Crisis to Calm: Impact of Daily Heroics on Work-Life Harmony

It is exhausting to always work at this high intensity & pressure. However, there are rewards and and positive outcomes associated with this behavior pattern:

• Recognition from others
• Adrenaline rush of dealing with crises, leading to a release of dopamine when a solution is found
• Sense of fulfillment of being needed & valued for your contributions
• Creatively resolving complex problems keeps you challenged & your creative juices flowing

These keep you striving ahead and willing (and maybe a bit excited) to suit up as a hero.

As you strive to reduce stress and improve work-life balance, addressing the tendency and desire to be the hero becomes an important challenge. Let’s look a bit more into heroism at work and then get to how you can start addressing it.

Crisis Management

Many of us have learned to call on our inner superhero as a crisis adaptation. It is a great skill to have, especially in high stress and high pressure situations. Organizations need individuals who are willing to confront and solve urgent issues without avoiding the challenge or freezing with denial, inaction, or indecisiveness. You look back to the years of the COVID; every organization had an immense challenge to figure out. Ideas on keeping employees safe, serving customers, and adapting the business came from anyone in the organization willing to speak up and take action.

Here are a few examples of these hero archetypes.

Team Oriented Corporate Hero Archetypes

• Firefighters go from fire to fire, addressing what is of highest urgency until the next urgent crisis happens. The first issue gets resolved enough that it won’t flare up. Hopefully, the issue has been solved well enough to prevent recurrence, even if it is still smoldering. For example, a customer backorder only gets resolved enough to keep them happy for a short period. The root problem has not been fully addressed. They might have another backorder in a few months / weeks as this has only been addressed at the top level. I’ve also heard people call this approach “a game of smoke and mirrors,” managing the perception but not the underlying business systems.
• Trauma medics keep putting tourniquets and bandages to stop the bleed out. They stay with the issue until the bleeding has stopped. They apply temporary solutions to an issue. Continuing with the back-order situation trauma medics continue to work on the customer's back-order situation until stocks are built back up and the customer feels like the issue is solved. This delves deeper into the issues than firefighting does, but it still doesn’t solve what the underlying problem.

Personal Oriented Corporate Hero Archetypes

• Superheroes fly in and, through their personal efforts & expertise, magically solve an issue that others can’t. These individuals have in-depth knowledge of systems, processes, or equipment and are the only ones capable of solving certain issues. In the back-order example, they have a key relationship with the customer or supplier and come to an agreement or a quick fix to mitigate the issue.
• Lone rangers ride in on a white horse and save the day. They focus on personal efforts (maybe with a trusted sidekick). In the TV show, the bad guy gets locked up, and the problem is permanently solved by the end of the episode. In the real world, the lone ranger gets much credit for addressing the surface issues. The sidekick only gets a bit of a reflected recognition. In the back-order example, the person goes in and works with the supplier or manufacturing department to get to a quick fix to mitigate the issue. There is more hands-on involvement and interaction than the superhero.

I’m sure you’ve seen these heroes at work at some point in your career. (You may have been one of them.)

In healthy organizations under strong leadership, these crisis situations are followed by a team doing a deep-dive root-cause analysis to determine what caused the problem and how to prevent it from reoccurring.

Biblical Example of Healthy Crisis Management - Queen Esther

In the Bible, Esther is an example of someone taking effective, courageous action in the face of a crisis. Once she learned of the plot to wipe out the Jewish people, she took immediate action. Then, she took appropriate actions to ensure the challenges were solved long-term.

When I read the story and imagine how I would respond in the situation she faced, she provides a great role model of how to work under stress in a high-pressure crisis situation and then carry through on all the details to ensure the Jews could not be threatened like that again under Xerxes reign.

Key Points

• She demonstrated strategic planning and risk assessment. First she sought counsel from God, a wise advisor (Mordecai) and the friendly support of her maidens. Then she carefully mapped her risks and planned her approach to talk to the king and gain his support.
• At the risk of her life, she approached King Xerxes to quickly confronted the crisis head-on.
• Because of her pre-planning and God’s support, she effectively advocated for resources and support. Persuasive and authentic, she gained King Xerxes sympathy and willingness to intervene.
• Due to her influence, the king issued a decree to counteract Haman’s evil plan. Esther was also wily enough to ensure justice was served to Haman. Yet, her efforts did not stop there.
• She followed up after the decree to ensure the actions were implemented. Esther and Mordecai ensured that the decree had the desired outcome of saving the Jews.
• Since she was not just focused on the short-term issue, she ensured the Jewish people had a right to assemble and protect themselves long term. It allowed them to triumph over enemies.
• Recognition and remembrance (like lessons learned) were also important to her, so Purim was celebrated for the first time and is part of the annual days of remembrance even now.
• Besides benefitting her people, this directly benefitted Esther & Mordecai.

Role Model

Esther is an excellent example of how to calmly handle a crisis, even when there are high personal stakes. Keep in mind, she found it abhorent that she was compelled to be married to a Gentile - even though he was the king. So as part of her actions, she had to get over her own feelings to improve her relationship with King Xerxes to best serve her people. She was recognized by the Jewish people and the Persian court for her efforts, which is similar to the recognition received at work by uplines, stakeholders and others in the organization.

If she was only acted like a firefighter, medic, superhero or medic, the Jews would not have Purim today and they may not have been able to defend themselves against their enemies while under King Xerxes reign.

(Let me know in the comments if there are any other leadership lessons you find as you re-read and meditate on Esther. Looking for other Biblical examples of effective crisis leadership,  Nehemiah and Judith (if you haven't heard of her, she's in Catholic & Orthodox Bibles and goes to extreme lengths to save the Jewish people; Judith & 1 Clement 55:4-6).)

RELATED: Addressing Common Gaps in Prioritization 

Corporate Hero Leadership - Short Term Focus & Ineffective

Yet, there are other situations in which being the hero is not for a short period, but an everyday role. The focus is on quick fixes to solve issues in the short term. When this occurs, issues reoccur at some point. Resources keep getting diverted away from long term growth & improvement to constantly trying to stay in front of the latest problem. It is exhausting for everyone involved - robbing time and energy from other initiatives at work and from personal lives. The leadership keep using the urgency and importance of the latest crisis to demand intense efforts and dedication beyond "normal" working hours.

I see this pattern occurring in two different scenarios.

Organization Hero Culture

Sometimes, this is an organizational strategic or cultural issue. You can tell when you look around and see that the only people who thrive and survive act as heroes, saving the day daily. Almost no one gets recognized or promoted for putting in new systems or process improvements or effectively doing the daily work to sustain the day-to-day business.

Generally, these organizations have a more short-term focus than seeking to invest resources into building processes and systems for long-term success. This can also exist in division or department pockets, depending on a key leader's preferred leadership and management style.

It will be your call on how toxic this environment is to you and your goals for work-life balance. Before you start job hunting, don’t assume that because this is the overriding culture or strategy, you can’t change your area of the organization. With your history of success at this organization, you have influence and can make changes that can help you and your team. More on this in a bit.

Personal Leadership or Management Style

Being the hero is sometimes a personal leadership or management style adopted, reinforced, and sustained over the years. Taking heroic actions daily adds pressure, increases stress, and commits to your time. It’s a cycle of exhaustion. Maybe it started as:

• A successful adaptation at one company (or department) you have now brought to another environment where it is unnecessary.
• You took on more than you could handle and got stretched thin. As you prioritized what you could handle, you realized that you could be successful just going from crisis to crisis. People around you were okay if you dropped the ball on smaller items because of your larger contributions.
• Being a bit of an adrenaline junkie. You find periods without crisis flat and unfulfilling at work, so seek projects that keep you on edge. Or you remain hypervigilant in risk management mode to prevent or detect the next crisis on the horizon - ready to jump into action. 
• You moved from being an expert in an individual contributor role to a leadership role. You thought, “It takes less time if I just do it myself,” or “This is so sensitive, I don’t trust anyone else with it but myself.” 

Regardless of your motivation to adopt this style of leadership, when there is no time or effort to solve problems and put in permanent fixes - issues reoccur. They may not be exactly the same, but as you look at the root, they are related. 

Personal evaluation

When you decide that it is more important to spend time with loved ones and care for yourself, you need to make the hard decision if this time consuming and energy draining approach will still work with who you want to be. It takes stepping back and thinking about who you really want to be and whether heroic leadership or management style supports that. As you try to be as successful at home and in your personal life as at work, it is probably time for you to rethink these behaviors.

I can sense the resistance and hear that quiet voice inside you:

It is just how I work. I've received a lot of recognition and been so successful working this way. It is core to how people perceive me at work. I can’t change this; I’ll get fired for sure. Heroics are how I’ve been successful. I’d rather figure out how to work fewer hours with a few productivity or administrative improvements to my ways of working.

I get what you are feeling - I’m a crisis and deadline-driven adrenaline junkie in recovery that was hypervigilant about potential risks. There were times when that quiet period between emergencies was harder than being caught up in the invigorating chaos and crazy of the latest crisis. Learning to be comfortable and happy in those calmer moments took introspection, prayer, healing, and time. But that’s a story for another day about how work, worth, and identity can all get tied together.

For now, I’ll address how to make small changes in your work habits that let you practice and develop other valuable crisis management skills. These will help you find the space to slow down and catch your breath, reducing your stress and the high-pressure load at work.

RELATED: Productivity Improvements Over Time Management

Small changes to transform heroic leadership into sustainable success

Whether you are looking to make changes for your department inside an organizational culture or your personal leadership style, here are a few starting points to consider:

Problem Solving & Root Cause Analysis

• As you and the triage team are deciding on assignments, ensure someone is working one deeper problem solving efforts with the people closest to the problem
• Point out the repeating theme of several of these crises and suggest that you can lead a task force to get to the root cause so it reduces the likelihood of repeating

Process Improvements

• Convert short-term actions to more long-term process improvements (it may not be root cause, but it closes more gaps than the immediate triage efforts)
• Before you move off of incident response, make sure resources have a clear action plan on what remains to be accomplished (e.g. procedures to update, training to complete, systems)

Accountability

• Ensure loose ends get wrapped up by assigning someone to complete the activity
• Set up follow-up sessions after the closure of the incident response and establish checks to ensure everything gets closed out

Early Detection

• If there aren’t resources yet to get into problem-solving, as part of the closeout, at least identify a documented process for early detection. Catching issues earlier mitigates the impact.

Testing 

• Once all loose ends are closed, run a “mock drill” to prove the solutions' effectiveness. This can also be done to test early detection process checks. From this, make a determination if that was effective enough to prevent another crisis. If not, ensure gaps are closed from the latest findings.

Lessons learned

• Keep a running file of lessons learned. While it solves nothing, it can help make solving similar issues faster. When deep in crisis mode, this may be a simple first step. Then, go through the file in a quieter time or as part of strategic planning, and use it for identifying initiatives. I’m sure you’ve found your memory of these crises blurs the different incidents into each other, and the recency effect keeps the details of the last one or two at the top of your mind.

Delegate

• If you find yourself being the superhero or lone ranger, develop others on your team. If you keep saying to youself - "It's faster if I do it myself." or "No one can do this as good as I do." - nothing will change until you develop and learn to trust the people on your team.
• Have them take more actions while you are mentoring them. Yes, it may take a bit of time upfront, but in the long run, more people can learn and grow. It frees up your time in the long-term.
• Trust, development and involvement are also motivational, encouraging people to put in that additional increment of discretional efforts.
• Your upline also recognizes that you have trained your backfill, so they will be more comfortable promoting you or moving you to another role.

Recognize

• Motivate your team and peers by recognizing when people take action to deliver long-term benefits instead of just short term wins.
• Set up systems to benefit and encourage those that put in the effort to keep the business running smoothly. You may be surprised by the impact of focusing on doing the right thing per the existing processes and procedures reduces the number of things that go wrong.
• Hero culture sometimes also creates a set of negative behaviors. When resources are needed, people may have been influenced to let things slip into crisis or to be portrayed as an emergency, since otherwise they wouldn't get the needed support.

Benefits of these small changes

If you and your team take some time each day during incident response to dig deeper into problem-solving and ensure the root cause is addressed (not just identified). You want to increase the amount of time that you publicly (and privately) recognize people who did the hard work of problem-solving and preventive action. Ensure you advertise how well your team prevents problems when you go to your boss’ staff meetings. You and your team must represent yourselves strongly amongst all the heroes at the table to help get more people invested in preventing problems. Slowly you can get out of crisis mode:

• Problems stop recurring (or recur less frequently)
• More people know how to deal with issues
• Others see your success & calmness during a crisis and adopt your approach for prevention
• Stakeholders value when the business runs smoothly with less expensive crises and can invest that money in more growth

This reduces your stress while, at the same time, your value to the organization is also greater.

My hope for you...

The Biblical examples of leadership through crisis give you the inspiration to make small adjustments in your leadership & management style.

With practice and training, implementing strategies to manage work-related stress and prioritize your time will become easier. As you get out of a constant frantic, high-pressure crisis mode, you will find that you have more time and energy for loved ones, personal interests, and self-care. You will also experience greater work-life harmony.

By taking time for relationships and activities that nourish your body, mind, and spirit, you will be living more of the life that God intends for you. Remember, God is always present, and by surrendering to Him and allowing the Holy Spirit to guide you, you'll find the strength and courage to overcome challenges and grow, ultimately leading to a flourishing life.

Interested in this approach and want to learn more about how you can go deeper into using your existing time management skills to help you improve your work-life harmony and reducing your stress?  Book a free consultation.