Three ways to battle the Other COVID 19 crisis - Mental Health

A client reached out to me yesterday and said that she’d like a mental health day. This was after quite a bit of the working day had gone by. Maybe around 3 or 4 pm in the afternoon. We were to meet for a session later and she just wasn’t feeling up to it. 

She’s also a friend so that conversation is for later, but it got me thinking of the other COVID 19 crisis that we all are coming face to face with. The mental health crisis. In times of ‘virtual leadership’, it is imperative that this features in the way that we care for our teams and ourselves. This client of mine is the - ‘I won’t ask for help’ sorts. Going to therapy was ‘good to have’ for her. But something unraveled yesterday and she had to reach out to her therapist for an impromptu session. That led to the ask for a mental health day. 

As managers and leaders, how equipped are we to handle requests when team members specifically ask for ‘mental health days’. It’s a small ask for help. It is a whole lot of courage from their end that they are asking for it and also that they are taking time to be compassionate towards themselves. 

I want to share some statistics with you that will put this into perspective for all of us.  These are the findings from a study of more than 2,000 employees conducted at the end of March and early April 2020 in Australia, France, Germany, New Zealand, Singapore, the UK, and the US. 

1. The number of people who rated the state of their mental health in the lowest range (3 or under on a 10-point scale) has doubled since the outbreak began.
2. Newly remote workers are 30% more likely than those still employed in any other setting to say their mental health has declined.
3. 53.8% report being more emotionally exhausted. 
4. 42.9% report feeling generally more confused. 
5. 44.0% of individual contributors, 40.5% of C-level employees, and 40.1% of managers report decreased mental health - This is happening across levels.

What are some of the biggest reasons for this decline in mental health? 

• Job uncertainty - some employees refrain from taking days off in fear of getting fired (which may or may not be unfounded)
• More work, less me time - with a spate of layoffs happening around the world, the ones who have their jobs are doing multiple roles and putting in longer hours - leading to faster burnout
• Challenges of working from home - with no clear boundaries between home and work, and spill over into each other - there’s no space left for the “person”

This question is important because it will highlight what leaders and managers need to do for themselves and their teams. 

Those being the top three reasons - what can we do to make it better? 

• Make it okay to talk about what you need from the team - I call these ‘energy check-ins’. Not the usual how are you feeling, but how are you ‘really’ feeling. Everyday chat up with some of your team members to figure out what’s happening below the surface. Are they stressed because of a client, what can you do to make  it better, is there something that they did like you to take off their plate, do they find themselves getting attracted to a new kind of role that wasn’t up for grabs before - talk about the energy around these. Make it okay to be human. 
• Emotional exhaustion brings us all down. Why are we so emotionally exhausted these days? It’s most likely because we are playing multiple roles simultaneously. With your kid away at daycare, you could mentally switch off from being daddy when in your performance review. But now you literally have to keep an ear and eye out for those tinies at home, lest they hurt themselves or break something or start bawling because they are hungry (especially when you’ve just fed them). Sashaying so many roles - daddy, leader, client engagement partner, husband, son, employer, person (-?) Takes a toll on all of us. Be aware of another person’s emotional engagements and make it known that you can take things off their plate - should they need a break. Emotional exhaustion is a real thing. Be attuned to their well being. 
• Nothing like transparency to bring it all together. When you think that a colleague is slipping up way too often, missing deadlines, not keeping their commitments - check on them with that data in place. Tell them - hey! I see that you’ve not been able to meet some of your deadlines - tell me what’s happening. Your feedback or action thereafter shouldn’t come as a surprise to them. That’s on you. Set clear expectations and mechanisms of when they should be able to reach out to you for help. You on your part communicate with them (over-communicate if I may) and give them access to the resources and the people that they need to get in touch with (this could be yourself too). 

Virtual work and social distancing will remain the norm for the near future. The mental health situation is one that we need to be extremely wary of - because it’s a silent crisis. The physical one is far more evident and one usually gets treated at the right time. Stay better connected - use apps indiscriminately. And be aware of what each team member needs from you - breathing space, technical know-how, people management, paid time off - it’s all for the asking. 

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About the author:

My passion is to create opportunities and catalyse relationships that help us thrive! I believe that personal, organisational and societal change is an interactive development process and through my interventions I seek to build awareness and action across all. I have had the privilege to have coached and trained leaders and management teams in 40 plus countries globally and on all continents.

Over the last two decades, I have engaged with leadership development, L&D and talent management across the entire spectrum from diagnosis to design to implementation. Currently I run my own niche Executive Coaching Practice to accelerate the leaders path to success through my focus on #LeadershipBranding.

Drop me a message at [email protected] or to schedule a call with me please use : calendly.com/shivangi/15-mins-call

Here are 2 initiatives I have founded : www.thrivewithmentoring.com, a non-profit that catalyses women to women mentoring (currently present in 5 countries) and www.xponential.cc (through which I bring award winning leadership trainings such as Crucial Conversations and Power of Habit).