I am writ­ing this post from a great lit­tle cof­fee house on the Ore­gon coast. This has been a morn­ing of catch­ing up on email. As I men­tioned in my last post, “Some­times You Just Have To,” I spent last week with friends and fam­ily, surf­ing our way up the Cal­i­for­nia coast. It was a fan­tas­tic mem­ory mak­ing time!

Today I am pay­ing the price. I have been knee deep in email for the last three hours.

One of the email mes­sages I just reviewed was from my won­der­ful team­mate, Kit John­son, who runs HR and Account­ing for us at Build­ing Cham­pi­ons. She sent me a report I had requested with our team’s unused vaca­tion hours. I asked for this because I want to make sure I am encour­ag­ing my team­mates to take full advan­tage of their vaca­tion time.

I have coached too many lead­ers who told me they have not taken a full week of vaca­tion in years — as if it were a good thing. It’s not! We do our­selves and our com­pa­nies a dis­ser­vice when we fail to take time to rest, explore, play and rejuvenate.

So here are my encour­age­ments for you today.

If you are a leader and are not tak­ing any time away, you are not bring­ing your best to your com­pany nor are you set­ting a good exam­ple for those you lead. Take a vaca­tion. I promise if you do, you will come back to your work with more energy, pas­sion, and creativity.

Don’t buy the lie that things will fall apart with­out you. What I have observed is quite the oppo­site. Your team will step up and grow when you are not there. You may even be sur­prised at their tal­ent and resourcefulness.

Some lead­ers are inse­cure about their team’s suc­cess with­out them — they’re afraid they will prove them­selves to be dis­pens­able. In real­ity, it is a credit to you as a leader when your team is strong enough to func­tion with­out you for a week or two.

The best thing you can do for your com­pany is to leave it every once in a while. Sched­ule some time away, and encour­age your team­mates to take their vaca­tions as well.

You will all be refreshed and per­form bet­ter when you return.

Related posts:

1. Are You Speak­ing the Same Language?
2. Lead­er­ship Moment: Walk the Floor
3. Asset or Advantage?
4. Don’t Con­fuse Man­age­ment with Leadership
5. Keep­ing Your Perspective

Tags: Down Time, Leadership, Teamwork, Vacation

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 at 11:13 am and is filed under Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.