Supporting Yourself and Your Team with 2 Simple Sentences…

In my last blog I introduced some ideas around minimizing you losing the “best of your best” Employees from your business, and I went into detail on minimizing this risk in relation to employees on reduced hours or short term layoff. What about those who ware still working with you though?

Employees who are still working in your business in critical roles have the advantage of being most likely in regular contact with you. This is very helpful for the relationship, the regular contact acts like relationship superglue and IN ADDITION to this you have the opportunity to build an even stronger working relationship for moving forward i.e. “We are in this together”. It’s definitely hard for these employees though, they are likely to be working extra hard with possibly a smaller team and some may even experience “Survivor Guilt” why did I get to keep my job when the guys lost theirs? They might prefer to be at home with their families rather than work (or may not!) the list goes on..

How can you make this relationship with your employees stronger than ever? By communicating as openly as possible, striking that balance between providing any relevant information they need to know and sticking to the facts. Not brushing over the situation “it’ll be grand when its all-over” and equally not feeding the drama which is so easy to do right now.

Not feeding the drama/worry is so important that its essentially what I will place my entire focus on here in this my latest blog. We ALL fall into this trap and for lots of reasons that make perfect sense. As humans we strike every second for a sense of certainty and this situation is challenging this to our very core, I’m not even going to type the name of the virus we all know so bloody well at this stage! Plus we are entire creatures of both imitation and habit, so one person says “this is awful” the other person agrees, they both go on to repeat this, build this habit and the cycle continues…. I am not saying for one second that this situation we are all in is easy, I find it so hard myself at times, what I am saying though is that feeding the “drama” story is not a bit helpful. Well not in my experience anyway and I mean both personally and professionally but I guess I am wearing my professional hat here so lets focus on the world of work!

So, what is helpful in the workplace with this drama? Well, what I have found is as language is such a powerful part of our day and our daily experience of life, is that by SHIFTING my own language it can really change things. An example? I might be talking to a client of mine on the phone and listening to them describe the MANY challenges they have on their plate, I’ll listen attentively and then when they finish speaking I’ll ask them 2 simple questions “So, what helps you right now? What are you finding supportive?”. Initially I get silence, some mumbling and then eureka! most often they will answer something like “Well, actually the other day I decided to take a 30 minute break for ME I walked around outside and left my phone in my pocket promised myself not to check it and when I got back to the desk (which is now my kitchen table as I’m working at home) I definitely felt a bit more refreshed and ready to tackle my next step, even when I heard the kids having their fifth fight of the morning!”. I go on to notice then in our conversation that the tone usually changes, they might mention some process improvements they have managed to put in place as there’s extra time in day now to really take a look at things rather than being continually pulled into constant reactive mode.

Maybe today you can take 2 minutes to ask yourself “So, what helps me right now? What could I find supportive?”. In an ideal situation then you would do this with any of the employees who are still working with you. I am sure they will appreciate the shift in focus and people do like talking about anything that is helpful, the self-referential parts of the brain literally light up in brain scans when they measure people talking about stuff like this! Its sesame street simple, it works, give it a try. To get the “A” in the exam then the “A” student would take a few minutes at the end of each day to write this down, take the time to put into writing what helped them “get through” yet another day in what might feel like counting the days down in prison for some, or a welcome relief from the outside world for others, who knows. What we do know though is that any bit of accountability we take for our own wellbeing usually pays back in dividends, it’s got the best saving account return going!

Thanks for reading, I’ll write again soon, don’t hesitate to get in touch if I can be of help right now…

Avril

www.humanreasons.com