Many years ago, one of my team who was relatively new at the office came in one morning and said “I woke up at 3 this morning and I was worried about client XXX”. My response was “welcome to my world”.
I was probably not 100 correct in my answer. As a leader I have often woken up in the middle of the night worrying about the big picture challenges of the business. Changing hats to my 20 years in finance and mortgages, I often had a disturbed sleep worrying out an individual client circumstance.
However, as the business has grown and matured, my night time challenges are more about leadership, strategy and culture and the big picture.
Speaking at a recent conference with a topic of “Leadership in the new world”, I challenged the delegates to consider what keeps them awake at night.
There were five common themes amongst the myriad of sleep depriving worries.
- Building rich and robust cultures with remote teams
- Creating a change mindset where team members embrace change which is inevitable
- Forming a wellness culture where the team is focussed on personal wellness
- Awareness of ethical blind spots and boundaries
- Shifting the organization from “profit” to triple bottom line of people, planet and profit.
Leadership in the new world needs to be equipped with the tools to manage these challenges and be flexible enough to cope with the myriad of new challenges that come our way each day.