💎 The Corner Office #5 - Ho-ho-hold the Leadership Magic

Read time: 4 minutes

Happy Christmas y’all!

Nothing great happens without great leadership. That’s the premise of this newsletter. Once a year, millions of people across the world wake up to presents under the tree. The result of a year’s worth of preparation, hard work, and logistical magic. Behind all of that, is a master leader. He is the big fat man with the long white beard. He is the North Pole’s top boss. He is: Santa Claus.

This week’s Corner Office Insights come from an inside source at Santa’s Workshop in the North Pole.

Empowering people

Delivering top-quality work under tight deadlines is a universal challenge for managers. When the pressure goes up a few notches, it’s tempting to shift gears into command-and-control. This often backfires. If Santa micromanaged his elves and centralized all of his decision making, he’s end up with a grinchy team and subpar gifts. If you do it, you’ll have a disengaged team with decreased creativity.

🎅 Santa’s Secret: clear expectations, defined success, and feedback loops. He sets the goals, trusts his elves to find creative ways to achieve them, and provides regular feedback to keep everyone on track. He creates the conditions to achieve success, he doesn’t define the way.

Get your Claus on:

1. Define the mission, not tasks. Give your team clear objectives. Take a high-level view, don’t just list tasks.

2. Define success. Highlight key performance indicators (KPIs) that will be measured to judge success. Answer the question: ‘how will we know we won?‘

3. Define failure. I love anti-goals. Even if you hit your KPIs, these are the actions or behaviors you don’t want to have happened.

4. Establish regular check-ins. Inspect the work being done and give support and feedback to make sure your team is on course.

Avoiding Burnout

High-pressure environments are par for the course in management, but burning the candle at both ends can often lead to burnout.

Some managers attempt to prevent burnout with vacations and disconnecting from work. Can you really completely disconnect on vacation? Sand, sea, and margaritas might provide short term relief, but they don’t address the root cause. Others adopt a slow-and-steady approach, working longer hours at low intensity. But that’s a recipe for low motivation and even lower effectiveness.

🎅 Santa’s Secret: a totally different take on managing work intensity. His approach isn’t just about working one night at maximum intensity, it’s about building operational intensity gradually over the other 364 days. Market research, preparation, infrastructure upgrades, and effective delegation are mainstays of Santa’s strategy. This balanced approach gives him, and his team, the opportunity for peak performance when it matters most.

Get your Claus on:

1. Balance high-intensity and recovery: Structure your year to alternate between periods of high-intensity projects and times for recovery and planning. For instance, after a major project launch, schedule a lighter workload to allow your team to recharge.

2. Delegate like a pro: Delegation isn’t just about offloading tasks; it’s about trusting your team with responsibilities. Identify key areas where your team can take the lead, allowing you to focus on strategic planning and big-picture challenges.

3. Find your ideal rhythm: Every manager and team is unique. Experiment with different lengths of high-intensity work periods. After each cycle, evaluate your team's performance and well-being. Adjust the duration and frequency of these cycles based on what works best for you and your team.

Inspired Communication

Words matter. Especially when you’re trying to engage and motivate your team. I’ve seen many managers use to-the-point communication, hoping to keep their teams focused on the desired outcomes. Others use tried-and-true formulas to craft communications.

When you use generic or outcome focused language, you fail to engage your team on an emotional level. Which is where the fire of true motivation is stoked.

🎅 Santa’s Secret: using storytelling to create magical narratives that resonate with all of his elves and reindeer. Linking what they do to the joy and smiles around Christmas trees worldwide. That’s what really inspires and brings joy to all of Santa’s little helpers.

Get your Claus on:

1. Develop your storytelling skills. For each important communication, think of setting the context (the beginning), the core message (the middle), and a call to action or the desired outcome (the end).

2. Make it real. Use real-life examples, metaphors, and personal anecdotes to highlight the emotional aspect of your message and make it stick.

3. Personalize your message. Consider your audience’s backgrounds, their interests, and their roles. The deeper their connection to your message, the better the outcome will be.

Tiny thought

He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count ‘em up. What then?

The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it costs a fortune.

- Ebenezer Scrooge

Keep your sleigh bells ringing,

Jess

Let me hear it. What’d you think of this email?

Forwarded this email? Sign up here