Research by Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson and Google’s Project Aristotle found that teams with strong psychological safety outperform others because people feel free to challenge assumptions, share mistakes, and offer new ideas.

In Higher Education, this matters more than ever. Universities are facing financial pressure, cultural strain, and the need for rapid transformation – progress depends on people feeling safe enough to tell the truth.

This article explores how psychological safety (or the lack of it) shapes the ability of universities to lead change, drawing lessons from the Gillies Report into the financial collapse at Dundee University and insights from our work with teams across the sector.

When local teams thrive but senior leaders panic

We’ve been doing some work with a faculty at one Russell Group university who have been getting better at psychological safety.

They’re starting to raise issues that were impossible before, supporting each other more, and frankly, just working together better. It’s the kind of localised empowerment that’s needed when things are tough.

But they’re operating inside an institution where the senior leadership team (SLT) isn’t encouraging safety. This isn’t intentional but they are falling into some classic traps: knee-jerk reactions, flashes of panic, individual rather than coordinated thinking and rampant back-covering.

Now cuts and reorganisations are hitting, the instinct of leaders is to individually grab back control and start telling people what to do.

That might make them feel better, but what the university really needs is the opposite: more empowerment, less fear.

High motivation, high anxiety: the paradox of academia

If you have watched Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmundsons’s great Ted Talk where she talks about psychological safety, you’ll know she says two things about highly motivated people (which is most people in HE):

1. if they’re in a safe environment they can get to high achieving and high learning,
2. but if they’re in an unsafe environment, they’re more likely to be underperforming, anxious and not speaking up.

In universities, the awareness of power and status – academic primacy and grade anxiety – is pervasive.

The teams I have been most impressed with have successfully dispensed with that within their group: they have a team leader who regularly canvasses opinion, asks for feedback and enables a space where each person clearly feels valued and respected.

The alternative is power dynamics that lead to fearful environments.

I remember watching a senior colleague chair a meeting and visibly wilt when criticised for letting the meeting ‘languish.’ The rest of the room, though finding the discussion useful, said nothing. No one backed the chair up. Everyone colluded, felt deeply uncomfortable, and walked away feeling a bit helpless.

That moment of silence isn’t just about one meeting; it’s the noise of fear cascading through an organisation. The uncomfortable behaviour at the top becomes the default everywhere else – an isomorphic pattern like the ones we wrote about in a previous post.

The cost of silence: what the Gillies Report reveals

What happens when that cascade reaches right across an organisation? Look at the recent Gillies Report into the financial collapse of Dundee University.

How low psychological safety amplified financial risk

Professor Gillies found serious failures in financial governance that were amplified by low psychological safety. The data was all there, but as she put it, her investigation uncovered a “culture in which challenge was actively discouraged.”

Nobody was questioning the financial information they were given because, her report found, there was no culture or expectation of constructive challenge at executive or court level. Financial literacy was patchy and critically, dissent was routinely shut down, particularly by the Principal, who simply “did not welcome difficult conversations.”

This shutting down, whether it’s the Principal’s decision to only share good news or female staff being routinely spoken over or labelled as obstructive for asking questions meant very few people dared to speak truth to power.

The most practical insight from Gillies? The value of one person’s innocent question.

She noted that one person’s sincere, “I don’t really understand…” is often a catalyst for someone else to step in, opening the door to curiosity and debate.

This engagement leads to a far richer understanding and, crucially, the uncovering of risks.

That vital question, however, was being squashed out.

And this was happening at School level, at the Executive Board level and at the level of Council. Arguably the Principal’s behaviours directly reduced psychological safety across the whole institution.

The cultural risks of discouraging dissent

The risks introduced by this culture were invisible for a long time. But as the levers used by universities to balance out financial bumps have been eroded by government policy and global instability, the risk went up significantly. Low safety limits institutional capability to respond to difficulties and erodes the checks and balances of effective governance.

Ultimately, Gillies made it clear: a “values-led university culture which privileges transparency and accountability is likely to actively support evidence-based collaborative decision-making, integrity and openness to challenge and debate.”

In other words, the cultural lack of psychological safety wasn’t the cause of Dundee’s failure, but it was a major contributing factor.

I’m sure many readers of that report will have been thinking, “that could easily have been us.”

I can think of three or four other institutions that we’ve worked with at ThenSomehow where there are similar patterns. Where members of the executive group have a real reluctance to challenge a VC. The members say things to us such as, “[challenge] is not something you can do very easily in the meetings, I have to pick my moments… never in front of the wider group.”

That failure to challenge is a misunderstanding of a key role of these groups, and will likely play out in a number of ways across all levels of an institution:

• Reluctance to make decisions.
• Permission seeking.
• Over-attention to the politics.
• Managing the optics and presentation of data.
• People not getting on with things, instead worrying about whether their back is covered.
• Concerns routinely not being heard or even shared.

If you are wondering if this could possibly be happening in your university, here’s a link to a brilliant illustration by Liz Fosslien of how low psychological safety plays out at the most basic level.

Have you ever experienced that?

Another of Liz’s brilliant illustrations show one of the differences between effective and ineffective teams.

Building psychological safety from the top down

Five key principles for building psychological safety from the Gillies Report

In response, Gillies says executive groups should be receptive to challenge – that it should be the normal mode of operation. She proposed 5 key principles, which we could treat like a checklist:

1. Make it a principle to actively challenge your financials

The University Executive Group (UEG), or its equivalent, should learn how to interpret financial data and routinely challenge the institution’s management accounts. Not to beat up the Finance Director but to back them up, demonstrate robustness and stand by their recommendations together.

2. Model fearless questioning

Do people speak up at town halls? Do you provide a range of fora for questions to come out from all levels of your organisation?

3. Be receptive to challenge

All senior role holders ought to be receptive to challenge, routinely requesting it, demonstrably grateful for receiving it, evidently listening to it and responding.

4. Encouraging curiosity in every forum

How do your committees structure conversations so that everyone is heard, and ‘stupid’ or naive questions are aired and built upon? (See Liberating Structures for practical ideas to support this.)

5. Communicate issues clearly and honestly

Is your instinct to paint the best picture or to trust your advisors with the whole truth? This is especially true when it comes to governance, and arguably works well for your team too.

Three steps to strengthen psychological safety in your team

The challenges at the top of HE can feel overwhelming, but you can have a lot of influence over the environment you create in your own corner of your university.

Here’s what you can do today, taking a leaf from Amy Edmondson’s great exploration of psychological safety, the Gillies Report, and Liberating Structure’s alternatives for how to structure meetings:

1. Frame discussions as learning opportunities for everyone

It’s completely appropriate to admit that things are complex, uncertain, and interdependent. No one perspective can hold all of the data so hearing every single voice is very necessary. Speaking up isn’t risky: it’s the only way you can ensure you have the best understanding.

2. Use vulnerability to de-stress the system

You have power, use it to level the playing field. Tell people, “I don’t know what I don’t know. If you have a doubt, say it – we’ll miss something important if you don’t.” As Amy Edmondson says: “Showing vulnerability acts as an immediate de-stressor for your team.”

3. Encourage the “innocent question”

Commit to making the time for real explorations. Actively ask questions to draw people in, especially those who are quiet. Take the advice from Gillies’s 5 key principles: make it a habit to minute challenges – not just decisions – and ensure every person in the room has contributed to the discussion.

The real risk of low psychological safety

If you are currently shouldering the responsibility for change in HE, there is a clear personal risk, too. Low psychological safety means leaders can become isolated and unable to ask for help or feel able to challenge, leading to poor decisions simply going through. If you or your peers are experiencing high levels of burnout, isolation, or a sense of helplessness, these are critical warning signs that the safety nets of challenge and support may be failing across your institution.

Ultimately, psychological safety is not just about creating a thriving workplace, it’s the foundation of sound financial and institutional governance.

As the Gillies Report reveals, the cultural dynamics that silence an “innocent question” at a committee level are the very same dynamics that can bring down an institution. Cultivating safety isn’t just about being a ‘nicer’ leader; it’s about making your university more resilient, more responsive, and more capable of fulfilling its mission.

Psychological safety is the hidden superpower your organisation needs to navigate the current climate.

When people don’t feel safe to speak up, systems fail – not just teams.

From safety to strategy: why it matters for every leader

The Gillies Report showed how low psychological safety can ripple from executive level right through an institution, silencing the very questions that could prevent disaster.

For leaders in Higher Education, the challenge is twofold: to nurture psychological safety in your own team, and to model it in the wider organisation. That means creating the conditions for curiosity, honest feedback, and shared learning – even, and especially, when things are uncertain.

At ThenSomehow, we’ve seen how one team’s courage to work differently can start to shift a whole institution. Building psychological safety isn’t a soft skill; it’s a strategic capability for resilience and intelligent change.

So ask yourself: what’s one question you could ask today that would make it safer for someone else to speak the truth?

At ThenSomehow we help universities and other HE organisations build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff that’s stuck.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help your organisation develop leaders and perform better, get in touch here.

The post Why psychological safety is the hidden superpower for organisational change appeared first on ThenSomehow.

Years ago I was the managing director of a radio station in Brighton. At the time, the station was being sold, and I busted a gut to help make that happen.

Some people became millionaires.

I didn’t – I didn’t have any shares.

I was given a nice bottle of wine. So swings and roundabouts.

I thought the sale would fix everything. The new owner had deep pockets, and for the first time in ages, we had enough money to pay all the bills. That felt like a relief.

Then they fired me.

Technically they moved me into another role and brought somebody else in as MD. (It didn’t go well. The new person was a disaster.)

But for me, it triggered a collapse of identity. I’d been “the guy who ran the radio station,” and suddenly I wasn’t.

I remember the moment I had to change my voicemail. It used to say, “You’ve reached Steve at Surf 107.2”.

Deleting that message really hit home.

My whole sense of value had been tied up in that job.

It was a turning point.

I made a decision: never again will I define myself solely by what I do for a living.

Because I am not my job. I’m me.

Who are you if your job disappears?

I ran into an old friend this week. His role is at risk of redundancy. The company offered him a different role, one they wanted him to do. He told me, “I think I won’t. I think I’ll go.”

So he did. And then immediately had a mini crisis.

Who was he going to be now?

In a Gallup survey of over 18,665 US workers, nearly 70% said their organisation experienced disruptive change within the last year – and half of them report burnout and disengagement as a consequence.

In the context of the current financial pressures facing Higher Education in the UK, a lot of people are facing similar challenges.

Why job loss or role change shakes us to the core

When your job is at risk or your role is changing or no longer needed, it’s no wonder people feel anxious, or even betrayed.

Years of discretionary effort. Loyalty. Hard work. It suddenly counts for nothing when deep cuts are being made.

If it’s your job at risk, it’s not just the fear of losing an income that affects you; it’s the sense of betrayal and the self recrimination for surrendering so much of yourself. And all those hours focused on work instead of friends and family, turned out to be a poor investment.

Alongside all that, troubling questions bubble up:

• What is my status here?
• Am I a victim or do I have agency?
• As a professional services person or as a junior academic – do I have any power?

Talking about this in our HELP group recently, one person asked, “I’m the Director of projects – if I’m not that, what am I?”

That’s the thing. For so many of us, identity gets wrapped around our role. Our job title becomes shorthand for our worth.

That person went on to reflect, “I’m also really good at directing projects, which is a skill I can apply in many different domains.”

The point: identity isn’t fixed. It’s multi-layered. It’s not one thing – it’s the sum of lots of things including what people know, love, and respect about us.

This matters organisationally.

Identity and belonging in organisations: a leadership challenge

We recently worked with a faculty at a London university, asking people which parts of the institution they identified with. Unsurprisingly people identified most with their immediate teams – a strong indicator of engagement, satisfaction and belonging. Interestingly, where we expected the sense of belonging to diminish when we looked further out from the local team, something else was happening. People identified with their department and the wider institution, but not with their school or faculty.

The reason? The study found a leadership vacuum at school and faculty levels, driven largely by unclear expectations of leadership roles. No one saw the value of them or the importance of shaping a collective identity at that level. When the inevitable faculty restructure happened people felt threatened by the change, their sense of belonging torn up by a part of the system they did not feel connected to or safe within.

Building identity beyond your job title: a personal journey

Someone asked me what advice I would give for not over-investing in one identity?

I could only say what happened for me. When I left radio I became a freelancer. I had no plan and no safety net. With a young family, that felt risky. (And it would have felt impossible if not for my wife’s salary).

But it worked out. I found work. I stayed busy.

At the same time I broadened my sense of who I was:

• I volunteered as a scout leader and enjoyed being part of a team.
• I joined the board of the local play group, and
• I picked up new skills: I took up knitting and woodwork.

By saying yes to more things and putting myself out there I reconnected with a friend and we started a business together that lasted five years. It was the precursor for ThenSomehow.

All of that came from letting go of a fixed idea of myself.

How leaders can support people through identity-shaking change

In my coaching work I am often asked to help people reframe the negative stories they tell themselves – the ones that hold them back.

And that feels like a key skill for a manager or a leader: demonstrating that you believe in a person even when they don’t believe in themselves.

Especially during change, which can be really traumatic. A reorganisation can break apart teams and communities, roles and titles. It can destabilise your sense of who you are. Especially if you have overinvested in your work identity.

It’s no wonder people often respond negatively to change.

That’s where leaders can help.

Not by giving life advice – but by noticing the signs of overinvestment and creating new kinds of opportunities:

• Encouraging people to connect outside their silos.
• Supporting people to take on projects or roles that stretch them, including outside of work.
• Highlighting skills and strengths that go beyond their current job.
• Involving everyone affected by a change in the conversation so they feel heard.

And perhaps most importantly: by modelling that yourself.

It’s a key leadership skill: helping people see that their identity is bigger than their job title.

Because change is easier to face for all of us when we know who we are beyond our roles.

So if you’re going through a restructure, it might feel like the ground’s shifting – but the truth is, you’re still you.

The work might change. The title might change. But your value doesn’t.

A case study: making change smoother through listening and clarity

One HE leader – a dean of a faculty – created a lot of space to hear people out during a change, in a really effective way:

They arranged 15-minute meetings, with a ‘no meeting without an agenda’ rule, plus a requirement to summarise the purpose in three bullet points ahead of the meeting:

• What’s this about?
• What do you want to achieve?
• What do you need from me?

This meant they could spend time with lots of people without getting swamped. This approach was critical to understanding what was really going on during the change programme.

It helped everyone feel heard, their needs recognised.

And it reduced the sense of done-to helplessness that so often drives much of the anger and frustration felt by people whose sense of self worth and agency is denied.

There was an added benefit too: their EA had enough clarity to triage meeting requests and be able to protect their time. For projects that were clear, the EA could say “yes, go ahead” without needing a meeting, or “no, it’s not thought through enough, come back with something clearer.” The EA also grew in confidence and purpose – no longer just ‘managing a diary’ but being an integral partner for the dean.

At the end of the process, the leader got a surprising compliment: “This was the smoothest reorganisation I’ve ever been part of.”

No bloodletting. Just listening, clarity, and a shared sense of agency.

Four ways leaders can help people through change

Four things you can do to lead more effectively through identity-shaking change:

1. Spot signs of over-identification – in yourself and others. When someone’s self-worth seems tightly wrapped around their job, open up space to explore what else they bring. Encourage them to broaden their network, do a secondment, take a developmental course.
2. Create small openings – low-risk, high-trust moments where people can show up as more than their role: peer learning groups, cross-silo projects, mentoring others, enabling volunteering.
3. Model a multi-layered identity – if you are comfortable, talk openly about what matters to you beyond your job. It gives others permission to do the same.
4. Take time to actively listen to people – help them feel heard, help them find what agency they can. Show them their concerns and contributions are valued and that you believe their motivations are good.

If this resonates – with you or your team – and you’re navigating change, a culture shift or have questions about identity at work, get in touch here, we’re always happy to chat.​

At ThenSomehow we help universities and other HE organisations build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff that’s stuck.

The post Beyond Job Titles: How Leaders Can Support Identity in Times of Change appeared first on ThenSomehow.

The Bucket Project: a mysterious adventure in the mountains

The Bucket Project has become an annual pilgrimage to the mountains for me, Arno the mountain guide from Alp Adventures, and a group of ordinary people who do not know each other.

We leave work behind for a few days and make our way to the hills, to experience a mysterious adventure, to reflect and slow down enough to get a bit clearer about our lives.

Each year produces a different group, usually from Higher Education Institutions and business: founders, directors, practitioners.

We walk, we talk. The slow pace enables the ebb and flow of alternating one-on-one or small group conversations, then people reflecting on their own but in company.

Possibilities open up in that space. We can reframe our challenges, temporarily lay down our burdens and responsibilities and relinquish control for a few blessed days.

Giving up control, embracing mystery, having an adventure. These are not normal things. And they are rather wonderful.

This is the Bucket Project, a four-day mysterious adventure in the mountains.

What happens on the Bucket Project

There are certain things about the Bucket that are really important, including that I don’t tell you what’s going to happen. Part of the ethos is that when you don’t know that, interesting things can take place.

What makes the Bucket Project unique?

I can’t tell you what we’ll be doing this year. That would spoil the surprise.

I can say you’ll laugh a lot. You might cry. You might find yourself well out of your comfort zone. You’ll make friends, feel appreciated and most likely learn a great deal from others and about yourself.

Last year we surprised everyone with an invitation at the end of a long day’s walking, to climb half way down a 140m cliff to sleep on a flimsy fabric platform.

It was totally safe, but I’ve never been more challenged going to bed in my life. Lying there with nothing but a thin sheet between us and a huge drop. The wind blowing around and over us.

Of course there were amazing views of the Mont Blanc Massif in front of us, but it was the scariest physical experience of my life. I did not sleep. And I learned that I don’t like heights. I am very glad I did it though, and I’m amazed that everyone on the trip did it too.

The good news is that we won’t be doing that again.

Beyond the comfort zone: why being brave is part of the journey

Being vulnerable and being brave is part of the Bucket Project. There’s something about being outside your comfort zone and taking a risk within safe limits that is really empowering.

But each year the Bucket is unique. We use different routes or include different activities.

We’ve slept in some pretty unusual places over the years: as well as the cliff edge, there have been ancient mountain refuges, a treehouse, and an igloo.

And we’ve seen signs of wolves, spotted three different kinds of vultures, and eagles, hares, marmots, chamois and ibex…

Over the course of the four days we will do some deliberate thinking. We will make deep connections. It will leave a lasting impression. We will go back into our worlds subtly changed.

Mostly though, it’s about the people, who bring different experiences and challenges.

Why join this journey

Often people come with a thing they want to work on. Usually that’s work or career related,
or to think about their most important relationships, but not always. Sometimes it turns out they need the space for something else entirely.

We start a group of strangers, we end friends, collaborators, supporters, bonded by the journey and the stories we share.

How a small epiphany can lead to big change

Last time a few people got into a conversation about Ikigai, the Japanese concept of finding what brings value and joy to your life including friends and family or work and hobbies.

Entrepreneur Marc Winn created a global meme when he merged purpose with Ikigai, creating a Venn diagram using four overlapping circles:

• what the world needs;
• what you’re good at;
• what you love, and
• what you can get paid for.

In the middle is your sweet spot, your purpose.

One of the group was struggling to find something they could do that would intersect all four circles.

Until another participant pointed out that the circles, including what you can get paid for, were never part of the original Japanese concept. Which was a good spot, as those four circles set a high bar and make it difficult to fulfil all the categories.

By letting go of the ‘paid for’ circle, perhaps finding money another way such as by doing flexible contract work, it would free up time to use their skills and passion to support the ‘needs of the world’. They were thoroughly cheered by that small epiphany.

There is often a riot of little moments of clarity like that on a Bucket Project.

There’s something about the walking, being in the clear air of the mountains, the conversations, the reflective space. The stress drops away. It’s a calm space. There’s joy, and a level of intimacy that you rarely achieve.

If you join us on the Bucket Project, you’ll be able to ask yourself some really helpful questions.

But if you can’t make it, you might like to give yourself some space to think about these reflective questions – useful at any time of year, adapted from similar ones that we use on the Bucket trip:

• What are you leaving behind from last year?
• What do you want for this year?
• What do you need?
• What can you do?

The Bucket Project 2025 is in October (16-20th), in the Italian Alps.

If you’d like to join – and it really is a special space – there are a few spots left. It will be one of the best things I do this year. Come and do it with me.

Apply here.

At ThenSomehow we help universities and other organisations build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff that’s stuck.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help your organisation develop leaders and perform better, get in touch here.

The post Why an adventure in the mountains can help you pause and reflect appeared first on ThenSomehow.

We all know meetings are a time suck, they get in the way of the work you need and want to do, and often don’t achieve anything. On top of interruptions and all your other work, going to meetings means you may need to work evenings or at the weekends to get everything done, or push work into next month.

According to Atlassian, the average worker spends about 31 hours sitting in unproductive meetings every month. And half of all meetings are considered to be wasted time, meanwhile employees aren’t even engaged during these meetings — 91% are daydreaming, and 73% are doing other work.

8 ways to reduce meeting overload

Here are 8 radical suggestions for what you as a manager can do about it to get some time back:

1. Do not go to meetings – delegate someone else to go instead
2. Halve the time you spend
3. 20 / 50 minute meetings
4. Create a rule for when you’ll be available to attend
5. Buffer time
6. Big rocks first
7. Overcome the urgency effect
8. Meeting free Mondays

Read on below for details of how to do each of these.

1. Delegate meetings to others

It is funny how we often accept the way things are without question. One manager we know at first claimed this was impossible and that she had to go to every meeting. Only to discover when she experimented by sending members from her team in her place, they thanked her for the opportunity and she got four hours back. Not only that, other attendees of the meeting were really impressed by her colleagues’ contribution, their estimation of the whole team and their manager went up. Test the unspoken rules: often they are not as fixed as you think they are.

2. Cut meeting time in half

If you cannot avoid attending a meeting can you halve its length? Or, if you meet every other week, would that be enough? Or, could you only attend every other one and use the minutes to keep up to date?

3. Try 20- or 50-minute meetings

Most meetings are 30 minutes or one hour simply because that is the default calendar setting. The 20/50 meeting rule suggests changing the default length to 20 minutes or 50 minutes whenever you can. At the very least that’ll give you 10 minutes to reflect, recover, refresh before jumping into the next task.

4. Set clear boundaries on meeting attendance

Struggling to find time to do focused work because of all the meetings scheduled by other people, another manager created a rule: “I do not attend meetings before 10am.” She always got in at 8am anyway, so by doing this she got two hours a day of uninterrupted time.

5. Schedule buffer time

Buffer time means leaving a gap between meetings and tasks, and/or scheduling unallocated time in your week.
One senior executive we know scheduled a weekly two-hour meeting with ‘Clive’ in her calendar. Only her assistant knew that Clive was her cat. Not everyone needs to know that your meeting is ‘with yourself’. Not everyone understands that time to think and plan and get your priorities straight is valuable. You do.

6. Prioritise important tasks before meetings

Ever tried fitting both sand and pebbles into a glass jar? What you discover is that if you put the sand in first, you can’t get all the pebbles in. But if you put the pebbles in first, all the sand fits around them. What this means: schedule your ‘big rock’ priority tasks first: force other tasks and even meetings to fit around them, not the other way around.

Overcome the need for too many meetings. Photo by @wocintechchat on Unsplash

7. Beat the urgency effect with better focus

Research shows that even if you are not rushed and you just feel you have not got enough time, you will prioritise lower impact activities like answering email, or filing. By telling yourself, “I have all the time I need” – as a mantra – actually helps you get to the more important work.
Next time you feel under time pressure, overcome the Urgency Effect by taking a breath and telling yourself, “I have all the time I need,” and make a good choice over which work to do.

8. Try a meeting-free day

It’s not just you that has these issues. Your colleagues and your team do too. So talk to the others and make a collective agreement about meetings – for example that you won’t have any meetings on one day of the week, or that you won’t schedule work during lunch times. Change the culture, help everyone feel better and do better work.

Try these strategies for cutting down on meetings and see how you get on.

Want to go further? Try our productivity programme

These tips and strategies come from our new Working Smarter programme – if you can find the time and the headspace to do it, it is a brilliant way to change your mindset and learn practical ways to be more productive.

If you’d like to make work better try the manager programme first for yourself, and if you think it’s good, buy the team version with or without clinics for your organisation. Contact us for more details.

The post How to cut down on meetings at work: 8 smart tactics for 2025 appeared first on ThenSomehow.

Meetings, messages, emails, colleagues and customers endlessly demand your attention and take your focus away from what you’d like to be doing.

Research suggests that everyone — from IT professionals to health care providers — are interrupted as much as every six to 12 minutes.

And other research shows that it’s actually really difficult to switch your attention between tasks without a residue of each unfinished one being left behind in your head.

Which means the chances of doing your best work after an interruption are pretty slim unless you can really focus and complete something.

We know that interruptions are one of the biggest challenges managers face, especially when trying to do their own work, and others want and need help.

So what can you do about it? Here are four simple things that our clients tell us work in order to overcome interruptions:

1. Marking in your calendar when you’re not available
2. Working away from your desk
3. Turning off calendar and email notifications
4. Setting boundaries and saying no

Read on for more information

1. Marking in your calendar when you’re not available

If you’re a manager this is good practice for getting your own work done. Let your phone go to voicemail, don’t look at emails, mark your Teams or Slack to show you’re busy. Negotiate with your team for how they can contact you in an emergency.
 

Work away from your desk. Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

2. Working away from your desk

This may have been more relevant when we were all office based, but when you are now working remotely, you can always go to a cafe or go to the library, or go and sit somewhere else, say on a different floor.
 

3. Turning off calendar and email notifications

If you haven’t yet turned off the notifications from you calendar or from email, you may not be aware just how distracting they are. Email can suck up your time with pointless busyness and reactive working, and this is what you want to avoid, especially when you are trying to do something else. Turning off reminders (which are all set to On by default) might be the most empowering thing you can do. Doing the same with your calendar notifications puts you in charge of how you are reminded of things – not the software you use.
 

Set boundaries and say no. Photo by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash

4. Setting boundaries and saying no

It is great to decide what to focus on and to create space to work on that. Just be aware you might have to say ‘no’ when someone tries to cross that boundary.

As an example, this is the story of two business partners who were constantly interrupting each other. It was happening so much they were both feeling really aggravated. But neither said anything about it. The build up of anger, frustration and resentment was threatening their working relationship. Eventually we helped them have a conversation, and they decided: “we will have four tea breaks a day, and in between we’ll write everything down that we want to ask each other and wait for that cup of tea and then we’ll go through our lists together.”

They did this and they got loads more work done and started to enjoy working together again – setting boundaries changed their lives and saved their business.

So try these four things and see how you get on.

These tips and strategies come from our new Working Smarter programme – if you can find the time and the headspace to do it, it is a brilliant way to change your mindset and learn practical ways to be more productive.

If you’d like to make work better try the manager programme first for yourself, and if you think it’s good, get the team version with or without clinics for your organisation. Contact us here.

The post How to stop interruptions at work: 4 practical strategies for getting things done appeared first on ThenSomehow.

Why We Feel Like Imposters at Work

Whether you’re feeling like an imposter because you are making a lot of mistakes, or because you’re not keeping up with the number of jobs on your plate, or because you’re losing confidence and thinking you’re not good enough to manage your team/ make that speech/ close the sale (ie “imposter syndrome”) – you’re not alone.

Most of us have these feelings from time to time.

You’re not alone — even astronauts feel it

There’s a great story about a man who went to a conference and introduced himself to the guy in the seat next to him: “Hello, I’m Neil,” he says, “what’s your name?” “Oh, my name’s Neil too,” comes the reply.

The second Neil says, “I don’t know… everyone here seems so capable and qualified. They’ve done all these studies and stuff. I just feel like a real imposter.” And the first Neil replies, “Neil, you were the first man to walk on the moon. I think you’ve earned your seat!”

(Yes it was Neil Armstrong in the seat next to him.)

The point of the story is that even Neil Armstrong, a global household name, feels like an imposter sometimes.

3 Ways to Overcome Imposter Syndrome

The thing about imposter syndrome is – while your feelings are valid – it’s also fair to say that your version of the truth is fuzzy and you might have lost perspective on everything you’ve already achieved.

If you feel like you’re failing, here’s how to turn that around:
1. Reset your expectations
2. Change your mind about what constitutes success
3. Do things that help you feel in control

Here’s how to deal with imposter syndrome

Reset your expectations. Photo by Yasin Yusuf on Unsplash

1. Reset your expectations

• Have a short to do list
• Use buffer zones
• Lower the bar

Years ago when I was working in sales for a radio group, I’d make a to-do list on a Monday morning for all the things that I wanted to get done that day. Then the phone would ring, one of my team would have a problem, and so on and so on… and I would only start actioning my list on Friday. I felt like I was failing, but only because of the work I hadn’t taken into account such as email, interruptions, and all the unexpected stuff that happens.

If that sounds familiar, the way to deal with it is to set yourself up for success – that list you make on a Monday morning, make it your weekly list instead.

I was chatting to a client the other day and he told me how he makes this work, “I have a look at my calendar, and I plan one thing I want to get done that day. If I don’t have a lot on, I plan two or three things. But if it’s a busy day: only one thing.”

The point is to set yourself targets you can hit.

As a way of helping yourself do this, use buffer zones to limit your ambition: put a half an hour gap between everything in your diary – it means you’ll get two less meetings into your day. Not a bad thing because back-to-back meetings leave you with no room to think, have a comfort break, or a cup of tea. This isn’t lowering the bar. It’s being realistic instead of wildly ambitious.

2. Rethink your signs of success

A few months ago my co-director Katharine was anxious about her ceramics exhibition. She told me how a friend helped her reframe her expectations. Their conversation went something like this:

Her friend asked her, “What are your signs of success? …Is it how much money you make?”

“No, I don’t expect to make much money,” Katharine replied.

F: “So is it the number of people who come through the doors?”
K: “I would like lots of people but there’s not much I can do to control that. I’ve posted on Instagram and Facebook and sent out emails… I can’t do anything else.”

F: “So what you get is what you get… So what does success look like? …Does the exhibition look great?”
K: “Yes, it looks great.”

F: “Do people tell you how much they enjoyed it?”
K: “Yes, they do.”

F: “Do you sell anything?”
K: “I’m actually selling quite a few things.”

F: “Are the workshops you run as part of the exhibition successful?”
K: “Yes, they work.”

F: “Do people enjoy making the things they make?”
K: “Yes, they are really pleased and they say they feel much calmer and they’re proud of their work.”

F: “These sound like really good success measures. Yes?”
K: “Yes.”

F: “So…was it successful?”
K: “Err, Yes! ????”

One of the challenges when you work for an organisation is the number of demands on you – failing might be keeping saying yes to so many things that you can’t deliver on any of them. Success might be when you start to say no to some things. It’s worth reflecting on how many things you have said no to this week.

Ask yourself: what does success actually look like?

Can you re-define your signs of success?

It’s a game changer.

Do things that help you feel in control. Photo by Thomas Bormans on Unsplash

3. Do things that help you feel in control

If you feel like you’re failing or out of control – can you look at what’s going on? Try the Circles of influence exercise – the point of it is to help you realise you can’t control everything… so let go of the things out of your control, and focus instead on what you can do and what you can influence instead.

Stepping back and working out how much you have on – for example by using Project Mapping (that’s explained here) – and then looking at what is and isn’t in your control using circles of influence – both of those things are designed to help you feel in control again.

Need Help to Shift Your Mindset?

If you’re struggling with feeling like you’re failing and need some help, get in touch. At Then Somehow, we have tools and programmes that can help. Get in touch here.

The post How to deal with imposter syndrome appeared first on ThenSomehow.

Burnout – the complete mental, emotional, and often physical exhaustion brought on by long term work related stress – is a more serious and widespread issue than you might realise.

According to a 2020 Gallup survey of full time employees, when asked how often participants experienced burnout:

• 48% answered sometimes.
• 21% answered always.

Burnout is more common than you think

That means the majority of full-time employees – nearly seven in ten people – experience burnout because of work at least some of the time.

The pressure to address this has become so important that in 2019 the World Health Organization upgraded burnout to “an occupational phenomenon”.

What causes burnout at work? Top 5 reasons

As workplaces become increasingly demanding and fast-paced, many employees feel overwhelmed by competing demands, unreasonable expectations and a tidal wave of communications.

Technology is at least partly to blame – being always on means the lines between home and work life are blurred – leading to long hours in front of screens without switching off.

Post-pandemic, with the surge in people working remotely from home, your team members are at greater risk of burnout now more than ever.

According to research by Gallup, there are five factors that correlate most highly with burnout:

1. Lack of manager support

Employees who feel supported by their manager are about 70% less likely to experience burnout. Your support as a manager provides a psychological buffer, which helps your team know you have their back when challenges come up or something goes wrong for them.

2. Unmanageable workload

Even high-performing colleagues can quickly shift from optimistic to hopeless when they’re struggling with unmanageable expectations and an overwhelming workload.

3. Unreasonable time pressure

Unreasonable deadlines and pressure can create a snowball effect: when people miss one overly aggressive deadline, they fall behind on the next thing on their to-do list.

4. Unfair treatment

If others get more praise or help than they do, this can make burnout more likely because it breaks trust. When team members do not trust their teammates, or do not trust you as their manager, or do not trust leadership, the psychological bond that makes work meaningful can be broken, affecting attitudes and engagement and creating more stress.

5. Unclear communication from managers

Unless you’re giving them the information needed to do the job effectively, people’s work becomes more difficult and frustrating.

What managers can do to prevent burnout

As a manager, the most impactful thing you can do to stop burnout happening in your team is to discuss with them which of the above factors are affecting them and work with them on how to spot the fires and put them out in time.

It may be that you’ll need to have a difficult conversation, or work on resolving some dysfunctional culture together.

It may be that you’ll need to adopt new behaviours and processes.

Three behaviour changes that help prevent burnout

Here’s 3 behaviour changes that can help your team deal with burnout:

1. Getting clear about priorities
2. Saying no and setting boundaries
3. Changing and reframing mindsets

1. Get clear about priorities

Sometimes we are not the best judge of what is important, but talking with colleagues can help us get clearer.

For example, you might be making assumptions about what other people are expecting:

• If you don’t check when someone asks you to do something – why they need it and what the end goal is – you might miss that it might not be best met by the task they’re asking you to do.
• And if you don’t ask when they’ll next be working on it – you may feel you need to do it sooner than is necessary, unnecessarily adding to your current pressure and workload.

When people are overwhelmed they are more likely just to do the task than question what is most helpful.

One way to overcome this is to do an exercise such as Project Mapping together.

Project Mapping is a planning tool that helps you work out what you all have on your plate and what to prioritise.

It is a way of tracking everything, deciding what you are not going to do, and progressing the most important things.

The idea is to capture every task and project you’re involved with on cards – one thing per card – then sort the cards into appropriate areas of focus and responsibility, and work out priorities.

Once you have decided on the priorities you can get clear on what the next steps are. We recommend you work out what the next actionable step is for each task or project and then schedule it in your calendar.

This is really helpful because:

• A small amount of time upfront makes tasks and projects more manageable and much easier to make progress on.
• Identifying the smallest next step makes it easier to get started.
• Using upfront thinking helps you work out what to do – making work less stressful.

For more info on Project Mapping – have a look at our new e-course: Prioritising the Right Things.

Project Mapping helps you work out priorities.

2. Learn to say no and set boundaries

It’s important that people know they can say no and set boundaries, for example by having clear start and end times (which can be flexible if your colleagues are clear about it), and stopping work at a set time like six o’clock and not carrying on just because you or they can.

It is also about taking breaks between tasks and meetings, making sure you take annual leave, and a proper lunch break!

Setting boundaries is everyone’s personal responsibility but you also have a responsibility as a manager to model it and empower them to do it.

Why boundaries are important
There’s a thing about work: it never ends, and there is never enough time to do it all.

This is important because until people realise it, they are at risk: trying to do everything leads to a destructive cycle of stress, letting other people down and eventually burnout.

The busier you get the less time you can devote to thinking or planning, which leads to more reactivity and overwhelm.

One part of the solution is to create some structure and plan your work. This helps you manage your capacity and provide a solid basis for agreeing to new work or not.

We recommend you use your calendar to get a visual reference of your capacity – so you can be better informed about what new things you can take on.

Another part of the solution is to schedule breaks – stepping away can help you see things more clearly.

It’s important to work out what you are and you are not going to do, and to prioritise what’s more important over what’s less so – doing this as a team, for example using Project Mapping, means you can decide what’s important and what to pause, together.

Why saying no is essential for wellbeing

Many people struggle with saying no. Saying no can be scary for many reasons – especially if you are junior and don’t wish to be seen as unhelpful or incompetent.

Yet you cannot say yes to everything. The consequences of that is taking on too much, unnecessary stress and burnout.

Does your team understand they can say no, and that saying no to some things means they can say yes to others? Or that overpromising and being unable to deliver causes more problems?

We are designed to do this together
At this point it’s worth pointing out that people can of course just start doing these things themselves, but some things work better when you discuss and iterate them together.

For example if you start saying no to everything without explaining to your colleagues, it might cause some issues. And sometimes you can’t see the wood for the trees, someone else has to hold up the mirror (and give you permission to do it).

3. Shift your mindset and reframe your thinking

Many stress management programmes tell you to reduce the sources of your stress. That is not always possible, which can end up making you feel worse.

Another way to deal with stress is to change your mindset – the set of assumptions and beliefs that affect how you think, feel and behave. You might think you can’t choose your mindset, but you can.

How your mindset shapes your experience of stress

Health psychologist, Kari Liebowitz is an expert in using the power of mindset to improve your health, wellbeing, and performance.

Kari spent a chunk of time in the north of Norway where it’s dark half the year, and what she discovered is that people are very happy there – the opposite of what she had expected. It didn’t seem to make any sense. Why are people happier when it’s darker? It turns out it’s because they embrace winter. They don’t see the darkness as cold and uninviting. They choose to see it as soft. It is a time for intimate, slow gatherings with friends, and for spending the long days doing craft. It is a time for sleep, rest, focus, close activity. Deciding to see it like this makes for a very different experience.

She has another example of a medical trial where the doctors gave people fake mosquito bites and then injected them with histamine. Half the trial received the injection, left and then had to report on how they felt. The other half received the injection and the doctor also said, “There you go, from now on the swelling will go down and the itching will decrease.” Which is undeniable. It’s what always happens with mosquito bites, eventually, the itching reduces and the swelling goes down. Even though this was just a spurious mollification, the people who were told the swelling would go down by the doctor experienced milder symptoms for less time than those who were just left on their own.

In both of these cases, people’s experience and their body’s physiological response was influenced by their mindset.

3. Reframing your thinking

Managing your mindset is not a cure-all. Some stuff is heavy going. But once you accept that you can change your mindset, and you realise that your cup of capacity is close to overflowing, you can reframe what you can in a way that is less negative.

Here’s how to do it:

• Acknowledge and own your stress.
• Focus on what you can control (try using the Circle of Influence tool).
• Pay attention to small pleasures and emphasise the silver linings.
• Don’t be over ambitious (Covid-19 may not be the time to write that novel!)
• Watch what you talk about (try not to dwell on what can’t be changed or what might not happen.)
• Be a ‘winter mindset’ ambassador and help yourself and others feel better.

The surprising upside of pressure at work

This chart shows that we all get more productive with a bit of pressure.

As pressure increases, performance and productivity go up until you’re into a super-performing place. But If you keep it up for too long without any respite you can slide from super-performing into strain very easily. And then from strain, you move into burnout, and a total collapse of productivity.

This means that being stressed is not bad. Because actually, you perform better when you’re in a slightly stressed state. It’s fun. It’s exciting. You can get loads done. It’s exhilarating.

The problem is to know when you’re in strain: you have to learn the signs that it might be happening, and then don’t spend too much time there.

So just be aware that your time in the stress zone is limited. And make sure that you don’t overdo it.

Otherwise, you’ll have a catastrophic collapse of productivity.

In conclusion: how to support your team and yourself

As work gets more demanding it’s incumbent on managers to provide pastoral care and look out for your team – that is one of the biggest things you can do to stop your team from burning out.

Once you have an understanding of the signs, you can look out for when your’s or someone in your team’s cup is overflowing, then you can work out what to do about it.

If I start losing sleep, and wake up feeling nervous, I immediately get my notebook out and start to write things down. It helps. I discovered that by emptying my brain of all the worries and concerns, and then reprioritising, I get some sense of control back, and I sleep better.

When I’m out of control and can’t handle it anymore, writing it all down helps keep my ‘cup’ from overflowing. By doing that I’m constantly discarding things that I haven’t got room for in my cup.

You could try the same.

If this post resonates and is helpful, have a look also at our post on Burnout – how to spot the fires and put them out in time.

How ThenSomehow can help

If you need some help with working on this – get in touch, at ThenSomehow we help you and your team build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff that’s stuck.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help your team deal with burnout, get in touch here.

The post How to prevent burnout at work: a guide for managers and teams appeared first on ThenSomehow.

Whilst we all respond differently to remote working, in an always-on world it can be harder to maintain a work-life balance or find time to relax whilst staying on top of what’s going on at work and in the world.

At first sight, remote working and working from home sound great. There’s no commute. You can enjoy freedom from distractions. You have the flexibility to go for a walk or work outside when it’s sunny. You could have more personal time.

But the reality – as we discovered during the pandemic of 2020/21 – is that many people find the working day to be more stressful, whilst others find the isolation of working and living alone to be a big challenge. And the lack of boundaries between work and home make it harder to switch off.

As a result of all this, lots of people have found that they are burning out or discovering to their horror that for the first time in their lives, they might actually be having to think about their own mental health.

None of this is going to go away, even with lockdowns in the rear view mirror – hybrid and remote working has an impact, and burnout is still be a possibility.

So what can you do about it?

Read on for our guide to avoiding Burnout. It’ll help you come up with practical ways to avoid it, spot when it happens and help you come back from it.

Photo by Gemma Chua-tran on Unsplash

A Practical Guide to Avoiding Burnout

What is burnout?

Burnout is more than stress. It is the state of complete mental, emotional, and sometimes physical exhaustion, brought on by months or even years of feeling swamped and taking on more than you can handle.

The symptoms of burnout may be invisible to other people, and burnout doesn’t go away on its own.

So if you feel overwhelmed and exhausted by everything that you have to do but somehow worry that it’s not enough, if you have no enthusiasm for your job and don’t feel motivated to do anything, you probably need to stop and take time off to recover.

Hopefully, most of us get nowhere near this and by paying attention to how you’re feeling and doing things to take care of yourself, you’ll avoid tipping over into burnout.

So if you’re trying to do too much and feel your stress levels building up and not going away then it’s time to do something about it.

The physiology of burnout: it starts in the body

Burnout and overwhelm can feel like a mental health issue but there’s a physiological aspect to it too – actually it all starts in your body.

Fight or flight is a well-documented human stress reaction – it goes back to our life on the plains of Africa: you see a lion, it sees you, it starts moving towards you… you run like you’ve never run before. Your body takes over. Your bloodstream is flooded with adrenaline, and your brain focuses on just getting you out of there.

And then one of two things happen. Either the lion catches you and eats you. Problem solved. Or you escape and you make it back to your cave, brush past the flaps and get behind the fire. You take deep breaths, your heart rate slows down, you made it, you’re alive. And you can boast to everybody about how you out ran a lion. Whoof!

The thing is, we experience similar kinds of stress in the modern world, and the same response happens. When you get very stressed, your digestive system shuts down, your adrenaline levels rise and your heart rate increases.

But there isn’t an equivalent of being eaten or escaping. We’re just in it all the time. If you think about all the things that make you feel anxious, more stuff comes along until it’s all overflowing, and we don’t complete the cycle.

This is when burnout happens: total emotional and physical exhaustion.

Reset and recover: how to complete the stress cycle

Because the emotional and physiological symptoms are so closely linked, if you can’t kill the lion and you can’t escape from the lion, it turns out there are things that you can do to complete the stress cycle – with either a physical or a mental reset.

Ways to physically or mentally complete the cycle

For example, you could go for a run and then come back. That could be enough to close the loop.

If you can’t run, you could go for a stiff walk, or you could do a workout. Writer Amelia Nagoski describes how she uses cross her trainer workouts to destress: in her mind’s eye she’s Godzilla, stamping on all the buildings and all the people who are pissing her off. In effect she’s introducing some creativity to her exercise workout, and activating her imagination. It’s a powerful way of resetting, and bringing her back.

There are other things you could do to reset yourself. It doesn’t have to be a Godzilla workout, it could be a creative activity, such as knitting, reading a book, or even watching a movie. Anything that takes your mind away creates the reset.

This isn’t rocket science, and most of us know this – the trouble is we don’t do it!

How full is your cup? Spotting the signs of overload

The Cup of Capacity was developed by clinical psychologist, Dr Emma Hepburn.

It’s a simple exercise based on her brilliant picture of a cup.

Dr Hepburn explains, “we’ve all got a cup of capacity, the question is: what’s in your cup?”

Try this: The Cup of Capacity exercise

How to do it:

• Draw a picture of your cup
• Make a list of all the things in your cup that you are dealing with and that are concerning you – a bit like Circle of Influence
• Have a look at all the things you’ve written down.

Is there a lot there?

Are there themes?

It’s really helpful to look at this and to acknowledge if you have too much on your plate, for two reasons:

What your full cup is really telling you

All the things in your cup that are stressing you out are also the things that represent and embody your values, because you only get anxious about things you care about.

Which means the reason you’re trying to do too much is not because you’re a bad person or a failure, but because you’re fundamentally a good human being and you’re trying really hard to make sure the things you care about get done.

So rather than feel bad for not being able to cope, acknowledge that you are trying to take care of a lot of important stuff like making sure people are alright, or finishing work to a good standard.

That’s admirable.

You shouldn’t be ashamed of that.

Understand your limits: cups only hold so much

The thing about cups is they only hold so much. And when they overflow, bad things happen: you burnout.

When you’re doing the Cup of Capacity exercise, it helps to think about the cup having three levels: green, amber, red:

• Green is fine – you have lots of room in your cup
• Amber – your cup is getting fuller
• Red – your cup is close to full
• Then you get to overflow

Ask yourself: where are you at right now?

Warning signs you’re approaching burnout

What happens when your Cup of Capacity is approaching the red zone (the top level)? What do you notice about yourself? How do you behave? How do you feel physiologically? This is really relevant, and understanding it is helpful.

If you pay attention, you may become aware that when your cup’s filling up you become forgetful, or you can’t sleep, or you start being snippy with your family.

These are indicators that your cup’s getting full, and you might need to do something about it.

Acknowledging what you have on is really important here.

Questions to ask yourself

• Why have you got so much on?
• What can you let go of? If nothing, that’s okay – there’s no point in feeling even more stressed about it.

What to do when you’re burned out

Knowing your cup is too full is helpful because it shows a pathway to feeling better.

Prevention, recovery, and letting go

There are several things that you can do: some are about prevention ie making your cup bigger, some are about responding to the discovery that you’re in that state and recovering from it, and some are about taking things out of your cup.

Ask for help — you might not see it yourself

There’s a great talk where sisters Emily And Amelia Nagoski, co-authors of Burnout speak about unlocking the stress cycle. They share a story of when Emily was writing a TED talk. As she got closer to the deadline she became increasingly unbearable and rude to her sister, Amelia.

Fed up with this, Amelia kidnapped Emily’s dog and put it in her car and told her sister, “I don’t care what you’re doing right now, you need to get in your car and take your dog for a walk because you need to take a break.”

Emily was annoyed but she went to the beach with the dog anyway and of course, within 15 mins calmed down and got some perspective and texted an apology to her sister, “I’m really sorry. You were right, I was wrong. Thank you for making me do what I couldn’t do myself.”

When you’re burning out you need people around you to help rescue you from that stuff that’s the problem. Because you can’t see it, when you’re in it.

When your cup starts overflowing, you could be the last person to realise.

Photo by Arek Adeoye on Unsplash

7 Ways To Build Your Resilience Against Burnout

So here are some practical ways to prevent and respond to burnout if you notice it’s happening to you.

There are two levels to this:

1. the basics that you really should be doing,
2. five practices to bring into your routine (five things can be quite intimidating, but you don’t have to do all five, you can find ways to tick several boxes at once).

The basics: 3 simple daily habits to protect yourself from burnout

1. Prioritise quality sleep

The baseline is to get enough sleep. And if you’re not, there are sleep resources on the NHS website and elsewhere that you can do that will help. Some basic tips: don’t look at your phone late at night, have a good night-time routine, and get some daylight in the morning.You can also try weighted blankets, ear plugs, or eye masks – they can all help.

Do some homework and find out what works for you.

2. Eat to feel good, not just full

Are you eating properly? When we’re stressed or upset we tend to reach for fatty, carb rich, sugary, comfort food and snacks that make us feel worse in the long run, not the fruit and veg that are actually good for us. This creates a vicious cycle. So make sure you eat lunch, have a proper breakfast and try not snack on processed food all day long.

3. Schedule joy and look forward to it

Have you got some planned joy in your life? It turns out this is really important.

Sometimes I plan to have an ice cream after work on Friday. I’ll decide that on Monday and look forward to it all week, because looking forward to it is a big part of the medicine. Planned joy might be that you’re going to see an old friend, or it might be you’re going to go for a walk, or watch a movie that you really like. It doesn’t matter what it is.

A colleague told me, “I’m really looking forward to having a really long soak in the bath on Friday. I’m going to paint my toenails, light candles and just pamper myself. I’m looking forward to it. It’s my treat to myself.”

It works.

The Five Pillars: things to build into your routine that reset your stress levels

Here are five extra ways to reset your stress levels. Think about how you could stitch some of them into your life. They’re not all separate so you can link them up – one activity may cover three of them for example.

1. Move!

Movement is a really helpful activity. Movement tells your body that you’re moving away from what’s stressing you, which is one reason why regular exercise can reduce anxiety – by making your brain’s “fight or flight” system less reactive. So at the very least make sure you go for walks – ideally every day.

2. Be creative

Learning or being creative can also help. Turns out, tapping into creative energy can actually improve your overall health. So whether that’s painting by numbers, taking a course, playing an instrument, whittling a stick or anything that engages your hand-eye coordination, grab a pen and start writing, doodling, get your hands dirty or whatever you decide to do, it’s time to start getting creative.

3. Being in the moment

Studies have shown that being present in the moment can improve psychological well-being. Being present means being aware of the sounds, smells, and what you see and feel, right now. Not thinking about the past or worrying about the future.

4. Connect with people

We are social animals, and connecting with the right people can improve mood, help you feel safer, and reduce stress. Family, friends, and coworkers are great places to start. Or anyone else you see regularly, such as neighbours or the barista at your local coffee shop. Whether it’s small talk or deep conversations, connection can boost mood and help you solve problems before things get overwhelming.

5. Give something back

It turns out acts of kindness reduce stress levels. So can you do something to give back? Can you help someone else? There is a definite helpers high and a feelgood factor from giving back and contributing to society.

Link these pillars up for best results

All five of these are things that make you feel good, and can help stave off burnout.

It may be a challenge to fit them all into your life without feeling like you’re failing. The solution is to link them up. For example, go for a walk and take some photos, or doing painting by numbers which also helps you be calmer and more present.

There was a woman who had a part-time job. In a spare day she volunteered at her child’s school (not in her own child’s class). She helped kids with reading or maths. She learned about the children and about modern ways of teaching. She hung out in the staff room – gasping at the bitchiness that was going on there and enjoying that – but mainly she was connecting with people. And she walked there too.

It ticked at least four of the boxes, and she felt much happier.

So see if you can find ways of introducing these into your life.

How ThenSomehow can help

If this post resonates and is helpful, and you’d like to take it further have a look at our elearning course on Burnout, here.

If you need some help with working on this – get in touch, at Then Somehow we help you and your team build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff that’s stuck.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help your team deal with burnout, get in touch here.

The post Burnout – how to spot the fires and put them out in time appeared first on ThenSomehow.

1. A clear, dedicated workspace to set boundaries.
2. The Circles of Influence to focus on what you can control.
3. The Pomodoro Technique to beat distractions.
4. Calendar best practice to structure your day.
5. A marathon mindset to avoid burnout.

Why remote and hybrid work is a challenge

The challenge of working from home is how you and your team adjust to this way of working – whether that’s remote or hybrid working – and how you manage your focus and attention.

Everybody’s different, right? Some of your teammates will love the opportunity to work from home. They prefer working on their own and love the freedom from distractions and the ability to focus that working from home provides.

Meanwhile, other people find remote working desperately lonely. When much of your social interaction comes from work colleagues, and you can’t see any of them in person, isolation can be quite alarming.

Whichever group your colleagues fall into, plenty of people have been wondering if they’re doing their job properly and feeling anxious about that.

This may be because they can’t concentrate or keep getting distracted.

Practical ways to stay focused when working from home

Here are some tips for staying focussed and positive whilst working from home to use and share with your team.

1. Set up a clear, dedicated workspace

First of all, make sure your space is clear and organised. It’s hard to focus if your desk is messy or covered in coffee cups, food wrappers, or papers. A tidy workspace makes it easier to be productive, find the things you need, and finish tasks.

Try to create a dedicated workspace that’s separate from your living space. Where such luxury is impossible, introduce some ritual to the start and end of your work time. Take a few minutes to turn your space into a workspace. Rearrange the furniture, set up your equipment, make a tea or coffee in your work mug. Put on your work clothes. At the end of the day, log off, put away your laptop or put a cover over your computer. Tidy your work stuff away, reset the room. Perhaps transition by going for a walk.

Turns out there may be a tiny benefit to the daily commute.

It’s important to have boundaries. Families can impose this on you. Even so, it’s all too easy to carry on or return to work for too long in the evening. Where boundaries are fluid, try to make them fixed. Stop work at the agreed time, go and do something else. We need rest, downtime: more than just work in our lives

2. Focus on what you can control – and let go of the rest

We all have to adapt to what the reality is. You cannot change the fact this situation is happening.

So the best strategy is to control what you can control, accept what you can’t, and influence what you can where it’s appropriate.

And then you can make the best of what you’ve got.

For example, you can’t change the fact that your colleagues might have children at home. But you can adapt to it.

You can be flexible and be generous when other people are unable to contribute as much as you can.

You can not feel guilty when you can’t contribute as much as usual.

You can reduce media consumption if it’s making you feel bad. (Just don’t look at it.)

You can influence things by making sure that you redistribute the work so that the most important things get covered.

You can influence things by agreeing with your team that there are things you are not going to do – because you no longer have the capacity to do them – and put them on the back burner instead.

On the flip side, you cannot influence the lockdown. So accept that. You cannot influence queues at supermarkets, but you can get your neighbours to go shopping if you’re isolated, or you can go and help your neighbours if they need it.

You can control your personal budget. Or at least reduce your outgoings wherever you can, if you are concerned about finances. You can investigate mortgage holidays or speak to your landlord.

So let go of all of the ideas about what you should be doing. Instead, focus on what you can influence and what you can control.

This is based on Stephen Covey’s Circles of Influence – we have a tool for it which is a great way to host this kind of conversation with your team.

If you’d like to explore this further, have a look at our post on Circles of influence for a free worksheet you can use. (We also run remote team workshops on this – details here.)

3. Use the Pomodoro Technique to beat distraction

This is a great tip if you need to get focussed and you can’t.

The Pomodoro technique is a time management tool developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. Originally designed for students, it’s very effective for any kind of work. You break your work down into short periods separated by breaks. Each period is known as a Pomodoro, from the Italian for ‘tomato’, after the tomato-shaped timer that Cirillo used as a student.

There are 4 steps:

1. Decide on the task
2. Use a timer to get focused on your work, especially the work you are avoiding!
3. Set the timer for 25 mins – this is the optimum time to use your focused brain (prefrontal cortex) which is where you do all your conscious thinking. It tires easily and pushing on can mean you start making mistakes.
4. After 25 minutes, take a short break to refresh, and then get back at it.

You can use shorter timed periods if you really hate or are bored by the task eg Moyra on our team has a 10-minute family tidy. “It’s very effective,” she says.

Using a timer means you can really focus because you don’t have to worry about the time passing.

How to use the Technique:

1. Work for 25 mins
2. Take a 5 min break (time all your breaks)
3. Work for 25 mins
4. Take a 5 min break
5. Work for 25 mins
6. Take a longer break

4. Structure your day using your calendar

Most people need structure to give them a sense of control. The best way to create structure in your day is by using your calendar.

The best practice for using your calendar is to:

• write very clear defined tasks
• structure your day into short chunks that you can move around when things don’t go as planned. It’s a way of managing expectations – yours and others.

So how do you structure your day?

As a manager, when you’re thinking about creating a structure that works for you, your family and your day, at the moment that might mean that you are only available for three hours a day instead of seven or eight.

(Don’t feel guilty, remember, you have to accept the reality of where you’re at – it takes a village to raise a child, they’re all our responsibility.)

Good practice is to build this into your calendar, and let other people see when you’re available (make sure your calendar is shared with your team).

The flip side of that is to encourage your team to put in their calendars when they’re available too.

This is one of the ways you can control what you can control. You cannot control what other people do, but you can influence them.

So make sure you use your calendar to create clarity and structure in your work, and how you communicate and encourage your team to do the same.

5. Slow down — it’s a marathon, not a sprint

Remember this is a marathon, not a sprint. There’s a wonderful blog post by assistant professor Aisha Ahmad, University of Toronto for more on this. My favourite quote: If you start off running too fast and try to pretend that everything can carry on as normal, you’ll be vomiting on your shoes within the first five miles.

If you’re feeling a rising sense of nausea over all of this, slow it down and focus on what you can do.

Stay well.

Need support for your team’s focus and wellbeing?

If you’d like help with issues like this, at Then Somehow we help you build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff that’s stuck.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help your organisation perform better, get in touch here.

The post How to focus when working from home appeared first on ThenSomehow.

Here’s an example to illustrate.

A client I work with complained that a member of her team took them right to the wire on a presentation for a client meeting.

The team member got their section of the presentation to her at 5pm the day before the client meeting, and worse, it wasn’t any good. My client stayed til 10pm that night to rewrite those slides so they were good enough to go into the presentation.

We all know there’s a big problem with that.

Understanding the Impact of Micromanagement

In the morning, the team member emailed to ask ‘how were the slides?’

My client couldn’t bring herself to say they were rubbish, so she emailed back to say thanks, they were great and she’d only had to make a few tweaks.

We all know there’s a big problem with that.

The team member now thinks that what she did is okay.

She might have suspected that it wasn’t okay, and maybe noticed that her boss was a bit grumpy, but with no idea why.

She likely felt confused and worried, with no idea how to make it better. Next time she may do the same thing again, maybe not so late.

Meanwhile, my client was annoyed and tired.

This is disastrous.

The Parent-Child Dynamic in Workplace Interactions

My client had been micromanaging her team member and treated them like a child, and her colleague responded like a child.

Conversely, my client acted like a parent, and just did the work for her.

In all likelihood, this will have set up a recurring dynamic where her colleague will keep bringing work that isn’t good enough… and my client will keep micromanaging her, until my client tells her.

So what to do?

Embracing the Adult-to-Adult Approach

The general rule is that if someone comes to you behaving like a child (eg “I can’t do this, can you do it for me?”) if you respond as a parent, and either do it for them (micromanaging) or tell them what to do, you’re doomed.

Equally, if you treat people like they’re children and tell them what to do and how to do it, then they’ll take the child role.

You can see these patterns happening in workplaces all the time at a really unconscious level, and everyone’s frustrated.

If you’re the ‘child’, you want to be grown up, and you’re not allowed to because you’re not given any autonomy.

At the same time, the person that’s being the parent hates it because they feel they haven’t got any decent people working for them, and they get frustrated.

To fix it, rather than micromanaging, you have to acknowledge the pattern, and then shift it.

The solution is: behave as an adult.

This means, if someone comes to you as a child, don’t treat them like a parent, nor meet them like a child, instead treat them like an adult.

Steps to Foster Autonomy and Accountability

So I coached my client and next time she said:

“Ah, actually, this isn’t good enough, I can’t take it to our client, and as it has to be delivered tomorrow morning, it has to be fixed.

It’s not good enough for this reason and this reason and this reason, and I can’t work late to fix it, so what can we do about it?”

If you say something like that, you leave it for them to respond – hopefully, they say: “I’ll deal with it, I’ll fix it now.” And not walk out at 5pm leaving you to carry the baby!

If you don’t treat them like an adult, and don’t explain what’s wrong and then give them responsibility for putting it right, they’re never going to get any better.

Breaking Free from Institutionalised Patterns

We default to these things very easily because we’ve been institutionally trained to be like this – as kids, at school – and when we come to work we can still be stuck in those patterns.

You will know people in your organisation, in your team, or around you who behave in a child-like way. And you’ll see people being parented, so you also know who the adults are.

Here’s a link to the Transactional Analysis model so you can read about it in more detail.

How to stop micromanaging: use the Transactional Analysis model

The way to use this tool is to combine the model with a set of questions around it:

• Who are you parenting?
• To whom are you presenting yourself as a child?
• What can you do to move to being an adult?

Either party – parent or child – could decide to do this re-setting.

So for example, if you are being parented by your boss, you could go to your boss and say, “you know that thing you did, I’ve decided to do it in this way and this way, I’ve created some options and I wanted to discuss them with you…”, as opposed to asking permission.

You could make a recommendation. You could state your intention, rather than waiting for them to tell you.

With the Scouts example in an earlier story, we’re the parents and they’re the children. And that’s how it is.

However, on the Do-What-You-Like Day, we broke that rule, and asked ‘what would you like to do?’ We treated them like adults. With amazing and unexpected results.

Relating that to an organisation: if you’re busy and find yourself being a micromanager, a bottleneck and everybody needing you – is that because you’ve been parenting?

If that sounds like you, and you’ve created ‘children’ who are culturally unable to take their own decisions, and need your permission to do everything, then, in reality, it’s your own fault.

Have a look at the Transactional Analysis Tool and see if it can help.

How ThenSomehow can help

If you need some help with working on this – get in touch, at Then Somehow we help you build emotional literacy, increase empathy, and help you see the world differently, giving you practical tools to shift the stuff that’s stuck.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help your team perform better, get in touch here.

The post How to stop micromanaging your staff appeared first on ThenSomehow.