Self Reflection and Gratitude to build team spirit during criss
This essay is not going to be about the Covid-19 and how it has turned the whole year upside down. A lot of that has already been said elsewhere, and I do not want to be the one to raise any more anxiety than what has already been by the media and politicians around the world. I want to share what I observed working remotely in this environment with amazing people that were as motivated and excited to contribute as they were in the previous years. This is a personal reflection on my journey this year working with my teams building products for our customers while living in the midst of constant uncertainty and fear.
A brief history of unprecedented times
It is hard to draw comparisons to the current year. However, when we look back in our history, we can identify patterns and lessons that apply to the current environment. I picked up the 1918 Spanish Flu, Cold War spanning 1947 to 1991 and the financial crisis of 2007–2008. The major themes that connect all these events and this year is the decline in GDP and spending, job losses in industries that were hardest hit due to the crisis, looming uncertainty and lack of reliable information and lastly fear of the unknown. These themes affect individuals at all levels and especially to their mental health. The perceived job insecurity in these times have been reported to increase the probability of poor self-reported health. There are reports of self disturbance, depression, mental distraction, dizziness and difficulties of coping at work for people. Lastly, all this causes deterioration in self-esteem and creates a pessimistic outlook about the future. It is not hard to put all this together and conclude that any individual working in this environment is not at the top of their game. Moreover, the effects of this crisis on an individual’s mind is prolonged even after the crisis is over.
The Tell-tale signs
Coming back to present times, I have been observant to varied behaviours that I heard or experienced in the work environment. As a reader, you may connect to some of these in your work.
No clear line of separation between the work and personal life
For most people who live in big cities and occupy small apartments, they have been the hardest hit. They now have to occupy two distinct parts of their lives under the same roof and often with their family members. Work and Personal time has to compete with each other. This becomes more prominent when we have restrictions of movement and daily life to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Those families who have to attend to kids and elderly members have to constantly balance between providing care and attending to the needs of their business. For those who opt for working remotely, this is their reality day in day out, but they made a deliberate decision to choose this life and therefore made arrangements accordingly. However, the present times forced this decision to all without giving them time to prepare and the space to organize their lives.
Meetings and interactions have become transactional
The transition from working in a physical office to a fully remote is not easy for organizations or teams that have little or no experience of it. Further, it is hard for those who do not have the mindset to adopt the remote work and treat it on par to any regular office work. This is especially noted in the ritual of meetings and 1-on-1 conversations prevalent as a necessary feature of modern work. Most offline and physical meetings when translated to the remote setting suffers as what merely changed is the medium without any change to the format. Remote work novices have often rallied that the remote work is different, and hence meeting and conversation formats have to evolve to thrive in this environment. Yet, meetings after meetings resort to the same old style of either one person talking at length, and others being expected to either respond or provide feedback. There is limited scope for non verbal communication and acknowledgement of remote meeting fatigue. The key highlight for me was how transactional the remote interactions and meetings came out to be. What I mean by transaction here, is the pure exchange of information without checking in how the person was or how was their day. The questions “how are things ?” or “how have you been ?” merely became pleasantries that are required before jumping right to the topic. Don’t get me wrong. These pleasantries do exist in the offline world, but they are accompanied by non-verbal demonstration of emotions often through hand-shakes or a pat or a fist-bump, whatever floats your boat and is acceptable in your work culture. The lack of these non-verbal demonstration of emotions together with the limited experience of running remote meetings drove the fatigue further.
The challenge I see here is not that the remote setup lacks the heart of an offline interaction, but rather that teams and organization often lack the maturity to graduate to this new medium, and in this process resort to habits that have worked for them in past in an offline environment. The result is long and frequent meetings and an imprecise model of using non-verbal communication mediums in a remote environment, leading to mental exhaustion. In an offline environment, people moving from meetings to meetings often had the opportunity to check-out and check-in when moving from one meeting room to another. This check-out and check-in process is crucial as it helps to transition your emotional state thereby preventing you to take a baggage from an earlier meeting to the new one. This however is missed if the calendar is full of back to back remote meetings with limited break time in the middle.
Feeling of isolation
A lack of in-person interaction for extended period especially for remote newbies could manifest itself into a feeling that you are on your own. A physical office often comes with intrinsic rituals of people checking in with you or asking you out for coffee or lunch. This however does not translate naturally to the remote environment. Remote novices recommend changing your work location to a coffee shop or a co-working space to reduce the feeling of loneliness, but the Covid-19 has put a dent into that. Planned team gatherings that take place online sometimes help, but at the end of the day they are still very loose adaptation of what works in an offline environment.
While extroverts derive their energy from the human connection, introverts also need human connection to acquire the feeling of validation of their presence in a group setting. This feeling of isolation is aggravated if someone lives alone and has limited social connections outside work. This feeling of isolation is often manifested in behavior where someone takes up a responsibility at work and does not seek out support of their peers. Pairing remotely does not come naturally to people, and the transactional nature of the remote environment does not support a paired approach to solving a problem.
The first step
As a leader, the first step that you can take is to acknowledge that this crisis will evoke unique reaction from each of your team members. It is important to consider that every individual in your team has their own unique challenge and the daily struggle irrespective of their circumstances. Their unique backgrounds and history lends to their unique reaction to the crisis. So there is no one solution that fits all. In essence, we as leaders must be transparent and candid in acknowledging this uniqueness in all interactions we have with our team members. This first step will normalize how an individual reacts to the crisis, whether it is of anxiety, fear, uncertainty, loneliness or worry.
To understand deeply about an individual’s reaction to a crisis like this, it is important to consider the human condition also called “dimming of consciousness” originating from the book The Complete Enneagram by Beatrice Chestnut. It expresses this fact that as a basic survival mechanism, the human psyche automatically goes to sleep to, or dissociates from painful experiences as a way of surviving or staying safe in the world. This disassociation is manifested through habits and coping strategies. To quote an example from this book pertaining to this : “For instance, a child who feels constant pressure to be good may develop coping strategies that help her to be perfect, thereby avoiding criticism or punishment”.
Being able to acknowledge all coping strategies as acceptable is the first step as a leader to try to support your team.
These coping strategies are unique to your team members and influence their decision making and ability to produce work especially in an environment which evokes pain like the current crisis. In the event of a crisis like Covid-19 pandemic, the coping strategies are prominently manifested in its all glory. It is hard for the individual to control and subdue these strategies because they have served them well over time, and is part of their nature. Being able to acknowledge all coping strategies as acceptable is the first step as a leader to try to support your team. And this is where the next step begins — the art of self reflection.
The second step
One of the exercises that you could, as a leader, use is to help your people to leverage the process of self reflection as a way to identify these coping strategies. Usually this is performed when the leader coaches the individual through introspection questions like “How do you react when you are criticized ?” and “How do you decide you need support, and what do you do when you realize that ?”. These are some of the questions that a leader could use to support the process of self reflection. The end goal is to have the individual identify the coping strategies and reflect on how it affects their productivity and work in the midst of crisis.
This introspection is entirely personal, but the experience of going through the process of introspection can be a catalyst to create bonding amongst team members. I experienced this by asking my team members to share how it felt for them to perform this introspection, with others in the team. I also shared my own process of self reflection and how I felt doing that. This provided the support to other team members to get inspired and take on their journey of self reflection. Moreover doing this often makes an individual mindful of which coping strategy is at work at a particular moment.
One thing I noticed while sharing the process of self reflection is that people understand that this process is not natural and it can be uncomfortable in the beginning. The peer support in a team helps to strengthen the resolve of a team member to go through this process at their pace and also provides them with a forum to address questions, doubts and concerns which they encounter in the process of self reflection.
The additional step
Apart from acknowledging individual struggles, coping strategies, and offering your team to self reflect, one other aspect can bridge the gap between the team members especially when working remotely and feeling being isolated. This step is the process of sharing gratitude.
A lot has been documented and shared about the power of gratitude lists and being grateful. It offers individuals the perspective to widen their thinking and “ground” their situation in a very human way. One of the exercises that has worked for me is to take time with your team to share gratitude. I usually open up the forum by letting people share what they are grateful to, a thing or a person in the last few weeks. The art of stating the gratitude and sharing it with others is powerful.
The transactional nature of the remote work often prevents individuals from appreciating the others in a direct way. What gratitude exercise does is to offer them a space and an inviting environment to share this with others, and to “ground” their work life to things that worked for them or people who contributed to their success.
I have seen positive outcomes from the gratitude exercises and has deeply connected people who often miss out celebrating each other in a direct way.
Last, but not the least
One aspect that was stuck with me from my experience working with remote novices was the act of checking in and checking out especially during a longer meeting or interaction.
Checking in provides a space and time to an individual to acknowledge their feeling or emotion that they bring to a meeting. This is often manifested by asking the individual about their emotion and feeling that they bring to that discussion without judgement. Checking out provides a similar space that acknowledges the emotion and feeling that they are taking out from this meeting or engagement to their future engagements.
I treat this checking in and out as a form of self reflection that provides a method to calibrate one’s internal compass and allows them to be authentic and honest to yourself and others.
Lastly, as a leader, we must make these exercises and engagements less about yourself, but more about the others. That way, you can disassociate your own internal thought to make things right for the other person with the actual outcomes. This is essential, as with anything, you cannot guarantee how the individual perceives and reacts to this crisis. They have their own individual struggle and coping strategy, and the magic happens when you start realizing this on a consistent basis.
If you liked this essay, I think you will enjoy a short presentation / talk that I gave recently on the Mindful Tech Leader community hosted by Reiner Kraft. Here is the video of the talk and post discussion on the topic.
