Candid truths and follow-ups: I say out loud to the team of people I lead that I am struggling.
It’s Friday afternoon on a ten-way team Zoom and I want to know how each individual human is faring with this struggle. Like all good software teams we do a retro, a list of what went well, what could be improved, and follow-up actions. Usually it’s about teamwork, communication, changing processes or tools. But that’s not what’s top of mind.
Someone mentions our product is growing 50% a week. I’m grateful we all have jobs, but it’s a lot of work for a tiny team. Every week there are 20 opportunities for improvement and two we can handle. The list grows and grows. I’ve been editing numbers in our system every half hour for two weeks while the engineers build in automation, because everyone else is overloaded with their own specialties and at moments like that the team-lead ought to step in and do the mundane dirty work that doesn’t require skills. If I’m waking up in the middle of the night with numbers scrolling through my brain I can’t imagine how much the work has invaded the lives of my teammates.
Many of us are new to our positions, with protocols and tools that update weekly. It’s incredible to watch the pace of improvement, but not blissful to work within it. The work fills me with pride, purpose and velocity when so much of life is stuck and monotonous. It also leaves me jittery and fatigued, like too much coffee on too little sleep.
We deliver a digital care program for anxiety and depression, and seriously, there is no time like the present. The sense of urgency and relevance with our buyers and participants, to have clinical support in a safe, heartfelt, and easily accessible medium cuts straight to the vulnerabilities of this pandemic. People are stressed and scared. People are overwhelmed and anxious. People are lonely and stuck and grieving for loved ones lost, loved ones far away, or a way of life in which they thrived.
In our Friday afternoon retro I try to bundle my thoughts into one little tile that a group can vote to discuss, and it makes the cut, at the very end — how do we support each other in these group video interactions and overloaded days while our personal lives tread water in turbulent seas? And what they say helps me realize what I’ve thought and felt.
One woman talks about interviewing users, rereading their reflections on the emotional rollercoasters of their days, and thinking oh, yes, I feel all those things now too. It’s not just “people” who feel these things. We are stressed and scared. We are overwhelmed and anxious. We are lonely and stuck and grieving for loved ones lost, loved ones far away, or a way of life in which we thrived.
Coaches are working long days supporting users with their mental and emotional challenges, helping them with tools to cope and reframe their thoughts. They give what one coach referred to as unconditional positive regard. And then a user shows risk of self-harm or suicide and their coach’s heart races to get them the right support speedily through brand new tools. Coaches ask their managers if they can really stop working after business hours and say they check the tools one last time every night before bed to see if anyone needs them urgently. How can they rest peacefully if I can’t even sleep well after crunching numbers late at night?
We talk about vacation. Where would we go? What would we do? How can we take vacation if there is only one person on the team with each skill set, never enough resources to address all our challenges, and so many people to help? Every week I feel myself getting caught up in details and fatigued in a clear sign of needing time off, but I worry. If I take a day off will it create more stress for my team and make them work even longer hours? If I take a day off will I realize even more profoundly how lonely, isolated, and stuck is my life outside work? Should I take a day off if I’ll just feel more down? And a teammate realizes out loud that she has been saving up her vacation for when she can travel — an interesting logic given we have unlimited vacation — but that deep down the issue is that taking a vacation now would require her to admit that this situation of constrained life will continue for a long time. If it’s about to end, it makes sense to wait. Taking a day off now is an act of acceptance that we are truly in this for the long haul; we can’t wait it out.
I say out loud to the team of people I lead that I am struggling. I don’t sleep as well, even if I give myself more time. It’s harder to exercise; my routines are disrupted. There are no backup plans for eating; I can’t run by a cafe if I haven’t prepared lunch in advance. I take breaks outside during the day, but only because I have a puppy who’s barely housebroken. But the biggest struggle is that 5:30 cut-off. Work-life balance is part of my identity and brand, but it seems impossible now. For weeks I thought it was the pace of our work, but I’m no longer sure. Our product grows and the seasons change, but little else shifts in life to draw my attention. In the evenings and weekends I have to choose to either be active outside, or interact with people on the computer. I can’t have both. Being alone lets work creep through my brain. Being at my computer does the same. I thought I had discipline in work-life balance, but it turns out I depended on others to pull my thoughts away. Isolation breeds isolation, and I observe myself calling others less, replying to texts more slowly. I’m pretty sure we have a technique in our program about this kind of depressive cycle.
My pulse quickens as I hear myself say out loud to the team of people I lead that I am struggling. I used to think team leaders shouldn’t say things like that, and it takes courage to say the words. I didn’t change my mind because I work for a San Francisco based company so I get to be what most of my new Minneapolis friends call “woo-woo” at work. I didn’t change my mind because we work on mental health, although that has helped me find the words and the courage. I changed my mind because life today is hard for everyone and the best we can do for each other is to acknowledge our truths and work together around them. While everything else about our lives may be increasingly private and isolated, our vulnerabilities are more public. This virus throws open a window to our hearts. We are alone in this together.
Retros are about candid truth and follow-up actions. We are all struggling. We share ideas:
We talk about finding ways to duplicate knowledge across the team to cover for each other…including the clinicians for whom only other clinicians can cover. I think I will write a “vacation coverage” document of critical things I do and who can cover for each when I’m out, then train someone to be able to have their name in each spot.
I find it worth acknowledging that one of our team members is sick — with a mysterious string of ever-changing symptoms that suddenly bring her down but that isn’t testing positive as COVID-19 — and that vacation coverage isn’t just about planning for vacation. She had barely 15 minutes of energy to talk me through her work, and I spent hours over the next week trying to work through her Excel models. When I finally gave up and asked for help from the rest of the team, someone quickly created a new tool for us that automated her modeling work, teaching all of us, yet again, the lesson to ask for help when you need it…and usually before you need it.
We talk about being a mental healthcare team and that we should live what we teach. Take a mental health day. Try it. Stop saving vacation. Stop fearing it. One man says he already proposed a mental health day, for the whole company, to our senior leadership. I think if HR doesn’t grant it, I’ll challenge everyone in the team to create a vacation coverage plan and then test it by taking a mental health day in May. Including me. Should I go last, or should I go first?
We talk about a team happy hour, to have time for the soft side. We talk about how much we like one member’s pep talks and joke that we’ll need vacation coverage for that too. We talk about how hard it is to ask and discuss vulnerable questions of how others are doing without taking up more of their time with 1:1s. One man suggests we state how we’re feeling each week on a scale of one to ten. We talk about how it’s best to ask for help, that it’s reasonable to feel overwhelmed, that we’ll do best if we take care of ourselves and each other.
We are in a unique position of being highly aware of mental health, living and breathing it in our work every day. We have the vocabulary. We know the importance. We are fluent in the tools. We talk about the importance of integrating mental healthcare into all medical care, to consider the whole person. But even for us, for me, it is a tricky balance to know how to integrate mental healthcare into work.
The last time I published a vulnerable essay, a coworker reached out to thank me. She’d struggled for months with the ups and downs of COVID-19, numerous missed diagnoses in the early days, false treatments, fear, fatigue. I’d seen her on a video call once, noted her helpful comments, and thought about how there were more and more people at my growing company who I didn’t know. She’d seen me on the same call and figured that, like everyone else, I had an easy life while she struggled alone. I was honored when she shared that my essay helped her realize that so many people probably have deep hidden struggles, but like her we come to work with a polished package that belies the complexity beneath. As I look at my team in our ten-way Zoom I don’t expect to ever know all the vulnerable complexity each person faces, nor would I be able to heal it if I did. What I do want is for each person to know that I know they face great challenges and burdens on the other side of the camera. That I do too and this helps me care. That I’m open to knowing. That I’m passionate to help, including when I can’t. That we’re all doing this together even though we are alone.
…more from Shira can be found here: https://lotteryofman.wordpress.com/
