During lunch, my dear friend and mentor relayed to me a beautiful analogy of a mountain horse and a successful leader. Here’s my summary of his story:

If you lead a horse up through a mountain trail, you can keep going and going until the horse drops dead. The horse will follow orders until it can no longer physically do so. Any animal lover or horse expert understands stopping periodically is not about being lazy; letting a horse have time to rest and refresh is just another step in the process to reaching the top.

It’s not uncommon in the workforce to witness some managers pushing their employees to the brink, assigning project after project until – until what? Burnout? Stress overload? Something worse? Effective leaders understand the importance of employee downtime. In fact, the really great ones go beyond simply encouraging it and will schedule resting periods for their highly motivated personnel. In today’s business culture, we so often focus on the next “mountain to climb” that we forget the basic need: we must first take care of our team so that we all can forge ahead successfully.

 

Tammy Wellbrock
Executive Director
Hays Area Chamber of Commerce
www.tammywellbrock.com