How YOU Are Undermining Your Own Success and What to Do about it as a Humanitarian and International Development Leader

Could your drive for high performance be secretly sabotaging your productivity and impact as a humanitarian leader?

This episode tackles the surprising ways your high-performance might be hindering your success, a common challenge for many humanitarian and development leaders striving for excellence.

In this 13 minute episode you'll learn:

• Why constantly being available can lead to decreased productivity and increased burnout.
• Learn how to set boundaries that allow for focused, impactful work without sacrificing team support.
• Gain practical strategies to balance high performance with effective leadership, enhancing both your well-being and your team's success.

Listen to this episode now to uncover how to break free from high-performance traps and lead more effectively!

----------------

What Is Your Leadership Style?  Free 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.

This podcast empowers international development and humanitarian leaders to achieve high performance teams, fostering diversity, inclusion, and wellbeing, overcoming burnout and overwhelm, while maximizing impact and productivity.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

High Performance: How This Unexpected Enemy of Success is Killing Your Productivity as a Humanitarian and International Development Leader

 How might your high-performance be getting in the way of you making a greater impact? Find out as well as what to do about it on 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.

Welcome my aspiring modern humanitarian and development leader. In this episode, you're going to learn how your high-performance may actually be getting in the way of your success, common ways humanitarian and development leaders self-sabotage and a deep dive into one in particular, and how to escape your own trap and become successful as a modern humanitarian and development leader. So when I worked in humanitarian and development, as well as after having observed hundreds of leaders who have taken my course and have been coached by me and others, I see traditional ways of working, which are keeping you from success. They come from good intentions

and this is the tricky part is that we think that these actions, these ways of thinking are leading us to high performance. For example, wanting to do quality work or to be a team player. But in reality, the way you are pursuing these things is actually creating the opposite of the success that you are looking for. So, if you're listening to this, you are probably one of these people.

You are probably one of these leaders that is a high performer, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's great to be a high performer. The problem is the way we approach high-performance which is causing us to self-sabotage. And that means we end up working long hours, spending a lot of time in meetings and on email and not making the impact that we want. So I call this traditional way of thinking and leading high performance syndrome.

It's actually driven by a variety of ways of working and thinking and these are few of them. So one is I need to always be available. Another one is I need to be a team player. Another one is this needs to be perfect. And another one is I need to have all the answers as the leader. These are just a few of the high performance syndrome ways of thinking that are keeping us stuck. But today we're going to do a deep dive and focus on one of the most common ones that I see and that is the thought I need to always be available. Now I want to emphasize it is a thought because it's just a perspective: one way of thinking . And there's enough people that have this opinion or this way of thinking that we think it's just true. And, you know, it comes from a really good place, right?

The desire to be seen as a caring leader or to be helpful. And I see that this needing to be available is especially common amongst the support roles such as admin and finance, which support others and therefore see their value as always needing to be available because otherwise I'm not being helpful. These are just opinions.

Remember this, that means that if it's an opinion is one way of looking at something. Today I first want to point out how this way of looking at this is not helping you, but then also another way you can look at it, which might help you more to actually be more of what you want, which is to be a more caring leader. So the problem with always needing to be available is that you are actually never really available.

And that is because you are always distracted. You're never fully present. You're always thinking of all the things you need to do because you're always available all the time. You're always getting interrupted. And so you're not able to get focused work done during normal working hours. And that means you have to work after hours to get focused work done. Such as report writing or anything that requires deep thinking and ironically, this this type of work, the deep thinking work, the work that requires strategic thought

and that requires us to concentrate is actually the most impactful work that we can do apart from building our team. I think the most impactful work that we do, the work that will make the most difference is number one building our team, strengthening our team and number two is is this type of work, which is the focus strategic work, where we're actually able to come up with new ways of leading new ways of thinking the innovations.

This all comes from when we are able to concentrate . And when you push your work into overtime or after hours, you're not going to do the quality of work unless you work really well at night that you would be able to do during working hours. Once again, Being always available means being always interrupted, which means that you're really never available.

You're never fully present. And so what happens also, what I've seen is leaders develop a, type of anxiousness or resentment that they're always being interrupted. And yet they are the source of their interruption. So all of this way of thinking about needing to be available all the time is actually creating the opposite of what we want.

We want to be seen as a caring leader, but we would be a lot more caring leader. If we were fully present for our team, meaning we are not always available.

So another myth is that by being available, we are being helpful. But in a lot of ways, when we are available all the time, we are also creating dependency. This is because instead of thinking for themselves, our team or others come to us and ask us to solve their problem. And this is human nature. This is human nature that we want to take the low-risk easy way.

So if we know that we can just go to our supervisor at any time and ask them what to do, then of course we're going to do that because then the idea comes from them so we're less responsible for it if it fails and being told what to do is an easy way of just not being able to think for ourselves.

And so we are actually being a less caring leader in that way as well, because we're not developing our team by encouraging them to sometimes think for themselves and not be dependent on us all of the time. So, I'm not saying that you should never be available, you definitely should be available. It's important to be available, to support your team, to coach your team, to teach your team, to, approve things, whatever that needs to move forward. But just being more intentional about it.

So decide when you are available. And when you want to create time at work for the focused things that you need to do, which require concentrated thought and not being interrupted. And I challenge you to come up with creative ways to accomplish this. And also to, communicate it to your team. And why not decide as a team when you will do focused work as a team? Because I'm sure that if you're in this situation, you are modeling this behavior and they are probably doing the same.

So they probably are also always available, which means they are also always distracted, which means they also have to do their work over time or after hours. So why not as a team decide when you will do the focused work? What hours of the day? Especially in environments, like open floor layouts. These severely impact productivity. Because you're always distracted.

It's very difficult to get any productive, focused impactful work done in an open floor layout. And so how can you create that space where, from this time to this time, for example, we're all going to do focused work, and therefore we don't have to worry about open floor layout because we're all concentrated and we're all focused.

We're not some people on calls, some people walking back and forth and distracting. And I understand, you know, we can't have offices for everyone, but why not create the opportunity to be able to have certain spaces where people can go to do focused work?

When we are not able to fully concentrate when we are always available, we are not creating the impact that you want. Decide your why? How can you be a more caring leader by not being available all the time? So rather than believing that in order to be a caring leader, in order to add value, I need to be available all the time.

What if you believe the opposite? What have you started looking for evidence that I am actually a more caring leader by not being available all the time, because now people have to think for themselves because now I am fully available or present when they come to me because I'm not thinking about all the other things that I need to be doing.

And what do you need to do to make this happen? I promise you, it will be worth it. For yourself for your team and everyone else remember being the change we want to see. Well, this is part of it, understanding how these high-performance syndrome ways of working such as always being available are creating the opposite of what you want.

So just as a quick recap. Number one, your high-performance may actually be getting in the way of your success through the form of high-performance syndrome, ways of thinking and leading, for example, I need to be available all the time or I need to make this perfect. Number two, how wanting to be available all the time actually makes us never available and create more work and less impact. And number three, how setting an example of not being available all the time and allowing yourself to do focused work during work hours can help you become a successful modern humanitarian and development leader. On Wednesday, you will learn how to stop fooling yourself and embrace choice over time constraints. See you then, and 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.