Managing in the eye of the storm - Pandemic Pandemonium, mental health crises, and resilience wearing thin Part 2 - 5 Tips for fighting back

So... part 2, in part 1 we addressed “hey, the world isn’t doing so great right now” and “hey, it's ok if you also aren’t doing so well either”. We talked about the myriad of stresses and strains 2020 and progressively 2021 has presented us all with. And we laid out some things we can follow through on as leaders, friends, and citizens of the Thunderdome. Some of the steps we can take to create an open dialogue, communicate our own experiences and allow others to bring their whole selves into the office with them. If you missed part one you can read it here.

So, assuming we have created a dialogue, everyone has said their piece, felt heard. That's it right? Famously in AA, admitting you have a problem is the first step, but it can’t lead to meaningful progress unless it leads to the other 11. 

Yep creating an open dialogue is the first and only logical step, it reveals the open wounds, but to heal those wounds or at least stick em back together with some super glue until better times, we need to go a few steps further. 

But wait you say, I thought we weren’t supposed to try to “fix” things, “Be a manager, not a therapist”. Yes, I haven’t forgotten, but I wish to draw the distinction here between trying to “fix” people's struggles, struggles which you do not have the full context or experience to fully understand. And offering actionable tactics, a toolkit for alleviating certain elements of the stresses on our lives with a particular emphasis on the workplace (although not exclusively).

And our responsibility as leaders to not only provide tools for our teams to work through their own personal challenges. But to embody these ourselves, lead by example and take care of our own wellness and mental health, so that we have the resources to help others to do the same. Like when the air steward tells you to put your own mask on first, which you interpreted through mime because you already had your AirPods in before you help others. Already regretting using the word mask, definitely a 2020/21 trigger word.

I’d also like to make clear that when I use the term “leaders” I am not referring only to those that hold (manager, director, VP) titles. Every single person can be a leader in the workplace, be an inspiration to those around them and contribute to the betterment of themselves, their colleagues, and the organization.

Opening the dialogue gives us the wonderful opportunity to collaborate on coping mechanisms, resilience tactics, and mental health tool kits. We have a foot in the door, now I hope these 5 tips for leaders and for us as individuals will help us kick down the door and head out into the glaring sunlight of a brighter day. 

Or at the very least be marginally helpful.

1 - Don’t be a 1980s parent “Don’t do as I do, do as I tell you”

We all know how this one panned out, don’t smoke that, don’t drink that, don’t swear, don’t ride that thing, don’t (fill in the blank). And what did we do? We drank, smoked, swore while riding that thing and anything else we could think of.

Each one of those do’s/don'ts that our well-meaning parents laid out, they were all spoken (giving the benefit of the doubt here) with the best of intentions. They had been there, done that, had the dodgy lungs/liver and road burn to prove it. 

So why didn’t it work?

When our actions do not bear out our words, they appear to be inauthentic or worse disingenuous.

Dragging this stretched connection back to the workplace. We have all worked at companies and with bosses that have a health and wellbeing programme, speak all the right words about mental health and self-care. But when push comes to shove they have no intention of putting this ahead of other more lucrative business priorities.

Even when this is aligned and the business you work within is genuine about its employee-first culture this can easily fall down when it hits the managerial level. What we say and more importantly what we do, needs to embody the values of our organization. Most often we are genuine in what we say, we encourage our teams to take care of themselves, to take advantage of the resources available, to not work extended hours and weekends.

But when our teams see us continuing to do the opposite ourselves, what message are we sending? That what we say is true if it's at the contributor level, but to move on it no longer applies? Are we then saying without intent “look after yourself, unless you want to grow your career?”

Let's start living what we say, so our words and actions support wellness and self-care within our teams and improve our own health at the same time.

2 - Create a culture of accountability around self-care

It's a team game, the leadership (management) team can discuss these challenges and yes the management team can make meaningful decisions to contribute to solutions. The leadership team can set the tone, attempt to embody their message, and advocate on behalf of their teams.

But culture is built by the day-to-day interactions with every single person in the organization, what do those interactions tell us all about what the true culture or intent of the business is.

I mentioned above that every person can be a leader if they choose to embody that role. To create a culture that is wellness and self-care forward. A majority of the people who make up that culture have to believe in that message and embody those values.

How can you contribute to this? Talk about the things you are doing to improve your resilience and to improve your wellness. Post about going for a walk, share about the things that make you smile, share if you feel comfortable about resources you utilize. Every time you share you allow someone else to do the same.

And most of all, create accountability, if we have all agreed this is something that we want to tackle as an organization or team. Then let's challenge each other to do the right things, remind others that they should be taking breaks, shouldn’t be working late every evening, etc. 

I encourage my team to continue to hold me accountable.

3 - Just say “No”

OK so this one doesn’t have the most successful reputation, but just because it didn’t work for drugs, doesn’t mean it won't work for you.

No, is one of the first words we learn as children and for a short time, everything is No. It’s a revolutionary word that allows us to start dictating what we will or will not engage with. Over time though we get socialized into being more compliant, we learn that we can’t just say No to everything we don’t feel like doing. Because it upsets other people.

Depending on how high your trait agreeableness and trait empathy is, you’ll become more or less comfortable with the word “No” as an adult.

I would argue that in Customer Success we have a lot of people who are high in agreeableness and empathy. We are mostly a “I want to make you happy”, “whatever you need”, type bunch. Even if that means that we take more and more on ourselves to the detriment of our health and performance. So we find the idea of saying no to our clients and internal stakeholders rather difficult, much easier to de-prioritize my own wellbeing because I’ll be happy that they were happy right?

There are a myriad of reasons why this is a flawed assumption but I’ll focus on two:

De-prioritising yourself is stealing from tomorrow, to satisfy today, it's a fool's errand. An inevitable slide into burnout. You can’t borrow from your resource reserves forever, which means you will crash, the only question is when.

Assuming that saying Yes to everything is the best thing long-term for your client is also a fool's errand. A child wants Ice Cream every day, but we don’t say yes because it's the easiest thing to do and they’ll be upset if you say No. We say No because, in the long run, they’ll be in a better place for it.

Start thinking about what you say yes to today, how much time you can sustainably provide and what we can start saying No to. This goes for clients and your internal stakeholders. 

This doesn’t sound like it’ll work, I can’t just say no to my boss?

Try - That project sounds great, is it a problem or priority? Here’s what I already have on my priorities list, does this supersede something on the list? How would you like me to re-prioritize?

And if like a lot of us you find say No difficult at first, my advice to you is, set a little target for yourself, say No to something once per week to prioritize your wellness.

4 - Hands off my…..calendar

Calendar optimization doesn’t sound sexy unless you’re into that type of thing. 

In the new world of remote working, everything is a meeting. Calling a client about something, meeting, getting your IT fixed, meeting, talking about the weekend, meeting. 

Our calendars are more jammed than they ever have been, if we do not take intentional control of how we organize them then we will be lurching from one meeting to another with very little understanding of how they contribute to the meaningful whole.

Also if you don't book in flow/focus time, then you will never see it again. I won’t go into why this would be catastrophic, that would be an article all of its own. Just trust me, you need it if you have any intention of getting any “real” work done.

There is no one way of working through calendar optimization, by its nature it is rather personal. My advice would be to start by analyzing how you like to work, how you most effectively achieve tasks, times of day you like to do calls rather than admin, etc. Then you can build out time in blocks to achieve different elements of your role, you can even utilize certain tools like Calendly to wrangle your clients into the right lane.

Once you have it built out, guard it with your life, this is where the number 3 comes into play.

5 - Wellness days and let's de-stigmatize mental health days, please

Last but certainly not least.

Let's recognize first of all that mental health is a very real and very serious ailment. No less real than any other ailment which would justifiably put you out of the workplace temporarily. Let’s also remove the stigma around this, it's hard enough for someone when they are struggling to be open enough to come to their manager and request time out. Without thinking they will be judged, that it will project that they are not competent or resilient enough. The only way we can do this is by speaking loudly and often about it, with our ears open.

Wellness days are a pretty new concept, at least in the form I have seen them implemented recently. To clarify wellness days as I am addressing them here are company-wide “free” days off, to be used by employees in whatever way they feel will help their health and wellbeing (Thanks PartnerStack, I’m on one now).

This is another way in which an organization and leadership team can show that they do indeed mean what they say. That they are willing to put their money where their mouth is and put their employees first.

I liken the implementation of wellness days company-wide to opening a pressure release valve. As individuals, we can do a lot to build our own resilience and prioritize our wellbeing. But in spite of all that, the world is hell-bent on testing us, sometimes a good old-fashioned day off can do wonders.

Bonus

6 - Have a laugh, we’re not out here saving lives

Have a laugh, we’re not out here saving lives, it bears repeating.

Share memes, talk about the every day funny things that happened to you, be informal, have a laugh at yourself.

My team had a Slack chat about our teenage jobs this week and it brightened an afternoon. Incidentally, Chuck-E-Cheese came up a lot, apparently, this is where CSMs are made.

In the spirit of this, this meme courtesy of Catalyst Software cut deep:

If you have made it this far, thank you for reading. I will continue to post on new topics and will likely start throwing out some smaller articles soon in addition to these longer articles once per month, so watch this space.