Relationships at Work - The Leadership Guide to Building Workplace Connections and Avoiding Blind Spots.
Relationships at Work - your leadership guide to building workplace connections and avoiding blind spots.
A relatable and honest show on leadership, organizational culture and soft skills, focusing on improving employee engagement and company culture to inspire people to apply, stay and thrive.
Because no one wants leadership that fosters toxic environments at work, nor should they.
Host, speaker and communications leader Russel Lolacher shares his experience and insights, discussing the leadership and corporate culture topics that matter with global experts help us with the success of our organizations (regardless of industry). This show will give you the information, education, strategies and tips you need to avoid leadership blind spots, better connect with all levels of our organization, and develop the necessary soft skills that are essential to every organization.
From leadership development and training to employee satisfaction to diversity, inclusivity, equity and belonging to personalization and engagement... there are so many aspects and opportunities to build great relationships at work
This is THE place to start and nurture our leadership journey and create an amazing workplace.
Relationships at Work - The Leadership Guide to Building Workplace Connections and Avoiding Blind Spots.
The Leadership Trap: Why 'Working Leaders' Fail to Lead
In this episode, we dive into the hidden dangers of the "working leader" mindset and its impact on organizations.
Why do so many leaders get bogged down in tasks, leaving no space for strategy, vision, or empathy? We explore how this approach leads to burnout, inefficiency, and short-term thinking—and what organizations can do to redefine leadership for long-term success.
Tune in for practical solutions to empower leaders to truly lead.
And connect with me for more great content!
Welcome back to Relationships At Work – Your leadership guide to building workplace connections and avoiding blind spots.. I’m your host Russel Lolacher
I’m a communications and leadership nerd with a couple of decades of experience and a heap of curiosity on how we can make the workplace better. If you’re a leader trying to understand and improve your impact on work culture and the employee experience, you’re in the right place.
This mini-episode is a quick and valuable bit of information to help your mindset for the week ahead.
Inspired by our R@W Note Newsletter, I’m passing on to you…
The Problem with “Working Leaders”
I was doing some volunteer work earlier this year at a conference. It was a great experience to get just a small glimpse into what goes into making these events successful operationally. And during a conversation with a co-volunteer, he brought up the fact that he used to work for a military organization that really loved their leaders to be "working leaders."
This really stuck out to me.
I used to hear this term a lot, and it was usually told to me by "old school" management that explained that they had "working leaders" as an answer to leaders they felt "just delegated and didn't do any real work." It took me a few years to shift my understanding and really see how horrible this thinking is.
The problem with working leaders is that they don't have the opportunity to actually lead. Great leadership needs space to think, to strategize, to understand, to craft, to consider, to empathize... to not be seen and treated like yet another cog in the corporate wheel. Truthfully no one should feel or be treated like that.
And if you want leaders to actually lead, you really shouldn’t. Because, unfortunately, having this attitude about leaders greatly limits their ability to do all that and just treats them as another position to heap work on.
Is productivity important? Sure. Absolutely. But it can't be the only thing. And imagine how much more productive we might be if our leaders had the time to think and improve processes and out comes? Which they can't do if the space to do that is undervalued, buried in the day to day or consumed by the next big project, which there always seems to be.
Sometimes this "working leader" approach is due to established leaders not understanding what it takes to be a great leader because this is how they were treated during their leadership journey. It's a “paying your dues” thing. Or they see a space in someone's calendar and wonder why it isn't filled, either by them or the leader themselves. Calling leaders, “working” leaders assumes all that strategy and thoughtfulness isn’t “work”.
Some other problems with this style - potential burnout, inefficiencies, overemphasizing short-term over the long-term, limited big picture view and who has time for professional development?
We’ve talked on this show about how being “too busy” is actually an excuse for not being a good leader. This is how we go down that path.
So what can we do to mitigate this problem? I have a few suggestions for you.
1. Clarify Roles and Responsibilities - define what is leadership work and what are tasks that could be delegated. And give those leaders the training they need for time management and how to delegate properly.
2. Support Systems and Resources - leaders can't do everything. Ensure they have the administrative/operational support they need, whether that's people or technological tools. Or both.
3. Foster a Collaborative Culture - empower our teams to be proactive in taking initiative and ownership of tasks, prioritize open communication so you know what's working and what's too much and train team members so they have the skills and confidence to help their leaders.
Small organizations will absolutely need their leadership to be more on the side of working leaders because there just isn't enough people to do all the work. But even then, how are we supposed to move forward as an organization if we don't have the time for strategic thinking?
If executive see "working leaders' as the goal, as the norm, it's time to rethink what we define as leadership.
Because with this approach, we’re just creating more managers, not leaders. And that will only hurt our organizations in the long-run.
Because it’s short term thinking, not long term success.
