When You Step Back to Grow, Are You Jumping into Your Time Off with Both Feet—or Just Straddling the Line?
Over the July 4th holiday, Disruption Advisors decided to disrupt ourselves with an experiment in resetting. Instead of settling on a long weekend, we put the entire company on pause last week—with some fairly strict rules: no calls, no emails, no Slack messages. Hands-off keyboards. A true radio silence. Why? Well, we’ve been sprinting on some new and exciting projects, passing the baton every day, sometimes every hour, as these deals move ahead. And as thrilling as it can feel to navigate these S Curves and bring our DA philosophy to life within other companies, we’ve got to live that philosophy, too.
To grow your team, to grow yourself, you have to step back and reflect. You have to be willing to take the right risks, to experiment. So, now that our experiment in unplugging as a team is over and we’re back at our desks, what did we learn? Here are a couple of notes from the team.
From Devanie Hopfenbeck, our director of products and services—“The thing that kept coming up for me when I was completely checked out was how it allows space for the other S Curves in our lives. It gives unquestioned space for hobbies, time with loved ones, and travel. Even PTO doesn’t do that because you see the work happening while you’re gone. When everyone pauses, you can truly step out.”
I’m sure we’ve experienced this phenomenon before: You’ve spent that sacred PTO on a couple of days for yourself, you’re on the couch watching House of the Dragon, and you decide to take a peek at Slack. Oh no, our project is on fire! Now there’s this tension—do I help? But—I earned this time on the couch? But—I care about my team and their stress, too! When you know that everyone is stepping back to grow, when you’re not plagued by that FOMO, it opens that “unquestioned space” that Devanie mentioned for genuinely focusing on ourselves.
By applying the ethos of our consulting services to our own company, we reinforce a sense of mission, too. Here’s Linda Elliott, coaching and assessment manager: “When we would reach out to clients to let them know we would be away, they were very understanding. They were glad to hear that we walked our walk, too.” We come back from this pause better equipped to assist our clients because we’ve felt firsthand the importance of taking this time. Just like we take the S Curve Assessment Tool as a company and talk through the results, we must speak with the conviction of having done it ourselves.
And one last thing, something it seems we all observed when we caught up on our Monday call: When there’s always work to be done and emails to respond to, you never quite have to sit in silence and reckon with yourself as an individual. When you’re a part of a team, it’s quite easy to melt into that identity. But we’ve had countless guests on Disrupt Yourself that have walked away from their collective identity, and realized, “I have no idea what to do now. I haven’t taken the time to just . . . sit on the couch and pick apart what makes me tick.”
When your company disbands the team for a week, however, now you get that time. And it can be uncomfortable, unsettled, hands tapping and legs bouncing while you figure out, well, what should I do today? It’s working through that feeling and getting through to the other end that reinforces our sense of self, like a sieve that leaves behind what’s important to us. Then we bring back those fresh eyes to our team systems, tinkering and asking new questions.
Because organizations don’t disrupt. People do. But sometimes, the organization can make it easier for a person to discover what disruption they need and create it for themselves. An out-of-office message doesn’t cut it in our hyper-connected world. So how are you taking time for yourself away from that group identity? How are you supported by the group when you do step back to grow? And what are you bringing back from that experience to strengthen your team in return?
