How to Manage a Bully

Shutterstock

Unfortunately, workplace bullying -- repeated and unreasonable behavior directed towards a worker or group of workers that creates a risk to health and safety -- is all too common. In times of chronic stress or constant uncertainty, workplace bullying may increase.

Working with a bully can quickly erode your resilience due to the chronic stress it generates. Here are some suggestions on how to handle a bully in your workplace:

Stand up for Yourself

Bullies count on others being passive or afraid. Most back off if their targets stand up for themselves. Show the bully that he made a mistake targeting you. Communicate that you can defend yourself without being aggressive or mean in return.

Be Confident

Bullies quickly identify people they can control and manipulate. To help maintain a calm, cool composure, take a few deep breaths before your conversation. Try your best to prevent your emotions and anger from being directed at the bully. To avoid looking nervous, insecure, or defeated, prepare for interactions with the bully. Practice the one or two things you want to say to the bully. Remind yourself that your feelings are valid. No matter what happens during your discussion, try your best to stay steady and remain professional.

Stay in Your Sphere of Control

While you have no control over what other people say or do, you do have control over your response. If you can't calmly address the bully, then postpone confronting her.

Walk Away

If the bully’s behavior is extreme (yelling, abusive language), walk away. Tell the person that you will continue the conversation only if the person is willing to communicate professionally. Walk away if you start to lose control.

Be Specific

When addressing the bully's behavior, have particular examples ready of how she has hurt you. If you don't have detailed examples to point to, it may look like you are overreacting.

Continue to Work Hard

Do not allow bullying to derail your work. Focus on your tasks and don't spend too much time talking with other co-workers about what is happening. Do not let the turmoil the bully creates cause you to fall behind on projects.

Keep Records

Keep a detailed record of all the bullying incidents, including dates, times, and witnesses. Keep all of your electronic correspondence with the bully.

Get Help

Immediately report the bullying to the bully's boss. If the boss won't or is unable to address the bad behavior, report it to your HR office or someone else who has the authority to take action.

Don’t Blame Yourself

Remind yourself that your colleague chose to bully you and others in the workplace and you are doing nothing wrong. Don't let the bully shift the blame for his bad behavior.

Look for Another Job

If the bullying is becoming unbearable or having a significant negative impact on your well-being, consider looking for another position. Searching for alternatives will give you some control over the situation even if you stay where you are.

How have you responded to workplace bullying?

___________________________

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 Productive? Take Breaks!

Photo by Morgan Sessions on Unsplash

Many people assume that the more time they spend working, the more productive they will be. We worry that if we don't stay on task all the time, we won't be effective. This assumption is wrong.

When it comes to productivity, it is not the number of hours we devote, but the level of energy we bring to each hour we spend on a task. If we have high energy, it will take fewer hours to complete a task.

Building regular breaks into your work routine will reenergize you and therefore make you much more effective. It will also improve your focus, creativity, and concentration.

Researchers recommend taking a short, 10-minute break every 90 minutes. Here are several activities you can do in 5-10 minutes for a quick energy boost.

Stretch

Stretches have the added benefit of countering the harmful effects of sitting at a computer all day. Here's my favorite five-minute full-body stretch.

Go for a Walk

Go outside and walk around the block. Visit a local park. The fresh air and change of scenery will give you a mental boost. 

Have a Healthy Snack

Brains burn glucose, a form of sugar. When we work hard, we use up our glucose, and a healthy snack provides the fuel we need to focus and concentrate. Keep a supply of fruit, yogurt, nuts, or sliced vegetables at work to avoid eating too much sugar from the vending machine.

Make a Cup of Tea

The time it takes to boil water and steep a tea bag is the perfect amount of time for a break. If you don't have a kitchen at work, consider buying a tea kettle for your workspace. Stand up, fill the pot with water, choose the type of tea you want, and spend a few quiet moments while the tea steeps. The added benefit is that you now have a nice cup of tea as you restart your work.

Work on a Jigsaw Puzzle

I'm a fan of having puzzles, coloring books, and other creative outlets at work. Spending 5-10 minutes being creative provides a quick energy boost. Warning - set your stopwatch to avoid losing track of time.

Clean Your Work Area

Cleaning and organizing clear the mind and will also give you a sense of accomplishment. Be careful not to substitute cleaning and organizing for actual work.

Listen to Music

Stream two of your favorite songs. Close your eyes and lose yourself in the moment. Focus only on the music, letting your mind go where the music takes you. When you're finished, you'll be amazed by how much energy this gives you.

Talk to Coworkers

Say hi to a colleague, ask about her weekend, hobbies, or family. Don't talk about work. You may be tempted to chat for more than 5-10 minutes, so watch the time. 

Tend Plants

Plants add life and vibrancy to a workspace. Check the soil to see if they need water, prune the stems, and polish the leaves.

Meditate

There are hundreds of apps now that provide 5-10 minute guided meditations. Go someplace quiet and spend a few minutes resting your brain. Praying offers the same benefits as meditation so if you're religious, build in a prayer break. 

What do you do on your breaks from work?

___________________________

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 a Competent Team? Focus on Training.

Photo by You X Ventures on Unsplash

Training is one of the best ways to improve competence, an essential element of team resilience. Resilient teams are innovative, creative, collaborative, and flexible. They thrive despite chronic stress, change, and disruption.

Unfortunately, when resources are tight and pressures to produce are high, one of the first things we sacrifice is time and money for training. While this may result in a few short-term gains, it is counterproductive in the long run.

It is critically important to invest in training even when resources are scarce. Here are some tips on how to do that:

Establish Set Training Times

Structure your work schedules to allow for regular training days or half days, ideally at least once per month. Having regularly scheduled training times highlights that training is a priority and prevents it from being indefinitely delayed because there is no time.

Budget for Professional Development

Set aside at least 5% of your budget for professional development and resist the temptation to dip into these funds for other purposes. If you look at training as investing in future productivity, 5% of a budget is not much to pay now for future benefits.

Use Individual Development Plans

Encourage managers to discuss development goals with all of their direct reports regularly. At the beginning of every year, have each employee map out a training plan for the coming year. A written agreement helps managers communicate effectively with their employees about expectations and commits both individuals to a clear training program.

Train as a Team

Find ways to train together as a team, such as regularly scheduled team off-sites. In addition to building essential skills, you’ll also improve trust, relationships, and communication among team members.

Take Advantage of Free Training

There are lots of webinars and training tools available online that don't require travel or tuition. Explore your options.

Train in Small Doses

Don't limit your training to long courses or webinars that are available only at set times. Training opportunities can be as short as 10-minute sessions in staff meetings. Encourage staff to design short training sessions they can give to colleagues on subjects the team finds relevant.

Training is Not a Reward

Don't treat professional development as a reward for performance or a benefit that you must distribute evenly across a team. Make training decisions, particularly those that include travel, based on the knowledge and skills needed by individuals. There should be a business case for who gets what training.

Extend the Benefits of Formal Training

Ask people who complete a formal training course to later brief their colleagues on what they learned. A briefing extends the benefits of formal training and also ensures that participants are engaged and get what they need from classes.

How do you promote training to build competence in your team?

___________________________

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 Have a Meaningful Life? Draw Your Tree of Life

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Having meaning and purpose is one of the best ways to build resilience. To have a meaningful life, you need to to know who you are, and one way to get to know yourself is to create a story for your life.

I discovered the Tree of Life in Nathan B. Weller’s storytelling blog. It is a useful tool that can help you visualize your life and develop your story.

The tree represents your past, present, and future. By looking at each part of your story, you can discover how the past shaped who you are today and actively cultivate your tree to reflect the kind of person you want to be moving forward.

Start by drawing a tree with a trunk, roots, branches, leaves, and fruit. Draw a compost heap next to it. Then, fill in the various sections per the instructions below.

Roots. Describe your origin. What is your cultural and ethnic identity? What influenced and shaped you as a child? Where did you live?

Ground. Write about what you do every week. What is your routine? What are your key activities?

Trunk. List your skills and values. What makes you who you are today?

Branches. Identify your long and short-term hopes and dreams. What are your goals? What would you like to be in the future?

Leaves. List the names of everyone who has positively influenced and supported you. These may be friends, family, mentors, heroes, even pets. 

Fruit. Describe the legacies that have been passed on to you. Look at the names you wrote on your leaves. What impact did they have on you? What have they given to you over the years?

Flowers & Seeds. Describe the legacies you wish to leave to others. How would you like to be remembered by the people you've touched in the world? 

Compost Heap. Identify what you no longer want in your life. What don't you want to define you? Include past trauma, abuse, social pressure, or cultural standards. You can also include negative images you've had of yourself.

Don’t rush this exercise. If you start with only one or two items per section, that’s fine. As you complete each part of the tree, memories and ideas will come to you. You don’t need to complete the tree in any specific

After you complete your tree, study it. Discuss it with a trusted friend or family number. What story does your tree tell?

___________________________

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. order. Use a pencil so you can make changes.

Sleep Is the Best Kept Secret

Photo by Vladislav Muslakov on Unsplash

How much sleep do you get? Are you one of over 35% of adults who sleep less than 7 hours per night? If so, you may be missing out on what sleep researcher Matthew Walker says "is the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brain and body health each day."

Sleep cleanses our brains of toxins, consolidates memories, prevents an escalation of physiological stress, regulates emotions, and sharpens our minds.

Getting less than 7-9 hours of sleep increases the likelihood of having a traffic accident, reduces creativity, limits productivity, and increases the risk of illnesses such as diabetes and Alzheimer’s.

If sleep is so great, why don’t many of us make it a priority?

Many people incorrectly believe they are among a rare group of people who don't need 7-9 hours of sleep per night. We think we'll be more productive if we sleep less. We strive to be like the CEOs who brag about being more prolific and accomplished because they need only five hours of sleep. Sleep specialist Thomas Roth spent many years looking for individuals who perform well on less sleep. He concluded that "the number of people who can survive on five hours of sleep or less without any impairment, expressed as a percent of the population, rounded to a whole number, is zero."

People in some professions (e.g., truck drivers, medical professionals, machine operators, and military personnel) are expected to work too many hours, and sufficient sleep is impractical if not impossible. Shift workers and constant travelers throw off their circadian rhythms so much their brains don't know when it is time to sleep.

Some of us have medical conditions that disrupt our sleep. For example, approximately 70% of individuals with PTSD have sleep disturbances. Having low resilience can make it harder to get a good night's sleep.

If you're struggling to get 7-9 hours of sleep each night, spend some time exploring the reasons why you're not sleeping. Once you've identified the cause, develop a strategy that minimizes or eliminates the barriers, and maintains your motivation to change your sleep habits. Make getting a good night's sleep a priority.

For example, if you don’t sleep enough because you feel you cannot spare the time, remind yourself that this thinking is counterproductive. Schedule sleep on your calendar if necessary to carve out sufficient time. Stop doing other things that are lower priorities.

If your work duties limit your sleep options, remind decision-makers that structural barriers to sleep are undermining workplace productivity and effectiveness. Explore options that prioritize an employee's ability to get sufficient sleep. For example, one company I worked with adjusted shift changes from every three days to every month. As a result, employees were no longer continually adapting their circadian rhythms because of a new shift.

If you have trouble falling or staying asleep, read the National Sleep Foundation’s sleep tips, and implement as many of their suggestions as possible. Try out different practices to see what does and doesn't work for you. Incorporate sleep techniques into your daily routine.

If you need some extra motivation, read Matthew Walker’s book Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. In addition to explaining the science behind sleep, he provides actionable steps towards getting a better night’s sleep every night.

Consult your doctor before taking any sleep medications or aids, including dietary supplements (e.g., Valerian) and hormones (e.g., Melatonin). While sleep medications or aids may be useful for occasional sleeplessness, particularly when traveling, many have adverse long-term effects.

Do you get 7-9 hours of sleep per night? What helps you sleep?

___________________________

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 Improve Team Resilience? Strengthen Relationships

Photo by Alexis Brown on Unsplash

Building social connections with your work colleagues will improve your team's resilience. When you know the people you work with, you're more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt if they do something that hurts you. You'll also be more likely to work through conflict and collaborate on projects more effectively.

Unfortunately, coronavirus has made it much more difficult to build and maintain work relationships. As we start to return to the workplace, make it a priority to reach out to colleagues and build connections.

While parties are the most common way to encourage social interaction at work, they are not that effective. They can overwhelm introverts, who will often avoid the party. People tend to talk only to people they already know at a party, rarely meeting new people. And, research shows that when people engage only in small talk, which parties promote, they become less close over time. Virtual parties can be particularly draining, especially if you’re teleworking and spending most of your time on a computer.

Instead, look for activities that promote meaningful conversations and forge authentic connections. Here are some suggestions for ways you can build strong connections in the workplace:

Ask a Colleague to Lunch

Eating together is a social glue that strengthens relationships and fosters personal connections. Cornell psychologist Brian Wansink studied firehouses and found that firefighters who shared group meals performed better as a team than firefighters who ate solo. You don't need to spend money in a restaurant; eating together in a break room or on a park bench, or having a virtual lunch is enough.

Be Creative Together

Instead of planning a traditional team off-site, consider hosting an event where the team works together on a creative project. One of my favorite group activities is PaintFests organized by the Foundation for Hospital Art. Another option is an annual Share Your Passion event where employees demonstrate their hobbies for each other. If you want to keep it virtual, use a tool such as Google Pixel Art to set up a shared spreadsheet and encourage team members to add to a joint drawing. See where the drawing takes you every time a different team member adds their colors and designs.

Start a Book Club

Book clubs are a great way to build camaraderie while also improving professional development among staff. And, it is easy to have virtual club meetings. Check out this website for pointers on how to start a book club at work.

Create working groups

Identify organization-wide issues that would benefit from collaboration and problem solving and create working groups to develop ideas and solutions. In addition to bringing people together from different work units, you'll also provide growth opportunities for working group chairs.

Create a Workspace That Brings People Together

Whether it's a water cooler, jigsaw puzzle table, or shared coffee maker, ensure your workplace has a space that naturally encourages people to gather. Conversations that take place while we wait for the coffee to brew can be compelling. Create a Slack channel for posting photographs of pets or employees engaged in their hobbies. Here are some fun ideas for Slack channels that help build resilience: https://museumhack.com/5-channels-better-slack-use/.

Encourage Wellness Activities

If you have space, organize regular yoga, meditation, Tai Chi, or other wellness activities sessions. Step competitions are another way to build relationships and can be done virtually. In addition to improving the well-being of employees, these activities will strengthen bonds between participants.

Cross-Train

Encourage employees to train for work in other units and divisions. Cross-training will improve professional development while creating connections between people across the organization.

Have Informal Conversations

It amazes me how often people spend time together in an elevator without talking. Make it a point to say hello to people you meet in an elevator and then follow up with a question that sparks a conversation. If you’re working virtually, reach out to colleagues for a quick, informal chat.

What do you do to build connections with your work colleagues?

___________________________

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.

Why Meaning is More Valuable Than Happiness

Photo by Nathan Lemon on Unsplash

Your pursuit of happiness may be causing more harm than good. Many people who focus on being happy have only fleeting moments of joy, and they often have low resilience.

People who pursue meaning, however, have stronger psychological health and higher resilience.

Several studies over the past few years have found weak associations between happiness and adaptive functioning. Other research highlights the temporary benefits of happiness versus long-term gains from meaning.

One researcher compared students who did things that made their life meaningful with those who focused on their happiness. Initially, the " happy" group got happier, and the "meaningful" group felt they had more meaning. But three months later, the happy feelings of the "happy" group faded while the students who had pursued meaning said they felt more "enriched," "inspired," and "part of something greater than myself." They also reported fewer negative moods.

Viktor Frankl reached the same conclusions after being imprisoned in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. In his book, Man's Search for Meaning, he writes that prisoners who lost meaning died more quickly than those who still had meaning despite their hardships.

Emily Esfahani Smith explains in her 2017 book, The Power of Meaning, that having a meaningful life is different from being happy. She explains that "the happy life is an easy life, one in which we feel good much of the time and experience little stress or worry." However, "the pursuit of happiness was linked to selfish behavior — being a taker rather than a giver."

Here are some things you can do if you're looking for more meaning in your life:

Join a Group

One of the quickest ways to add meaning to your life is to be active in a group. Not part of a group? Join one. No groups to join? Start one.

Tell Your Story

Write your story. Where do you come from, who influenced you growing up, and what are your dreams and aspirations? Do you have a redemption story from a time when you experienced an adverse event followed by a positive development?

Write Your Obituary

How do you want people to remember you when you die? Are you that person right now? If not, what do you need to change to be that person?

Volunteer

Helping others is one of the best ways to bring meaning into your life. Look for ways you can give your time and energy to a good cause, a friend, or a family member.

Find Your Passion

Being passionate about something other than your work can provide significant meaning in your life. What brings you joy and excitement? Make time for it.

Have Faith

Many people find deep meaning in their religious beliefs. If you are devout, strengthen your faith and participate in religious gatherings.

How do you find meaning and purpose?

___________________________

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.

Stop When You've Done Enough

American culture often pushes us to do more. We think if we spend more time on a project, we can make it even better. If we put in more hours at work, we'll get that promotion.

Recently, a neighbor encouraged me to add more laps to my morning swim, arguing that if I'm not doing more, then I'm going backward.

While striving to do more can inspire many of us to do great things, it also risks eroding our resilience. Too often, the compulsion to do more or trying to make it even better sucks up the time and energy we should be spending on self-care and fostering social networks, two critical resilience factors.

Attempting to be the best at everything often makes us unhappy and unfulfilled, and risks not being good at anything. This constant need to do more is also one reason we have an epidemic of burnout, and too many employees report they are overworked and exhausted.

Research provides some insights into how to break out of a do more cycle. It turns out that satisficers, people who stop at good enough, are happier than maximizers, people who feel they must always choose the best option.

Psychologist Barry Smith, author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, found that people who are satisficers are generally more optimistic, happier, and less regretful than people who are maximizers. He did a study of college seniors looking for jobs and found that maximizers got better jobs but felt worse about the jobs they got than satisficers did.

Stopping when you’ve done enough does not mean submitting mediocre work, shirking responsibilities, or not aspiring to excellence. Instead, it’s determining what excellence looks like ahead of time and stopping once you’ve reached it.

As a supervisor, I regularly saw better performance from staff who knew when to stop than those who tried to be perfect. And, the employees who knew when to stop were able to complete more work because they weren’t bogged down with a single project.

Here are some tips on how you can stop when you’ve done enough:

Define Enough

Sit down with people close to you and talk about your personal, professional, and financial goals. What does enough feel and look like for you? When you get a new work project, discuss with your supervisor what level of effort is required and what result is enough to achieve the project goals.

Write Down Your Goals

After you decide what enough looks like, write it down. Written goals will help you resist the temptation to shift the goal post once you've accomplished enough. Revisit these written goals regularly.

Resist Social Pressure

Recognize that there is a lot of social pressure to do more and use your written goals to help resist this pressure. If people push you to do more, let them know that you are satisfied and happy where you are.

Calculate the Opportunity Costs

Many of us focus only on the positive results of doing more and forget to calculate the costs. If you spend two more hours on a project, what won't you do instead, and is it worth it?

It’s OK to Change Your Mind

It's perfectly fine to change your mind and set new goals but do so with intention and input from people who know and care about you as a person. Make sure you're setting new goals because of what you want, not what society is pressuring you to do.

Don’t Be a Perfectionist

Remind yourself that the need for perfection is rare. Most of us are not brain surgeons or rocket scientists where anything less than perfect can cause death or significant financial loss. Ask yourself whether 80% or 90% is good enough. Evaluate the worst-case scenario if you do 80% and decide whether you can live with that outcome.

Do you stop when you’ve done enough? What helps you be a satisficer instead of a maximizer?

___________________________

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.

How to Stay Resilient in a Crisis

Now that many of us are coming out of the coronavirus crisis and creating our new normal, it’s time to prepare for the next crisis. Unfortunately, we often won’t know ahead of time what the next crisis will be or when it will hit.

Building your resilience is one of the best ways to prepare for a crisis since resilient people and teams are more adaptive, flexible, and collaborative. The type of emergency you may face is often unpredictable. For example, companies in Houston were not expecting Hurricane Harvey to cause catastrophic flooding that threatened their operations. The 9/11 terrorist attacks challenged many organizations, not just first responders, who struggled to manage the impact of this tragedy.

Even smaller crises, such as the sudden loss of leadership or cancellation of a significant contract, can erode staff resilience. If an emergency is prolonged, and we don't intentionally maintain our resilience, we risk becoming burned out and ineffective.

Here are some ways you can build individual and team resilience during a crisis:

Put People First

The highest priority in an emergency is the safety and security of team members. Take the time to ensure that everyone has what they need to feel secure. If it is possible and some people want to opt-out, don't judge and permit them to leave. Fewer people will ask to leave if they know they have the choice.

Stay Connected

Take the time to eat a meal with your family, have lunch with a friend, or chat with friends or family by phone. It is easy to become consumed by the crisis, but a few minutes spent with your social support network is a valuable resilience boost.

Ask for Help

One of the best ways to maintain resilience during a crisis is to resist the temptation to prove how capable you are by going it alone. Be proactive early on and get the help you need.

Eat, Hydrate, Exercise

Ensure you have fluids, healthy food, and the time to eat. Minimize caffeine and sugar since these only provide a temporary boost followed by a significant drop in energy. If you want to have snack foods, bring in fruit and nuts instead of candy and chips. Avoid alcohol since it will mask but not reduce stress, and can harm your body in times of stress. Make time to exercise even if it's only taking a ten-minute walk.

Take Rest Breaks

While a crisis often requires 24/7 work coverage, that doesn’t mean people should work non-stop. Develop work schedules that incorporate time for rest breaks, meals, and relaxation. Ask people who are not scheduled to work to leave. Some people like to stay where the action is, but they can be distracting and will then be overtired when it's their turn to work. Leaders should designate deputies so they can also take time to eat, sleep, and relax.

Identify Goals

Many of us assume we know what our goals are during a crisis, but hearing those goals articulated will help ensure that everyone understands and shares the same goals. Remind people often what your shared goals are.

Stay Positive

Look for the positive in everything you do and remind colleagues what good has happened every day. It's easy to focus on the negative in a crisis so intentionally shift your focus to something more positive.

Communicate Extensively

Effective communication is critical in a crisis. Err on the side of over-communicating since staff will fill a vacuum of information with rumors that are often worse than reality.

Encourage Humor

Even though you may find yourself in a life or death situation, there is still room somewhere to have fun and laugh - find it. Be sure you are culturally sensitive when you do this.

Actively Problem Solve

In a crisis, it's easy to get stuck when things do not go as planned. Work with colleagues to identify issues and find solutions.

Do What's Right

Sometimes in a crisis, rules and regulations need to be bent to do what's right. While you don't want to disregard policies and procedures, there will be times when they will conflict with what is right. Do what's right and ask forgiveness later if you violate the rules.

Have you experienced a crisis? If so, how your resilience was impacted, and what you did to maintain your resilience?

 ___________________________

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.

Don’t Return to the Workplace Without Talking About Risk

Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

I managed many crises during my service as a U.S. diplomat. One of the most important lessons I learned is that everyone has a different threshold of risk. That's the amount of risk a person is comfortable taking when faced with danger and uncertainty.

When people have not yet reached their threshold of risk, they function reasonably well despite the dangers they face. When they exceed their risk limit, anxiety kicks in, fear becomes overwhelming, and they struggle to perform.

I saw this dynamic very clearly after insurgents fired rockets at the al-Rasheed hotel in Baghdad in 2003. For State Department employees in Iraq, this attack changed our perception of the risks we were taking. For many people, that risk exceeded their threshold.

While a few people immediately left Baghdad, many others were pressured to remain in-country despite their discomfort. Staff who remained despite having exceeded their thresholds of risk suffered from high anxiety and struggled with performance. Many became a burden on the rest of the team.

Many organizations are exploring ways to bring employees back to the workplace now that more people are getting vaccinated. Returning to a workplace during this pandemic entails a certain amount of risk given the uncertainty associated with the virus. While putting in place mitigation measures such as wearing masks and regular cleaning may reduce some hazards, it's impossible to eliminate all risks. Even employees who are vaccinated are taking some risks by interacting with other people in their workplace.

Wise supervisors strive to avoid asking employees to return to the workplace when this would exceed their risk threshold. It's essential to recognize that every employee has a personal threshold of risk and to talk with staff about their concerns. While there may be easily identifiable justifications for low thresholds such as underlying health issues or a fear of vaccines, there are also less apparent reasons why someone is more risk-averse.

I learned to explore underlying reasons when one of my employees resisted moving into a new office. I assumed she was jockeying for an office closer to leadership but luckily did not act on that assumption. Instead, I met with her privately to explore her reasoning. She told about a terrorist incident she'd experienced years before and explained that working in an office with windows on the main street felt too risky for her. Her anxiety spiked when she thought about working in that office. An office that was not on the main street felt less precarious. If we had not adjusted and accepted her threshold of risk, her anxiety would have interfered with her performance.

Here are some ways you can ensure that you're not pushing employees beyond their thresholds of risk as you return to the workplace:

Understand and Accept Your Employees’ Risk Thresholds

Some people are more risk-averse than others. When faced with uncertainty, they prefer to minimize loss, even when it reduces possible gains. This may be a personality trait or be influenced by life experiences. Either way, it is unlikely you will persuade someone to be less risk-averse. Instead, accept your employees' risk thresholds and ask what they need from you to mitigate them.

Don’t Push for One Size Fits All

Some supervisors mistakenly think that fairness means treating all employees equally. As a result, they settle on one solution and try to persuade everyone to adopt the same approach. They may reward employees who are comfortable returning to the office at the first opportunity, which pressures others to exceed their risk thresholds. Or, they defer to those with lower risk tolerance and frustrate colleagues who would like to take more risks. Instead, recognize individual risk tolerances and institute policies that allow for flexibility. It is ok if some employees return to the workplace sooner than others based on their preferences. 

Don’t Impose Your Risk Threshold on Others

Some leaders assume that their perception of risk is "right," and when employees differ, they are unreasonable or insubordinate. There is no right or wrong when it comes to risk. That's why managing risk is so challenging. Recognize that your risk threshold is based on your personality and past experiences. Others will have very different, yet just as valid, responses to the same situation.

Don’t Minimize People’s Fears

If you dismiss or minimize your employees' fears, their fear will not go away. Telling someone "not to be scared" communicates that their concerns are not valid. When employees don't feel heard, they often become frustrated and angry. Some people may try to suppress their fear, which drains their emotional energy and erodes resilience. Instead, acknowledge and accept their fears and focus on actions you can take to address the underlying causes.

How are you addressing risk as you return to the workplace?

___________________________

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.