CEOs Need to Stop Bragging About 4 A.M. Alarm Clocks—Here’s Why
A warning from workplace experts suggests early-morning boasts do more than irritate employees—they fuel burnout and set dangerous cultural expectations.
Unmistakable workplace “humble bragging” tends to send eyeballs rolling among employees hearing it. That reaction is more discret in responding to bosses who—yet again—mention their habits of rising indecently early to start work each morning. But while that form of matinal masochism may be an increasingly frequent boast among all levels of workers—especially as pressure increases on staff to demonstrate industriousness and improved productivity—all the crowing about job-inspired sleep deprivation may be having negative effects on many people exposed to it.
That warning was recently voiced by experts at Korn Ferry in one of the business consultancy’s insightful (and often entertaining) posts. The article doesn’t contest the utility, and often necessity of CEOs and other top managers to rise before the sun to start dealing with their heavy workflows and responsibilities. Those short nights are even more justified among executives who need to communicate in real time with staff and partners in different time zones. But whether it’s intentional or not, bosses who repeatedly mention that they get up to attack work several hours before most people ever crack an eye can wind up becoming off-putting in both professional and personal ways.
“While the early-bird routine works for many, it may also represent a type of macho-heroic persona that is not helpful for others,” noted Kevin Cashman, vice president in the CEO and Enterprise Leadership practice at Korn Ferry in the post, which else where notes there’s often “a competitive element at work” between boasting bosses.
The negative effects can be even worse than
But the negative effects can be even worse than just coming off as swaggering about miserly sleep routines.
When CEO’s early rising reminders don’t provoke sprained eyeballs from workers derisively responding to them as boasts, they may instead leave some employees feeling forced to replicate the pre-dawn routine to avoid looking like slackers by comparison.
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That risk is all the greater as companies’ initial post-pandemic attentiveness to work-life balance, wellbeing, and even the importance of employees getting sufficient sleep has given way to more hardcore workplace demands.
The drive for productivity, the push to return
“The drive for productivity, the push to return to the office, the flattening of organizations, and the rise of AI have all contributed to the ‘return of the grind’ mentality,” the article said. “(I)t was only a few years ago that the idea of sleep as something that needs to be protected for mental health and wellness was all the rage.”
That always-on mentality—and sleepless work-life organization it requires—may be fine for CEOs and other executives whose workloads demand they spend more hours each day pursuing the job than other people. But there’s a risk that banging on about that as a quasi-virtue may be interpreted by employees as a round-about expectation that they follow suit.
Source: www.inc.com
