Even when you think you know a lot – you can still be surprised!
I’ve learnt a couple of surprising things the last year and it has struck me that my own experience is shared with many of the leaders we work with. Mental Health Awareness Week 2022 is all about re-connecting with the people and places that lift you up. As leaders we can often feel the weight of the world on our shoulders. In the last 12 months, I’ve learnt a few important lessons around re-connecting with myself and sharing the load with those around me.
Languishing
I found myself frequently ill through 2021. I spent months never quite getting back on top of my health and energy. This was surprising, as I’m someone with high resilience, good practices to support my wellbeing, and I’m known as a powerhouse of energy. So what’s been different?
In short, my experience has been a bit like an iPhone that is a few years old – the battery doesn’t charge itself in the way that it used to, I’m running on empty faster and at unexpected times. The term coined for this is ‘languishing’. It’s that flat feeling when you can’t seem to find the bounce in your step, it’s the months and months of illness that you can’t shake, it’s the increasing pessimism and worry that you struggle to put aside.
Now is not the same as before
Even from my privileged place in the world I’ve had a couple of years of continuous exposure to stress. I’ve been absorbing ambient stress from the world around me in unprecedented amounts. I look around at my friends, family, work and the world and see crises small and large - soaking that up has taken its toll. Our emotional response systems have been heightened through media and, surprisingly to me, often it’s not the big trauma but the small stuff that adds up. We are grappling with new dynamics and our past practices, which would have worked for us previously, are much less likely to work for us now.
What I didn’t realise is the way in which those million little stressors had built up for me. From my own experience I’m not someone who gets particularly wound up with stress or challenge. The telltale signs I might have seen for stress just weren’t there. I didn’t see the triggers and I didn’t notice the gradual decline in my emotional, mental and physical wellbeing. But hindsight is a wonderful thing and with the help of others and some solid self-reflection I’m learning to spot the more subtle signs.
The eyeball cannot see itself
People around me were seeing and talking about my wellbeing before I was. They were seeing the changes in me, well before I did. Who knew that my subtle signals included not being able to read novels in the weekend, watching way more TV, and for an off the scale extrovert I couldn’t be bothered organising events or parties with the people I love. What I now know is that in 2021 I had hit the ‘shut down’ mode of distress. My emotional, physical and mental wellbeing was languishing, which came as a huge surprise to me as I analysed how I was feeling at the start of this year.
When someone has high energy and they drop off the radar, that’s a worry that we need to pick up on. My lived experience was that the ‘clues’ were less obvious for me and it was easy to keep adjusting to the lows in energy and mood as a new normal. Because I couldn’t see it, I kept putting the expectation on myself to keep functioning. I acknowledged that “I was tired” when in fact I was languishing on the edge of burnout. Those of us who are high functioning can sometimes miss these danger signs as we’re able to maintain things for longer.
Keep renewing the wellbeing strategies you use
My big insight is that no matter how well we have looked after ourselves in the past, we can easily fall into a small set of habits. When that autopilot is on we miss the prompts for us to do things differently. As I work together with leaders across New Zealand I’m sharing the things I’ve personally learnt over this year:
Do the basics well and often: Leaders, including me, are feeling the financial and business pressure to keep delivering and not ease off in case there is another disaster around the corner. You are expected to make time for everyone – work and home, team and customers and in amongst all that it is hard to stop and make time for you. However that’s false productivity, we do need to put ourselves first and make sure we are looking after ourselves to be able to be at our best for others and the situations we face
And so I found myself needing to step back and practice what I teach on the importance of recovery time. Doing the basics well is making sure that you have a relentless focus on making time for good sleep, good food, exercise and connecting with people in a social sense. If I am going hard at it, I now make sure I then schedule my recovery – whether that’s an early finish, a relaxing weekend or a long walk in the middle of the day. I know I can’t keep sprinting and expect to be OK.
Share the load: Being a CEO doesn’t mean that you have to do it all. This is a change for me this year vs last year and it’s been such a wonderful change to share more of the work and the worries across my talented and capable leadership team. My concern of loading them up or making their life hard has not proven to be true! Quite the opposite, they are energised by being involved and sharing the work has allowed people to step up and play new roles in the company’s direction. People playing to their strengths and being able to take on work aligned to their purpose and interests is good for them and it’s also been good for me.
Asking for help from unusual places: One of the upsides of us all living through the pandemic crisis together is that we are all aware of the impacts and have all felt some aspect of these challenging times. It took courage to ask for help this year from those outside my usual circle and I’ve been blown away how positively received it’s been. Suppliers, customers, team members… who is in your support network or what you might choose to ask for could be quite different from what you’ve done before. Connect with people, let them know what you need and prepare to be grateful for all the positive support there is if you ask.
Keeping connected: Staying well, staying purposeful and staying effective doesn’t happen on your own. My recent learning has been a reminder about the importance of having deeper conversations with those around me, to accurately test the story I’m telling myself about what’s happening and how I am doing. Finding your people and staying connected with them is such an important feature of our humanness and yet our busy, digital and superficial lives can leave us surrounded by people but with no connection. That breaks my heart. So if you do nothing else that I’ve covered in this blog, do this. Find your people. Who is your team in life? At work? And how are you letting them in?
As we recognise Mental Health Awareness Week I’m aware there are a huge number of offerings in the wellbeing space at the moment. My learning this year is that it’s got to be right for you. Have a range of things, keep it simple, keep it personal, keep it front of mind and stay connected to your people.
