Running on empty and full to bursting

Photo by craveiro_.

The article of the moment is this NYTimes piece about late-stage pandemic burnout. It's something we've written about before. There's a quote in the piece that sums the mood up nicely,

“Honestly, weirdly, sometimes when I’m writing I just stop and stare at the wall.”

If that's not you, we promise it describes some of your friends and colleagues. The disconnection, the apathy, is the mood of the moment. Or maybe the lack of mood.

When you spend too long in a high-anxiety, low-control state, your brain tries to protect itself. And when all feeling is bad, the thing some brains do is just turn off feeling. You stop getting joy from things. You zone out. You put one foot in front of the other and you make it through and you're not exactly sad, you're just far away. For many of us right now, that's the story of where we are.

But it's only part of the story.

Last week, we were picking up our little from school. And outside, wearing multiple masks, was one of her before-care teachers from last year. We had to squint to know for sure that it was someone familiar. She squinted back. And then we erupted.

Loud, joyful, how are you? how's your fam? how are your kids? how is it going? how have you been? is everyone ok? Exaggerated, effusive waving and a shared wish that this all be over soon.

Heading back to the car, after this mini-reunion, it all hit at once. Grief. The kind that catches you off guard. Where you think you're ok, only to find you are very much not ok.

From the outside, this one's hard to explain. Why was the interaction with the occasional teacher from last year the one that felt like a gut-punch? And not the FaceTime calls with grandparents across closed borders?

This relationship only existed pre-pandemic. A person who had taken amazing care of our "youngest but tallest" kid. Had asked for daily updates on Melissa's citizenship process. And had cheered like she would for her own kid when the answer was finally, "Yes, I passed my test!"

That moment of the before-times colliding with the after-times, that's the other part of the story. Many of us are managing apathy and numbness. Others of us are deep in our feelings over seemingly mundane things. And some folks are a mix of both. Swinging from numbness to intense emotions, and then back again.

The foggy, compartmentalized thing is real. But so is the bucket of deep and powerful feelings we're each carrying around right now. They're like two dissociated versions of us. And they aren't going to stay that way.

A very appealing half-truth

Our unified pandemic experience has started to wane. Arguably, it never existed in the first place. But what's started to creep in is a very appealing idea. One so alluring that once we say it out loud, you'll see it everywhere. Ready?

The idea is this: once we get back to work, everything will be ok.

Once we're back in the office, our routines will fall into place. Kids will be back at school. We'll put the past year behind us. And the elusive "return to normal" will be there, waiting for us. Right next to the monitor, keyboard, and stress ball on our desk.

It's hard to overstate the attractiveness of this idea. Where work is the mascot for normalcy. The place we go back to being ourselves. A safe harbour, ready to catch employees, weary from poor lighting and non-ergonomic setups.

Even if your company is planning to stay remote, the idea is still an attractive one. You may not be talking about five days a week in the office, but meetups and hoteling and hot desks. The framing is still in there. We'll feel better when we're back to our old productive selves.

Once we get back to work, everything will be ok.

It's true that work has a rhythm and pacing to it. A structure for the day. The cue that it's time for lunch as chairs roll back. The office microwave sending out alternating delicious and concerning wafts.

Structure will be ok. Collaboration will be ok. The nudge to sign off cause there's about to be no one else left and you don't actually know how the alarm system works. Those things will all be ok.

Us? Well, we're a bit more complicated.

What if this, too, won't pass?

You may feel ok. You might get back to work and feel like you're coping well, and getting back to normal. And then some random interaction, some incidental thing, will shoot through you like a spark and bring up tears you didn't know were there. It will hit you all at once, and it will knock you over.

Because that compartmentalization breaks down. Because that bucket of emotions doesn't go away on its own. There's a grand re-integration coming. As the normalcy of exterior life returns it's gonna let us focus on what a mess we've made of the place, internally.

What this means for you as a boss is that some surprising things are going to happen. People may have very strong, emotional responses to work. They will cry in 1:1s, and in their car before coming in, and in the snack room. They may have doubts about their work, or their worth. They may read unexpected things into mundane updates.

It's gonna be rocky. And you have a job to do, smoothing the road.

We need to be careful here, though. You are not your team's therapist, and you shouldn't pretend to be. That bears repeating. Do not insert yourself into a mental health care role with your people. It's not fair, and it's not safe.

We also need to remind you that you don't get to mind-read. You can prepare for surprising things, expect them even. But you don't get to tell someone what they're feeling, or that their emotions aren't valid. It's appropriate to shut down abusive behaviours, but you aren't in charge of their process, you're in charge of their workplace.

So what can you do? Understand. Recognize that we got here because of a high-anxiety, low-control stress position. And look for places where you can build the opposite.

Low-anxiety, high-control

You can reduce anxiety for your people. Communicate expectations and progress clearly instead of hoping they'll read between the lines. Talk with them about workload and clarify priorities. Listen to the stuff that's hard about work and get creative about how to adjust it.

You can also increase their level of control. Everyone wants autonomy in their work, it's a powerful motivator and feeds that sense of control. But autonomy means vastly different things to different people. Some people want an open field to run, and some want a race track with clear markings. Talk to them about how much support structure is helpful, and how much is getting in their way. It will help to put up some clear, near-term wins.

This process will go fast for some people and slow for others. And for some, the only path to normalcy will be to quit and build it from scratch somewhere else. We've said it a few times during this whole affair, that these are the moments we pay you for, as a boss. You control how work feels for people, you can make a better normal.

And. And your own bucket may be very full. You may be running on empty. We know. All we can do is tell you the truth. Which is that getting back to the office will fix some things but not everything. Bringing the disparate pieces back together will take work. And if you’re gonna hold space for your people, you’re gonna need a head start.

- Melissa and Johnathan