Take a Mental Health Day

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

A "mental health day" is when an employee takes sick leave to focus on their mental well-being. Mental health days can be controversial if management perceives them to be a misuse of sick leave or just an excuse to play hooky.

Some employees are reluctant to take a mental health day because they believe it is a sign of weakness; they should not need a day off to focus on themselves.

However, if you are feeling run down and experiencing characteristics of low resilience, you are just as impaired as if you have a cold or the flu. Taking a mental health day will help you recharge and improve your resilience, resulting in higher productivity at work. Supervisors who encourage mental health days will find their employees are more effective in the long run.

Here's some advice on how to spend a day away from work recharging:

Plan Ahead

Schedule your mental health day at least a week in advance, so your boss and co-workers are prepared. Plan your mental health day during a slow time in the office. Check the calendar and your schedule to ensure your day off works for everyone.

Be Honest

Don’t violate your organization’s HR rules or lie to your supervisor. If your office frowns on taking sick leave for mental health reasons, explain why you need the day off and how it will positively impact your performance once you’re back at work.

Plan Your Day

Unstructured free time is not always relaxing. Use your mental health day to engage in resilience-enhancing activities instead of doing errands and chores. Pursue a hobby, visit a museum (virtually during the pandemic), or exercise. Focus on yourself. You'll be amazed at how much better you feel once you're back at work.

Don’t Feel Guilty

You may feel uncomfortable or guilty during your day off. Brush this feeling aside. Using sick leave for a mental health day is legitimate and restorative.

Three-Day Weekends are Great

If possible, try to pick a Friday or a Monday if you don't work on weekends. Three days without working can do miracles. If that isn’t possible, taking a day off mid-week can also be beneficial.

Keep it to Yourself

If you post your mental health day activities on social media, you may be disturbed by unwanted attention. Think twice before posting.

Do you take mental health days?  How do you make them work for you?

___________________________

To learn more about how you and your team can thrive in adversity, visit my website, and follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. And, check out my online Resilience Leadership course.

The 7Cs of Team Resilience

Team resilience is the capacity of a group of people to respond to change and disruption in a flexible and innovative manner. In the face of adversity, resilient teams maintain their work productivity while minimizing the emotional toll on their members. 

A collection of people with high individual resilience does not automatically result in a resilient team. For example, I worked with a U.S. Consulate that had resilient staff who performed well as individuals when they experienced a traumatic incident. They also recovered quickly after the event. However, they struggled to respond during the crisis because they did not work effectively as a team.

Teams need to regularly foster the following 7Cs of Team Resilience in order to ensure they are capable as a team and ready for the unexpected:

Culture

The team has shared values, identity, history, and purpose that bind them together. Teams share stories that help describe their history and identity. Team members can answer the question “who are we together?”

Competence

Team members have the capacity and skills they need to meet demands, particularly during times of crisis and high stress. They have the knowledge and abilities they need to be successful. Team members share their competence with each other.

Connections

Team members know each other and have formed strong relationships. Teammates are treated as individuals not as positions or titles.

Commitment

Team members are dedicated to each other and to a shared mission. They demonstrate respect and loyalty to colleagues and will give something of value (time, money, effort) to support others. They will keep their promises and protect teammates from harm even when it is hard to do so.

Communication

All team members feel well-informed about what is going on in the workplace. Colleagues willingly share information and encourage questioning, critical thinking, and dialogue. Teammates welcome differing views.

Coordination

The team is synchronized across the organization and its goals are well-aligned with other organizational goals. Teammates work through conflict to ensure they are working in sync with each other.

Consideration

Team members support their colleagues’ personal needs as well as professional goals. They express gratitude and appreciation to each other.  

Check out my other blogs that explore each one of these 7Cs and how you can strengthen them in your workplace.

What has help your team build and maintain resilience?

I help individuals and teams thrive in adversity by providing practical skills and tools I developed over several decades as a U.S. diplomat in challenging environments. Visit my website to learn more about how I can help you and your team avoid burnout and become more innovative, collaborative, and productive despite overwhelming challenges, constant change, and chronic stress. Follow me on Twitter at @payneresilience.

11 Tips on How to Say No

Photo by Isaiah Rustad on Unsplash.

I believe that the ability to say no is an essential resilience skill since it helps us stay in control of our time and provides the space we need to practice the five resilience factors. Unfortunately, it is tough to say no even when we know we should. If you want to become better at saying no, try some of these tips:

Know Why You Say Yes

Many of us say yes because we want to be the perfect employee, don't want to disappoint others, avoid conflict, or have a strong sense of duty. Identify the reasons you say yes when you would prefer to say no and actively counter them. For example, if you tend to avoid conflict, recognize this and prepare yourself to work through the tension this creates.

Set Boundaries

Set clear limits that allow you to evaluate every request to determine whether it falls within your boundaries. If a request crosses a boundary, remind yourself why you established the boundary and the costs associated with saying yes. Setting priorities is one example of setting boundaries, making it easier to explain that a work request is not a priority at the moment and, therefore, cannot be done.

Take Some Time

Replace an instant yes with “Let me check my calendar” or “I’ll get back to you” to give yourself the time to check whether yes is consistent with your boundaries. If you decide to say no, it gives you time to plan how you will deliver this message.

Be Clear

It’s tempting to water-down a no, but doing so can result in miscommunication about expectations that can eventually damage your reputation and relationship.

Explain Why

Give an honest explanation that you think is most credible to the person making the request. Examples include: “My team is down two people, and we are only taking on new assignments if they are in our top five priorities” or “This is outside my area of expertise, and I don’t want to deliver a sub-par product.”

Don’t Argue

Don’t let your requester argue with you about the validity of your reason for declining the request. If he attempts to debate, repeat your explanation over and over until he gives up.

Remember Long Term Impacts

It is tempting to make someone happy in the short term by saying yes, but if you are overwhelmed and cannot fulfill your promise or provide substandard work, you'll have a very frustrated person later on. You also risk developing a reputation for not keeping promises. It is much better to have some minor disappointment in the near term than anger in the long run.

Provide Other Options

If you want to be helpful without saying yes, direct the asker to different ways she can meet her needs. While not always possible, this can lessen potential conflict or disappointment since the asker is achieving her goal.

Don't Blame the Person Asking

It is common to become annoyed or angry with people who ask for something you do not want to provide. Remind yourself that asking for something, if done professionally, is not wrong. If you struggle to say no, that's behavior for you to address and it doesn't help to blame the asker.

Value the Request

By acknowledging a person but saying no to the specific request, you may reduce your guilt and preserve a meaningful relationship. For example, if a colleague asks you to buy a box of Girl Scout cookies from his daughter, you may respond that you admire the Girl Scouts and think their annual cookie sales is a great effort, however, you’re trying to cut back on sweets and already bought the one box of cookies you allow yourself every year.

Drop the Guilt

Guilt signals that you’ve done something wrong and need to make amends. Many of us feel guilty habitually, even when we’ve done nothing wrong. When you feel guilty, ask yourself, “have I harmed someone or acted in conflict with my values?” If yes, apologize, and do better. If no, remind yourself that there is no reason to feel guilty.

What helps you say no?

___________________________

To learn more about how you and your team can thrive in adversity, check out my online Resilience Leadership course.

We Work With People, Not Positions

Photo by Randalyn Hill on Unsplash

Consideration, showing appreciation for and taking care of other people, is one of the 7Cs of team resilience and is key to building a team that responds to change and disruption with flexibility and innovation.

One common barrier to fostering consideration in the workplace is that people treat each other as tools or resources, not as human beings. Too often, office culture values roles and positions, not people. This tendency to focus on titles, with people becoming nameless and faceless, undermines the resilience of our teams and too often leads to mission failure.

Recognizing and overcoming this tendency to overlook the human factor will strengthen work teams and make it easier to achieve mission goals. Here are some tips on how you can promote team resilience by recognizing your colleagues as human beings:

Get to Know Each Other

Ask people about themselves, their families, their personal goals, hobbies, and dreams. If you are a supervisor, use your first meeting with a new employee to learn about them. Resist the temptation to jump into mission goals, saving that conversation for a later meeting. Invite colleagues to lunch or for coffee and talk about yourselves rather than work issues. Sometimes your teammates may not want to talk about themselves, but most people appreciate being asked.

Step Back

It is easy to focus only on work when there is a never-ending flow of demands. Take five minutes and step back. Ask yourself what would be the worst outcome if this task does not get done right away. Think about the people doing that project. What do they need? Are they getting enough support?

Use Names, Not Titles

When referring to colleagues, use their names and resist the temptation to use titles or designations. Government employees often fall into this trap since we are trained to use acronyms and it is easier to use titles. This tendency to refer to colleagues only by title dehumanizes the person in the position. For example, instead of saying “the secretary is late today”, say “George is late today”.

Develop Empathy

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. Put yourself in the shoes of colleagues and make an effort to see issues from their viewpoints.

Stop Making Assumptions

Many of us assume we know what colleagues are thinking, what they want, and how they are reacting. Instead of making assumptions, ask questions. Find out from them what they are thinking and feeling.

Build on People’s Strengths

Help people understand where and how they contribute most effectively given the skills and abilities they have. If people need to learn new skills or overcome weaknesses, focus on how they can grow and improve rather than where they are deficient.

Deal With Poor Performance and Misconduct

Addressing poor performance and misconduct is one of the hardest things a manager can do. Managers are often reluctant to have honest and difficult conversations with employees. They risk having complaints filed against them or creating conflict. By taking on this challenge, managers communicate to the rest of the team that the hard work is worth the effort and risk to improve the working conditions for the rest of the group.

How do you create a culture that values people, not positions?

___________________________

 To learn more about how you and your team can thrive in adversity, visit my website, and follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. And, check out my online Resilience Leadership course.

Want to Be More Resilient? Try Engaging in These Activities

Since resilience is a state of being, our level of resilience is constantly changing. Sometimes we feel very resilient, which allows us to be more adaptive, flexible, and collaborative.

After experiencing high stress or trauma, we may find our resilience has slipped and we know this because we become more irritable or moody, or maybe we have trouble sleeping (see characteristics of low resilience).

To develop and maintain your resilience, you can incorporate resilience enhancing activities into your regular routine. When you sense your resilience slipping, increase the time you spend on these activities to give yourself a resilience boost. 

Luckily, there are hundreds of activities you can engage in that build resilience. Here are just a few examples divided by the five resilience factors:

Self-Care

• Exercise regularly

• Dance

• Sleep 7-9 hours per night

• Eat a healthy diet

• Drink plenty of water

• Avoid toxic people

• Schedule down time for yourself

• Take a vacation

• Take a mental health day

• Engage in breathing exercises

• Get a pet

• Manage your workload

• Engage in quiet reflection and contemplation

• Meditate, practice mindfulness, pray

• Play sports and games

• Read fiction

• Engage in a hobby

• Sing or play music

Social Support

• Work on your relationships with friends and family

• Talk about what you’re going through with a trusted friend or mentor

• Nurture new relationships

• Commit to regular social interaction (virtual during coronavirus)

• Ask a friend or colleague to lunch (virtual during coronavirus)

• Host a dinner party or social gathering (virtual during coronavirus)

• Join a club/team

• Organize an interest group

• Develop peer mentors

Problem Solving

• Ask for help

• Set boundaries and say no

• Ask questions and be a good listener

• Anticipate change and view change as an opportunity for growth

• Give yourself adequate time to process change

• Identify and address the source of problems you’re facing

• Develop a logical way to work through problems – ask why

• Prioritize people and things that are important to you

• Focus on things that you have control over

• Use a to-do list

• Know when to quit

• Drop burdens and negative thoughts

Meaning & Purpose

• Volunteer

• Join a religious community

• Write down your personal and professional goals

• Engage in activities that bring you a sense of personal satisfaction and fulfillment

• Have a passion for something

• Take time to think about the feelings of others

• Identify your core values

• Self-reflect about your meaning and purpose in life

Positive Outlook

• Focus on the part of your life that is going well

• Limit negative and self-defeating thoughts

• Visualize yourself being successful and happy

• Keep a gratitude journal

• Write down three good things each day

• Compliment other people

• Reframe how you view negative events

• Show authentic appreciation to others

What do you do to build resilience? What can you start doing today?

___________________________

To learn more about how you and your team can thrive in adversity, visit my website, and follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. And, check out my online Resilience Leadership course.

5 Things I Learned From My Thank You Note Resolution

Researchers consistently find that gratitude builds resilience. A 2006 study published in Behavior Research and Therapy found that Vietnam War veterans with higher levels of appreciativeness experienced lower rates of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. A 2003 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that gratitude was a major contributor to resilience following the terrorist attacks on September 11.

To test this in real life, I decided a few years ago that my New Year’s resolution would be to write a thank you note every workday to a colleague to whom I was grateful. Here's what I learned:

My Resilience Improved

Spending a few minutes every day thinking about how colleagues helped me gave me a much more positive outlook. It forced me to focus on the positive events of the day, minimizing annoyances or irritations. Writing down my appreciation helped me clarify why I was grateful.

It Was Hard

I underestimated how much self-discipline I needed to spend 5-10 minutes every workday thinking about whom I would send a thank you note. It was easy to get absorbed in my work and forget to write a card. To stay on track, I posted reminder notes and put the cards where I would see them.

Having a Routine Helped

At the beginning of the year, I kept forgetting to write my cards because I hadn't set a time of day during which I would write. After trying several options, I settled on writing a card at the beginning of each day. I created a recurring calendar entry as a reminder. The added value was that I started each day thinking positively about everything people had done the day before to help me.

People Love Personalized Cards

I printed cards in bulk on moo.com using photographs I had taken. By personalizing the cards, I made a connection I had not anticipated with recipients. Recipients wanted to learn more about where I’d taken my photos and were glad to see I had a passion outside of work. These cards ended up being much more impactful than cards I bought at a stationery store.

Team Resilience Improved

One significant benefit of this practice was that people loved receiving a handwritten thank you note. I realized that I was fostering team resilience by showing consideration to colleagues, one of the 7Cs of team resilience. Members of my team appreciated that I was taking the time to say thank you and commenting on their positive impact.

Consider giving this a try in 2021 and tell me in the blog comments how it goes.

___________________________

To learn more about how you and your team can thrive in adversity, visit my website, and follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

How to Know When Your Resilience is Low

2020 has been a tough year hasn’t it? We are still in the midst of an unprecedented global health crisis. Sharp divisions and social unrest in our communities has many of us on edge. It’s not surprising that many of us are exhausted, worn down, and struggling to keep up with simple tasks and responsibilities.

Resilience helps us thrive despite the adversity we are facing. Resilience is a state of being that can fluctuate depending on the levels of trauma or stress we are experiencing at any given time. It is helpful to know the common characteristics of low resilience and what behaviors you may exhibit when your resilience is slipping, so you know when you should engage in resilience enhancing activities or need to assist others in addressing their resilience.

Not everyone exhibits the same characteristics, which range from mild to severe in nature and can last for varying durations. For example, I have trouble sleeping when my resilience is low and I find myself getting irritable much more quickly than normal. When I see that I'm not sleeping well and am irritable, I prioritize spending time rebuilding my resilience.

Here are some common characteristics of low resilience:

Irritability/Anger

Being quick to anger and irritable is one of the most common characteristics of low resilience and often leads to conflict in the workplace. When my resilience eroded after Iraq, I found myself being more combative with peers and quick to fight about an issue. As I rebuilt my resilience, I became much more patient and collaborative.

Persistent Illness

One of the most frustrating characteristics of low resilience is constant illness. Since our immune systems are depressed when our resilience is low, we cannot fight off the viruses and bacteria that naturally bombard our systems. I normally never get sick, but for two years after I left Iraq, I seemed to catch every bug in the office and had constant stomach ailments. Once I bounced back, I rarely got sick again.

Trouble Sleeping

Trouble sleeping is extremely common among people with low resilience. Many of us focus on how to sleep better without realizing that instead, we need to enhance our resilience. For two years after leaving Iraq, I rarely slept more than 4 hours per night. I thought it was just part of growing old but once I bounced back, I started sleeping much better and when my resilience is high, I sleep great.

Becoming Isolated or Over Clingy

As our resilience diminishes, people can either start to isolate themselves from other people or become too dependent on having family or friends around them. I stopped socializing and making new friends. Unfortunately, by isolating myself, I cut off an important way to enhance my resilience which is to build a social support network.

Moodiness

As resilience decreases, there can be a change in our body's hormones that causes mood swings. We can experience extreme highs and lows, sometimes several times a day.

Overreaction to Normal Stress

When a car cuts us off on the highway, most of us are slightly annoyed. A person with low resilience may overreact and become enraged. Small irritants become major problems.

Easily Depressed/Crying

Some people with low resilience find they feel sad a lot and cry more easily than they used to.

Poor Memory

In the State Department, we often saw this when personnel would study a foreign language after serving in a dangerous overseas posting. They would struggle to learn the new language because of their lack of memory. Once their resilience improved, they found language learning much easier.

Lack of Hope

The most troubling characteristic of low resilience is the lack of hope and a vision for the future. This can sometimes evolve into despair. This makes it hard to plan and problem solve and can manifest as cynicism and a lack of caring. People may also find themselves taking unnecessary risks or engaging in reckless behavior because they just don’t care.

By paying attention to your behavior, you'll soon learn how to tell when your resilience is low. How do you know your resilience is low?

To learn more about building your resilience, check out my other blog posts.

 ___________________________

To learn more about how you and your team can thrive in adversity, visit my website, and follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

How to Make a Resilience Resolution That Will Stick

It's hard to believe that 2021 is just around the corner. Given how tough 2020 has been, consider making a New Year’s resolution that will improve your resilience.

Review my blogs and identify one resilience enhancing activity to incorporate into your routine in 2021. Then, follow these steps to ensure that your resilience resolution becomes a reality:

Limit to One Activity

It is much easier to maintain your focus if you have only one change you want to make. Creating a laundry list of changes can be overwhelming, and you're more likely to give up. For example, one year, I wanted to increase gratitude in my life, and I resolved to send a thank you note to a work colleague every workday. Focusing on this one activity made it much easier to turn this resolution into a habit.

Be Specific

Write down a clear and measurable change you'd like to make in your life. If you want to exercise more, specify how many hours per week. If you pledge to spend more time with friends and family, identify how many days per month you want to socialize. This way, you'll know whether you've met your goal.

Identify Barriers

Accurately identifying what will prevent you from doing something is crucial since it will determine your change strategy. If your efforts aren’t working, check to make sure you’ve identified the right barriers. For example, when I resolved to exercise four days per week, I thought my barrier was not having time. However, my strategy to address this didn’t work. When I reconsidered, I realized that my barrier was laziness. I then changed my strategy and was much more successful!

Devise a Strategy

Develop a strategy to minimize or remove the barrier you’ve identified in step three. For example, if the barrier to practicing your hobby is not having the money you need, a strategy could be to create a separate hobby bank account with automatic deposits so you’re not competing with other financial pressures. My strategy to overcome laziness was to permit myself to watch my favorite TV show only when I was on the exercise bike.

Build-in Motivation

Make a plan to stay motivated. Having friends or colleagues who will join you is a great way to stay motivated. For example, if you want to walk 30 minutes every day, find a group of colleagues who will meet you at a set time and walk together. You're less likely to skip the walk if other people are waiting for you.

Hopefully, these simple steps will help you become more resilient in 2021! What’s your resilience resolution for 2021?

___________________________

To learn more about how you and your team can thrive in adversity, visit my website, and follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

How to Prevent the Holidays From Eroding Your Resilience

The next few months may be rough for many people. Many of us will miss our traditional gatherings with family and friends. Non-Christians may feel excluded and isolated.

While winter holidays can be joyful and rewarding, they can also be emotional and stressful. There might be stress at work over who gets to take annual leave for important holidays.

Some families find the pressure of deciding which relatives to visit or host on meaningful days overwhelming. There’s even more stress this year since we have to decide whether or not to cancel holiday gatherings. We may travel long distances to be with family, which is exhausting in ordinary years and precarious this year.

There may be endless parties and an expectation to be cheerful. There may be social pressure to celebrate on New Year's Eve when we'd rather curl up with a good book. Watching everyone else have fun can be incredibly lonely for people without close friends or family.

If you find the holiday season particularly stressful, develop a strategy for staying resilient. Here are some tips that might help:

Build Social Support

If the holidays make you feel lonely, be proactive about finding people with whom to spend time either virtually or with social distancing. Let people know that you'd love to be invited to their virtual events. Host a virtual holiday event or a safe in-person gathering and invite others who would otherwise be solo.

Make Time to Recover

While it can be tempting to visit loved ones over the holidays, understand the risks you are taking. If you plan to travel, build in time to recover by carving out time just for yourself. If you can, add a day or two of vacation that is just for you and immediate family.

Say No

Clarify your holiday boundaries ahead of time and communicate those boundaries to family and friends. Say no when requests come in that are outside of your boundaries, explaining the reasoning beyond your decision.

 For example, a boundary could be that you travel only once every holiday season. When requests come in for additional travel, you can explain that you find that more than one trip is too much for you and your family over the holidays, and you hope to make a trip later.

 Another boundary could be that you will only spend time with people outside of your household if you all agree to stay outdoors and maintain social distance.

Volunteer

Consider volunteering at a local organization that helps others during the holidays. You can find meaning and purpose in what may otherwise have been an empty or lonely celebration by helping others.

Reframe

If you don't get to take leave over the holidays this year, ask yourself if anything positive can come from working during the holidays. Are you earning points at work for pitching in over the holidays? Would taking leave at another time spare you the horrors of holiday travel during a pandemic?

If you have to cancel traditional gatherings, remind yourself that you’ll all hopefully be together next year.

Manage Your Indulgences

While it is fun to indulge in holiday treats, resist the temptation to stress eat or drink. If you find yourself getting overstressed, make sure you continue to eat enough fruits and vegetables and try to set a limit on indulgences.

Permit People to Opt-Out

Recognize that some people find the holiday season extremely difficult to navigate, especially this year. Be understanding if they opt-out of the office party or family gathering. Resist pressuring them to "have holiday fun."

What helps you stay resilient during the holidays?

___________________________

To learn more about how you and your team can thrive in adversity, visit my website, and follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

This Thanksgiving Commit to Being Grateful

Next week is Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday because it always makes me feel re-energized and resilient. I call it the resilience holiday because it focuses on one of the most effective ways to increase resilience - expressing gratitude.

There is a growing body of research on how gratitude improves our wellbeing and resilience, and luckily, gratitude is a social skill that can be cultivated and enhanced. For authentic appreciation, strive to go beyond praise (good job!) and focus on the details and reasons why you are thankful (your contribution saved me hours of work).

Unfortunately, many of us focus on gratitude only at Thanksgiving, thinking back over a full year to find what we appreciate the most. In addition to expressing thanks and gratitude this Thanksgiving, commit to incorporating gratitude into your daily life.

Here are some ways you can ensure you are grateful every day and not just on Thanksgiving:

Write Appreciation Letters

Buy thank you cards in bulk and make a habit of writing appreciation letters to people in your life to whom you are grateful. Start with writing one card per week. Express your enjoyment and appreciation of that person's impact on your life. Once in a while, write one to yourself.

Thank Someone Mentally

If you don't have time to write a thank-you note, think about someone who has done something for you. Explore why you are grateful and mentally thank the individual.

Keep a Gratitude Journal

Before going to sleep, write down three things about your day for which you are grateful. Be specific and think about the emotions you felt when something good happened to you.

Pray

If you are religious, use prayer to cultivate gratitude. Even if you're not religious, think about developing a daily practice of giving thanks. 

Meditate

When you meditate, you focus on the present moment without judgment. Although people often focus on a word or phrase (such as peace or compassion), you can also focus on what you're grateful for at the moment.

What do you do to cultivate gratitude?

___________________________ 

To learn more about how you and your team can thrive in adversity, visit my website, and follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.