Top Leadership Quotes round up for the week by Sally Clarke

Every week we round up the top leadership quotes from Alexis Zahner and Sally Clarke on Human Leadership. These are Leadership Quotes that our Human Leaders community love, resonate with and have shared the most. Our leadership quotes are about inspiring and encouraging you to lead with courage and Human Leadership. Feel welcome to share these to your social networks too, and tag Human Leaders!

Wellbeing leadership quote by Sally Clarke on LinkedIn.

✨To lead people effectively, we need to do the ongoing work of owning our privilege✨

At an event I attended yesterday, a presenter spoke about how “we don’t need less stress, we just need to change our relationship to stress.” I could almost hear my blood boiling.

While I see her point in theory, this is incredibly easy to say when we benefit from privilege. A relatively trauma-free upbringing. A good education. The significant disposable income required in our societies to do the work of healing and self-care. Having options.

For many, chronic stress is so rampant, ubitquitous, normalized and unavoidable that expecting everyone to “change their relationship to stress” is like asking them to stop a tornado with an umbrella.

In the latest episode of We Are Human Leaders, Alexis Zahner and I had the incredible privilege of conversing with Harvard professor and sociologist Michèle Lamont about the importance of recognition and dignity in the workplace and beyond.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t take every opportunity to seize our power and agency in a situation. I am saying that what gives rise to and prolongs stress in one person’s life may not be the same for another.

This conversation fortified my resolve to keep doing the work of bringing awareness to the multiple privileges from which I benefit and which color my perspective.

I’m curious: how does acknowledging privilege help improve your leadership?

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Burnout Leadership Quote by Sally Clarke on LinkedIn

✨Conversations that leave me understanding myself, the other person and the world at large better are my favorite. This was one of those conversations✨

In candid and wide-ranging conversation, Julia Hartwig and I explore
✨ what burnout is
✨ why it can be hard to identify
✨ some of the symptoms of burnout
✨ steps we can take to prevent, and heal from, burnout

The message in this video is one of the key ones I try to impart whenever I talk about burnout. It's never the individual's fault. It's not a failure, a shortcoming or a lack of trying. Burnout is your body's intelligent response to chronic workplace stress.

Listen to the episode wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for your vulnerability and for holding space for this important topic, Julia!

I'm curious: What did it take for you to acknowledge you were in burnout?

#burnout #burnoutprevention #podcast frenemies #humanleadership

Leadership Quote on burnout by Sally Clarke on LinkedIn.

✨Are you one of those people who will listen when a doctor tells you to rest, but struggles to listen to your own body and needs? Or is it just me?✨

For many of us, permission to take care of ourselves – rest, say no, say maybe, go for a long walk, skip an event, sign up for something that makes our heart sing (but doesn't seem super "productive") – is not something that comes naturally.

So today, identify one thing that you want to do. Something that is not a hack, or a productivity booster, or at the behest of someone else, or society at large. And give yourself permission to do it.

Today, I give myself permission to write in my journal and listen to a fav playlist on a train trip to Germany. No screens. Just my musings, my terrible handwriting and my exceptional taste in music.

I'm curious: What are you giving yourself permission to do today?

selfcare burnoutprevention burnout wellbeing

Leadership quote by Sally Clarke on LinkedIn.

✨Wellbeing is not offering free fruit or meditation apps. Wellbeing is an outcome of great leadership, work design and culture.✨

I'm not against wellbeing initiatives – however, things like free yoga classes and pizza parties need to be offered in addition to a healthy work culture, great leadership and mindful work design.

Too many organizations make the mistake of investing massive amounts of money on wellbeing initiatives like free gym memberships and discounted green juices. However, when leadership, work design and culture are toxic, these initiatives function like a bandaid on a broken leg. Ineffective and insulting, leading to further suffering, disengagement and cynicism.

Instead, to meaningfully impact wellbeing, leaders need to actively prevent the issues that contribute to chronic stress and burnout. By:
> improving leadership qualities like mindful communication, self-awareness and emotional wisdom,
> redressing glitches and inefficiencies in work flow (think: too many emails and pointless or excessively long meetings) and ensuring healthy workloads,
> making recognition and meaningfulness a part of the culture,
> adequately remunerating people, and
> ensuring people feel connected with what they do and who they do it with,
workplace wellbeing will naturally improve too.

✨When these preventative measures are in place, those initiatives will enhance wellbeing, rather than act as a beacon of leadership hypocrisy. ✨

To learn more, listen to the latest episode of We Are Human Leaders, where Alexis Zahner and I speak with workplace wellbeing expert Ryan Hopkins about what really works – and where leaders can start right now to make a difference.

I'm curious: What do you think is the key driver of wellbeing at work?

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Leadership Quote on Burnout by Sally Clarke on LinkedIn

✨Burnout happens to individuals. Yet it impacts every single one of us ✨

Last year, the Infinite Potential Global Burnout Study found that 38.1% of working people are in burnout.

Think about that. 4 in 10 of your colleagues. Friends. Family. Fellow citizens. Currently experiencing the 3 dimensions – exhaustion, cynicism and reduced professional efficacy – to the point where they are burnt out.

Reflect for a moment on how 4 in 10 people being burnout impacts your day to day...

🌟How senior leaders in your organization make decisions.
🌟Your brother's mood when you call him for advice.
🌟Your partner's ability to parent.
🌟Whether your colleague can step in to help on a sudden change to deliverables.
🌟Your fellow citizens ability to partake in informed, meaningful dialogue around politics in the lead up to a federal election.
🌟Your manager's capacity to balance competing interests or fight issues on your (or your team's) behalf.

Your own ability to love, live fully, be present, and thrive.

Burnout affects all of us.

If you want to help do something to shift the dial on workplace burnout, please take a few minutes to do and share this year's survey. In doing so, you contribute to important research into the root causes of – and meaningful solutions to – burnout. https://lnkd.in/dfZ--6uA

I'm curious: how has burnout indirectly or directly affected you?

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