How You Can Achieve More while Working LESS as a Humanitarian and International Development Leader

Are you exhausted from constantly being "busy" yet feeling like you’re making little impact?

In this episode, we dive into what I call "high performance syndrome" —a state where the drive for productivity leads to stress and burnout rather than meaningful results. If you’ve ever found yourself working late into the night or drowning in endless emails, this discussion will resonate with you deeply.

Through listening to this 10 minute episode you'll learn: 

• How to know if your high performance is keeping you stressed and not productive

  How to overcome this way of working

• Why the common ways of working are doing the opposite of what you want – leaving you overworked and with less impact on your team and community

Don’t fall into the traditional way of doing things which isn't creating the results you want —hit play on this episode now and start transforming your impact today!

WHAT IS YOUR LEADERSHIP STYLE? QUIZ

Want to know how to lead better?  It starts by understanding your leadership style.   To find out yours, take my free quiz “What Is Your Leadership Style” - you’ll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.  Just click on the link fill out your quiz and click submit.

 FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Learn how to create more impact with less work and today's episode.

Welcome to The Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader podcast, the podcast, helping humanitarian and development supervisors make a greater impact by taking control of your time, leading more inclusively and empowering your team all the while avoiding stress, burnout, and overwhelm. I'm your host, leadership coach and former aid worker, Torrey Peace.

Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hello, my aspiring modern humanitarian and development leader. I hope you're having a wonderful week. And in today's episode, you're going to learn. How to know if your high performance is keeping you stressed and not productive. How to overcome this way of working. And why the common ways of working are creating the opposite of what you want, leaving you overworked and with less impact on your team and community.

So, this is actually something that I teach in depth in my course "becoming the modern humanitarian and development leader", but it is one of the most popular topics in addition to of course coaching.

And many of my students ask me for more information on this because they find it that it resonates with them so much. And I actually came up with this idea based on coaching hundreds of leaders who I saw were trying to be productive and get things done, but the way they were doing that was just not helping them. And so I came up with a way of being able to tell if you are one of these types of leaders. So here are some of the symptoms of what I am calling high performance syndrome. And it's something that I will, I will define in a minute, but let's start with the symptoms of how, you know, if you have high performance syndrome.

You spend 50% or more time on email and, or in meetings.

That is one way you will know. You work late nights and or weekends. In other words, you work after normal working hours. You are distracted during work hours and cannot get focused work done. In other words, you can not concentrate during the day because you're constantly interrupted. And so you have to create time after hours for focused work. You take on more work than you can accomplish. You feel you have little or no control over your time. And finally you delay getting things done. In other words, you procrastinate. These are all symptoms of high performance syndrome. Spending lots of time in email or meetings, working late nights and weekends, being distracted during work hours and so not able to get focused work done, taking on more work than you can accomplish, having little control over your time and delaying getting things done. These are things that are super common. Whenever I ask my students, how many of these things that they can say yes to, it is usually at least two, if not more.

So, if you do say yes to at least two or more of these, then that means you have what I call high performance syndrome. And this actually comes from good intentions. You want to do well. Naturally humanitarian and international development attract leaders or people who generally want to do well.

They want to make an impact. And so they have good intentions. However, the traditional way of thinking and leading in our sector creates busy-ness without impact. And so I want to unpack that today for you so that you can see how this might be impacting you and your work, and then also how to overcome it. So. When you have high-performance syndrome, you might be trying to make an impact on your team or in your work by always being available. You know, always being reachable. Saying yes to more work. Because you want to be a team player. And doing things like telling others what to do.

So telling your team what to do, for example. And what happens is when we do these types of things and there are more as well that I'll get into in other episodes. But when we do these types of things, this results, in you, as the leader, taking more work than you can handle. It also results in a lack of focus because you spend time on tasks that don't make an impact. And you create a team that's dependent on you because they're waiting for you for the answers. So this means we start to feel overwhelmed and stressed and do not make the impact they're seeking for themselves or for their team. And once again, this is something I've seen in many, many leaders I've coached and worked with over the last five years.

So good news is there is a way to treat this and I've helped so many of my students overcome it. And a lot of it is just awareness. And what I call the treatment is actually the coach approach leadership style. So that's part of a way of leading to become a modern, humanitarian and development leader. And it actually comprises three parts.

So the leader makes an impact by number one, identifying or having a clear vision of the impact they want to create. As you've heard in many past episodes, I've talked about the importance of knowing where we're going. So having that vision. Number two overcoming traditional ways of thinking about your time and productivity and taking back control of your time and productivity. And then finally, number three is empowering your team. So empowering your team through a coach approach to take more responsibility so you can delegate more and therefore be freed up to focus on more things.

So when we do these things, this results and you as the leader: making more effective use of your time. Having more focus and able to work on concentrated work tasks that make more impact. And create a more motivated, productive team.

This means that overall the leader, that is you, makes a greater impact with less time and without the stress and overwhelm.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to continue doing a series on this. A little bit more of a deep dive on the types of ways that you are working and thinking about your work that are keeping you busy, but not productive. And therefore also preventing you from making an impact. And so just as a teaser, these are some of the ways of thinking that I see are so common and yet so accepted that we don't even question them. I'm going to walk you through, how do you first understand or become aware of these ways of thinking, and then how do you overcome them or find better ways of being more productive? For example, I have to always be available. That's one.

Another one is I have no control over my time. Leaders oftentimes say this as if it was a fact when actually it is a belief or a thought. I have to tell my team what to do. That is also common belief that we have or assumption that we have. This needs to be perfect. Also another thought or belief which leads to lower productivity. And another one is I have to say yes to extra work in order to be a team player. So over the next few weeks, we'll go over all of these. But just to say. If you

have any of these symptoms I mentioned earlier about spending a lot of time on weekends, or working on weekends after hours, not being able to get focused, work, done, spending a lot of time on low impact tasks, like email or meetings, these types of things. You probably have high performance syndrome. You probably are believing some of these things I just mentioned or acting in a way which is not helping you become more productive and create the impact you want. What we'll be exploring over the next few weeks are some ways that you can overcome some of these more common ways of working and thinking that are so commonly accepted and yet are not helpful to you or to your team. All right. Until then, Keep evolving. Bye for now.

Are you the type of leader that tells others what to do? Or do you let them figure it out for themselves? Understanding your leadership style is the first step to deciding what's working for you and what's not. To find out your leadership style, take my free quiz "what is your leadership style?" You'll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team, and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.

Just click on the link in the show notes, www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz fill out your quiz and click submit. So what are you waiting for? Go to www.aidforaidworkers.com.Quiz and discover your leadership style now. Your team will thank you for it.