Jessica's Monthly Management Memo - April 2023

I know you know - leadership can be lonely. One of my clients is dealing with their first experience in letting staff members go this month - what a deeply challenging thing to have to take on your first time. If you are not already part of a community of other people managers, I encourage you to actively create that space. Maybe it's a monthly breakfast meetup for a handful of leaders you know, or a Zoom meeting with other executives in your circle that happens every so often. If you're heading to any in-person conferences this year, could you organize a pre-event or post-event meetup of leaders you know who will also be in attendance and create a community of support that way? You deserve it.

Let's get to this month's Monthly Management Memo - as always, with?something bold,?something new,?something borrowed, and?something to pursue.

Something Bold

Have you ever gotten a massage? On top of being relaxing and good for your physical body, I've noticed that some of my best professional ideas come to me when I'm on a massage table and I've had a chance to stop the constant flow of input that marks most hours of my day. So my bold suggestion for you is that getting a regular massage, if it is financially possible for you, could be an incredible investment in yourself that will also benefit your professional success. A membership to a place like Massage Envy or Hand and Stone can be a more affordable way to get regular massages, and you can likely even pay for it with Flexible Spending Account dollars with a note from your doctor.

Something New

I've just launched a brand-new online course on how to plan your week. This is one of my most popular workshops to do inside of companies and nonprofits to support staff, and so I'm very excited to now have turned it into a course that you can do on your own time. For now, it's only available as part of the?Mindful Professional Bundle?(which is an excellent deal with over $5,000 of resources for $97). It's got courses about how to work with a virtual assistant, how to setup an online password manager, goal-setting, and more. It's definitely worth?checking out, and it's available only through next week (April 18th).

Something Borrowed

Have you seen?this research?about the impact on your brain of back-to-back meetings? Check out?the graphic?that shows the buildup of stress as meetings continue without breaks between them. If you and your team are not strategically planning meetings to avoid having them back-to-back-to-back, you are certainly paying a price with meeting engagement and the effectiveness of the discussion being done in the meeting itself. The article ends with suggestions for how to beat meeting fatigue - I definitely encourage you to check it out and share with your team.

Something to Pursue

Is your team in the midst of a busy season? Plan time to recover after that sprint (or marathon!). As The Management Center wrote last year, "Sustainability doesn’t mean constant comfort. Our jobs sometimes come with long hours or rapid response moments. Sustainability is about the way we stretch, which includes planning time to recuperate and coming up with mitigations when you (or your staff members) notice an untenable pattern." So here's my suggestion for you - where could you plan ahead for that recharge? If you've got a big event or client deliverable coming up, could the following Friday be planned now as a day off for everyone? If there's always a sprint leading up to the quarterly board meeting, could the afternoon after the meeting ends always be a planned time off for everyone involved? You likely can anticipate busy times, so take time to plan ahead for rest too.

I'll be back next month with more resources for you as you lead at work. Cheering you on until then! Until then, you can find all of my paid and free resources at https://www.jessicaeastmanstewart.com/everything.