RESPECT, RESPITE and REFLECTION; the three R’s we’ll need to rely on to ride out the rest of this year
I’ve been reflecting a little lately on the journey my organisation (and other companies) have been on this year. We’re nine months — three quarters — of the way through the year and it has been a year truly like no other.
A typical year would see peaks and troughs smattered throughout the year. The company would have moments of busyness, sometimes freneticism even — where life is frantic, and it feels almost unbearable with the volume of work we are dealing with — but these periods would almost always be followed by troughs; a moment of relaxation (and celebration) where we can recharge our batteries, enjoy the moment, and re-energise ready to tackle the next peak. Peaks often bring with them anxieties (pressure, stress, tension) and troughs bring the relief (relaxation, celebration, enjoyment). It’s the balance that is needed to achieve goals and get through the year in one piece.
This year has been different though. Tension is now pretty common in life (in and away from work). We’ve had wave one of covid. We’ve dealt with the pressures of changes in our home lives (working from home / home schooling / caring for relatives / caring for our own health) and we’ve sustained a challenging level of productivity driven by changing demand from customers and our desire to keep businesses on track for their longer term plans.
With tension comes tiredness and when we get fatigued our behaviours drop. We get snappy, our blind spots start to come to the surface or our dark side behaviours start to become more frequent and regular. This is where respect comes in. In order to keep going, to keep “surviving” the long fight through covid-19 and keeping an organisation on track, we need to ensure that we’re being respectful in all that we do. Respect means many things, but in this case its four-fold; respect for ourselves — to look after our mental health and wellbeing, respect for our colleagues — to recognise all that they are doing in their roles and all that they bring to the company, and respect for time — not to whittle it away on non-essential things, to stay focussed on the things that are important and to be aware of what time we’re asking of each other and how we can optimise our time most effectively. It’s also about listening. With a devaluing or loss of appreciation of respect comes our inability to truly listen and understand each other. We listen to reply and then wonder why even more tension creeps into daily life. Respect is the bedrock of a high performing team as its an earned quality and is required to form strong relationships. It’s also an enabler of good (healthy) conflict, something that is essential for solving difficult problems and coming up with the right solutions.
Respite is the antidote to tension… I often talk with colleagues and clients about the need to “perch” — like a bird does — its an analogy that refers to the opportunity to pause, re-energise and assess where we are on a journey. In a typical year we’d all have many opportunities for respite. Whether it’s the big things like annual vacations or little getaways, to the everyday conversations that take place in cafeterias or by people’s desks. All the things we’ve been robbed of this year by Covid-19. We need more than ever for the remainder of this year to be ensuring we’re all getting enough respite and that we’re encouraging each other to get those little breaks in. This could be making time to do social chats over the internet or dare I say…. on the “phone” (is that too old fashioned now?!) as much as it could be ensuring that we’re getting routine moments for ourselves in the diary doing activities that re-charge our batteries. Remember, introverts prefer solitary activity, extraverts need time around people. The key thing is taking responsibility for ensuring we are well rested enough to go the distance. This is very much an endurance race we are in, not a drag race!
With respite comes reflection. It’s so easy when under pressure and stress to get too “in the weeds” and to lose sight of the bigger picture or be able to determine which way is up. Using respite as an opportunity to reflect gives us opportunity to look at where we are being ineffective. Whether its focussing on the wrong things, being bogged down in the detail or not valuing ourselves or our colleagues, only through reflection can we course correct and identify the little (or big) things needed to go the distance and keep a company on track to achieve its goals.
History is a great teacher of resilience and grit. It’s easy to think that this year has presented us with the hardest of times, but humans are resilient animals and we’ve been through worse and succeeded…. and we’ll likely experience worse in the future and succeed again. The key for all of us is to give ourselves the best chance of being successful and making it the smoothest journey possible while we ride this out and move steadily towards an unpredictable future.
