Why some Business Leaders never take a Vacation
When one hears the word vacation, it should conjure up the fondest of fantasies. Feet lounging in the ocean water, while a gentle breeze greets you face and tired body. In other words, relaxation at its finest. For some business leaders though, this is anything but the case. That is because these people refuse to free up time to take that much needed respite. The question is, why?
This might sound unbelievable to the legions of people that eagerly await their time from the office, but it is true. A Harvard Business Reviewarticlecited a Vacation Deprivation Survey that found that a staggering thirty four percent of Americans do not take all of their vacation days in a year. There was also mention of the fact that plenty of folks take no vacation at all.
There are several reasons for this ever-increasing phenomenon. Put yourself in the shoes of the business leader who created their own company and is the one that knows the most about how it operates. This person entertains the thought of taking that well earned breaks, but then bows out at the last moment because they feel there is no one there that can adequately run the operation. So they keep pushing it back, promising to do it next year, when they have a person they feel comfortable leaving in charge.
Of course, that person never does materialize because the business owner never thinks that anyone knows it like they do. This lack of trust though is not the only reason that vacations are never taken by these business leaders. There is also a fear factor that some captains of industry subscribe to. That is that they cannot take vacation time due to the fact that the competition is still working and that the business will lose ground while they are out.
As preposterous as that sounds, many bosses believe this to be the case. They do not take into consideration that those same companies also have leaders that take vacations and are not worried about being off a week. There is an old saying that the world can change in the blink of an eye, but rarely in business does a week off each year coincide with earth shaking changes at the same time.
Finally, some business leaders never take that much needed vacation break because their companies underhandedly frown on it. The word underhanded is used because of the tactic at work to accomplish this. Sure, companies provide their leaders with the two weeks of vacation each year. Ah, but then they come up with reasons why that third week in June is not a good time.
There is a critical meeting taking part that week, or perhaps that important task force cannot function without you being present. When they try again in August to go, someone else is off or another milestone needs to be met before we can afford to let you have that week off.
In the end, businesses forget the real importance of what a vacation brings. It allows a worker to get away from the office and relax for a short period of time. The worker gets a chance to recharge their batteries and comes back to work more refreshed. This helps them to produce better work, thus increasing the productivity of the business. In that case, it is a win-win for everybody.
