To everyone with the auto-replies of being on vacation – I hope you have a great time! But I don’t think any of you deserve a vacation.
Words matter
Perhaps that’s too alarmist.
What I mean is – vacation isn’t a prize or a reward.
Everyone should relish vacation time, should refresh and recharge, and should use all of their allotted time off.
My guess for why we hear the phrase ‘well-deserved vacation’, is that we’ve crossed our wires between ‘well-deserved promotion’ and ‘long-awaited vacation.’
But when we hear “well-deserved vacation” we get direct and subliminal messages, that lead to feeling some stress about vacation.
Unnecessary stress
- Young professionals can feel a burden to prove their worth before requesting time off.
- Middle managers can feel judged if their vacation isn’t described like a peer’s vacation.
- Executives can feel pressure to wait for an elusive ‘better time’.
All of these situations lead to poorer performance, weaker decisions, and discontent.
How do we avoid this? Simply talking about vacation like it is common practice – which it is!
Make talking about vacation common practice
So here’s an exercise to strengthen your communication muscle:
- Every day this week, incorporate the topic of vacation into a conversation with colleagues at least once a day. Maybe it’s reminiscing about favourite vacations, plans for the next one, or sharing concerns and stress over it.
- At the end of the week, notice how you felt during the conversations, and what was easy or hard to talk about.
