Check on your People

Because we're, of course, working remotely, it's easy to forget checking in with people on how they feel, you know? Are they taking care of themselves? Are their kids doing okay? How are they coping with as many of us do parenting their kids as they experience school from home? Are they staying away from screens? Are they taking time for themselves, physical well-being, emotional, mental well-being? Checking in with people, the one-on-one conversation is really important. Using communication to form a community is important as well. We can't get together, but a lot of people thrive in being part of a community and it's important to create events, whether that's at the end of the day or beginning of a week, but to check-in and to chat and maybe have a glass of wine together. In my group, we had the Word of the Week, where everybody talked about the essence of their week and how they felt this week, and what they're looking forward to this weekend. So the informal things that may seem more difficult to do online, they're extra important because this undoubtedly is going to be a marathon and not a sprint. COVID will be with us for quite a while, and the longer it goes, the more emotional wellbeing and mental wellbeing will be a topic for company leaders, and the more it matters for us to make sure that people aren't just effective but are also happy and balanced and able to perform the tasks that work but also take care of themselves and their families.

These are all great tips. I know at our company, we have what we call circle time, sounds a little bit like you're back in kindergarten, right, but sometimes it's simply asking everybody how they feel or sometimes we actually have people draw images, draw an image of how you're feeling today, something you're happy about and something you're worried about. But I like your idea about wine, having a little wine hour virtually sounds really great.

Yeah, that's after I work, just to be clear.

Oh, it's not at 9:00 AM before we start the day?

Well, you know, it's harder to control in a remote work environment but generally, I would hope that the answer to that question is no.

All right, that's why you're the leader I'm interviewing and not vice versa.