#wfh: How to maintain your team’s emotional health when working from home is the new normal

Simple strategies to guide your people in times of uncertainty

Now that the buzz of the first weeks of Covid-19 has calmed down and working from home is the new normal, keeping emotionally healthy is going to be one of the main challenges teams and individuals will have to face.

Everyone is settled into their home office, technology is set up, new routines are created.

Does this mean we are all set to be happy and productive in the coming weeks? Not quite yet. The emotional turmoil that we are going through will continue in the coming weeks and months. People we know will be getting sick, we might be feeling under the weather ourselves and how long all of this is going to last is another questions tormenting people’s minds. In the new routine it will be increasingly difficult to address these questions because we are once again so caught up in being busy.

Cutting through the surface — create connection beyond the surface

We are all very much wired to keep up appearances and although that strategy might have worked well up to now, it might be time for a course correction. Imagine you are in a Zoom call in order to discuss a new project that has been in the pipeline for months. You are very excited and want the entire team’s attention on making this a reality. But what if all the other people on the call are completely elsewhere with their thoughts? Worry and anxiety can lead to unhelpful thought spirals that get us so caught up in our thinking that we have a hard time to focus.

Self-awareness is one of the foundations of resilience. Hitting the pause button to understand what is going on inside us, is the first step to getting a calmer mind. However, when we are overwhelmed with anxiety, identifying what it is that we are feeling and finding the right words to describe it, might not come easily. These days in a team setting it is even more important than usual to understand where other team members are at a given moment.

Emotional roller-coaster: Using Check ins and metaphors as a way of connecting with each other

Using metaphors to describe our mental state is a helpful way of giving everyone the tools to express themselves. Although it might sound cheesy in a first instance, speaking about one’s internal weather can do wonders to people’s self-awareness.

“I feel like in the middle of a hailstorm with no end in sight”.

“There is a relatively blue sky on my side today with just a few fluffy clouds.”

The vocabulary we use to describe weather conditions is funnily enough often richer than the vocabulary we have to explain our feelings. Other metaphors that work easily for everyone are roller-coasters, colors, sounds, boats and the sea, sports — or just any other topic your team connects with.

Starting video calls with a round of check ins — icebreakers — using metaphors allows everyone to understand how each member of the team is feeling and to take this into consideration before moving on to other topics. We have seen team members go all out in a mission to support other people on their project. One day you are the one to help out, the next day you might need a little support yourself. Empathy goes a long way!

Provide some extra care for those who need it: Create space for the unknown

As we are transitioning into a new normal, having deep conversations becomes difficult again. While the first two weeks of confinement everyone was constantly on the phone, discussing the special situation we are in, people are now coping with the uncertainty and anxiety in different ways. Some use humor, others withdraw as much as possible from the world outside while others like to discuss every new headline that makes the news or is trending on Twitter. In the midst of all these coping mechanisms and being in a remote setting, it becomes increasingly tricky to find a good moment and the right people to connect with beyond the small talk and work chatter.

Care Pods are a great way of addressing this issue. The idea is to create a space where people can feel safe to address what they are struggling with. Often the mere fact of speaking about it and being listened to alleviates the burden a great deal. A feeling of “we are all in this together” can help fight loneliness and the feeling of being overwhelmed. Sharing different coping strategies, what worked and what didn’t, how people go about finding good times in the moment — anything goes. Care Pods can be themed, e.g. Care Pod for people who are worried about their loved ones being sick, people struggling with isolation during confinement, challenges related to having kids at home that need home-schooling, etc. or just a moment in time for people to connect. A simple lean coffee format helps to get this up and running in no time.

To quote someone I had been on a care pod with recently and to relate it back to the metaphors, she said:

“I started out feeling stressed with hail flying and left with sun shining down!”

Working on what we can actually influence: Fostering small moments of positivity

The science of positive psychology suggests that putting our focus on the things that we can control helps uplift our emotional state. One of the easiest ways of doing this is by taking a moment to show gratitude. I have heard people say “I have never been more social” and others that feel their lives have become richer due to the sheer amount of activities they can now engage in online. I have seen people re-connect with old friends and distant family members and others being overwhelmed by the practical support they have received from their neighbors. Despite the times being uncertain, we see a lot of hope and connections being created.

In a team setting you can practice gratitude in many ways. Kudos cards are a well-known tool, a #gratitude channel on Slack is another one, ending the day with a short retro and one round of appreciation can also do the trick. Whatever works best in your setting, the principle remains the same.

Having said that: Thank you for reading this article and for taking care of the people around you!

About Andrea
I am no prophet on this topic, however when discussing with friends how they live this situation, I realized that over the last decade I have picked up a thing or two that might be useful for others. These last 10 years I have led projects across more than 40 countries working with people that I never met in real life. I have worked mainly remotely for the last 3 years and although I love the freedom, I am no stranger to the eventual moments of isolation, the days where you struggle to make any progress and the times where you just need a vivid exchange with other people but find yourself alone in your home office. I have experimented with a lot of different formats and tools — all in order to make #remotework bliss.

Together with Line Mørkbak and the project LEAP Lab, we have been developing culture hacks and brain teasers over the last 12 months. The idea? Enabling everyone in an organisation to take small steps towards a better way of working together. Inspired by agile methodologies, participatory governance frameworks for organisations like Sociocracy 3.0 and Holacracy as well as facilitation techniques we have come up with an abundance of formats — all with the goal of connecting people better, tapping into collective intelligence, being more creative and generating real value. These experiments are so small that everyone can try them in a risk free way. Yet, combined their collective impact has the power of transforming teams and entire organisations.

Usually delivered in pep talks or a series of webinars, we have decided to open up our collection to everyone and share so that you can use these times of social distancing to grow together as a team or organisation.

Don’t be shy and reach out if there is anything we can support you with!