Typically sabbaticals are the domain of academic institutions and are a time for professional development and research. Yet why should they be confined to academia? Truth is many managers and business owners across every sector could benefit from a decent time away from their role and workplaces to refresh and regenerate; to upskill; to do research; to reflect on the workplace and things within it. Some large organisations have schemes that enable staff to take a reduced salary over a set number of years to have a chunk of paid future leave as a sabbatical.

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I like the phrase 'having a guard dog and barking yourself' as it reminds me of role boundaries and people management. Sometimes inexperienced managers inadvertently pick up the work of their staff because the staff are overloaded, overwhelmed, can't meet deadlines or don't know what to do. They may do this as a short term, immediate solution to a particular issue yet sometimes find that when the particular crisis has passed, they're still stuck with their staffs'

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In most workplaces today the dominant generation are the baby boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964. Most management positions are filled with baby boomers and that whole generation has developed and shaped the workplaces as we know them today. I've been wondering about just how attractive the workplaces really are to generations X and Y and, come to that, to some baby boomers too…When I hear managers lament the fact that generations X and Y don't stay long in their roles and reflect on why that is so,

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