It seems like every week there’s a trending story about the latest company that’s fighting the power struggle of getting people back to the workplace.  I don’t know how this will end. Clearly, there’s benefits to working from home - and those may be too powerful to overcome for many people.  But it seems like many companies are just attempting to lure their employees out of their homes with workplace perks and/or reverting to ultimatums when the perks prove ineffective or impractical.  And what about schools and hospitals and places where people can’t work from home?  Are they at a permanent disadvantage for recruiting talent?

I spent many years as a leader avoiding my own pain and trying to create the illusion of a pain-free team.  I constantly thought about how to keep everyone’s focus on how well things were going, and ensure that my leaders were responding immediately to even the smallest challenge team members were facing - lest their experience become painful in some way. 

It helped me create a team culture that was very “positive.”  I’m not sure it helped me create a team culture that was very safe.

When does honesty backfire?  When we’re not being honest with ourselves first.  Almost every leader we work with has a sense that “good” leaders are honest - even when it’s hard.  They say the hard thing.  And a lot of our leadership intensives are spent exploring what that feels like.  But there is a problem with focusing FIRST on being honest with others. 

I’ve had many moments in my leadership that bring up regret or shame because, looking back, I can see where my choices hurt someone or sent a damaging message to my team.  Often, I wasn’t coming from an honest place in those moments -  I was acting too quickly from a place of defensiveness, fear, or hurt - I just didn’t realize it. 

Many leaders have mixed feelings about inviting more vulnerability on their teams.  But when a team can’t be vulnerable, they manipulate instead.

“Manipulate” is a word that gets a strong reaction from most people.  But when we consider the definition – to control or influence someone – it’s often not a devious behavior, but a very common and understandable one.  Especially at work.  And especially when people don’t feel completely safe.  

On average, we have about 4,000 weeks to spend on this planet. Most of those will be “work weeks.”

We spend a lot of our lives with the people we work with. When it comes to the emotional roller-coaster that is the human experience, the reality is that much of that ride will be taken with our coworkers.

My daughter is a year and a half, and the question that’s been looming over my wife and me is whether we’re going to try for a second child.  When we first started talking about it, it seemed like we were just in different places (I wanted another one and she didn’t).  But recently we started having a fully honest conversation. 

What emotions are you comfortable with?  What emotions are you uncomfortable with?  If you’re in a leadership position, then your team can probably answer that question for you.

What do the words “emotional constancy” mean to you? For most of the leaders we work with, they’ve internalized those words to mean that they shouldn’t register “negative” emotions - and feelings like fear or anger should never see the light of day. For many of those leaders, “emotional constancy” is a good thing - something they’ve been praised for and feel a need to convey - but it’s also driven by fear, and deeply connected to race and gender.

Imagine you’re watching a team during an emotional meeting. Two team members are sharing their frustration with each other. Then someone is tearing up as they come clean about how much pressure and stress they’ve been feeling. Moments later, other team members are sharing their own fears about a new direction the team may be taking.

How does it feel seeing all this happen?

Now, imagine that you’re the leader of this team. Does that change how it feels?