I’ve noticed a particular challenge that the leaders and managers I work with face. I call it the Sunday Night Blues.
It begins with mild anxiety on Sunday afternoon. It is not debilitating, but it is draining. The prospect of Monday morning is looming. Your full inbox is waiting. An unresolved conflict demands closure. An unhappy client scheduled a 7:45 AM call. And, your vacation days are depleted.
Thoughts of ‘I hate my job’ lurk and your spouse or significant other is angry because you ‘aren’t present.’
I have good news: You are not alone! The relief that you seek is often as close as the development of a healthier team.
Your feelings are connected to a sense of isolation. Daily demands have pushed healthy collaboration to the back seat and it’s ‘every man for himself.’ Creative energy is sacrificed to production deadlines and interoffice drama has driven you to retreat and protect your silo.
From Passion to Pain
The slide from passion to the pain of Sunday Night Blues is almost imperceptible. It enters through doors of silence and ignorance. Not the stupid version of ignorance, but the kind where you ignore crucial conversations. Failure to acknowledge breaches of trust results in unhealthy conflict. Motives are silently judged and it becomes easier to distance yourself from your tribe.
You Haven’t Lost Your Passion
You are in this role because you created it or chose it, and you have an obvious passion for your work. The team around you shares that same passion. You may have an occasional outlier who doesn’t fit (you may be the outlier, but that is rare), but overall your tribe chose to be there. They want your vision to succeed because your success is their success.
The relief that you seek is often as close as the development of a healthier team.
Your passion isn’t lost, it is obscured. Recovering alignment with your team can help reduce the fog creating your Sunday Night Blues.
Cure the Sunday Night Blues
I’d like to offer a couple of simple, practical solutions to help recover lost trust, collaboration, and creativity with your team.
- Have the hard conversations. The earlier you approach conversations that are potentially disruptive, the easier those conversations tend to be. Letting crucial conversations brew in your mind for long periods of time isn’t healthy. Negative perceptions and assumptions usually get magnified over time. Gather your thoughts. Keep the issues front and center. Finally, check your emotions for anything that would communicate a personal attack. Schedule the conversation.
- Tackle your most intimidating challenges first. Getting on top of your toughest challenges quickly reminds you that you have what it takes to succeed and silences the voice of ‘overwhelmed.’ Subsequently, this will set you up to be more present to your team.
- Don’t allow production demands to ‘divide and conquer.’ Schedule non-negotiable team meetings to revisit vision and values. Don’t sacrifice alignment to the god of busyness. Keep the main thing the main thing. When you take care of your team, your team will take care of your business!
Work with Me!
If you find that you and your team are suffering the effects of Sunday Night Blues, I can help you. You can recover your passion for life and work. Click here to tell me your story!