That’s why it’s so important to recognize these signs as a leader—and nip them in the bud.
“We have a very successful culture at IWT where no one wants to disappoint anyone else,” Gretchen explains. “So I have to remind people that while it’s not necessarily okay to randomly miss a deadline, it’s perfectly acceptable to say, ‘Hey, I’m really overcommitted today. Instead of delivering this today, can I deliver it to you next week?’”
Part of this requires an acute awareness of your team’s stress and happiness levels. If you’re not in tune with their work, you could end up missing the signs of burnout — and that could hurt everyone.
A big part of solving this comes down to communication… which brings us to:
Lesson #3: Normalize asking for help
Communicating this to your team is key. You have to make them aware that it is not only okay to ask for help, but also to encourage it. This will go a VERY long way in fostering a healthy work environment—and a successful 4DWW trial.
“Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. That’s a good sign that you’re really self-aware,” says Gretchen.
She added that it’s vital to embed this message in the foundation of your company’s culture. If not, you could easily end up with dissatisfied and constantly burnt out employees.
However, it is one thing to talk about it and quite another to do it yourself as a leader. But when you practice this value, they become more than just empty words about COMPANY VALUES written on a dusty HR document. They become the real one.
“It’s a very powerful message when you see your boss saying, ‘I’m struggling with this too and I need help,'” Gretchen explains. “But I think it normalizes the fact that we’re all learning together and we can lean on each other.”
Lesson #4: Embrace intentionality
While you want to make sure your team is happy and not overworked, you also want to make sure at what time are in the office they use the best they can.
It starts with intention. Once you make it clear to them what business goals are, they will be able to get a feel for how they should prioritize their work to achieve those goals.
“Everyone at IWT has that intention before they sit down to work every day,” says Gretchen. “They spend a moment and think about, ‘What is my high-value activity? What do I have to do today? And what if it doesn’t end?’ They’re really great at figuring that out, focusing on high-value priorities, and knowing what’s inevitable and what’s not going to get done.”
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One thing you might notice about all these lessons is that they can be applied to many aspects of life outside the 4DWW. That’s the beauty of this challenge. As Gretchen says, “There is no silver bullet.”
The things that make a business successful or unsuccessful in 4DWW are the same things that make it successful in any other scenario. These are the same lessons every leader should have when leading a team.
Remember: anyone can be a leader. Fortunately, the things that make you a good leader in good times are practically the same things that make you a good leader in bad times.
“All of those things make it great to do good work,” Gretchen says. “This is just a crucible for really honing those skills. Even if we ended the 4-day workweek tomorrow, I think we’d all be better for what we learned from doing it because it makes us so aware and thoughtful about how we work—and that was really one of my goals with the 4-day week. work week. It really forces you to be intentional about your work.”