I‘m 67kg, slight build. If there’s something heavy that requires lifting, I’m not the first person that someone asks. In fact, if I was asked, I’d probably decline knowing that it’s likely I’ll do my back or damage something in the process. The last thing a workplace needs is an OH&S issue with an employee, right?
But when it comes to mental health, we don’t have those visual signals that communicate that we might be better at certain types or ways of work and not others. No one can look at me from across the room and see that I’m capable or not capable of managing many high-pressure projects at once, or successfully switching contexts every 2 hours to a different problem with a different group of people. No one can easily see that I work best on a maker’s schedule (in focussed half-day increments) and not on the manager’s schedule of something new every hour. Some find that type of work exciting and interesting – they thrive. Others don’t. And now, in a context where we’re working in distributed teams, no one can look across the room at all because we’re not co-located anymore. There’s even greater natural invisibility of how someone’s coping with the way a team may be working or how a leader may be structuring their day-to-day.
A more nuanced conversation about mental health
Anyone who’s done any work on their own mental health knows that good mental health comes down to two things: self-awareness and being able to talk about it. They’re probably two of the most difficult things for any human to do because, from a very early age, we’re encouraged to do the exact opposite – bottle it all up.
Managers of my past, not all, but certainly most, have excelled at telling me what to do and how to do it. And, with so much time spent telling, they’ve been terrible at listening. They’ve assumed, very wrongly, that whatever they were capable of doing, I would be too. That whatever motivates them motivates me. Where my manager may be motivated by growing a business or team, revenue numbers, and ‘headcount’, they never took the time to understand how I was different. I looked like them, and if they could do it, couldn’t anyone? If I was struggling, I’d just have to try harder.
We don’t assume that when we’re lifting a piano, though.
Listen first, then lean into strengths
What it comes down to is that we’re all built differently – different strengths, different weaknesses. It’s an obvious thing to say out loud but it’s surprising how little it’s acknowledged or forgotten in the day to day of leading people. And so, just as someone may be better suited to hauling a piano up some stairs than others, the same is true for managing multiple projects, switching contexts, working under tight timelines. Some thrive, some barely survive.
Understanding individual’s strengths, then building a team with complementing ones, means not everyone needs to do everything and the team ends up greater than the sum of its parts.
Personally, I find deadlines provoke anxiety, not motivation. I get more energy from a short thank you from a team member than seeing revenue increase. I prefer small, tight teams where everyone knows eachother’s name. I love ambiguity and complex problems and can sit in uncertainty and concentrate for hours to work through something chunky. Sometimes I like virtual lunches, and sometimes I don’t. I value and am motivated by generosity and reciprocity, not competition and domination. The managers who took the time to understand that saw the best parts of me, and, in some cases, friendships blossomed. Managers who didn’t left us both tired & frustrated (and left me looking for another job).
Stopping for breath
It’s difficult for leaders to prioritise stepping back and reflecting with their individual team members on what’s working well and what’s not. In a business where it’s all, “we needed this yesterday”, most managers and employees are struggling to play catch-up let alone assess the possible carnage or opportunities that lay in the wake of forward momentum.
Structuring conversations about reflection need to be the first-step. “In the last two weeks, how have you found the work? What do you like or not like about it? What’s been giving you energy? What’s been taking it away?” It only takes an hour every 2 weeks.
Over time, these moments of reflection accumulate and begin to shape a picture of the individual – not one of their physical abilities, but of their mental and emotional ones. Once we can understand the environments in which each team member thrives, then leaders get to focus on their real work; shaping the environment to suit the individual. If it’s true that people are like plants, then maybe taking this approach will lead to better outcomes for everybody.