Why Leader Recovery Should Be a Top Priority

[ Silence ] [ Music ] >> Hi, I'm Dr. Patricia Gerbarak, and I'm Dr. Katina Sawyer and welcome to Thriving at Work, a Worker Being podcast. You can learn more about us on our website, merkerbeying.com, or on social media, or you can support our community. We've actually made some changes recently to our community. We're on Patreon now, where we have some bonus episodes. We also have bonus episodes, same content on Apple subscriptions. So, find us in both places if you want more than just the episodes, patrons, where to go. If you just want more episodes, Apple's a great place to start. So, today, Katina, what are we going to talk about? So, today, we are going to be talking about recovery, which is a topic that we've spoken about before on the podcast, and also on the blog, and we've presented about this topic before in organizations. But we're going to be talking about a specific type of recovery, and for specific type of person, leaders. And, leader recovery, actually, as it turns out, has some interesting and maybe unexpected and important to remember, consequences for followers that we're going to talk about. So, that's the topic that we're going to be discussing. And, my question before we get started, is have you ever had a leader who role-modeled the importance of recovery at the end of the day? Ooh, it's a great question. So, I kind of have two examples, which is probably rare. I've actually had a decent string of leaders that I reported to directly, and some of them are better at modeling it than others. Most of them generally encouraged recovery from their teams. They didn't always model it perfectly. But I would say that one of my leaders years ago, she was very good at living life. Her life was life. There was stuff going on all the time, and she would go and take care of what she wanted to do. And, she managed to fit a million things into her days. And, I was always in awe of it, but then I realized that, oh, she's truly sitting boundaries and taking recovery time for things that she thinks is important. I don't know if it's important, but I feel good. So, I would say that leader is probably the one that I would say to the good job modeling it for the most part. I mean, there's always situations where there's a lot going on, and maybe you can't perfectly model it, but I would say mostly she did a good job. And, just say shout out to Jill. Yay! Yay, Jill. Jill has used as an example of how to be a great leader. So many times, I feel like we should do a bonus episode with Jill just with her saying, here's how to be awesome. I think that would probably be a good idea. I know we talked to her before on the show, forever ago. Yeah. But, yeah, it might be fun to have her on a bonus episode, just like super casual conversation with her. She is amazing. Great leader, great person, just so fun. She's the best. Yes, we'll just like force her to be not modest, and she'll have to come on and speak about herself, we'll just ambush her and be like, surprise, you're here to talk about how you're great, go. Yeah, I don't know. She's right though with the modesty thing. I don't know if she'll be super aligned with how we see her, but you know, I think that she definitely has some tips that she could share. Yeah. What about you? Have you had a leader, you know, when any of your roles that has modeled it? I feel like an academia. No one models as well. Yeah, I was actually thinking about that. And I think that a lot of the people who have role model disconnecting, who are doing it in a way that kind of makes you feel like they shouldn't be doing, like it's, oh, it comes with a caveat of like, yeah, I did this history, but don't tell anyone or whatever. And you're like, no, or like someone that I used to work with told me that she brought up once that she was in a book club. And it wasn't in my department, but in a different department, that the chair was like, don't ever tell anyone you're in a book club. Like people will be wondering like why you're not, like using that time for other things. So I think that that's true, but I will say I had two department chairs ago. I did have a department chair who he and his wife, they were empty nesters, their kids were grown and whatnot, but they definitely went out during the week and had fun together. And you would like find them like in a restaurant or in a bar, like on a Tuesday, just like hanging out, having fun. And like if you saw them, they would like invite you to come sit with them and talk and whatever. And you got the sense that they had a life. You know what I mean? Like it wasn't. It would not be taboo to tell them that you had done something other than work. And I feel like that caught like that created like a good environment, I think in a variety of ways because you felt like you could be real with them about what you were doing. And my department now is very much that way too. But when I was thinking about like a specific person who I felt, oh, I've seen this person around and they have fun. And if that was me doing that, they would be like, good for you. Like that's awesome. I'm glad you did that. I feel like he and his wife who were both in our department were good role models in that way. So I would say just we also lived in the same town. So that I saw them like frequently in the same place that I usually was. So that was also maybe a unique scenario. But in any event, they were, they were good for that. Well, that's nice. Yeah. I mean, I think it is rare in academia. I feel like you hear all those horror stories of like God forbid you read a book that is not about your research. Yeah. Yeah, it's wild. So I'm glad to see that there's some people out there that are doing a better job than others. Yeah. And from what I, what you're telling about your department today, it sounds like there's some better approaches to things than maybe other departments that you've been in. Yeah, definitely. I think so. So I think there's some role models out there, but I think no matter what your industry, there's this like badge of not recovering. And I think also for leaders and what we're going to be talking about today, there's this like particular inclination to be like to act like you never take off or you have to wear this like badge that's, you know, this badge of honor that you're harder working and less leisurely than other people because if you're not doing that, then like, you're no better than anyone or you don't deserve your position or something. Like there's some kind of an expectation that leaders even have for themselves. I think that sort of baked into the way that we envision leadership that can become problematic. I completely agree. I feel like there's a lot of that and the situations where I've had leaders that I thought were generally good leaders, but didn't necessarily practice recovery well were ones that would make comments like, well, I put this on myself like you don't have to work these kinds of hours, but like I might I'll try to make sure that you don't interrupt you with emails and messages after hours, but like that's not really setting a good example right right that saying that, okay, well, if you want to be in this position, you are probably going to have to work like this, you it's okay. And even if someone says it's okay for you not to work those hours and even if you trust that person, take them for their word, you tend to still start shifting your hours and your functioning to what they do a bit, even if you don't mean to. And I've had a couple people do that, like I've had a few leaders that are like, you know, there's something that I've done to myself for like in this role, I have to do XYZ, but like please if I send you an email after 8 p.m. Like don't respond, I'm just doing it because I have to work at that time and it's like right that you don't have to know that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so I think exactly what you're bringing up is very aligned with some of the takeaways from the article today. So there are three things that I want people to take away from today's episode and the first is that leader recovery is not only possible, but it's positive. And I'm going to talk to you about what this study defines as recovery. This is the night before work pleasurable recovery. So I'm going to talk to you about what that is. And that. I'm just gonna tee up to say that it has positive impacts. Good. The other thing that I'm gonna talk about is how it has positive impacts. And as a preview of that, it has to do with emotions that you feel and that others feel that boost things that people care about at work for the bottom line and for innovation. And the third thing is that it actually matters more for the people who you would think it might matter less to. A lot of cryptic stuff in your takeaways. Like, what? I know. Who is mad at you? I'm really just gonna leave us hanging here. Yes, I'm really creating an air of mystery around this article. But hopefully I can clear up the mystery. I really like that one of the outcomes though that you mentioned is innovation. Like that's something that people talk about a lot. So I think it's really cool that we're gonna be talking about recovering innovation because, I mean, I think intuitively from what you and I have no from the research what you talked about before, recovery obviously would help with innovation. You need to be somewhat rested to like be creative and think of new ideas and new ways to do things. But people don't always connect the dots to that. So I'm excited that that's part of this. Yeah, yeah. So I think it's a really cool article. It's kind of straightforward, but also there's mystery as I have hinted. (laughing) So let's start with this idea of pleasurable recovery activities. So they're focused here and we've talked about on the podcast before different ways that people can recover at the end of the day. This is specifically focused on things that happen outside of the work domain, leisure activities that bring happiness to the individual and that can be a wide range of activities that both make you feel happy but also help you decrease your stress. So there are examples of that, like watching a favorite TV program, which we know has to do with relaxation but also hanging out with friends and they're not super prescriptive in this article about what you need to do. It's more important that you define the activity that you did as something that brings you joy. Got it. So it's very dependent on the individual and what they like to do and how they feel about things and I've even thinking like, I for example love to read fiction and rarely have a ton of time for it but when I get to sit down and read a book and really get into it, it's just, I'm so happy. But then I'm also super disconnected from anything else because my mind is fully absorbed in the book. I'm reading it, I'm imagining things. My brain is so focused on that that I feel like it's super relaxing too in that way. So I think for me, that might be one of the things that would be, I forgot what you called it pleasure bowl. - Yeah, something that brings you joy. - Yeah. So I think that makes sense. But then somebody else like my husband, Danny hates reading. He like, we'll listen to audiobooks all day but he's not like a sitting with a book visually reading it and he would pick something very different. So it kind of will depend on an individual person as to what that activity might be or what those activities might be. It's probably more than one. - Exactly. So they don't really define or tell you like, do this activity because of that individual variability. So they're not gonna say like, this is what you need to do in order to experience this because that varies a lot according to person. So if you're a leader and you're like, tell me what to do, we can't tell you specifically what we'll do that but you should do some soul searching around what brings you joy. And I think something that's important is to consider whether or not the things that you instinctively say bring you joy are things that you think other people wanna hear or that other people expect will bring you joy or if there's something that when you're doing it you're really like, I am so happy right now. Whatever the thing is that you genuinely feel makes you happy is the thing that will work in the way that we're saying it will work. If it's not really something that brings you joy if it's just something you're trying to check a box or you heard that you should do it or whatever, any of that is not going to have the impact that I'm gonna talk about. So you really have to be honest with yourself too, is part of the process that it can't just be something that you saw as a trend that you're trying to follow but something you know in your heart you really like. Totally fair, makes sense. So tell us more, what's next? Yes, okay, so when leaders engage in these pleasurable recovery activities and this study was interesting because it took data from both leaders and followers and so you have the perspective of both the leader themselves saying whether or not they engaged in these recovery activities the night before. So they go into work and they take a survey that asks them did you do something the night before that gave you joy and then they also ask their followers the extent to which they displayed positive emotions and they ask the follower later in the day the extent to which they felt positive emotions. And so what's happening in this process is when you come into work the night before you've done an activity that brings you joy, what this article suggests is that you come in happier, emotionally happier and it's not just that you feel happier, it's that other people notice that you are happier. So if you do this recovery activity compared to days when you don't do this recovery activity other people notice that you seem happier. Which I think is interesting. Yeah, I do too and now I like, I'm just wondering about how I come off after I read my books. When I have a night where I've read a book or I just finished a book two nights ago maybe and I'm just curious, after that did I come to work and did people notice? I mean they're not gonna silly say anything but I am very curious about that. That is so interesting with other people notice it. I mean I could see that you probably care yourself differently, you've got like slightly different way of approaching things that day, maybe smiling more readily, things like that. Yeah, but that's so interesting people notice. Yeah, and the way that they explain it and we've discussed this before but the way that they explain it is that, you might be lacking some resources, you're kind of burnt out from work, you're gas tanks running on low and you go home, you do this activity that replenishes you and then it refills the tank so that the next day compared to days that you don't refill the tank, other people notice like hey, the tank's been refilled and it actually makes a difference in terms of how other people see you. So that's interesting. So in the night before, if I do a recovery activity that brings me joy the next morning, my followers will view me as being more positively, emotionally oriented and then later in the day, if I ask them, hey, how do you feel? They report feeling happier if they perceive me as being happier as the leader. So followers get happier and they see their leader being happier so it's sort of as contagious. It spreads throughout the organization and in alignment with them feeling happier, they end up doing better. So leaders actually rate the followers as having higher performance and followers rate themselves as engaging in more what they're calling creative behavior but it aligns with what people are looking for in terms of innovation in the workplace. So things like looking for new technologies, trying to think of new processes, trying to come up with new products, trying to think of new techniques for doing things, all of those things are part of innovative and creative behaviors. So when people feel happier, they put more effort into their work and the leader is noticing. So this leader is taking a survey in the morning saying, yeah, I did something last night that made me happier and then at the end of the day, they're being asked to rate their followers performance and the followers are being asked to rate their leaders emotions in the morning, their own emotions in the middle of the day and then their creative behaviors at the end of the day. And the leaders pleasurable recovery activity is related to all of that stuff. More of their own positive emotions, more followers positive emotions, higher performance ratings and higher creative behavior. - So there's a couple things I wanna unpack here. I mean, it could be that the leaders in a better mood, and that's why there's-- - Are they rating people higher? I don't know how they can, do they control for that in any way? - Yeah, they actually did, which is super interesting. Yes, they did control for that. They controlled for the leaders midday positive affect at the same time as they rated the followers midday positive affect. They also controlled for the leaders sleep, quantity and quality to make sure that it was actually that activity that they took part in and not some other thing about what they did the night before. So they ruled that out as well. - Okay, so they, if they control for the sleep piece and that means it's not like, oh, I'm just well rested and therefore I'm functioning better and maybe making an impact on my team that way. So that's good. And the second piece, he said, they're controlling for their positive emotion, basically. And if that's the case, then, you know, if we're removing the affective, I'm in a good mood, so I'm just nicer to my team and rating the higher. - I'm just gonna say everyone performs well. - Exactly. So we're taking that out, we're taking that noise out and we're still seeing that performance is rated higher and that theoretically indicates that their performance is actually higher on those days than compared to the days where the leader was not in a positive mood. - Yeah, and there's always, you know, stuff that you could control for other explanations, but they did take those two things into account and then they also took into account the work demands that the followers were experiencing. So they controlled for the extent to which they felt like their day was particularly demanding to make sure that it wasn't just that they were experiencing. Maybe when the leader is in more relaxation mode, they just assign them less stuff or something like that, right? So they also took that into account, which I thought was interesting. - Yeah, well, that's really good. I'm glad to hear that they took all that into account 'cause I think it's important and they're all like, things that people could easily just poke at and be like, well, what about this? What about that? - Yes. - It's really true, or are these leaders just being way too easy on employees and you know, there's, there are people out there that are gonna say that. So I'm glad they took that into account because now it's like, well, actually no. It's truly this like cyclical impact of like good experience for a leader, coming in positive, people feeling positive because of that and now everyone's doing better. Both performance wise, innovation wise, they're all doing more, doing better than they were if the leader did not come in with that same positive mood based on the recovery the night before. So that's really, really helpful that they did that. I love it. I think it's great. - Yeah. - It's awesome. Yeah, it's great for me. - Yeah, so I think it's super interesting because I think a lot of times leaders assume that recovery is at best for other people, right? So they're like, well, I hope my team has time to recover but I'm the leader so I don't have time to do that. But what actually is being missed in there is that your team will do better if you do it, right? You have an actual responsibility to your team to help them perform better and do their best by taking time for yourself. Which I think is probably helpful for leaders who might think of recovery time as selfish or distracting from the point of their job which is to get their team to be able to produce the highest quality product. And what this is saying is that's not selfish time. That's actually really well spent time that folks can benefit from and it's a service to your team to make sure that you're recovering. So I really like that takeaway and there's one more thing that I was mysterious about that makes it even more interesting moving forward as well. Okay, what's the one more mysterious thing? Yes, so the mysterious thing is that, and it's not mysterious when you really think about it but I'm making it mysterious. So the person or people who your recovery matters to the most are the people who have not taken time to recover themselves the night before. So, follower recovery, they took into account so they also asked the followers in the morning, how much did you recover last night after work? And for people who said, I really didn't, I didn't take time to disconnect. I'm feeling still really connected to my work. I don't feel like I had the time to really unwind or do something that brought me joy. The people that come into work the next morning saying that are the people who have the biggest room for improvement from the leader's positive emotions and positive displays. And so that becomes even catchier to those people. And so the boost that they experience is even higher than people who had the opportunity to recover and the difference are like the delta in their performance and their creative behavior is even larger. So this matters the most for people who didn't have the opportunity to do the same thing that you did. So not only are you helping your team when you recover, but you're also helping the most people who are the most burnout and tired, which I think might be counterintuitive to what some people would think. - I do think that's a little counterintuitive until I started thinking about it as you were talking. And the thing that resonates with me is when you're really feeling tired and burnt out, I feel like you catch the negative emotions way faster. So it's almost like if someone else, if your leader comes in and they're kind of grumpy or you know, not super positive, not happy, then you're just gonna be like, oh, I'm down to, they're down. We're all kind of in this machine mode. But if they were happy, I think you're more likely to kind of pick up on it. Because you're just too tired to like have any regulation in your emotions. And so you're kind of more of a sponge of what's around you than when you yourself are arrested where you can be a little more resilient against a negative emotion. So I think it makes some sense from that perspective. And I think it's important though, 'cause now as a leader, like you were saying, it's so easy to be like, well, like I have so many things to do. I want to protect my team from all of this extra work. So I might do it or whatever the case might be. But actually, if any of them are tired, you're just gonna keep making it worse and worse when you can just take a few minutes to take care of yourself and then help them too. Obviously you want them to recover as well, but if they can't, if there's something else going on that's substantial, you better take care of yourself to make sure you can take care of them. It reminds me of like the parenting or like the mom thing that people say, like, you know, like, you can't really be a good mom if you don't take care of yourself. Like, it's a similar kind of concept, I feel like. I agree and I like Mushy Mode, leaves you to be in Sponge Mode. (laughing) Mushy people are the sponges. - Yes, it's true. - But I think that that's correct, which is that you're more likely to focus on the negative, if you're in a negative space. So shifting the people who are more likely to focus on that into a more positive head space has a bigger payoff than trying to shift people who are already in a more positive head space into an even more positive head space. So I think that that's dead on. So basically, I think the takeaway here and something that I really want to impress upon people because I think it's important is that if you think that as a leader, your recovery time is even more of a luxury than your team, you're actually doing your team into service and potentially harming their ability to perform and to think of new and interesting ideas and set your team up for more success. If you're not taking time after work to do something that really brings you joy and that identifying what that thing is 'cause I think also over the course of our lives, we get disconnected from what those things even could be 'cause we just get stuck in the race of everything that we don't always even understand what that looks like. So I think reconnecting with what brings you joy, getting a little bit of that each day and recognizing that that's actually an act that's helping other people, if that's what helps to justify for you why you should do it, is maybe a useful message that people need to hear. - I love it. I think it's a really good point to take the moment and figure out what it is or test different things that actually, to see what brings you joy. Maybe what brought you joy like 10 years ago is different than what bring you joy today, but you don't really know because you've been so bogged down in work and life stuff that comes up that you just don't even know anymore. I think that's a really great point to take that moment in time to really think through it, figure out what you like, what's making you happy and then using that time to take care of yourself so you can take care of your teams. - Yeah, absolutely. So I hope this is helpful for anyone who's listening who struggles with justifying to themselves why they should take time at the very least, do it for other people. At the best, you know, you should do it just because it's important for you, but if you have trouble with that, know that it's actually helping others as well. agreed. Well thank you so much for sharing this article. I think it was super helpful. Very interesting. And I can see I'm having a big impact on leaders like I hope leaders listening take it to heart and do something about it. Me too. And I appreciate you listening to it. And I hope everyone learned something useful. Yes. Thank you all for listening. Again, if you want to find us or learn more about us, you can find us on our website workerbeam.com. Find us on social or join our community at workerbeam.com/community. Thanks for listening. Driving at work is hosted by us, Dr. Patricia Grubarak and Dr. Katina Sawyer, and produced by Ali Johnson.