A Journal? Or Diary of a Transformation?

May is mental health awareness month – so I thought I’d share my experience about how a modern take on journaling can help lift a load for us, and potentially for those around us.

I was one of those kids who wrote in a diary, which was gifted to me early and came with a zipper and a lock on it. Looking back now, it gives me a good laugh to read the words stored in that vault and to reflect back on where I was then and what’s happened since. I’ve used journaling as a way to document new jobs, process the sudden death of my husband, and capture milestone moments; and it’s been an important "tool" for me. But I hadn’t really used it outwardly, in a work context per se.

Experts say journaling is good for mental health – documenting deep thoughts and life’s key moments. Today’s journaling, especially in a business context, has taken on new forms: blogs, LinkedIn, and other mediums now loosely resemble these journals of yesterday. We as communicators are involved in drafting these regularly for other people. Famous people throughout history - Albert Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Marie Curie - were avid journalers. I’ve heard this theme more and more often in recent podcasts, where founders confess to writing regularly about the startup journey, giving them strength when they look back, daily catharsis, and a reminder about important context they may have forgotten in the daily grind. But how can we apply the benefits of this personal tool more broadly?

Going Beyond the Work

Shortly after I began my role at SAP, leading a team of 100 people in more than 60 countries at a time of rapid and significant change for the industry icon, I got some feedback that people didn’t really know me, and were looking for more dialogue and insight into why we were making changes, and how we could (and should) implement them together. I came from outside and had a lot of ideas about things to change but needed to build trust for the journey ahead and get more vulnerable by sharing more about myself, my thought process and lessons learned, in the process. We had a cadence of team meetings (in global time zones) and I did regular 1:1s, but getting truly connected at all levels and creating a sense of one global team with a clear and united purpose was slow to get traction. Even though the roadmap was communicated, I felt I wasn't successfully scaling to build genuine team cohesion.

Introducing Monday Memo

Taking a page from industry leaders I respect, about 18 months ago I started sending a weekly Monday Memo to everyone on my team, opening with some thoughts about life, observations about the industry, conversations I’d had or something I recently read and wanted to share. I’m not about to be short-listed for the Nobel Laureate for literature or philosophy, but when I recently re-read this Monday Memo trove - I realized how much it narrates the transformation journey of our team and evolving thought process. What astonished me is how many details I had forgotten about the journey itself – how disparate teams around the world got to agreement on common metrics, implementation of an AI-enabled global PR measurement tool, an awards program, a learning platform, a customer voice program, a globally connected executive comms approach for annual kickoffs, and the now adopted mantra: “We standardize and scale.” It is a telling documentary about where we started and the progress made (also kind of fun to see starting around Fall of 2022 the ever-increasing drumbeat about AI in communications). What started out as a weekly note I sent into a black hole, not knowing if people even read it, became a regular conversation starter in groups. I also noticed people approaching me more often to connect individually about something I'd shared.

Building a Spirit

As leaders, we often take it for granted that people are on the same page about where we’re heading, why, the path to get there and who we are as people. Does that matter? I'm convinced it does. It’s especially important – and can be complex - if leading a global team across cultures, languages, and time zones to understand that our style, our motives and our experience, may be suspicious or take time to digest. We may also take it for granted how important it is to document our thinking in different formats, in order to let people absorb in their own way given languages, time zones and virtual working. I now know that sharing personal insights, new ways of thinking about a problem, or a correlation between something at work and at home, can go a long way toward building familiarity, a team spirit and bringing people together. I've shared personal stories, from rattlesnakes encountered on a hike, to how helicopter skiing with my son is like life at SAP, and lessons learned through personal challenges ranging from birth to death to illness. I’m pretty sure from the feedback that it has made a difference in the way people viewed the environment within our team, understood the strategy, celebrated our progress, and allowed people far away to get to know me as a leader – an American stranger from outside - coming in to a 50-year-old German company.

The world is filled with constant change and stress and the dynamics in most companies, including the way people feel, reflect that too. While it may be time consuming to pen these notes and it can feel like digging deep to find something “important” enough to share, I think we can all learn by tapping back into ancient history and bringing forward a simple tool – whether in digital form or inscribed in a tablet – the mighty journal. In the words of Marie Curie:

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

What do you think? Do you journal personally or professionally? What would you like to see more (or less of) in your daily work life from your leaders?

#Communications #MentalHealthAwarenessMonth #Leadership