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Articles under Tim's Writings

Team Burnout: How to Help

December 8, 2020

By Tim Stratman

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on all of us. Consider the range of emotions you’ve personally experienced from the early days of the pandemic to today. It’s been a unique struggle, unlike any we have previously experienced.

Many executive teams are struggling physically, emotionally, and spiritually as the pandemic drags on. It makes sense given the personal and professional challenges of the past ten months.

In many respects, this your defining leadership moment.  During the American Revolution, when the colonists were clearly losing their military campaign, Thomas Paine famously said, “These are the times that try men’s souls”. This was followed by: “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

Paine was inspiring soldiers to stay the course and continue fighting, even though they were taking a pounding.  He was delivering on a key leadership responsibility: transferring energy. He was also giving patriots a Reason to Believe they would ultimately prevail.

We talk often about energy. Now more than ever, your team needs energy. They are likely thinking, feeling, or saying things like:

“I’m anxious and overwhelmed; I miss being around people.”

“I am absolutely burned out and struggle to remain optimistic.”

“This is insane, I don’t know how much longer I can keep going”

While team members aren’t battling the British Army, they are experiencing unprecedented stress. Consider those you’ve personally known who became sick from Covid-19. What about those who have lost loved ones? In addition, most businesses have experienced a “Covid Contraction” affecting individual’s financial and professional security.

I want to share some practical things you can do to transfer energy and help your people. While grit, perseverance, and adrenaline may have helped your team muscle through the virus’s early days, the high-energy sprints have long since faded. Now people are just downright tired and need a boost.

Project Bounded Optimism: I spoke frequently about this back in April but it bears repeating. You need to display inspiration, hope, and optimism tempered by reality. Things will get better; however, they will never be what they once were. Life will be different and perhaps even better. Consider:

We have learned things during this period that will stick with us. We have moved faster than we ever thought we could and overcome obstacles that seemed overwhelming. We have learned more about each other and adopted new, innovative ways of doing business.

Listen deeply and show personal vulnerability:  Create space and time for your people to share how they are truly doing…the raw truth. LISTEN for understanding and resist the urge to dominate the conversation. This requires vulnerability and, in this regard, you need to be a role model. One of my clients brought her team together for a Zoom check-in…no agenda. She kicked off by sharing a recent and serious personal health scare. It was authentic and emotional. Her team knew nothing about it. After her “share”, the team opened up and “got real” about how they were each really doing. The anxiety dropped and the energy rose. She received several personal letters of gratitude for sharing her story.

Another client scheduled 30-minute, one-on-one check-in calls with team members every ten days or so. Again, no agenda. He just wanted to hear how they were really doing. How was their family holding up? What can I do to help you? Admittedly, the first couple of calls were sometimes awkward; but over time, they became highly valued opportunities for human connection.

Encourage personal growth:  Arthur W. Frank, professor of sociology at the University of Calgary, found there were three archetypical responses to being chronically sick or permanently injured:

Restitution – individuals yearn to go back to the way things were, engaging in a “restitution” narrative focused on how much better their lives were before illness.

Chaos – individuals have lost sight of the past and cannot imagine a better future. They exist only in the present and assume chaos is permanent.

Quest – individuals meet their unchanging circumstances head on, accepting them, and incorporating them as part of their identity and journey.

Individuals who adopted a “Quest” mindset, thrived despite of their illness. They found meaning in suffering and used it to build a positive future. This ability to grow and develop, especially during times of stress, is a high-priority leadership “muscle”.  It needs to be constantly exercised. 

How strong is your leadership muscle? How about your people? I suggest sharing these three mindsets with your team.  Ask them to do some soul searching on where they stand. Emphasize that growing this muscle is an expectation.  While no one wishes for a pandemic, we need to understand what have we learned about ourselves and use it to create a better future.

I look forward to our next conversation. In the meantime, protect your energy and share it generously.

Wartime Leadership

May 15, 2020

By TimStratman

The current pandemic has been compared to war and, admittedly, I initially bristled at the analogy. Having a father who fought in WWII, a brother who was a Navy submarine captain, and a daughter in the Marine Corps., it sounded like hyperbole. However, as the pandemic rolls on, and daily tragedies grow, I see the wisdom of this comparison. This pandemic is a war, one that is imposing extreme physical and emotional pain–and death–on people and businesses.

Those executives who are leading their teams and organizations through the Covid-19 crisis are most certainly Wartime Leaders. Elliot Ackerman, a veteran of the 2004 assault on Falluja, has real experience with wartime leadership. He has some intensely emotional insights I wanted to share.

Wartime leadership involves, most crucially, two things. The first is steely honesty in the face of grim facts. My company commander modeled this for me in his response to the estimate of 70 percent casualties within our ranks. He gathered the officers and staff non-commissioned officers. He told us that he didn’t know whether the 70 percent figure was accurate but that we should assume it was. He also told us that it didn’t matter. We had a job to do, and our competence in doing it was the only way to keep that figure down.

The second component of wartime leadership is affirming the capabilities of those you lead. The senior enlisted Marine in our division, a sergeant major and 30-year Marine veteran, excelled at this. Two days before the battle, he addressed a large group of us who were headed into the assault. He reminded us that we were part of a legacy stretching back to battles in the Argonne Forest in World War I, to Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima in World War II, to Hue City in Vietnam and up to this very day. He placed the battle we were about to fight in a broader context. We were Marines, he affirmed, a link in a chain. As those who came before us did, we’d rise to our challenge…

This was one of the lessons I learned in Falluja. The night before the battle, when I brought my platoon together for a last-minute pep talk, I’d benefited from the example of my company commander and the sergeant major. Standing by the trucks that would drive us to our jump-off point, the platoon gathered in the headlights. And I knew exactly what to say. I didn’t tell them I hoped the casualty figures we’d heard were high or that I had a hunch the battle wouldn’t last too long. Instead, I told the Marines that I didn’t know what was going to happen when we entered the city. I told them that didn’t matter. We knew one another and could rely on one another. That would be enough.

Elliott and his leaders were demonstrating deliberate calm and bounded optimism. Deliberate calm reflects your ability to detach from situational emotion, and demonstrate clear thinking and poise. Your people witness that your “feet are on the ground”. Bounded optimism is modeling authentic faith in the future while maintaining realism about the potential pain, suffering, and setbacks likely to be encountered along the way.

Here are some final thoughts from Elliot on the Falluja engagement.

We went on to fight in Falluja for more than a month. The 70 percent estimate proved inaccurate. Our casualty rate ended up higher. Eventually, though, the battle did end, and in a pleasant surprise it was just in time for Christmas.

Leading with deliberate calm and bounded optimism is absolutely critical right now. There is a third vital leadership behavior with equal standing: empathy. This isn’t the time for an “all business” operating style. Executives are experiencing anxiety and pain on both the personal and professional fronts. As I write this, a client of mine’s father is dying from Covid-19 (she isn’t the only one). At the same time, she is managing monumental business challenges.

Col. Eric G. Kail, who served as Course Director for Military Leadership at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, has this to say about empathy:

These truths, in turn, rest upon empathy, one’s capacity to comprehend or experience the emotions of another. Followers view leaders in terms of the personal impact made on the followers’ lives. Unfortunately, many leaders spend all their energy trying to impress others when they could be truly impressive by learning more about those whom they lead.

People decide just how much they will allow you to lead them. Sure, if you are in charge, people will most likely do as you say. But how well they carry out your commands and for how long is their decision, not yours.

Leaders demonstrate holistic empathy during the Covid-19 crisis by actively inquiring about their people’s family and personal challenges before charging into business issues. How are YOU doing? How are your spouse and children doing? Do you need anything? This approach ensures you capture the heart as well as the mind of your people. Avoiding these genuine demonstrations of concern implies that you don’t care, which is death to any leader.

As we move through this crisis, leaders need to actively demonstrate deliberate calm, bounded optimism, and empathy. These are virtues that will make the biggest difference as we move through and eventually recover from our current crisis.

Start Leading Now

August 13, 2019

For many years, I have given presentations at professional conferences. I connect with leaders all levels. It is invigorating to have rich discussions with diverse professionals in the special atmosphere of a conference. After my presentations, I stay in the conference room to speak privately with some of the attendees who come up to me. Here is one of the most asked questions: “When can I start being a leader?” It is asked by entry-level professionals, supervisors and even seasoned managers. Read More »

Mentoring: Giving and Getting

July 22, 2019

Over my career, I have been the beneficiary of the wise counsel, constructive criticism and honest feedback of several mentors – both formal and informal. It made a big difference in the tangible results of my career (position, compensation) and in intangible ways (sense of purpose, confidence). Once I reached a certain point in my career, I was faced with the choice to be a mentor myself. It was time to give back. Read More »

Your Professional Brand

June 3, 2019

When we think about “brands”, we generally think of consumer products and companies. We can conjure up brands like Domino’s Pizza, Volvo cars and Apple. The image that emerges when we think of them is the brand. With Domino’s, we think “fast”. While we don’t think “gourmet food”, we do think we can be eating pizza thirty minutes after ordering it. When we hear Volvo, we think “safety”. Apple we associate with “innovation”. These associations are the brand. Read More »

Bouncing Back

May 13, 2019

Most of us can remember a time from our childhoods when we failed. Maybe we lost in the final round of the spelling bee, forgot our lines in the school play, or cost our team the championship game. At the time, those failures felt devastating and in some ways they were. However, most of us learned early on that failure is essential to winning. Read More »

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