Revisioning Work

This is the fourth in a series of articles about what many are calling "The Great Reopening." To find the rest, keep scrolling!

Bloomberg reports that a May survey of 1,000 U.S. adults showed that 39% would consider quitting if their employers weren’t flexible about remote work.  Some familie that switched to home schooling during the pandemic aren’t going back.  The pandemic brought with it looming questions of life and death, and those questions tend to clarify our values and priorities.  In the post-pandemic world, professional ambition may never return to its former stature.  If you’re interested in getting some help with your career, call me.  I use a strengths-based approach to helping you create opportunities where you can shine.  It’s a fun process of exploration to find the best intersection between what you have to offer and what the world needs.

The Re-Emergence of Buried Conflict

This is the third in a series of articles about what many are calling The Great Reopening. To see the others, keep scrolling!

A fully virtual workplace both inflames conflict and also makes it easier to avoid.  When you’re in physical proximity with your team on a daily basis, you send and receive a lot of nonverbal cues to your colleagues that communicate a sense of safety and trust.  When you go to a perfunctory birthday celebration for a colleague that you don’t even know or like that much, this ritual performance still communicates to you and others that you are all on the same team.  These everyday ritual signals that communicate trust and belonging are much more scarce in a virtual work environment.  As a result, you may have noticed that your thoughts and feelings about your colleagues are not as kind, charitable, or trusting as they once were.  That’s a natural consequence of remote work. 

At the same time, it’s easier to avoid dealing with these conflicts when working remotely.  Avoiding conflict is a common human tendency under the best of circumstances.  When you rarely are in circumstances where you have to look the other person in the eye, and where it's much easier to just send an email, conflict avoidance is that much more convenient and available as a strategy.

So, as people return to the office, I predict that many of these buried conflicts will come to the surface.  It’s not a bad time to develop your conflict management skills, such as empathic listening, assertive communication, and negotiation towards win/win solutions. If you need help, I’m just a phone call away!

The Plight of Introverts

This is the 2nd in a series of posts about what many are calling The Great Reopening

Introverts had an unexpected heyday during COVID and are now watching sadly as the world reverts to its natural extraverted form.  If you’re an introvert, you experienced a period in which it was ok, even mandatory, to make choices that suited your natural style.  Now that social calendars are filling again, what choices do you want to make to engage with others in a rhythm that is comfortable for you?  You may need to practice assertive communication in order to protect the space and time that is precious to you.

Previous Posts in the Series:

Even Happy Transitions Involve Goodbyes

Even Happy Transitions Involve Goodbyes

This is the first in a series of messages about what more and more people are calling The Great Reopening.

We’ve all worked very hard to get to this point. We’ve long looked forward to going to restaurants and cookouts without fearing for our lives. Now that time has, for all practical purposes, arrived (at least here in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, where we now go several days in a row without any new cases of COVID being reported). Yet there are things we will miss. Many of us will miss the spaciousness of our social calendars, the ease with which we could create space for solitude and reflection. Even with the most positive changes in our lives, there is a process of letting go that can be hard. It is ok to feel sad about some of the things about lockdown that you will miss. It is not wrong to have complicated thoughts and feelings about the good news of the end of the pandemic. Acknowledging the losses and grieving them will help you flow through the transition more easily.

Don't Check Them at the Door:  The Business Value of Emotions in the Workplace

When my clients talk about their emotions in the workplace, particularly negative ones, they typically do so in a tone of heroic dismissal. In this essay, I describe some of the important sources of value that emotions bring to the workplace. When they are acknowledged and handled appropriately, emotions can lead to a more engaged workforce and better customer service.

Trauma-Informed Leadership During the COVID Pandemic

Psychotherapists and other health care providers have long known that their work must be trauma-informed; that is, they must approach their work in a way that acknowledges the fact that many of their clients are impacted by trauma. Today, especially because of the COVID pandemic, practically all of us need to know how to be trauma-informed in our work. This has special implications for leaders. Fortunately there are some concrete steps leaders can take to respond appropriately to the trauma of their people.

5 Tips for Improving Your Team's Collective Emotional Intelligence

Just as there is a collective intelligence that emerges when team members put their heads together to analyze data, develop strategies, and innovate, so there is a collective emotional intelligence that emerges from a group's ability to be resilient in times of stress, manage disruptive emotions, and build constructive relationships with important groups of stakeholders. Here are five tips you can use to increase the collective emotional intelligence of your team.