Some weeks are quieter than others and rightfully so. After all, we can’t always run at full capacity. However, sometimes we tend to forget that we need to recharge every now and then.
Perhaps that with the rise of electrical vehicles, the term “recharge” will become a more common term in our daily vocabulary. The perpetual motion machine still has to be invented and thus we accept that we can not drive in a car from here to eternity without recharging. But recharging is not an exclusive term for vehicles.
You also need to recharge yourself; as a leader, with your teams and within your collaborations. In my work as a coach I have seen many people and teams who were in dire need for a recharge. Overloaded with tasks or disturbances, people start to loose sight of important things and are busy with urgent, but not important, tasks. Teams get irritated over little things and they lose their collaborative effectiveness.
We tend to forget, or we don’t allow ourselves time, to recharge every now and then. However, to have our battery fully loaded makes us sharp again, ready for the next sprint and resilient against unexpected disturbances. It also reenergizes us with fresh perspectives about our own performance and about how well our teams or our collaborations are doing.
Recharging does not have to be a long process. We have superchargers for electrical vehicles; we as humans can supercharge from short breaks as well. The past week started off with a couple of those supercharge days for myself. On Sunday we set off to visit our youngest daughter in Gran Canaria at her internship location. Wednesday our plane touched ground again back in the Netherlands.
Only a few days and it felt like an extended recharge! Good company, lovely weather and my choice to be disconnected from business 95% of the time helped me to recharge in a short amount of time. It was a quiet week for me, quiet and full of new energy!
Is the word “recharge” already part of your daily vocabulary?
What are you doing to recharge yourself, your teams and your collaborations?
I can highly recommend to take some supercharge days off to recharge yourself. For your team and collaborations, an offsite can work quite well. Do remember to include the social elements as part of such an offsite! Business recharging is good, yet the real collaboration takes place on a personal level, based on trust. The social elements in an offsite help to recharge trust in your relationships.