What you need to know…
Interview with Dr. Diane Hamilton on this topic
Dr. Diane Hamilton is a professor and a business leadership expert. She gives seminars, leads podcasts and shares blogs helping people to build better business strategies. Here are a few things she could say in an interview about having a workaholic boss:
- It can be helpful to ask to have a meeting about the situation to address it. Sometimes bosses do not even realize that they have put people in difficult situations. It can help to address the requirements of the job and the importance of work/life balance for productivity. Sometimes painting a picture of the outside of work responsibilities can help leaders see that their expectations are unreasonable. It can help to ask them to survey others in an anonymous survey to determine if it is problematic for most workers.
- It always helps to begin conversations about difficult topics with a positive comment showing support. For example: “I admire how hard you work to ensure the company’s success.” Then explain the consequences of too much work. For example: “You might have seen that Gallup data has shown only 1/3 of workers are engaged at work, which costs companies more than $600 billion a year.” Provide a solution. “Part of the problem is that workers feel overwhelmed by too much work without having a sense of work/life balance.” By painting a picture of why being a workaholic can be problematic, it can open a leaders’ eyes to the bottom-line problem and cost associated.
- If the boss is at the top of the leadership line, then it can be much harder to change the culture and expectations. If the boss is mid-level, it is possible to go above him or her to share concerns regarding the mismatch with the organization’s culture and goals.
Interview Dr. Hamilton
Dr. Diane Hamilton is an award-winning speaker, nationally-syndicated radio host, consultant, author, and educator. Through her work as the MBA Program Chair at the Forbes School of Business and at several other universities, she has taught more than 1000 business courses. She has a Ph.D. in Business Management and is a certified Myers-Briggs MBTI and Emotional Intelligence EQ-i instructor. Top companies, including Forbes, have hired her to speak to groups to improve employee relationships, increase engagement, improve productivity, and reduce conflict. She is the author of multiple books, one of which was required reading at a technical university, titled: It’s Not You, It’s Your Personality. She is the creator of the Curiosity Code Index, a ground-breaking curiosity assessment tool, and the author of the forthcoming book: Cracking the Curiosity Code.
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Jo Allison
Success In Media
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