The best email you can send to your team right now, as a leader

It's been a tough year for most of us. While there are things to celebrate in the way that we have found creative ways to live and work differently, the daily toll of uncertainty and upheaval has had a stark impact on our collective mental wellbeing. As Jeffrey Pfeffer and Leanne Williams note in this powerful piece on the "coming revolution" in mental health in the workplace, the Pew Research Center recently found that 73% percent of Americans reported feeling anxious at least a few days per week. A report in the British Medical Journal suggests that stress, anxiety, and depression all rose markedly in the United Kingdom following the onset of the pandemic.

So, what can leaders and managers do to help people right now?

Institutionally, Pfeffer and Williams make a strong case that organizations need to get more systematic in encouraging employees to talk about mental health and putting in place easy-to-access support. Individually, I have seen good leaders doing this directly with their teams - checking in with people, normalizing discussion of mental states, sharing their own stories of ups and downs, encouraging colleagues to seek help, making it easy to get that help.

There’s one more thing that leaders can do at this time of year, which is to encourage people to take a break (as far as is possible in your field).

Downtime matters tremendously to mental health. The human brain needs rest to function at its best, even when we’re fully healthy. (You know this if you've ever stepped away from a tricky piece of work and then suddenly seen a way forward when you come back to it with fresh eyes.) Taking a long break is not an option for everyone, especially if you're on the front lines of the battle with the pandemic. But this is one area where research is clear that something is better than nothing. And the more we switch off from our always-on devices, the bigger the restorative effect on our mental state.

Here's an example of a leader enabling their team to take a proper break.

With that in mind, I wanted to share below the best note I’ve seen written by a leader to their team, to both encourage and equip them to take a proper break in the coming weeks. I’ve edited it to make the note more universal, and I invite you to plagiarize at will.

THIS IS THE EMAIL:

"Hi everyone –

As we enter the final wind down to the holiday break, I want to encourage everyone to plan on taking fully unplugged time off. And, more importantly, to start taking steps now to make that easier to do.

We so often get to the holiday break still running at a hundred miles an hour. Work topics continue to go around in our head for days. While it’s great to be committed to what we do, keeping these plates spinning in our minds is not a way to have a break that is truly refreshing and recuperative.

And this is a time to prioritize our own physical, mental, and emotional health, and that of our loved ones. It has obviously not been a normal year - and next year is not likely to start off that way either. It may continue to be tough for most of us on a personal level until vaccines are out, schools are open, and families are confirmed to be OK.

So my encouragement to everyone here at the end of this not-normal year is to truly switch off for this vacation, in what may feel like a not-normal way.

To do that, we have to stop those plates spinning in our heads. Of course, I’m aware that many of us are still very busy. The ongoing dedication we all see in each other after such a hard year is inspiring. But I want to encourage you to start wrapping things up and mentally winding down now.

Here are some specific suggestions for how to do this:

-Brief your future self. For each major task that you need to set aside and pick up again in January, write yourself a note that will remind you of where you got to, and what needs to happen next. It will make it easier for you to stop thinking about it for a while.

-Prioritize open space. Give yourself permission to have open blocks of time where you do this wrapping up of tasks.

-Sweep to January. Look at your calendar and to-do list, and if you see something that could just as easily happen in January, move it to January. Especially anything that might require fresh thinking – you’ll be better at that after a break.

-Hold off on new initiatives. There are a lot of good conversations happening now on important topics that will bear fruit for us in 2021. As important as those are, most can wait. Make a plan to connect as needed in January.

-Create your ‘2021 ideas parking lot’. As you have ideas about next year, scribble them down somewhere so you can get them out of your head and get back to preparing for break/being on break. Don’t feel you need to bottom everything out now.

I am very proud of all we have achieved together this year, and I hope you are too. I have a lot of optimism for what we will do together in 2021. But right now, I will be proudest if all the achieving stops, and we all come back in January looking forward to doing interesting and exciting things together. Please let me know anything I can do or help take off your plate to make it easier for you to do what I am describing above."

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Notice that last important sentence in the email above. It makes everything they say feel more real and more doable, doesn't it? Please share other examples of great end-of-year emails if you have them – we all need to learn from each other’s wisdom and experience in these times. And I wish you all a little rest and recovery in the coming weeks, however you're able to take it.