The Sunday Evening Flu
David Freund, Chief Leadership Officer

Do you suffer from the Sunday evening flu? When you start thinking about Monday morning, do you get stressed out? Does your job seem like drudgery where you work very hard and never seem to make the progress you want? You simply can’t get ahead. What if I told you that you could actually love your job and that on Sunday night, you would start looking forward to Monday. What if I told you that after a long hard day, you could go home feeling tired but still energized? The truth is you can. Let’s look at how we can make this happen in your life.

The key to being successful in your career is to be working in your strength zone. The problem is, most of us focus on what’s not working rather than celebrating what is working. We are almost afraid to celebrate our strengths. At this year’s Live2Lead event, Marcus Buckingham shared that when a child brings home a report card with two As, one B, one C, and one F, over 70 percent of parents focus on the F. (Guilty as charged.) How about managers who continually focus on the deficiencies of people rather than celebrating what their people do well. Let’s be honest with ourselves; that’s exactly what we do. It starts when we are parenting; Stop that, stop that, stop that! When we become bosses, we tend to do the same thing. We need to change our process from finding all the weaknesses to finding and developing strengths.

When we focus on our strengths, we become energized. Even when we work long hours and are very tired, we still go home excited and even wish we had the time to continue working. The very work we are engaged in breathes life into our day. We don’t mind putting in the effort because we feel a sense of accomplishment and mastery in what we are doing. Failures don’t get us down but rather encourage us to try a different approach until we can finally achieve the outcome we desire.

We each need to take the time to find our strengths. Perhaps it’s through an assessment like the StrengthFinders assessment. The Maxwell Leadership DISC assessment reveals our Power DISC, a tool that I have used to help people determine their strengths. Others can help us discover our strengths if we are willing to ask. As bosses, are we managing our people like we play checkers where each piece moves the same? Great leaders lead their people like we play chess, where pieces move differently and have different skills. If we want to finally put an end to the Sunday evening flu, we need to intentionally move into our strength zone, for ourselves first, and then for our team.

If you would like more information on the power of working in your strength zone, please join Marisa Norcross and me for Episode 128 of The Next Page podcast.

Download The Next Page Here: iTunes | Google Play | PodBean