Managing in the eye of the storm -Pandemic Pandemonium, Mental Health crises, and Resilience wearing thin 5 Tips for building an open dialogue

So….. what a year 2020 was and what a year we have had so far in 2021. 

Never mind the time before we ever heard the term COVID-19, by now I'm looking back on sitting at home watching Joe Exotic singing “I saw a tiger” on the top of a jeep, almost wistfully, a simpler time when work from home was a two-week trial and our pre-pandemic lives were bouncing back by the summer.

A year into the pandemic we have been in and out of lockdown, seen social unrest across the world, global economic meltdown, and a health crisis beyond imagination. Each and every one of us has had to make sacrifices, been away from our loved ones, lost jobs, and lost security. Worst of all there are many hundreds of thousands of people out there who lost people, family members, and friends to the COVID-19 crisis. 

We’ve also lived through dimension-shifting social change, with many of the members of our communities rising up and finding their voice, but also having to open old wounds and suffer new ones confronting the ugly truths of some of our existing systems. Our neighbors south of the border even had an era-defining election that resulted in a group of people storming the Capitol building. 

I have been very lucky, I have a job I feel very passionately about, I have sufficient financial security that my world has not been as turned upside down as many of my friends, colleagues, and members of my community have. But even so, my world has been less colorful, more uncertain, and at many times filled with anxiety for myself and the people I care about. It’s also just been kinda lonely.

Suffice to say without work it’s been a time for us all...

Add on to that the rapid digital transformation of many workplaces, moving entire businesses built-in offices to work from home, working parents managing to homeschool, and a whole host of other components. The workplace has become challenging in a way many of us had yet to see in our lifetimes. The separation between home and office has become a blurrier and blurrier line, hours have been extended, work stress hasn’t had to follow us home because it's already there. Uncertainty is rife outside of the workplace, couple that with virtual connections, fast-growing startups and you have a crisis on the horizon.

So why am I writing this article after all of the above context?

We recently hit a bump, March 2021 will go down as a bumpy ol time for a lot of us I think. The optimism of escaping 2020, like Steve Mcqueen launching over the barbed wire fence in The Great Escape, only to find we landed in the same spot we took off from. This sunk in around March, everyone I spoke with was coaching friends and colleagues through one mental health crisis or another. It's the hope that kills you, they say.

For me, it was seeing my team hit the wall, after going so hard and driving the business forward so much. Sometimes we don’t see the wall coming these days, because we are too virtually distant, we can't pick up the signs until we can feel something is wrong (by then something is really wrong).

This temporary crisis gave me food for thought, I pondered many hours on what I could do as a leader to make people feel heard, feel appreciated, and get us back on track. I am very blessed to work with so many wonderful people, both on my own team and across the company in a supportive environment and yet we still found ourselves in a struggle. Was this my fault?

After a lot of soul searching on what I could do to make a difference I settled on several things I felt I could provide to enable the discussion and some practical steps to start fighting back. In Part 1 today I share with you 5 tips for building an open dialogue around the challenges we are facing, mental health, and resilience:

1 - Acknowledge the problem

Simple, obvious, but yet very effective and underutilized. In start-up land, everything is a unicorn, even if that unicorn is sometimes a donkey with an ice cream cone strapped to its head. Positivity and a future state vision for how things can progress and become better are essential. But it's only meaningful if we can acknowledge the sometimes messy state of today.

A little tip, regardless of whether you acknowledge a problem or not, the problem is there. Ignoring it wilfully or otherwise only creates an aggressively large elephant in your virtual room. One that slowly erodes the faith of the team in your leadership, because either you are too stupid to understand what is going on or worse still, you don't really care.

What is it they say in AA, the first step on the road to recovery is acknowledging there is a problem.

Start talking about mental health, self-care, and acknowledging the unique stresses we are facing in public channels within your organization and in 1 on 1 conversations you have with your colleagues. Recognize openly that not every day will be a good day and that that is OK. Most of all ensure that your teams understand that being their whole selves in the workplace and struggling on occasion, doesn’t mean they are letting you, the company, or their colleagues down and that they are not alone.

2 - Create a space for people to share

It can be awkward, very few of us like talking about things that are going wrong, particularly when it comes to how it affects our personal lives or mental health. For as many books that have been published on progressive leadership styles, most organizations still have a tacit taboo around showing weakness, saying that you can’t, or bringing your personal feelings into the workplace. It’s unprofessional, it's viewed as a lack of ability to handle pressure or a lack of competency.

Even when this is not in the culture of your specific organization, we all operate within the broader societal norms, most of which are archaic around workplace expectations. So very few people will volunteer to be vulnerable.

If you don’t ask you’ll never know. It’s our duty as leaders not only to acknowledge the problem but to create a safe space for people to comfortably share their experiences, challenges, and frustrations. 

Get your team together and brave the gauntlet, ask the tough questions and LISTEN to what they say, don’t assume to know how they feel.

In my experience, the process of sharing with each other the challenges we are faced with is cathartic and moves the mood forward immediately, even before actioning the change.

How are you feeling?

(it's not rocket science, but it helps)

3 - “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken” - Oscar Wilde

It was a truism then and it's a truism now. We are unable to be anyone other than ourselves, at least with any level of authenticity. There is no right way to have these conversations, there are a bunch of wrong ways, but very few absolute right ways. The right way for you is the one that is honest and authentic to your character.

How can we ask our colleagues and team members to be open, honest, and vulnerable with us about their struggles if we can’t be the same with them?

In fact, as a leader, it is incumbent upon you to share first and share publicly to give your team the confidence to do the same. 

Vulnerability is strength. People believe more in someone who can lead the way but acknowledges they don’t know every stop on the way and that they will almost certainly err in judgment along the way too. Rather than a pseudo appearance of imperviousness, omnipotence, and frankly egotism.

Talking honestly about your own struggles, doubts, and stresses gives everyone you work with the opportunity to share their own whole selves in the workplace. It’ll also take some of the weight off your shoulders, give yourself permission to not always have the answer.

4 - Be a manager not a therapist

The road to hell is paved with good intentions they say. 

It’s very easy to sucker yourself into providing mental health advice to a team member in crisis. When you bump up against a situation where a team member, a direct report, or a colleague confides in you that they are suffering, the empathetic among us want to throw whatever we have at the problem to “fix” it.

DONT

You’re not this individual's therapist, you are not qualified to provide mental health advice, and even if you were, you lack all the additional context unrelated to the workplace to comprehend what they may be going through.

DO

Let them know you are here to support them, hear them, and provide resources within the boundaries of the workplace.

Let them know that there is no judgment, they’re not alone, and that they are a valued member of the team.

Let them know about all of the available resources your company/community provides and assist them in engaging with qualified people who can help them. 

5 - Transparency is the new black

Loose lips sink ships, was a long time ago. No ta-da’s, please!

Uncertainty directly correlates to anxiety, mental exhaustion, and to some people hopelessness.

The wider world is rife with uncertainty, here in Toronto we have a weekly speech from our Premier that dictates whether you may or may not be able to go to a store, see a friend in real life, visit your family or open your business. With life being that uncertain, do we really want to add to that?

As leaders what you say carries extra weight and what you don’t say counts double. We are coping with a communication crisis Zoom’ing and Slacking our way through the day exclusively. It’s harder and harder to understand how we are performing, how people perceive us, and the wider context of why we are doing what we are doing.

Talk to your team about everything that is happening, then talk to them about it again, then do it again. Give everyone as much context as you can about what is happening and most importantly why it's happening. Including if nothing has changed. You may know things have paused, but your colleagues may assume that the project is ongoing and they are for some reason out of the loop.

Give feedback as often as you can, don’t wait until review time, don’t assume your team understands that you appreciate what they do, tell them.

If you have made it this far, thank you for reading, I will be posting Part 2 of this article, “5 tips for fighting back” in a few weeks, so watch this space.