Here’s What 2 Weeks of Vacation Taught Me About Leadership
The counterintuitive truths every manager faces someday
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As leaders, we often find ourselves caught in the whirlwind of our job’s daily demands: constantly responding to emails, attending meetings, overseeing operations, and making decisions.
With all that “busy-ness,” we manage to convince ourselves that our presence is required for the smooth functioning of our teams and projects.
“If I miss responding to an email, or do not attend a meeting, it will derail the project.” — what a manager believes
But what happens when you step away? What happens if you don’t respond to that urgent email or give that high-profile meeting a miss?
Recently, I took a two-week vacation and (almost) completely disconnected from work emails and calls. Upon my return, I discovered a number of leadership lessons that I’m sharing in this article.
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Going on Vacation
Before diving into the lessons learned, let me set the stage. I’ve been leading a team of smart people for several years now, including managers, senior technical leaders, and their extended teams. We’ve worked hard to build a culture of trust, belonging, and open communication.
Despite this, I’d always felt a nagging worry about stepping away for an extended period.
What if something went wrong? What if critical decisions were delayed?
These concerns had previously led me to check in regularly during vacations, never fully disconnecting.
I would steal a glance or two at my email while waiting in line at the Disneyland queue or respond to a Slack message while waiting for our food to be served at a restaurant. Sound familiar?
This time was different.
I made a conscious decision to completely unplug for two full weeks.
No email checks, no quick calls.
Nothing.
I informed my team well in advance, ensured all ongoing projects had clear directions, and then… (oh my) I left…
The Return
Coming back to the office after two weeks of radio silence, it was difficult for me to pick up my laptop to check my email. I braced myself for an avalanche of emails with issues, delayed decisions, and a ton of things I needed to follow up on.
But guess what: to my utter surprise (with a mix of relief and amazement), I found none of that.
Instead, I was greeted by a team that had not just maintained the status quo but had thrived in my absence. Projects were on track, decisions had been made confidently, and any issues that had arisen were handled efficiently.
Even though I had shared my phone number so they could reach me during emergencies, nobody called. The team promptly took care of the customer escalations and production issues that came up during the time and even conducted a blameless postmortem (which I was frankly quite impressed with).
The Lessons
I eventually came to terms with what had happened and was nothing but proud (and I must say, a bit emotional) of my team.
As I started thinking about this from a leadership context, several profound realizations popped into my head:
💡Lesson #1 — Trust is the Foundation of Effective Leadership
The smooth operation of the team in my absence highlighted the importance of trust.
By stepping back, I had given my team the ultimate vote of confidence. This trust was well deserved, and they rose to the occasion magnificently.
They felt empowered to make the decisions they did and to respond to the escalations the way they did.
👉🏼 Lesson: Building a foundation of trust is crucial. When team members feel trusted, they’re more likely to take initiative, make decisions, and handle challenges independently.
🛠️ Frameworks to build trust:
💡Lesson #2 — Empowerment Leads to Growth
My absence created a space that allowed team members to step up and take on more responsibility.
They made decisions they might have previously deferred to me if I were around or available. They stepped up and solved the problems that presented themselves in a thoughtful and creative manner.
👉🏼 Lesson: Regularly stepping back (even when not on vacation) can create opportunities for team members to grow and develop their skills.
🛠️ Frameworks to build empowerment:
💡Lesson #3 — Clear Processes Matter More Than Constant Oversight
The fact that operations continued smoothly was a testament to the fact that we had strong processes in place.
The decision-making processes, clear lines of ownership and accountability, and the engineering processes and systems all functioned smoothly and guided the team’s actions and decisions in my absence.
👉🏼 Lesson: Invest time in developing clear, robust processes and systems. They’re the backbone that supports your team and makes your operations smoother and more efficient.
🛠️ Frameworks to set systems and processes:
💡Lesson #4 — Overinvolvement Isn’t Always Necessary
I realized that my constant availability, quick responses, and frequent check-ins might have been more about my own need for control than actual necessity.
During my absence, the team proved they could handle day-to-day operations and even significant decisions without constant communication or involvement from me.
👉🏼 Lesson: Trust your team to come to you when they truly need input. Constant availability can sometimes hinder rather than help. Only get involved where truly necessary.
🛠️ Frameworks to lead better by “getting out of the way”:
💡Lesson #5 — A Leader’s True Value Isn’t in Daily Operations
Seeing the team function so well in my absence made me reflect on where I add the most value as a leader.
It’s not in the day-to-day decision-making or problem-solving.
The place I should be spending most of my time is in the strategic aspect of my role: setting the vision, developing talent, and creating opportunities for my team to grow and develop.
👉🏼 Lesson: Focus your energy on high-level strategy and team development rather than getting bogged down in daily operations. Your team can handle those better than you can.
🛠️ Frameworks to spend time strategically:
💡Lesson #6 — Delegating Isn’t Just About Tasks, It’s About Authority
Many managers believe that delegation is about assigning “tasks” to their team members. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
This experience demonstrated the importance of delegating authority, not just the tasks. By being unavailable, I had unintentionally given my team the authority to make decisions, and they handled it admirably.
If you only delegate tasks, you are giving them a budget to spend while keeping the purse strings tight and expecting them to come to you for every spend. And we all know how suffocating that can be.
👉🏼 Lesson: Effective delegation involves transferring not just tasks, but also the authority to make decisions related to those tasks.
🛠️ Frameworks to delegate authority:
💡Lesson #7 — A Well-Prepared Team is a Resilient Team
The smooth operation during my absence was a testament to the team’s capability, skills, and drive.
It told me that all the years of effort we had spent on training, building domain knowledge, and the skills specific to their roles had paid off.
👉🏼 Lesson: Invest heavily in preparing your team and equipping them with the right resources to get their job done. The more knowledgeable and capable they are, the more resilient your organization becomes.
🛠️ Frameworks to provide support and coaching:
💡Lesson #8 — Sometimes, Stepping Back Allows Others to Step Up
My absence created opportunities for team members to step up and showcase their leadership skills and their initiative, which may otherwise have gone unnoticed.
Those who proactively rose to the occasion and took on the challenge showed great potential in taking on leadership roles.
👉🏼 Lesson: Periodically create opportunities for team members to lead, even when you’re not on vacation. It can reveal hidden talents and future leaders, and automatically build up your leadership pipeline.
🛠️ Frameworks to support growth:
💡Lesson #9 — The Importance of Work-Life Balance
The fact that the world didn’t fall apart while I was on vacation reinforced the importance of work-life balance.
In all honesty, I have never enjoyed and really “experienced” a vacation like I did this time around. I was able to be with my family both physically and mentally, which helped me to relax and rejuvenate.
👉🏼 Lesson: Model good work-life balance practices. It benefits you, sets a positive example for your team, and keeps your team at their best levels of performance.
🛠️ Frameworks to develop the right balance of stress vs safety:
💡Lesson #10 — Ultimately, Leadership is About Creating Other Leaders
Perhaps the most profound realization was that true leadership isn’t about making yourself indispensable.
It’s about developing a team that can function effectively, with or without you.
In fact, the best leaders are always looking to make themselves redundant. That is the holy grail of leadership.
👉🏼 Lesson: Your success as a leader should be measured by how well your team performs in your absence.
🛠️ Frameworks to develop your team:
Final Thoughts
As leaders, we often fall into the trap of thinking that we constantly need to be connected, even when on vacation.
But what I realized after my two-week vacation was this:
As a leader, sometimes the best gift you can give your team is to step back, trust them, and let them shine.
💬 What was your biggest takeaway from your most recent vacation? Share your story in the comments! 👇
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This is very close to what I discuss in my book Renaissance Leadership Odyssey. In fact I would call it the the standard operating proceedure for being a Renaissance Leader.
You have stumbled upon what I talk about when I say we need to change the leadership paradigm. So much of the existing paradigm is focused less on leadership and more on delivering product and services. That is why leaders feel mid-level leaders are easy to replace because executives see mid-level leadership as driving product or service delivery through oversite of others. The leader is overseeing the task completion of their employees, not leading them.
Scattered all through your post are things I mention in Renaissance Leadership Odyssey that leaders must master and they fall under three pillars that leaders must master: 1. The leaders psychological profile and understanding of their self. This is all about self-awareness that helps lead you to delegation and balancing control. 2. Emotional Intelligence which is all about understanding how to connect with others and the value associated those connections, e.g., trust. 3. Interpersonal Communication: The reality is you must connect with others to understan yourself and to emotionally connect with others. Otherwise you are a stick drifting alone in a large ocean. Two axioms are paramount in interpersonal communication. When there is more than one person involved, everything begins and ends with interpersonal communication. Second axiom: The meaning of the message you send to someone else always resides the mind of the person receiving your message. This is why interpersonal communication mastery is absolutely essential to the Renaissance Leadership paradigm. interpersonal communication is essential to connecting individuals and the role of leadership is primarily community building and enancement of others that leads to developing communities. Humanity defines the needs that leaders will help satisfy.
In my fifty years of leadership in a wide variety of organizations of varying sizes both domestically and internationally, as well as my consulting in leadership development and culture change, the role of leadership has been under utilized. As I helped refocus that role I saw vast improvements. The principles you listed were vital in not just leadership change but organizationals change which often alters the humanity of organizations which we tend to call culture.
Very well written and highly recommended information. I hope more people read this and then read it over several times. There is much to be learned in your post.