The Double-Edged Sword of "Leaning In" at Work

Short-Term Gains vs. Long-Term Pains

In the enterprise world, the term “lean-in” has lost its original focus and symbolizes a broader workplace ethos involving deep commitment, assertiveness, and proactive participation. While this approach offers clear short-term benefits, it's important to consider the potential long-term consequences that can emerge for individuals and the organization itself.

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The Immediate Benefits of Leaning In

“Leaning in” typically involves adding more responsibilities ( and potentially taking on a leadership role). This work is outside of the scope of your current role. You may be doing this voluntarily by proactively seeking new opportunities or your company may have asked you (told in some cases) that you’re now going to be taking on a new mandate. The workload can be in addition to your current one or possibly being temporarily reassigned to a new role. Some great benefits can come with getting the team to “lean in”:

If you’re adaptable – you can learn a lot and fast. There is an expectation of embracing change, ramping up on new opportunities and beginning to deliver immediate results. Regardless of your seniority, this requires unique skills (often favoured by generalists) – gisting information and understanding, situational awareness, communications, situational leadership, adaptability, resilience and perseverance. This agility is crucial

Leadership experience: When companies go through organizational change, “leaning in” includes taking on new leadership responsibilities for many leaders (or potential leaders). This often involves taking on more people, responsibilities and expected business objectives. For newly-appointed leaders, this gives them immediate, practical experience leading a team. Tenured leaders gain insights and experiences into new business units, products, or markets that weren’t in their original portfolio. Also, corporations see this as a training ground for future leaders, as those who demonstrate these qualities can be groomed for management and higher leadership roles. This can drive positive employee engagement, deliver new capabilities and increase revenue.

Innovation and Problem Solving: Employees who are encouraged to “lean in” are more likely to think creatively, propose new ideas, and find innovative solutions to problems. This is crucial for companies looking to stay competitive and adapt to changing markets.

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Employee Engagement: “Leaning in” often involves actively engaging employees in decision-making and creating a more empowered work environment. Even if individuals aren’t placed into direct leadership roles, they can still be decision-makers or informal leaders (running a product, program or project). Employees, in this case, tend to be more productive and driven to deliver customer value and create innovative products and solutions.

Customer Satisfaction: Customers can see the outcomes of “leaning in” with significant improvements to products, services and solutions. They may also find that they receive a heightened level of customer service.

Strategic Investments: Leaning in might also mean making targeted (highly prioritized) investments in technology, new market entry, or product development. This type of shift requires mobilizing teams and other resources to support the prioritized investments. These strategic investments, though potentially costly upfront, can lead to long-term profitability through differentiation and competitive advantage.

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Visibility and Talent Recognition: When employees “lean in”, their efforts and talents become more visible to the management. This makes it easier for companies to identify and nurture high-potential employees, ensuring that talent is recognized and appropriately utilized.

There is a notable upside to employees leaning in…BUT it can come at a price.

The Long-Term Drawbacks of Leaning In aka Overworking

There is always cause and effect in how we work. Decisions have an impact. In many cases “leaning in” means overworking.

The consequences of long-term “leaning in” are not good. It leads to burnout, imbalances in lifestyle, and significant impacts on your health – mentally and physically…and sometimes when you’re “in it”, the symptoms and results can be hard to recognize. It takes self-awareness…and sometimes you have to experience the burnout once to know when to ease up and take breaks.

Burnout: Continuously operating at full capacity (or greater) without adequate rest leads to burnout. This state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion reduces productivity and has proven to be seriously detrimental to your health. Leaning in causes fatigue, sleep deprivation, and disruption of the body's circadian rhythms, which can further impair physical and mental health

Work-Life Imbalance: Employees who consistently “lean in” often struggle to maintain a healthy balance between their personal and professional lives. This can lead to neglect of personal relationships, hobbies, health, and well-being. Yes you are hyperfocused on the mission at work BUT you have temporarily forgotten about every other aspect of your life.

Diminishing Returns: Over time, the initial benefits of leaning in—like rapid skill acquisition—will plateau, leaving employees feeling stuck or unsatisfied.

Increased Stress: The pressure to continuously perform at a high level increases stress, leading to decreased job satisfaction, errors, lapses in judgment and reduced overall employee satisfaction. Healthwise it can increase the risk of serious health problems like heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and mental health issues such as depression and anxiety.

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Organizational Sustainability: A company reliant on employees constantly working at (or greater) than their full capacity will struggle to adjust when people need to step back, reduce workload or leave, leading to systemic issues with the sustainability of the organization’s growth, profits and wellbeing.

A Sustainable Approach

To mitigate these long-term consequences, both individuals and organizations can adopt an adaptable approach where, based on specific guardrails, companies can “lean in” to drive greater results and career advancement:

Setting clear “guardrails” for leaning in – e.g. we have “x” to product to deliver, its going to be 12 hard months and the effort will be significant. Being hyper-focused keeps the team focused on the mission and can yield exceptional results. Focus on culture, team behaviours and chemistry, outcomes, what’s in it for the employee(s) and the overall outlook of what this leaning in will bring to the company. Transparency and constant communication are key here.

Employees identify how they work best: Employees should be encouraged to set and respect personal boundaries, ensuring they have time to recharge. This self-awareness also allows the individual to choose to what length they want to be leaning in. Everyone has different levels of performance and motivations to work. This sets up a culture of trust amongst the teams and leaders that people are listened to, valued and respected. Claire Hughes Johnson (ex-COO Stripe) has a great “How to work with Claire” one-pager template in her book, Scaling People, that I believe should be written by every leader and employee. Self-awareness is key here.

Create flexible practices: Organizations can build operating practices to support product discovery, innovation, adaptability and scalability of building and deploying software…this allows continuous and lasting capabilities to be released to the market. Organizations should look at shifting to a “work anywhere” culture, define core hours, create connectivity across the enterprise, and establish norms of working together (and more).

Providing support services for health and wellness: Encouraging a supportive environment that recognizes the risks of burnout and actively works to prevent it; including programs, channels (think hotlines, online doctors) and wellness services.

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Long-Term Career Planning: Helping employees plan for long-term career growth, rather than just short-term gains, keeps them engaged and happy. Employees acknowledge that they are being invested in and will reciprocate. Also, companies who invest in their employees create a strong brand and become well-known as a place to work.

There is no “one size fits all” solution. The answer is “it depends” and taking into consideration the factors identified, it’ll allow you to make more confident decisions in your approach to building products and services.

Thanks for reading!

-Adam