Empathy and care are essential qualities for leaders in the best of times. In the past two years, they’ve been needed in spades as the pandemic has taken its toll on the mental and emotional health of employees and team members.
A few weeks back, after a pretty full-on time publishing my book, launching a new programme and doing a website refresh, I decided to take my own medicine.
A manager who finds fault in everything you do. A team member who’s abrupt and rude. A colleague who talks over you in meetings.
Where is your breath right now? When I ask my coaching clients this, they’re often a bit perplexed. “My nose? My mouth? I’m not sure what you mean.”
Since they introduced clay courts at our tennis club, it’s much easier to make a line call. If you call the ball out and your opponent disagrees, you can actually go over to the spot where the ball landed and find the mark. Conversation closed.
May I introduce you to Alex. Alex is a finance manager in a tech company. She’s struggling to keep her head above water at the moment as she fields demands from all directions – her boss, her colleagues, her clients, not to mention her team. Alex has a large team and finds her time constantly hijacked by their queries and requests for help.
I find it really difficult to switch off from work. The fact I work from home alot doesn’t help because it’s not easy to remove myself from my work environment, but the main reason is that I think – and worry – about work when I’m not working.
The other day, I was playing in a group tennis coaching session. There were 6 of us and, at one point, we were playing 3 against 3, the winning side being the first to get to 21 points. My side started off winning several points in a row but then had a losing streak at which point the coach, Brian, piped up saying we’d “regressed”.
I was recently introduced to the current affairs magazine, Positive News, which reports on the good things that are happening in the world rather than the bad. For example, the latest issue features rewilding in Sussex, a Canadian doctor prescribing money to low-income patients and people who are creating solutions for challenges facing UK society, such as racial and religious intolerance and young people in need.
When I’m working 1-1 with professionals, particularly professional women, I often discover a Missing Conversation. For example, there was the finance manager who wanted to know her prospects for promotion yet was afraid to have the conversation with her manager because they might think she was being “pushy”.