When I see job adverts that talk about working in a fast-paced environment it makes me shudder.
What does fast-paced really mean? Is it just a generic term that’s been copied and pasted because everyone is working so fast that no one has time to stop and think? It is code for ‘we’re under resourced and it’s a bit toxic here’ Is it really a positive team attribute ‘we all really enjoy working fast’?
I’m writing this from the perspective of being a facilitator, trainer and coach, working with leaders and their teams to build their skills and confidence for high performance.
Are you very busy?
A consistent problem that I help leaders to overcome is that ‘we are so busy’ and it’s bad for people and for business.
In my experience leaders and their teams are constantly expected to do too much and struggle to hold boundaries and say no. The deep-rooted belief that so many people hold about ‘busy’ being a good working attribute for making career progress can make it practically impossible to push back. This leads to unhappiness, stress and often burnout.
When leaders are not able to say no, their senior leadership doesn’t necessarily know they are struggling and the knock on impact this has on team dynamics until the wheels fall off.
When we’re too busy we have no time to reflect because we’re already onto the next project that’s already behind in a fast- paced schedule. Strategic thinking is often squeezed in on top of business as usual and the pace and stress increases.
I read fast-paced in job descriptions as the ‘badge of busy’. This feeling that in order to be doing your best work you have to be busy. When someone asks you how you are, your automatic response is ‘busy’ or ‘really busy’. It’s bad for us to be constantly busy.
There’s a huge stack of evidence about levels of stress and anxiety in the workplace not being conducive to good work. Whilst some level of stress can be helpful and us help focus, if the balance tips too far into ‘busy’ we get an influx of the stress hormone Cortisol and we enter a flight or fight mode. When this happens our ability to think clearly and make good decisions is significantly diminished.
Just because you’re fast-paced it doesn’t mean that you’re productive.
High performing teams are not necessarily ‘fast paced’ or ‘really busy’ as their core qualities. Just because you’re fast-paced it doesn’t mean that you’re productive, happy at work or making impact. When we don’t allow ourselves and our teams time to think we can often be busy doing activities that are not taking us effectively towards our goals or working harder at repeating the same patterns and expecting different results.
Before aspiring to be ‘busy for the sake of busy’ high performing teams take time to build and maintain relationships. When people know, like and trust each other the work flows more easily, work is more enjoyable and problems are more quickly overcome. Building relationships increases collaboration, creativity and impacts massively on what gets delivered.
It can feel counter intuitive, and deeply uncomfortable, yet being able to take time to think, to reflect, to slow down and look after yourself and your team is better for getting your best results than being really busy.
Join our fast-paced environment
I’m not saying fast paced is ‘wrong’ – but is that the leading statement about your working environment? Is that the most important element of your team culture?
Unless you drive for F1 I’m going to say no.
The Lucidity Success System™ (LSS) is my system developed over 15+ years and is a wellspring of guidance for team leaders who need to cultivate confident leadership skills for themselves, and resolve these plaguing obstacles to their teams success.
If you’d like some guidance to help your team be less busy and make more impact then get in touch today.