Mental Health – Page 4 – mardihumphreys.com

Risky Business

Photo by Yan Krukov from Pexels

Back in October, we talked about how employers need to iterate their employee retention strategies to adapt to the new, non-traditional, workforce if they want to stay in business. One current retention and recruitment strategy is encouraging employees to bring their whole selves to work. October’s discussion ended with the acknowledgement that for some demographics authenticity at work is not always a wise choice. For example, people of color, other-abled, LGBTQIA+, older, and immigrant workers, to name few.

In this survey 64% of employees said they felt pressured to conform to certain expectations and standards dominating their workplace culture. For example, some hid their political views and information about their families in order to fit in the organization. If you agree with the 64%, then your choices are leaving your authentic self at home, try changing the culture from within, or find another job. What’s the right choice for you?

Be Assimilated

If quitting is a luxury you can’t afford, then remind yourself that your job serves a purpose. It pays your bills which gives you options in other areas of your life. It is okay for now. You do not have to retire from this job. If bringing your whole self to work does not align with your organization’s norms, then you must assimilate. For instance, if your company has a strict dress code, then your tattoos or hair may not conform to the culture and you must obey their rules. This conformity is exhausting and can negatively impact your productivity, so carefully monitor your job performance. For example, regularly update your “Atta Baby!” file.

Become a Change Agent

Bringing your whole self to work means being open and authentic about who you are, your values, beliefs, and experiences. If you are in a minority group, (like those mentioned earlier), then you are in a position to enhance your organization’s DEIB initiatives. Be aware that participation may involve communicating painful memories forcing you to relive them. Not only is this work, it is usually unpaid work. If you choose to help change your company’s culture, then please prioritize your mental health. For example, enlist an ally to help you set boundaries on how authentic to actually be.

Beware

Every organization has its own culture. If you get another job, that culture may not fit either. If you decide to find new employment, then look for key phrases in the job description to determine whether or not that organization champions authenticity. For example, phrases like value alignment, access to reliable transportation, and ability to complete tasks with or without reasonable accommodations, signal that you may have found a company with a culture where you could be your authentic self. Keywords like young and energetic, strong English-language skills, and compassionate nature warn you to keep looking.

It’s in a company’s best interest to create an environment where all employees feel safe and empowered to bring their whole selves to work. Authenticity fosters productivity, improves employer-employee relationships, and inspires collaboration. More authentic collaboration leads to more ideas. More ideas lead to more innovation. More innovation leads to more products/services. More products/services lead to more growth.

How do you encourage authentic diversity in your workplace? Please share in the comments.

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

You started out as friends. He came to rely on you more and more and you were happy to support him. You shared private jokes. You made him look good in front of others. You knew what he needed before he did. Now, he takes you for granted. What began as a sweet relationship has turned sour. You want a divorce. I’m not talking about your life’s partner. I’m talking about your work spouse.

Breaking up with a work spouse is neither an easy nor a quick decision. Maybe you were hired because you were friends. Seventy percent of Americans found their current job through their networks. This makes changing your relationship even more difficult. Here are five things you can do to handle the situation with both empathy and respect.

Be Honest and Grateful

Schedule a private meeting with your work spouse. Honestly and kindly communicate your feelings. Be clear and straightforward about your decision. Thank them for the positive impact they had on your professional life and assure them you will continue to support future collaboration. If you need some inspiration, then read the story of how Dolly Parton broke up with her work spouse, Porter Wagoner.

Set Boundaries

After breaking the news, set clear boundaries and expectations for moving forward. You are trying to prevent as much awkwardness and as many misunderstandings as possible. If your former work spouse decides to lash out and go low, then you need to go high. For example, if they start overly criticizing your ideas in weekly team meetings, then come to those meetings prepared to defend your ideas.

Prepare for Professionalism

Think about how you will control your reactions when you see your former work spouse every day. Keep any negative feelings to yourself and commit to remaining publicly amicable. This should help minimize the negative impact of your breakup on your coworkers. They will feel the new friction between the two of you even if you avoid talking about it and they will have questions. Can you and your work ex-spouse agree to deliver the same elevator speech to those inquiring minds? It’s essential to both your careers to maintain a professional attitude. For example, you still have to effectively collaborate on projects every day, but maybe you communicate more through email than face-to-face.

Allow Time for Adjustment

Give your work ex-spouse some space and time to adjust to the new normal. It’s natural to feel disappointed when a close professional relationship ends. Be patient and allow them to process their emotions at their own pace. Meanwhile, you need to adjust to your new single status. Your former work spouse had input into your projects and now they won’t. For example, if you always ran your monthly report by them before submitting it to your manager, now you need a new proofreader.

Make New Friends

Connect with other people on your project team. Grab coffee with someone this week and lunch with someone else next week. Creating stronger relationships will help you get to know, like, and trust each other. Since business moves at the speed of trust, investing in key relationships helps your team work both faster and more efficiently.

What do you do when you need to set new boundaries around a work relationship? Please share in the comments.

Recognize Not Normalize

The workplace was turbulent from the start, but it feels downright tumultuous these days. Mass hirings are transitioning to mass layoffs. The Great Resignation is transitioning to The Great Regret. The pandemic is transitioning to the sansdemic. Change is hard. People react emotionally and these emotions can be negative. Left to simmer, negative emotions produce toxins. How easy is it for you to identify toxicity in your workplace?

Sunday Scaries

Often, your body tells you that you are in a toxic situation before your brain recognizes it. Do you get the Sunday Scaries? If the thought of going to back to work on Monday morning after having the weekend off makes you feel tired, depressed, or physically ill, then your body is trying to tell you something. There are plenty of examples of toxicity in the workplace, but let’s focus on the big three: managers, environment, and habits.

Managers – Your manager may be toxic if they:

have unspoken expectations (e.g., you are surprised to find a Sunday morning project meeting on your calendar)
have unrealistic expectations (e.g., they expect you to answer the emails they send late at night)
do not give you agency to do your job (e.g., insist on controlling everything you do and how and when you do it)
don’t listen (e.g., they consistently interrupt you when you are talking)
publicly embarrass you (e.g., in the all-hands meeting they announce that you missed a typo in the last meeting’s minutes)

Environment – Your workplace may be toxic if:

bullying is allowed (e.g., a coworker habitually yells to get what they want)
microaggressions are common (e.g., jokes about women and/or people of color are laughed at instead of banned)
you can’t trust your coworkers (e.g., you are intentionally excluded from emails containing information pertinent to your responsibilities)
you are not treated with respect (e.g., your coworker sits on top of your desk to talk to your office mate)
it’s like the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz. “O my! People come and go so quickly here!” (e.g., employee turnover is high)

Habits – Your work habits may be toxic if you:

feel like you have to always look busy (e.g., downtime makes you nervous)
interpret every ambiguously worded email negatively (e.g., you think your report is shoddy because your manager requests further explanation)
are a loner (e.g., you don’t ask questions because you’re afraid to appear stupid)
engage in office gossip (e.g., participating in negative conversations about coworkers that you would not if they were present)
frequently put off assignments you don’t like (e.g., the client survey results are ready for data analysis, but you dread sifting through their ideas for improvement)

Points to Ponder

Toxicity causes burnout which makes talent quit. If you are an individual contributor in the workforce, fighting toxicity is like trying to turn the Titanic around. If toxic habits are holding you back, you can change them, but is your reputation already damaged? Searching for another job is daunting, but if you are experiencing a toxic boss or environment, then please consider dusting off your resume and activating your network.

What are examples of toxicity that you faced? Please share in the comments.

Best Stressed

In my role of serving the local IT community, I get to eavesdrop on many conversations. A recurring theme is the challenge of recruitment and retention, as you may imagine. The recent mass layoffs at big tech companies have caused stress waves that are crashing over both employees and employers.

Stress Has Many Flavors

There are different kinds of stress. For example, there are hindrances. These are things you cannot control, like a pandemic. Hindrances cause bad stress. There are also challenges. These are things you can rise to meet with effort, like learning a new skill. Hindrances demotivate while challenges boost motivation. Hindrances make you feel like you can’t get over them no matter how hard you work. Challenges make you feel accomplished when you meet them.

Help Instead of Hinder

In their book, Designing Your Work Life, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans say that humans have intrinsic, psychological needs: autonomy, relatedness, and competence (ARC). As an employer, if you can meet these needs for your employees, then you will have an easier time attracting and retaining talent.

Autonomy – This is controlling your own life. Employees want to feel like they have the freedom and trust to do their jobs the way they think they should be done. For example, let’s say you’re a manager at a home decor store. You have an employee who has ideas for how the store should be styled. Could you assign them to merchandise an end cap and a display table at the front of the store for one month? If the items on those displays keep getting sold, then you could assign them a whole section next month.

Relatedness – This is connecting to a community. Employees want a squad to belong to. This survey found nearly 57% of their respondents said they enjoyed work more because they made a friend there. For example, let’s say you’re a manager in charge of a fundraiser. You have to bring employees from different departments together to plan the event. If you facilitate a getting-to-know-you conversation at your kick-off meeting, then the diverse group can begin to develop empathy, camaraderie, and buy in for the mission. This not only makes collaboration between teammates possible, it may also start better collaboration between the various departments represented even after the fundraiser is over.

Competence – This is being good at what you do. Employees with a growth mindset look for ways to do more of what they like at work. For example, let’s say you’re the manager of a software development company. You have an employee who is really good at explaining one of your products to small groups of onboarding sales people. You’d like her to develop her onboarding talk into a presentation that she could deliver at an upcoming industry conference, but, she gets stage fright. If you record her next product demonstration, then you’re helping her take the next step in public speaking and you have a video that you can show during your conference presentation.

Motivating employees is a challenge as old as the organized workforce. As an employer, you cannot eliminate stress for every employee. The goal is to give them more good stress than bad stress in their jobs.

What are some ways your manager gives you good stress? Please share in the comments.

Uses Time Wisely

In Kindergarten, we weren’t graded on subjects like math or English and we did not receive letter grades on our report cards. Instead, we had a list of goals to meet. The teacher put a check mark next to the goal if it was reached or an X if it wasn’t. I received an X next to “Uses Time Wisely.” It’s haunted me ever since.

How do you determine your level of productivity at work? You compare yourself to your coworkers. You worry that everyone is using their time more wisely than you are, especially if you’re remote or hybrid. By the beginning of Q4 2020, I stopped saying that I work from home and started saying that I home from work. Technology allows us to work when and where we want so we work all the time. This phenomenon is the autonomy paradox. For example, how many times have you replied to work emails on your phone while waiting in line at the grocery? (Asking for a friend.)

Asynchronous work makes you very susceptible to what Brigid Schulte, Director of the Better Life Lab at New America, calls time confetti. These are the minutes scattered throughout your week spent on unproductive multitasking. Alone, the spent time is insignificant, but it adds up pretty quick. For example, would that PowerPoint presentation you’re working on be done right now if you had closed your direct message app for a couple of hours?

Even if your app is minimized, hearing the notifications breaks your concentration and now you know that someone is waiting for you to do something. Your brain is distracted by wondering what it is and figuring out how, when, and where to get everything done. It takes time to mentally shift from one task to another and back again. Before you know it, your time has shredded into confetti. How can you prevent being buried in it?

Protect – When you have a project that requires deep focus, schedule it on your calendar, close your door and put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on it, and turn off direct message and email alerts. Notice how quickly you get it done.

Train -You not only have to set boundaries, you have to show people where they are and hold them when people try to cross them. For example, those who contact me between 7:30pm and 8:00pm EST Monday – Saturday do not reach me. Jeopardy! is my boundary. I do not answer calls, emails, or texts during that time. I have communicated and held that boundary so many times that our daughter bought me a T-shirt.

Forgive – Don’t berate yourself for failing to complete every task on your to-do list every day. We treat time like it’s something we can control, and, to a certain extent, we can and should. However, days have varying rhythms. Stuff happens and we have to roll with it. Think about how many fire drills you have in a week. Checking off every task on your to-do list is not using your time wisely. Giving your best effort is.

What do you do to minimize time confetti? Please share in the comments.

Be Quiet

Welcome to the final installment of the It’s so Quiet series. We’ve talked about Quiet Promotion, Quiet Quitting, and Quiet Firing. All three have some things in common. For example, The absence of reflection, unaligned expectations, and lack of communication. What would the quiet situations feel like if those issues were resolved?

Groundhog Day is this week. In the movie of the same name, the main character is stuck in the same day over and over doing a job he doesn’t want to do. What would a Groundhog Day look like for you if you were in the right role, using the right processes, working for the right organization? You would be Quiet Thriving.

What Is It?

Quiet Thriving is when you do your part to be responsible for engaging with your work. If you steer your tasks toward the things you like to do, remind yourself there are aspects of this job that you really like, and have a good friend at work, then you may be quietly thriving.

What Can You Do?

Document: You took this particular position because something in the job description interested you. What was that? Are you doing that? If not, can you start? Pull out your “Atta Baby!” file. What do the things that people praised you for have in common? Did you get satisfaction from those duties? If so, can you do more of those? If not, what are the barriers to doing more of the projects you enjoy?

Communicate: Time for a 1:1 with your manager. Managers are usually tasked with motivating employees. It’s much easier to motivate someone who enjoys their job. You offering to do more work makes their life easier. Respectfully discuss how you can use that phrase “and other duties as assigned” in your job description to receive assignments that you like. Any task that makes a positive contribution, especially if it makes and/or saves the organization money, should be welcomed.

Strategize: The questions in the Document section above are meant to help you craft the job you want to do. Do you have the agency to craft your job? If so, try to spend 20% of your day doing the tasks that energize you. Can’t think of what those tasks would be? That’s not surprising since we’ve been in crisis-mode for three years. You need creativity to solve problems. Dealing with crisis after crisis after crisis drains that. To recharge your creativity, can you journal? Maybe write your perfect job description. Or sketch what your perfect job would look like, or bullet point work you see others doing that you’d like to do. Can you make a friend at work? This survey found nearly 57% of their respondents said they enjoyed work more because they made a friend there.

Thank you for your feedback on this series! I appreciate both your point of view and your relentless respect. Let’s keep the conversation going in the comments. What do you do to quietly thrive at work?

All Fired Up

Welcome to part three of four in the It’s so Quiet series. We’ve already talked about Quiet Promotion and Quiet Quitting. This week let’s look at Quiet Firing.

What Is It?

Quiet Firing happens when management slowly takes away your responsibilities and freedom over time. For example, you have not received a pay raise for years and/or you are turned down for promotions multiple times. You may be getting quietly fired if:

You receive a “Does not meet expectations” evaluation of your job performance at least three times
Coworkers with your same job title receive perks (e.g., WFH days) that you are denied
Everyone in your department receives an equipment upgrade (e.g., mobile phone, laptop, etc.) except you
You are intentionally and repeatedly left out of email threads that are crucial to your duties
You asked for feedback from your manager multiple times and they refuse to give it to you
You signed up for the company’s leadership development program more than twice and are still not accepted

What Can You Do?

Quiet Firing may like feel like gaslighting because the treatment is typically subtle. It is management’s passive-aggressive strategy to encourage you to resign. It makes you ask yourself, “Did what just happen mean what I think it means?” In a LinkedIn News poll, 35% of respondents said they faced Quiet Firing. How can you decide if it is happening to you?

Document: Open up your Atta Baby! files from the last three years. (DM me for a definition of the term.) Use them to create a What’s Up With That? file. For each item in the Atta Baby! files, note what your manager’s reaction was to it. For example, if you saved the company $18K in 2021 by catching a typo in an invoice and still received a “Does not meet expectations” in your annual performance review that year, make a note of that.

Communicate: If your research indicates that you may be getting quietly fired, then it’s time for a 1:1 with your manager. Respectfully share what you found, how you interpret it, and ask if your impression is correct. If your manager gives you specific feedback for areas where you can improve your job performance, then you are probably not being quietly fired. If your manager’s reaction is neutral or dismissive, then it’s time to strategize.

Strategize: Should you stay or should you go? If you want (or need) to stay at your organization, then ask your manager for a PIP (Performance Improvement Plan). I realize this could be a humbling experience, but watch your manager’s reaction. It will be very revealing. If they are impressed and excited that you took this initiative, then there is hope that you are not being quietly fired. If they reject your request for a PIP, then it’s time to find other employment.

Have you ever been quietly fired? Please share what signs to look for in the comments.

The Rise of the Quiets

COVID spotlighted the Greats: the Great Retirement, the Great Resignation, the Great Reshuffle, the Great Rethink, etc. Now, the transition to post pandemic is highlighting the Quiets: Quiet Promotion, Quiet Quitting, Quiet Promoting, Quiet Thriving, etc. Just like the Greats were in play with or without COVID, the Quiets are not new. It’s just that now employees feel empowered to discuss them openly and employers are pushing back. We’re going to devote the next four weeks to exploring the rise of the Quiets. First up: Quiet Promotion.

What Is It?

A Quiet Promotion happens when you are given more tasks and/or responsibilities beyond your job description, but no increase in compensation. It can be tricky to spot because going above and beyond your job description is the traditional path to a genuine promotion. You typically have to prove you can do more before you are given more (especially if you identify as a woman; don’t get me started…). Here are a few clues that you were quietly promoted:

You have the same job title as your colleagues, but you have more work than they do
You have absorbed all the duties of a coworker who left and there is no end in sight
Your manager asked you to be a “team player” and you don’t feel like you can refuse

If these sound familiar, you have a couple of options. One is to ask for a real promotion. The other is to get another job. Either way, these three ideas can help.

Document

Update that “Atta Baby!” file on your desktop (DM me if the concept does not sound familiar)
Keep a daily activity log including what you did (especially the extra duties), when, and approximately how long it took
Note (with statistics, if possible) how what you do (especially the extra duties) moves the organization closer to their goals and aligns with their mission

Communicate

After gathering your documentation, schedule a 1:1 with your manager
Prepare for it as you would a performance review
Begin the conversation with a curious mindset. For example, lead with something like: “During several weekly reflection exercises that I do to self-monitor my job performance, I noticed something interesting…” and present your case
Note your manager’s reaction. It will be very revealing

Strategize

If your employer just lost a major client, or your company is in a hiring freeze, then no one is getting promoted. If you can be patient, do. It allows you to accumulate more documentation and contemplate whether this job and/or company is still the right fit for you. If you can’t be patient, the documentation you gathered sure looks good on a resume.

By the way, the phrase “other duties as assigned” is included in most job descriptions. That can be a good thing. You want your job description to iterate. It allows you to grow and advance. The problem comes when an organization uses the phrase as a loophole to assign an employee responsibilities beyond minor tasks related to the employee’s position.

Have you ever received a Quiet Promotion? Please share your experience in the comments.

Something’s Burning

Last month we talked about burnout and how, as employees, we can both recognize and minimize it. On the other side of the organization, what can employers do to help extinguish burnout?

Why is Burnout the Employer’s Problem?

Because employees who burn out quit their jobs and replacing them is expensive. In their 2020 Recruiter Nation Survey, Jobvite found that retention is the second highest recruiting priority according to the HR professionals who participated. And according to Legaljobs, 45% of employees in the United States are job hunting. Turnover can cost an employer up to one-third of an employee’s annual salary due to lost productivity as well as recruiting efforts.

What Can Employers Do About It?

Set Reasonable Boundaries – For example, if you send emails at 7:46PM on weeknights, texts at 9:12PM on Saturdays, and/or direct messages at 6:12AM on Independence Day, then you are assigning someone a task. A valuable employee is at least going to stop what they are doing and reply no matter how many times you type, “No rush.” Even if you don’t expect the employee to do anything about your request at the time, you are still imposing a mental load on them. Now they have to remember to remind you of the thing you wanted them to do when you contacted them outside of normal work hours. Establish rules around communication. Include acceptable hours, expected response times, and appropriate modes. For example, if there is an emergency requiring their attention outside of normal work hours, then you will call them instead of email or text. Reiterate these boundaries once a quarter. BTW, most email platforms have a feature that allows you to send your message during someone’s normal business hours. Please use it.

Reevaluate Productivity Goals – Are pre-COVID KPIs still in place? Should they be? How reasonable are they? The workforce is moving toward a productivity model where job performance can no longer be measured by when, where, or how many hours employees work. Consider normalizing flexibility. For example, in performance reviews commend the employee for taking their earned PTO instead of praising them for perfect attendance. Best Practice: Leadership models taking time off, flexible work environments, and/or remote work days.

Communicate – Listen with empathy to your team on a regular basis. Can you set up in-person office hours or a virtual coffee once a week to bond with your team? Find common ground. Support and encourage self-care and mental health. Record a 30 second video on your company’s instant messaging platform and send it (during normal hours, please!) to your direct reports. Remind them that the intense project they’re working on will get done more efficiently if they rest their brains for a few minutes every hour. In 1:1 meetings, invite employees to discuss challenges outside of the job that are negatively affecting their ability to work. Is the solution something the company can provide as part of their benefits package?

As we approach the holidays, I hope both employers and employees get some rest from their work. Maybe in front of a roaring fire in your fireplace or, like me, a fireplace online. Please let those embers be the only burnout you allow.

As a manager, what strategies do you use to ease employee burnout? Please share in the comments.

Booked

Thinking about doing some reading while you wait for delayed flights or relatives to wake up from post-holiday-meal naps? Here are some books about T.E.A.M. that I thought were worth mine.

Time

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho – Translated from Portuguese, this hero’s journey is a brief, unapologetic fable. My biggest take away is: Omens are everywhere. When I think I’ve spotted one, I should stop and reflect on how it may direct my decision making.

The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green – Born from his podcast, the theme of these essays is the impact of people’s behavior on our current geological age. His topics include everything from “Humanity’s Temporal Range” to “Diet Dr Pepper.”

My Mrs. Brown by William Norwich – Another hero’s journey, this novel offers lovely prose, a depiction of women of a certain age, and characters we are surrounded by every day, but don’t consider their life stories. This is a great tale for goal-setters.

Energy

Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans – Tools, processes, and insight on how to get from where you are to where you want to be. The authors present systems you can implement to make decisions about your work, relationships, goals, etc., no matter what stage of life you’re in.

The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul – Science-based research on why we need to get out of our heads when problem-solving. Presented in narrative form, it’s a validating read for knowledge workers.

High Conflict by Amanda Ripley – When we have a disagreement with someone, conflict becomes an additional adversary to battle. Engaging examples of people who believed the enemy of my enemy is my friend, identified conflict as the enemy, and worked together to defeat it.

Attention

The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan – If you haven’t read many productivity books or you need a refresher on the basics of making wise choices, you’ll like this book. If you read Stephen Covey, Charles Duhigg, and/or James Clear, etc., then you will probably not be impressed. It’s short, so you could finish it on a cross-country flight.

Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown – Read this before your holiday get-togethers and keep it handy for reference. It should be on your bookshelf right next to your dictionary and thesaurus. Brown identifies 87 emotions, why they affect relationships, and how you can navigate them to achieve connection.

The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker – This is the cure for meetings that should have been emails. Also, it will help you create more meaningful holiday gatherings.

Money

The Ultimate Retirement Guide for 50+ by Suze Orman – The author speaks plainly and with empathy. Preparing for retirement can be confusing and scary and this book helps you move forward with more confidence.

Never Too Old to Get Rich by Kerry E. Hannon – In 2021, the average age of successful startup founders was 45. If you think you are too old to start your own business, read this book and think again.

Know Your Value by Mika Brzezinski – The author chronicles her journey to get the appropriate recognition and compensation for her work. She also interviewed women in a variety of industries and reports their experiences too.

What are you reading? Please share in the comments.

P.S. I occasionally post on Saturdays what I’m reading that weekend. Please follow me on Facebook and and contribute to the conversation!