Читать книгу Leading from the Middle - Scott Mautz - Страница 9

When you lead up, down, and across you wear more hats than you can keep track of. It requires constant micro‐switching, moving from one role to the other, all day long. (I'll talk more about the expanse of required roles in the “Rock Your Roles” section of this chapter.) One minute you're adopting a deferential stance with your boss, the next you switch into a more assertive mode with your direct reports, then into collaborative mode with your peers. You might switch from moments where you're experiencing tremendous autonomy and a sense of control to moments where you feel like a mere cog in a giant wheel with lots of responsibility but little authority and too little support. You make lots of decisions but maybe not the big, shaping ones. The range of issues and responsibilities is ever broadening, creating still more micro‐transitions. Role switching fatigue is exacerbated when you have to perform in front of different levels of management or different functions within one meeting or when you unexpectedly have to jump into one of your roles you weren't mentally prepared to play.

The net result is exhaustion, frustration, and confusion about who you really are and what you should be spending your time doing, which is further exacerbated if you're working in a poorly defined role with unclear expectations and uncertainty about how far your authority extends. And to cap it all off, all the micro‐transitions that force you to be spread thin can leave you feeling that while you're certainly busy, you're uncertain of the impact you're really having.