[contextly_auto_sidebar id="ojH6KUASOXuAQfxXJjszCN7K3JZ2K88Q"]Jason Fell recently wrote a post for Entrepreneur on entrepreneur Grant Cardone's approach that entrepreneurs must always be open for business, and that means staying semi-plugged-in while on vacation (about an hour a day).
The piece closes with this killer quote:
"Nobody ever knows when I'm [away from work]," he says. "People think I'm working 29 hours out of a 24-hour day. That's the impression you need to create."
Why?
Because you want your employees to feel sorry for your lack of sleep, family time, downtime, creative space, and lifestyle?
Because you want your employees to feel pressured to work similar hours -- productivity and creativity be damned -- lest they look like the underachievers of your team?
Because you don't trust your employees to hold down the fort while you take some well-deserved time off?
Because you believe even an hour of your vacation time a day is best spent putting out fires, checking email, and delegating tasks to your team that they were already planning to tackle anyway?
Because you believe that only you can respond to your customers while you're on vacation, and that you can do so adequately and completely in an hour a day?
Because you think your customers and clients will admire your lack of care and attention to living a life outside the office, and use that to inform their purchasing decisions?
This sounds ridiculous, because it is ridiculous.
As a high-performance team member, I up my game when my entrepreneur is out of town, because I want to prove that the roof won't cave in if he's not there to oversee operations. When he returns, I want him to feel like he can take a longer vacation next time.
I work better and faster when I see that my efforts tangibly affect my team's ability (including my entrepreneur) to take full weekends, unplug in the evenings, and yes, unplug on vacation. When they're rested and relaxed, they work more effectively, which means our company can take bigger strides week over week.
More than anything, high-performance team members like me recognize authentic passion, hustle and dedication in their leaders -- we don't need it paraded around like a trophy. Workaholism doesn't impress us, because we're already primed to do whatever it takes to deliver results.
The real art is delivering results without bending time and space to work 29 hours out of every 24.
It's growing a successful business alongside happy, engaged employees in which every person in the building has a fulfilled, whole life.
That's why I work hard: to pursue the seemingly impossible feat of balancing effectiveness, efficiency and excellence. Of living a high-performance life with finesse.
That's the impression I want to not just create, but live.
