Lessons for a Crisis - From a Household in December
During the winter break, so many things went wrong in our household, and as luck turned its back on my house - so many things went wrong all at once. Our family entered this winter break with rest in mind, and like many of your own, sickness hit. I don’t share all of this for sympathy or to suggest that it was even an unusual holiday as somehow all the sickness converges when you take downtime. But it was a trifecta of challenges - so if you bear with me, I will link to this crisis in the workplace after a quick setting of the scene…
THE SINUS: Christmas Eve, my oldest kiddo was still battling a cold that appeared to be hanging around. This quickly devolved into a Patient First visit on Christmas night and antibiotics for a raging sinus infection. We would wage a battle with this infection for a week.
THE COVID: The day after Christmas my wife woke up with a fever and feeling very poorly, a quick COVID test confirmed our fears and we entered into immediate quarantine.
THE SINK: Christmas Eve, we lost our kitchen sink and dishwasher. It would stay gone for over a week and not be functional until January.
With all of this in motion, I emerged as the buck stops here person. I am sure this kind of scenario is familiar to caregivers everywhere, but as the kids have reflected on this week over the last month, I started to think about the lessons learned that could be applied to the workplace and to leaders managing within a crisis, because folks - it was a crisis in our home.
The importance of self-care - Airplane messages have forever told us to put on your own oxygen mask first. Empathetic managers really struggle with this concept. During our adventure of competing needs that week, I took an hour off each day. I warned everyone, settled their needs, and then said I was unavailable for the next hour. I picked a show and watched an episode. As leaders, we can make sure our team is safe and cared for and then guard our own time. I aspire to block some time each week to think without a defined outcome. I do my best to guard this time.
Making space for feelings - Shew, we were all having feelings, and extended family was having feelings about missing planned events, and at the end of the day, it was just a thing we needed to go through. We didn’t have control over what was happening while under quarantine and negotiating medication management to keep everyone mostly functional. In the workplace, we must ensure space for feelings without granting a free-for-all - languishing isn’t healthy. This can mean carving out a space to listen and then move into planning. I’ll acknowledge this can be a tricky spot.
Culture of Reflection - At least five times, we have all turned back and reflected on lessons we learned about our family during that week. Post-crisis, it is imperative to turn back and reconsider, revisit, and recast. You can’t skip this step in culture building - even if you feel too busy to make time for it.
Bright spots - Amid the mayhem, the kids witnessed and have since named all of the things that need to get done that get done regularly - what it takes to run a household was highlighted when the household was under siege. It’s not as if this is a new phenomenon, but given their ages, I think they could see it differently. This has resulted in more gratitude and conversations about how we can all contribute. The Bright Spot concept comes from Chip and Dan Heath’s book Switch and focuses on strengths - during a crisis this can be hard. We are currently working with a client with a budget crunch coming in the future - 18-24 months away. They are leaning into their strengths of values-based decision-making and budget forecasting to do the work now to figure out a path, not to avoid hard things in the future but to do it in the right way.