazy!

By the way, this is not work for me so I have the right to blog on this cruise. Now time for that Vesper!  😎

As I am writing this, my wife and I are in a hotel room in Amsterdam. We are starting a short vacation with some members of a wine club, taking a river cruise down the Rhine River. Writing about leadership right now should be the farthest thing from my so called mind. But I guess it is a default thing within me that when I see examples of leadership, both good and bad, I keep note of it to hopefully make myself a better leader.

We flew over on a Delta flight from Detroit (no direct flights from Las Vegas to Amsterdam.) As soon as we were seated, I observed the purser onboard the plane. A gentleman by the name of Don. One of the first things that struck me about Don was his smile, appearance and demeanor. Don was welcoming to all the passengers he was charged with taking care of. His clothing was impeccable and his manner was professional, yet very warm and inviting. This was a person who obviously took pride in his profession. I also observed him as he interfaced with his team of fellow flight attendants. My wife is a former flight attendant so I know how hard and demanding their jobs can be, especially with difficult passengers.

I observed two flight attendants, at the beginning of the flight, trying to set up the trays so they could come around with juice, champagne, water and Heineken (after all, we were headed to the Netherlands and you have to have Heineken onboard!) Unfortunately, one flight attendant must have dropped something while setting up the trays as I saw a commotion up front and the one flight attendant apologizing to the other one profusely. She kept saying “sorry, I’m sorry” to the other flight attendant and to Don. I thought I heard her say something to the effect of being tired or not having done this (working a flight I assume) for a while. Don could’ve gotten upset as whatever happened caused a small delay in getting the drinks out to the passengers. But I saw him tell the flight attendant in question that “it was okay.” He smiled, made light of the situation, and tried to take the burden off of the flight attendant. He didn’t berate her in front of her co-workers, something I have observed and have heard about many times over my years in business and government (the essence of lousy leadership!) What is interesting is that while we were in the gate area getting ready to board the plane, the gate agent scanning everyone’s tickets before we got onboard, must have made a mistake as her supervisor was chastising her, in front of passengers waiting to board the plane about something. I couldn’t hear what it was about but the poor gate agent was chagrined and then had to have her attention on her supervisor, while trying to process passengers on the plane. Don didn’t do anything like that. He understood, the way good leaders do, that people make mistakes. He uplifted her with his smile, with his reassurance that it was okay. Don understood that he needed her to be on her game and making her feel worse than she already did would do nothing but make things worse.   He was not only thinking of the flight attendant, but was also thinking about us!

When I was a cop, I made a boneheaded mistake one time as a rookie, and my Sergeant, who could’ve really gotten on my case, instead, met me in a quiet location on my beat, told me what I had done wrong, said he understood the rationale and told me i can use that incident as an example of what not to do and to continue to work on being a good cop. It was one of my first observations of leadership (I’ll talk more about this incident in a future blog post – can’t give everything away all at once!)

At the end of the flight, Don went to each and every passenger in his section. He told us how much he enjoyed having us on the flight and that he hoped we had a good experience. It wasn’t fake or phony at all. It was a sincere appreciation for all of us who were on the flight. He was genuine. Great leaders are genuine. Warts and all. Great leaders let their teams know, on a regular basis, how much they are appreciated. You have to verbalize it. You cannot “Vulcan Mind Meld” your gratitude to the troops, (all you Star Trek fans know what I mean by this) you have to tell them, personally and honestly.

Funny how one flight brought up some good examples of leadership. Don was caring, approachable, professional, uplifted his team, genuinely wanted to do the best job he could to take care of us, and took pride in his profession. I will probably never see Don again, but he is one fine leader from my observation. And he also gave us some good Ghirardelli chocolates at the end of the flight, which didn’t hurt my opinion of him either. From Amsterdam, signing off until next time.

Mike Howard