Last week I arrived at work to find a dispiriting pile of advice had accumulated in my inbox over the new year break on how to be a great leader.
The list was long and familiar. Be authentic. Inspire purpose. Embrace uncertainty. None of it mentioned one bit of advice that the past few weeks have shown all sorts of leaders could use: when to cut short a holiday and get back to work.
This is a tricky thing to navigate in an age of work-life balance, when the boss is supposed to set an unplugged, logged-off example to underlings. Yet the crisis in Iran and the Australian bushfires have offered an unhappy set of lessons about what not to do.