When’s YOUR Bye?!

 

I’m an NFL fan only around this time every year. I watch football on Sundays because Deb makes some incredible popcorn for me. Hey! Full disclosure. One of the interesting things about some sports is what is known as a “bye.” Knowing this term is important if you want to fit in with the folks who are actual fans. Who has a bye is very important. As it should be.

 

Apple AI describes this phenomenon as “A bye week in sports, particularly in the NFL, is a scheduled week during the season when a team does not play a game, allowing players to rest and regroup. Each NFL team has one bye week during the 18-week regular season.” 

Okay, you started reading this because you’re interested in leading effectively. Well, here’s the point. WAIT! Let me tell you a story first. It’s my nature.

My family and I are stationed at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. I'm the Deputy Director of the Family Support Center, serving about 40,000 Americans in the Kaiserslautern Military Community. I'm at my office. In civilian clothes. On leave, at least officially. I'm working on my Master's Degrees at the time and have to submit some paperwork to the University of Oklahoma office, which happens to be on the top floor of the building my office is in. I head up, looking for Heidi Kennedy, the young lady in charge of that office. I submit my paperwork to her, and we start to chit-chat. She asks me why I'm in civvies. Attempting to be cute, I tell her that "you'll always know when I'm on leave because I'll be in the office in civvies." That's kinda cute, isn't it? Man, does she set me straight as she asks, point-blank, "What do you think you're showing your Airmen? That they, too, should take their leave and go to work in civvies?" Reevaluation moment right there! I never did that again. And I made sure my followers didn't do that, either.

 

I’ve always led. Always! And one of the things that I was taught that I should do to be an Effective Leader is best described by a commercial from the 60’s. Yeah, I was around then. Believe it or not. The tag line was “The best never rest.” I learned how to emulate that admonishment. I became a workaholic. All of my peers were, too. I may share my updated perspective on that thought with you sometime, but for now, I want to tell you that it’s stupid!

 

If you’re to lead effectively you have to take care of yourself, FIRST! And always. Yeah, that sounds selfish but let me tell you that you cannot give what you do not have. AND your followers are watching. They’re going to do what you do, not what you say.

 

The key to that description of “bye” is “allowing players to rest and regroup.” You HAVE to rest! You DO! Or you’ll break. You WILL! Trust me! Commit to giving yourself a bye whenever you need it. Look forward, not backward. I shoulda doesn’t work here. Put it on your calendar. RIGHT NOW! I’ll wait! Now, live up to it so that you can live longer and more effectively. When’s YOUR bye?!

 

Until next time, How bout dem Cowboys?! 

 

HEIRPOWER!

bob vásquez!