HEALERS & LEADERS Need Nurturing Too

I spent the first half of my adult working life in the people-helping industry as a pastor. It didn't take me long to notice that my colleagues and I, in the midst of all the caring, giving, and shepherding we continually gave to hurting, grieving, suffering, dying, and despairing people, often didn't have anywhere or anyone to go to for our own self nurture. In spite of all the talk, the organizational support was never adequate.

Healthcare is one of those industries that is facing a huge crisis - not just in patient care or in financial sustainability but especially in nurturing its caregivers.

According to a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll:

• 3 in 10 health-care workers have weighed leaving their profession;

• more than half are burned out.

• 6 in 10 say stress from the pandemic has harmed their mental health;

• 1 doctor is dying from suicide every day (more than double that of the general population).

Burnout and Stress are not just an individual healthcare worker's problem. It's an organizational systemic issue that must be addressed wholeheartedly. Not just patient lives are at stake. So are the caregivers' lives.

The same applies to almost every industry.

If you are a leader, you, too, deserve support from your organization to provide all the tools and resources needed for your personal wellbeing. This is not a luxury. It is crucial to the success and effectiveness of everyone's work. It must become an organizational priority.

Here are some of the pressures that too often lead to chronic stress and anxiety and burnout. These are issues that every organization needs to address creatively and collaboratively.

• workload pressures

• staff shortages

• long hours

• lack of peer support opportunities and the time off needed for this to take place

• mounting paperwork and email exchanges

• expectation of being on call 24/7

• a stigma around getting mental health help

• not enough access to mental health therapies

• lack of autonomy and a voice in organizational changes

• more emphasis on productivity than self care (personal development)

• shortage of providing professional development and training for leaders

• fixing people instead of fixing systems

Every organization must address these issues that are tragically impacting leaders from so many industries. If they don’t, their people will continue to suffer and end up leaving as a result.

We have to care for the healers, too!

Your Character is Your Competitive Advantage

Character matters. It’s what I call soul ballast.

In sailing, ballast (weight with its corresponding stability) is created by a very heavy keel attached to the bottom of the boat. For stability in heavy winds and waters the boat must have more weight below the waterline than above the waterline.

Why does this matter? I ran across a powerful statement by AdamGrant, organizational psychologist at Wharton Business School, as he refers to the importance of leadership character in today’s world:

“As we strive to overcome a global pandemic and an economic recession, the character of leaders will matter as much as their competence. In 2021, servant leadership will be a competitive advantage, giving [those leaders] an edge in recruiting, motivating and retaining talented people.”

It’s what people cannot always see that matters more than what people can see. Character depth. Soul ballast. The leaders that prioritize personal and professional ballast are the leaders that have a loyal following at work and at home. Those that don’t, as sailors say, are recklessly courting disaster.

NAVIGATING TRAUMA & CRISIS SO YOU END UP THRIVING

Navigating Trauma & Crisis So You End Up Thriving

It seems that often our human tendency when going through crisis or trauma is to fixate on the "Why"--why is this happening? Why me? Why do I have to go through this?" I have a propensity for that question.

Then I remember Rabbi Harold Kushner's response. In his book "When Bad Things Happy to Good People" he tells the story of losing his young son to a degenerative disease. In the midst of his painful loss, he too asked "Why?" And then at some point in his grieving, he realized that ultimately the more important question was, "Now that this has happened, what am I going to do about it?" That question, focusing away from the past into the future's possibilities changed his life. 

Those who become stronger through crisis and trauma are those who find meaning from it, a sense of renewed purpose--it's the "what now" mentality.

Notice the benefits listed by Lisa Zigarmi & Davia Larson in their article in the link below:

• An increased sense of your own strength and capacities to prevail.

• Improved relationships with others, including a greater sense of belonging.

• A greater sense of compassion.

• And an increased sense of purpose and appreciation for life.

An Harvard Business Review article provides a profound framework (the Post-Traumatic Growth process) for making meaning out of difficult times. It describes a helpful tool to use with yourself, with your teams, with other groups you belong to, even with your family. I'm using this process in my own life as I chart my path forward during these times. https://lnkd.in/ga5f-Vk.

How To Stay Centered and Grounded in a Time of Upheaval, Stress and Anxiety

We are living in such high emotion and intense feeling times! I read today that crises go through three stages: emergency phase, regression phase, and recovery phase. Specific emotions are involved with each phase; and we all tend to go through the phases sometimes at different times. No wonder it's so challenging to navigate our relationships not just with the people we know but with people we meet along the way, whether on Facebook and social media or beyond. Tempers rise, anger increases, anxiety and uncertainty increase our stress, and we can invariably lash out - we're feeling caged in, sometimes attacked by others, feeling misunderstood by some, violated or judged or diminished. Our feelings these days are intensified! We're all experiencing this.

We have to make use of the tools at our disposal in order to manage our stress, anxiety, and big feelings! If we don't manage, we will be managed. Just look around our society these days and see the glaring results. 

I've been thinking a lot the last few months about what practices and tools we can access to help us manage our feelings proactively and effectively. I put together a playlist in my youtube channel of 5 simple practices we can leverage - breathing, body movement, gratitude, meditation, and taking one day at a time. I'm getting good response from people about these short videos. These are really useful, scientifically-proven ways to manage our stress and anxiety. I'd love to have you access them and let me know what you think and feel with them. Hope you enjoy it!

And let's all be as intentional as we can to lower the emotional temperature all round us, including inside of us. We can do it. And we can encourage each other toward that place of groundedness in more peace and calm.