Our New Normal

This week is different to last - we can get a haircut, visit a department store and have a pub lunch!  

Behind every hair-cut, till sale or drink served there is likely to be an owner or leader who has worked tirelessly to keep their business alive and to bring those experiences back to us. There is also an individual serving you who could be experiencing any one of a wide range of emotions as they serve you with a smile. Fear, excitement, exhaustion, worry – in these “new normal” days almost any emotion going feels like a reasonable response.  

The past year has had a huge impact on our bodies and our brains. Many of us might never be quite the same person, living quite the same life as before.

There is lots of evidence that our actual brain chemistry has been affected by the lack of social contact, the additional blue light from screens, as well as the stress and worry about the pandemic.

The differing levels of the chemicals that affect our mood, energy levels and motivation won’t simply “top-up” to their pre-Covid levels, just because the external environment goes back to normal and your workplace re-opens.

What can we do as we help ourselves and each other to find our best version of a “new normal” as we go back to work and start to socialise again?

Here are the top 5 things I have been talking to clients about in the run up to today:

1)    Feeling Different is OK

It is unrealistic with the changes to both our brain chemistry and circumstances to expect that most of us can simply go back to our pre-Covid lives and feel the same about them. Being kind to yourself and allowing yourself to experience those different emotions or energy levels without judging yourself harshly will help.

It’s worth remembering that when we experience an emotion, often the physiology and chemistry of the emotion is the same – fear and excitement for example release the same chemicals – it’s our brain that differentiates between one or the other and gives the feeling a “label”. [1]

You can use this brain quirk to your advantage. If you are feeling worried for example, simply noticing the emotion and calling it out to yourself - with curiosity rather than judgement will help.

Being kind to yourself and practising positive self-talk is proven to make you feel and perform better. Check out how you are talking to yourself – and take the time to make sure that the people around you know that this makes a difference to performance too.  

2)    Invest in your Head

The great thing about the brain is that it is incredibly ‘plastic’ (capable of changing). This means we have an amazing capacity to repair any damage done by the difficulties of lock down. There are some incredibly simple things that when we do them deliberately, alter the brain function and its chemistry to our advantage.

There are 4 main chemicals that can help us feel motivated, happy and thus more able to perform:

SEROTONIN - our natural mood stabiliser.

OXYTOCIN - sometimes called the hug hormone. This makes us feel affection for ourselves and others.

DOPAMINE - our reward chemical which we release when we get a treat

ENDORPHINS - our self-made natural painkillers which can give us a boost of energy that can feel euphoric and help us through painful events.

The great news is that if we are low on these chemicals because of external circumstances that are often out of our control, there are some simple things we can do to encourage our bodies and brains to release an extra shot!

However, in the next few months when most of us would benefit from creating some new healthier habits and losing a few baddies, we might not be in the right mindset to make change happen. We know from science that we find it harder to make changes when we feel less good about ourselves – or don’t have social or professional networks to help us.

To help people overcome this, myself and Dr Iain Price, (who is a neuroscientist as well as a coach) devised a practical plan involving a number of simple and small activities that are easy to do, which are scientifically evidenced to raise or stabilise the chemicals that will improve our stress levels, mental health, concentration or mood. We “go live” with a tip each week on Instagram at 10am every Friday @itsnotbloodyrocketscience and have created www.the52project.com where we write a blog about the simple tips that boost our brains.

Here's a link to one of our live episodes:

 https://instagram.com/p/CMmL3eflqal/

The Instagram live is an informal chat about why scientists think the tip works and we help people to work around the natural resistance that they might have to changing their habits by explaining the science around habit formation and change resistance too. An example is explaining that whilst a run isn’t release endorphins, trading the last 15 minutes of a training session for a “treat” like a sauna (or even a chocolate bar in the sunshine!) will release dopamine as well. So whilst you might not get the full calorie reduction in the same period of time, you do get the powerful benefit of additional chemical release to improve your mood even further.

3)    Dial up your Emotional Intelligence

There are going to be challenging times ahead. Team members may feel worried about returning to a public place of work for example, but if this is a commercial necessity, difficult conversations are inevitable.

With clients I talk a lot about great leaders needing to have 2 qualities – and to exhibit them at the same time – being warm and genuine so that people trust you and being challenging and strong to help people to face difficult truths. But there is a pecking order. We need to build trust first – otherwise our challenges aren’t likely to be processed properly by the recipient’s brain. We can inadvertently trigger people’s instinct to protect themselves from us – and fight or flight from the situation – rather than face the challenges that need to be discussed. [2]

In order to navigate a situation where there are likely to be strong emotions, you will have to acknowledge how other people feel and appreciate that they might see the situation differently to you. We know from research that telling people what to do frankly doesn’t work and can be career limiting for you too.[3]

Don’t be surprised if logic or rational arguments don’t work when emotions run high because as human beings, we sometimes can’t process information accurately when we feel strongly about an issue. I refer people to a great study done at Yale by a law professor if they don’t believe me! [4]

If you say things in such a way that people don’t feel that they can trust your intentions towards them, they spend a lot of brain energy on trying to work out what you are holding back or whether it is safe for them to voice how they feel. Given humans can’t multi-task well, any time spent second guessing your intentions is time someone can’t spend focussing on their performance. You may win the argument at a theoretical level, but not actually get the productivity gains you expect.

Emotional intelligence is about using empathy to manage the conflicts that arise when human beings work and live together. You absolutely can disagree but choose your words carefully to avoid suggesting someone is somehow “wrong” to feel the way they do. Genuinely trying to walk in their shoes will help.

4)    Change is Hard – So Invest Brain Power Wisely

You might have heard somewhere that it takes a month to make or break a habit. We call this The Month Myth as it has no scientific basis whatsoever.

At TopRightThinking we did some research via You Gov in 2019, with over 2000 adults. Our research suggested that people needed to get past the three-month mark to make a habit permanent.

The lockdowns have resulted in more than three months of forced change and we all have responded by developing new ways of living and working that will be quite hard to change back – particularly if we have tried new things like working from home and enjoyed them.

In addition, resisting change or finding reasons to stay as we are takes up significant brain energy – which is finite. Once our brain fuel is used up, we can’t create more without rest, sleep or food. As a result, I have been recommending that leaders think really carefully about asking people to break habits they are enjoying – like working from home – particularly if the gains are marginal.

I have suggested instead that leaders and individuals use the return to the ‘new normal’ to challenge both existing and previous work practises and decide what “even better if…” could look like. If changing anything takes time, effort and energy, surely it is worth focussing on the very best version of how you live and work and striving for that?

We have seen inside one another’s lives and homes and it might be helpful to keep that going, but are 7am meetings on Zoom really necessary now that the Covid emergency is easing? Would your team not be better continuing to meet halfway between their homes to do a 'walk and talk' in the fresh air, rather than driving 2 hours to sit in a meeting room?

If business as usual is really as you were in February 2020 then we need to prepare ourselves that it will simply take time and brain power for people to start to feel comfortable going back to that and not working from home, for example.

It’s the same for our personal habits too - for the 48% of respondents who claimed to have put on lockdown weight [5], it will take some time to get back into better eating habits again – with all the subsequent impact on energy levels that this will bring. Patience will be needed all round.

5)    Remember Everyone is Different

Our research echoed a previous study at UCL in 2010 where they found 66 days was average but that varied between 18 days for one person and 254 [6] for another. What one of us finds easy, another person will find much harder.

Our experiences have also been very different too. Some people have never worked harder and are desperate for a break, others have been shielding and have barely seen a real person for almost a year and there are those on furlough who haven’t worked for a year and feel really unequipped to start up again.

We can be very keen to help others by giving advice but there is lots of evidence that giving advice simply doesn’t work.[7] Unless it is an emergency situation or a simple instruction, human beings are not very good at being told what to do.

The alternative, genuinely listening to the concerns of others and asking questions from a place of curiosity and not judgement appears to take longer. However, there is strong science to suggest that investing this time it is the only way to create real accountability and to enable people to perform at their best – saving time and improving performance in the long run. However, resisting the fallacious short-cut and stepping back from the impulse of telling people what to do and giving advice is not easy to do. Especially when most of us are doing this from a well intentioned place and really do believe we are being helpful when we say “I’d do this if I were you.”

You may have heard Simon Sinek recently talking about hard and soft skills[8]. Listening, asking questions and being in control of your own strong emotions so you can withhold judgement and offer a safe place to explore difficult subjects are not “soft skills” – they are commercial, teachable core skills that I train people in when they want to become professional coaches. Every coach I know and work with will tell you that they found it really hard to learn to do these things well.

Got It - Now What?

Even though the coming months will be hard, I strongly believe that the people who will come out of this fighting fit are those who can master the skills of emotional intelligence, creating trust and confidence during this time.  Everyone is changed by Covid – but change brings opportunity. Being patient, supportive and curious rather than judgemental can create trust and deepen relationships. Respectful, deep trusting relationships means that tough challenges can be faced and conflicting opinions can be explored safely to stretch our thinking and change what we see as the art of the possible.

What does “Even Better If…” look like for you, your teams and your business?

Dulcie Shepherd Swanston spent over 20 years in FTSE 100 and 250 environments before founding Top Right Thinking Limited and becoming an Executive Coach. She is the author of It’s Not Bloody Rocket Science and believes herself to be the only Fellow of the CIPD who has both an MBA and a qualification as a nightclub bouncer. Find her at www.TopRightThinking.com

[1] See It’s Not Blood Rocket Science Chapter 1 or Cordelia Fine – A Mind of It’s Own

[2] See David Rock on SCARF

[3] KPMG boss Bill Michael quits after “stop moaning” row – BBC News 12 Feb 2021

[4] See Dan Kahan 2013 ‘Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government’,Yale or Most Depressing Brain Finding Ever – HuffPost

[5] Ipsos MORI/Kings College London June 2020 2,254 respondents

[6] UCL Habit research Philippa Lally 2019

[7] Quiet Leadership – David Rock

[8] Simon Sinek – There’s NO such thing as Soft Skills – 27 Feb 2021 - YouTube