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The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a lot of opportunities for leaders to really stand up and make an impact in either positive or not so positive ways. Dr. Jennifer Hall, an executive coach, leadership trainer and assessment author, talks to Andi about how leaders can use their core values to help guide their behavior during this uncertain time.
Dr. Hall talks about value polarities; how to identify and label values that are authentic and realistic, and how leaders can use the “ring” method to learn how to share emotions and information.
You can find Jen on her website, Mindset Coaching, or LinkedIn.
Transcript
Dr. Jen Hall:
When the worst of this crisis is over, how would you like the people who you interacted with, the people you lead to remember you? And what are the implications for the choices you make today? By asking that question, we’re inviting people to look at, remember to become regrounded in their values and to make decisions on that basis.
Andi Graham:
Starting and running a business is hard. Starting and running a values-based business is even harder. I’m Andi Graham, and this is Walk The Walk, a podcast for entrepreneurs who are doing just that. They’re making choices in the name of integrity every day even when it’s hard. Today we’re talking to Dr. Jennifer Hall. Dr. Hall is a licensed psychologist, a board certified coach with a PhD in clinical psychology and someone with whom I have been talking for a very long time for leadership advice and coaching. For 20 some years, Jen worked for the Center for Creative Leadership, doing coaching talent management where she found, developed and managed executive coaches. And then she launched her own business called Mindset Coaching, and she’ll talk a little bit about that.
But one of the things I think that Jen really brings to the table is she’s been working with her clients who are very, very high level C level executives in large organizations, huge enterprise organizations, the military, you name it, around the world through this COVID-19 crisis and the coronavirus crisis. She’s been working with them on how to think about and how to lead through crisis, but also talking about resilience. And so that’s what interested me because there’s a lot of correlation between having a strong values foundation and resilience.
Andi Graham:
So Jen today talks to us a little bit about how our values influence resilience and how we can use those values to guide some of the decisions we’re making during times of uncertainty.
Andi Graham:
Hey, Jen. Thank you so much for being here to talk to me today.
Dr. Jen Hall:
Hey, Andi. It’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Andi Graham:
Yeah, I really appreciate you taking the time out of your quarantine life to come say hello.
Dr. Jen Hall:
We all need a break from quarantine and I can’t think of a better one than this.
Andi Graham:
It’s true, it is nice to have something a little bit different to do. It’s getting a little monotonous. So Dr. Hall, please tell us a little bit about you and what you do.
Dr. Jen Hall:
Sure. Thanks, Andi. So I am a psychologist by training and right after grad school I went into college teaching and I did that for a while and I ended up then at a little college, Eckerd college, with which you’re familiar, and I found that I didn’t love the process of grading student work, but luckily for me at Eckerd college there was a network affiliate of the Center for Creative Leadership, or CCL, which is widely considered a premier provider of leadership training and research. And I was able then to shift from my faculty role to a full time role at the CCL affiliate where I started an executive coaching program. And I have been doing that either for the CCL network affiliate at Eckerd or CCL itself or for the past five years for myself. So I do both leadership training, team building, workshops, keynote presentations, and also a lot of one on one coaching. And the name of my business is Mindset Coaching because I work a lot on people’s mental frameworks, the things they tell themselves and how that affects behavior.
Andi Graham:
That’s interesting. So what types of leaders do you work with for the most part?
Dr. Jen Hall:
For the most part I work with high level corporate leaders, VPs and above, but sometimes I work with business owners and entrepreneurs and occasionally, I work with newer leaders or managers.
Andi Graham:
So do you in your Mindset Coaching, but in anything else, do you talk to them about their core values and their organization’s core values?
Dr. Jen Hall:
I do, absolutely. So when I work with a new corporate client, I like to understand as much about the context as I can, so mission, vision, values tends to be an important part of the context and the information I collect. And then when I work with individuals, I also do want to know their values. Typically, if I know the organization’s values, if I’m working with more than just that one person and I’ve collected that information, or even if I haven’t, I like to check with them to see the degree to which their personal values are aligned with the organizational values. If not, well then there’s a fruitful conversation to be had right there. And then I do want to talk to individual leaders that I work with about their values because I think that’s important in so many ways. That is in some ways a mental model or a mindset because how I look at and evaluate any given situation and any decision I have to make is going to be guided by that particular framework of my values.
Andi Graham:
I totally agree with that. Do you ever find situations when the leaders you are working with personal values are in conflict with their organizational values?
Dr. Jen Hall:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So for probably two and a half, three years on and off, I’ve worked with an individual who’s a president of an organization that was founder-led. The founder stayed on as the CEO, my client was the president, had a lot of cross functional responsibilities, was also serving the CFO role and he valued candor, transparency, consistency. And in his estimation, the founder did not behave in a way that showed that he personally adhered to those values. So we worked with this a lot over time and frankly, although as a coach, I don’t lean heavily on advice but rather on feedback, and I ask a lot of questions first but then I also will share feedback. So I would share with him that I noticed this values differenced and asked him to think about what were the implications short term, longterm, what did this mean? And he probably understood that I was concerned about his overall wellbeing and his sense of adherence to his own value system working within this context. But it took him a long time, so just recently he decided to leave.
Dr. Jen Hall:
The conflict in the values became just too overwhelming and he decided to leave. And he feels tremendous relief about that. Even though now he finds himself unemployed in a very uncertain job market, it’s difficult, but still when you’ve been living in a context in which you can’t feel like you’re true to yourself and then you leave that, there does tend to be tremendous relief associated with that.
Dr. Jen Hall:
Or I’ve got a long time client who, I think this was a great story, so she doesn’t have a college education, she works in sales, she’s always really successful, but because she was young, a woman without a college education, she often found herself in this situation where a male peer got preferential treatment. She had better results and he’d get promoted more quickly, so she always had this chip on her shoulder, this resentment. So she worked at a company for a long time, didn’t ever feel valued enough, went to work for a more entrepreneurial company, loved it. It was great. Then they got bought by a big multinational corporation, she was in the same situation. So she found herself feeling victimized again until one day she was actually driving to work, she’s on the New Jersey turnpike, and she was stealing resentful and pissy and she had a meeting with her team and she just looked at herself in the rear view mirror and she goes, “No, you do not do this. This is not who you are for me. Take responsibility and you’re going to get out in front of your team and you’re going to bring your best stuff and your best energy and you’re going to be proactive and say, here’s what we can do. No one’s going to come and say to you, it’s all up to you.” And that’s a real story.
Andi Graham:
That’s interesting. We adhere very strongly to our core values, but we actually use them in our interview process, and so I really admire when we have candidates come in that have their own personal values and they ask us questions about how we would align with their own values. So, do you have your own personal values, Jen?
Dr. Jen Hall:
I actually sat down last night and went to one of the many lists of values that I have, and I have given my clients over the years too as an exercise to select the values with which they most resonate and with which they live their lives, and it gave me a chance to write down the values that I do believe that I live by. And it was really a fun process. So what I found is there are actually three pairs of values that I consider as polarities.
Dr. Jen Hall:
And I don’t know if you’ve read anything about polarity management, it’s a fascinating concept, but it’s this idea that in business and in life, we have this idea that all problems can be solved, you identify the problem, the parameters, and then you solve it. Well, the author … Gosh, I wish I could remember his, his name. I can find it later. But the author of this book on polarity management said some problems can’t be solved and so the trick is to identify those and then to manage them as opposed to trying to solve them. And this happens when there are poles or opposites that are interdependent, such as, do we focus on individual work or do we focus on teamwork? Well, very few organizations rely on one or the other, nor should they. And so it’s kind of fallacious to say, “Oh well we’re going to shift from individual work to teamwork.” Well, no, there’s still going to be some individual work to be done. So the individual and the team, they would be considered poles in this way of thinking and that would be a polarity that had to be managed. Same with centralization versus decentralization.
Dr. Jen Hall:
So I actually articulated these values in polls. So for me, they are affiliation and autonomy. So can you see how those all operate as polls to be managed? I love being in connection with other people who are kind and smart and talented and interesting. That’s really important to me. At the same time, I really value my autonomy. So as a professional, the way I attempt to manage that is by creating affiliations with those kinds of people I mentioned before that also allow me autonomy.
Dr. Jen Hall:
So there’s affiliation, autonomy, there’s also curiosity, and then either wisdom or expertise. So I don’t believe that those are truly opposites. I believe that in fact you need to nurture both. So I want to be curious when I encounter … When I have new clients, I always have to operate out of a place of curiosity. I can’t come to quick assumptions about the person. I want to know what their background is, how do they see the world? What are they attempting to accomplish? What are the obstacles in their life personally, professionally? How did those overlap? At the same time, I don’t want to come to my clients as a total beginner. I want to use the accumulation of my experiences that have led to some, I hope, knowledge and expertise to be able to short circuit some of the learning. So I need to somehow stay in curiosity and yet see patterns and see connections that can allow me to be helpful to the client. So those are two values.
Dr. Jen Hall:
And then the other two would be what I’m calling impact and enjoyment. So by impact, what I mean is I want to do work that a positive impact. I want to help people. I want to help organizations. Nothing feels as good to me as when a client says this was really helpful and here’s how this conversation, here’s how this relationship, here’s how this work had a positive impact. It’s very gratifying. At the same time, I want to be having fun. I want to enjoy the work that I do and I struggle with saying that a little bit because in some ways it feels selfish, but I have to be honest with myself that I want to enjoy what I do.
Dr. Jen Hall:
Let me give you an example. When I was doing my pre doctoral internship, I worked at a community mental health agency and I worked with a lot of people who had been dealt a really bad hand in life, and they were struggling to feed themselves to keep their children safe. And I worked with kids who … I can’t imagine people in this world more deserving of help than these children. They’d been abandoned by their parents, they’d been abused in all kinds of horrific ways, they’d seen terrible things. And yet it was clear to me that although I hoped I could have some impact on them, it was so painful for me that I couldn’t do it. So of all the ways … And God bless those people who do it because they’re real heroes. But of all the ways in which I or anyone could potentially have a positive impact on other people’s lives in this world, I have chosen to try to select work based on the ability to both have an impact and for me to enjoy myself.
Dr. Jen Hall:
So those are my six values [crosstalk 00:13:30] as poles, those poles that I manage.
Andi Graham:
And I think one thing that’s interesting about listing those values is the things that did not get listed, and I think that’s just as important because when we look at lists of values, you like and identify with most of them, right? You want to be, say, joyful or happy and you want to be transparent and honest and you want to have integrity and respect and all of those things, but you have to really look at and eliminate the things that don’t guide the person you are and want to be. And I think part of that is being real with yourself. There’s a little bit of this is just not who I am and so-
Dr. Jen Hall:
Exactly. And that takes courage to do that, Andi, to be really honest with yourself.
Andi Graham:
Yeah. Right.
Dr. Jen Hall:
Like I said, it was a little embarrassing to say, well, I want to have fun when I’m doing work as opposed to just the work that would have more of an impact but it’s not fun. I want to balance those. I have to look at lists and say, “Oh, adventure. No, I want to be someone like you who’s going to bungee jump and do all kinds of wild things.” [crosstalk 00:14:34] yeah, nope, it’s not me.
Andi Graham:
Yeah. It’s funny. That is actually a pretty high value of mine is that I want to constantly challenge and adventure.
Dr. Jen Hall:
Yes. And I just want to challenges myself intellectually.
Andi Graham:
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Jen Hall:
Not by bungee jumping-
Andi Graham:
[crosstalk 00:14:51] at the expense of the polarity, which is comfort and familiarity. Those are not things that I really value at all. I’m okay being uncomfortable and feeling strange and feeling challenged, that’s comes with travel and adventure and those sorts of things.
Dr. Jen Hall:
It does. And there’s also research that shows that that trade off changes over the course of one’s life. I was reading a book called Algorithms to Live By, and I think it was in that book that I read about this exploit, explore algorithm, how much do we want to exploit what’s available to us now, the comfort, the familiarity? And how much do we want to explore what’s new? And so there are individual differences like between you and me for example, but also as individuals are at different points in their life that ratio changes as well.
Andi Graham:
They change. Yeah, and I would suggest probably that your finances change that as well. So as you’re able to do more exploration and travel and adventure, that value becomes more exciting. I don’t know.
Dr. Jen Hall:
Yeah, perhaps. But then of course there are people who are billionaires who might find that if their time on this earth is limited, it becomes about enjoying the people they’re most close to in the comforts of home, so there are a lot of [crosstalk 00:16:04] impacted.
Andi Graham:
Yeah, I’m interested in how, especially during this strange … There’s a lot of uncertainty right now and I’m struggling with it, you’re struggling with it, all of your clients I’m sure are struggling with it, how many folks are looking down on there on their values as some scaffolding to help them through these times of uncertainty? Is it helping them with reduced anxiety or decision making and that sort of thing? Have you seen any examples of that?
Dr. Jen Hall:
That’s a great question. What I have noticed, Andi, is that in this time of uncertainty, which for a lot of my clients who are faced with really hard business decisions, they are not automatically looking to their values because they’re trying to manage the crisis that’s in front of them and it’s changing so quickly, the situation is so fluid. And what happens when we are really scared or when we experience any intense negative emotion is we get myopic. We just see what’s right in front of us and we’re trying to survive, sometimes literally, sometimes metaphorically. And so what I have been doing with my clients is just exactly what you’re suggesting, which is inviting them to step back and to open up the aperture and to look more longterm and to look at what they value now and what are the implications for … I’m sorry, what they value now, but what they value in the longterm and what are the implications for the choices they’re going to make right now?
Dr. Jen Hall:
So I listened to a great webinar the other day by Danessa Knaupp, who is an executive coach, and also, like me, affiliated with AIIR Consulting, and it was a fabulous webinar. And she is inviting leaders to say, how do you want to be remembered at the end of this time? So stop, step back, think about when this is over. And of course we know we’re never going to go back to the way we were before, but when the worst of this crisis is over, how would you like the people who you interacted with, the people you led to remember you? And what are the implications for the choices you make today? And in essence, by asking that question, we’re inviting people to look at, remember to become regrounded in their values and to make decisions on that basis because it’s easy to let go of that and just to be in survival mode.
Dr. Jen Hall:
So for example, if I am someone who values candor and I value compassion, how am I going to interact now with my folks who are working from home? Let’s say if I don’t have any kids and I don’t really get it, and I’ve got an important deliverable and I’ve got an important client meeting and we’re all on it, and kids are running around in the background, I might get a lot less compassionate about that. I might be a lot more reactive and irritated if I haven’t taken the time to ground myself in my values and think about how I want my employee to think about me afterwards.
Andi Graham:
100%. And with the clients we work with, for me, it’s been really interesting watching them make decisions in this time that align with their values. We have a client who owns a chain of bowling centers in Tampa and he has always really taken really good care of his team. He pays them well, he treats them well in an industry where you might not think that’s the case. And so he closed well before the city or the state required him to close, he wanted to keep folks safe, and he made it his imperative that he continued to cover their salaries and payroll. And so he’s paying their employees even though they’re not working and he’s closed his business for the first time in 60 some years that it’s been open so-
Dr. Jen Hall:
Isn’t that admirable? I have so much admiration and respect for business owners who are doing that, and I’m seeing that happen all over the place. And I really believe that in the end, they will be rewarded by that. These aren’t my clients, but I’m sure everybody had last summer plans that are now up in the air, and I’m receiving communication from the heads of, for example, a camp that my kids are scheduled to go to, family-owned amazing values. That was one of the reasons that drew me to them in the first place.
Dr. Jen Hall:
The owner of the camp communicated with us recently and he said, “Well, we’re going to make a decision at the end of April,” so he told us what he knew, what he didn’t know, he was very clear, he was very concise, very helpful communication at this time, and said, “And here’s what we’re going to do, we are going to continue to pay our staff to prepare as if it will be a normal summer. It might not be. We’re going to take out a loan right away, and this is awkward, but we do have to ask you to make the payments as scheduled. We’re going to put aside our cancellation policy, so we’ll give you longer to cancel than before. We won’t hold any of your money. We’ll refund you the full amount if we need to. We’ll do right by you. But we will ask, if you can, to transfer your kids into another session, if you can, if the whole summer is a blowout or if we can’t accommodate them later, we ask if we can hold your money and send your kids next year, but we’ll do right by you and we’ll refund you.” So I loved that in his communication. He’s taking care of his customers, but he’s also taking care of his staff.
Dr. Jen Hall:
And as a consumer, that makes me so much more willing to say, okay, absolutely I’ll pay and you can hold the money until next summer because I know why you need it and I know what you’re doing with it. And it’s going to make me more loyal as a result.
Andi Graham:
100%. And I’ve seen the opposite where I’ve seen people complaining on Facebook about their gym continuing to charge their membership with no explanation, and I’m on the other side going, well, you understand they need their members to continue to pay so they can continue to pay their coaches? But had the gym positioned it as such that, “Hey, we’re trying to do the best we can here. If you really need it, we’re happy to refund it, but we would really appreciate it and here’s how what we’re willing to do.” Communication is everything. It helps everything-
Dr. Jen Hall:
Exactly, it is. Which reminds me that I signed up for an annual membership to a gym right before this happened, have not heard from them. I don’t know if they’ll … I guess they charged me at the beginning of the month, so I’ll have to see if they’re going to charge me.
Andi Graham:
And they haven’t communicated with you?
Dr. Jen Hall:
Nope.
Andi Graham:
Wow. Our gym has gone over the top, which I’m sure you’re ad nauseum have seen on my Instagram, but I’m trying to give them as much love as I can publicly because they not only communicated about “We need your memberships, come get equipment from us for free to use in your backyard or your living room.” And then they’re doing four times a day Zoom classes where you can log on and do a Zoom class with all … Plus, extra, once a day they do classes that are just stretching or yoga or something, they do a kid’s workout on Friday so you can do it with your children. They’ve been over and above right now. And they’re still paying all their coaches, so yes-
Dr. Jen Hall:
That’s amazing. And so many businesses are stepping up in that way and I think that’s a great example of how values can guide your decisions in a way that’s beneficial for all your stakeholders, your employees and your customers. And not doing that, it’s really a lost opportunity.
Andi Graham:
Oh, I think so too. So yep. This will be interesting to see how things shake out, which leads me to the topic that we wanted to talk about today, which is resilience. And I know that the conversations you’ve been having with your clients for the past probably two, three weeks have been a lot of pulling your hair out, how do I get through this? How am I going to survive? And there’s a lot of research around resilience and core values and I’m trying to find … But I’m curious how you found that your clients, who have really strong values, whether they’re defined or not, I think we all know who adhere to something greater than themselves, I think that value sort of inoculate you against incoming threats where you say, “Well, these are the things I believe in. I’m going to do my best to do these things no matter what.” They’ve helped us at least sort of define a path forward as … When I talked about our client in Tampa, his path forward was we’re going to close as early as we need to, we’re going to continue to pay our employees as long as we’re able to. These decisions were a lot easier to make because he had defined these are my number one priorities, these are the things that I value.
Dr. Jen Hall:
Yes.
Andi Graham:
I mean, do you have any stories from clients of those things?
Dr. Jen Hall:
So yeah, I absolutely believe that values do provide that path forward. It’s almost like that North Star. And I also have seen that my clients are having to pay a lot more attention to self-care than ever. So we’ve all talked about self-care for years, but the reality is much more pressing right now, I think, because most of us are working from home. The people who aren’t working from home, who are considered essential, some of them are in a much more stressful place, the folks who work at hospitals, doctors and nurses on the front lines, first responders, even frankly, people who work in grocery stores and they have no control over who they’re exposed to. So I have major respect for all those folks. But even those of us who are working from home and it’s safe and it’s comfortable and we decide who we’re exposed to, it’s still stressful. And many of us find ourselves sitting at the desk in front of our computer, we’re in front of screens more than ever, we’re doing Zoom calls, which can be great, but then we’re taking in news, we’re trying to homeschool our kids, many of us, so the realities are in less leaders right now, and business owners are incredibly intentional about how they’re taking care of themselves physically and mentally and emotionally. They’re going to get depleted. They’re going to be the worst versions of themselves as opposed to the best versions of themselves.
Dr. Jen Hall:
And leaders especially, whether they’re in an organization or whether they own a small business or a large business, they’re oftentimes so focused right now on the people who they serve, the people who they care for, their staffs and their customers, that it’s easy to put themselves last even more so than usual. So what I see as leaders becoming very depleted and it’s leading to lack of performance and productivity, but more importantly it’s compromising their immune systems. And this is not a good time to compromise your immune system.
Andi Graham:
So that’s also something I found that psycho neuro immunologists, which I had to write down that word because it’s a long one, psycho neuro immunologists find that our immune are strengthened or depleted by the degree of integrity with which we live our lives, that when we are in conflict with our own values, that we internalize that by decreased immunity, which is … I mean, that to me is incredible.
Dr. Jen Hall:
It’s fascinating. It’s fascinating.
Andi Graham:
When you say, it made me sick to my stomach to make this decision or to do something, it’s because it was out of alignment with what you were supposed to have done or whatever that is.
Dr. Jen Hall:
Right. Which is, I think, part of the reason that really good leaders can make hard decisions because they understand their value system and they’re doing it with clarity and intentionality, even if it’s not easy.
Andi Graham:
100%. So the study that I’ll send you is Patterson and Kellerher, and they did a study on school leaders, and they actually found that resilient leaders say that the process of privately clarifying, publicly articulating and consciously acting on core values is a source of strength and helping them face adversity and emerged stronger than before.
Dr. Jen Hall:
I love it. Thank you so much, yeah, for sending me that because that’s such … I think that at this time we need simple frameworks, simple intuitive frameworks, and I love that three step process, because we can all do it. Like I said, it was so helpful for me when you gave me these questions to write down these values, so what’s going to keep anyone from doing that now? Saying, here’s what I stand for, here’s what I believe and here is how I’m going to choose my behaviors.
Andi Graham:
Agree.
Dr. Jen Hall:
And they’re out there. It’s out there for anyone to see and to have an immune system boost at the same time.
Andi Graham:
I know it’s funny though, I feel the uncertainty is the hardest, part and we’ve gone through this as Floridians going through hurricane preparation is you just don’t know what you’re preparing for, but what you do know is that it will be completely over with by Monday at 4:00 PM. That’s the difference. But there is still that, should we board up? Should we not board up? Should we leave? Should we not leave? And that decision making is the hardest part. And I think that’s what’s happening now except for on a global scale, is that everyone is seeking some sort of rails on which they can stay when they’re making those decisions. It’s like, which direction are we trying to go and how many of those things can I control? I don’t know.
Dr. Jen Hall:
Yeah. Well there’s so little we can control so it becomes more and more important to think very explicitly about that which we cannot control. We always talked about the VUCA world before this volatile uncertainty, that was nothing. This is uncertain. And we don’t know how it will end. For some reason we’re all hoarding toilet paper, it’s so bizarre.
Andi Graham:
It’s bizarre, right?
Dr. Jen Hall:
Whatever’s going to happen probably that’s not going to be the thing we need most, but-
Andi Graham:
Probably not, especially when you have a shower step away from your toilet.
Dr. Jen Hall:
Hey, good point.
Andi Graham:
There are other ways to deal with the problem.
Dr. Jen Hall:
Necessity, the mother of invention. Well I’ll find out, maybe.
Andi Graham:
The way they’ve been doing it for centuries and centuries out [crosstalk 00:29:46] the world, so yeah. Wash yourself.
Andi Graham:
So Jen, what do you think is most needed? What do you think that leaders need, managers need, especially when working with teams? I think that’s one of the hardest things I’m trying to do because we’ve talked a lot about how we feel personally and the things we’re doing personally, but to me it’s what can I share with my team? What can I pass to them that they can feel good about? What are they looking to me for right now?
Dr. Jen Hall:
I hear a lot of leaders asking themselves this and frankly, if you ask yourself that question, you’re better off than anyone else who’s not asking themselves that question because it shows, A, that you’re concerned about it, and B, that you’re curious and that you don’t have the answer. So I think it goes a long way simply to ask the people who report to you that question, what do you need from me? Don’t assume that you’ve got to figure it out on your own or that everyone will need the same thing, so I would ask that question and I would ask it often. And don’t just ask it once and then feel like, okay, well they’re going to tell me and then if it changes, they’ll let me know. What they want, what they need might change over time and they might not know that they have permission to let you know if it changes. So I think communication is key.
Dr. Jen Hall:
Everyone’s saying this, there’s so many resources online and some of them are very, very good. There’s a recent HBR article, just a very brief one, on four things that leaders should keep in mind during crisis, I can share that with you if you’d like, and so many organizations and publications are making their services free for a while, so the firewalls, all these media outlets have been taken down to the paywalls, I guess they’re called. So those are available to all of us. But I think that communicating frequently, communicating candidly, communicating concisely, those are all important. Don’t overwhelm people with communication. Be very clear about your message. Be clear about what you do know, what you’re prepared to deliver, what you expect from them. And have an open door policy, check in frequently, lots of times, especially people who are living alone or they’re feeling isolated, they want to see you. Thank goodness for Zoom. I wish I owned stock. Zoom is a lifesaver for so many of us now. Check in frequently. Just be aware of their individual circumstances and needs. Be sensitive to that. Be human. Don’t be afraid to be human yourself.
Dr. Jen Hall:
At the same time, I think that leaders have a responsibility to support those reporting up to them and they shouldn’t count on their people to be a source of support for them. It often works out that way just naturally because we create relationships, but I think that leaders need to be very, very aware of their own need for support. I posted a little something about this on LinkedIn the other day about we should support in down to the level of the employee. We can dump or complaint upward or outward, and it comes from the ring theory of … What’s it called? The ring theory of when someone is really sick, who gets to complain to who and who supports who. And essentially the sick person is at the middle of the circle and at increasing levels of the circle we’ve got the significant other, the close family, then we’ve got friends and acquaintances. So you support in, dump out or complain out. So I do think that leaders need to be really tuned in to what their employees need, give them what they need, sacrifice their own needs to an extent in the moment for the needs of their employees and then get their support elsewhere.
Andi Graham:
That is great advice. Do you think that that’s an advice we should be taking all the time? I mean, it’s a hyper sensitive time right now, but is that something we should be considering always?
Dr. Jen Hall:
I think so. I think it’s a very solid model in all situations. If anything, this situation gives leaders even a little bit more, I guess, bandwidth to be human. And there’s this huge vulnerability movement, and I love Renee Brown, but I think there are limits to how often we can be vulnerable, but I think in times of crisis … For example, I have a client the other day, she’s always supporting her team and always focused on that and building them up, but she said to her team the other day, I’m having a rough day. And that was really helpful because then her team could just be a little bit more sensitive to what they brought to her because I think many of us are aware of the moods of the people we report to and sometimes we know, well, I can bring it today, maybe I can’t bring it on another day. So when a leader is able to identify their own state and announce it, not in a accusatory way, but that gives the people who work with them and report to them a sense of what they can handle at that day. And it doesn’t have to be a big mystery.
Andi Graham:
Yeah, I think that’s incredibly important. And I recognize that I am somebody who’s always been very clear about having the rough days. And I actually think I need to take the ring theory into consideration a little bit more and not share as much as I share sometimes, and so think about … It is nice having a business partner now that I can talk to about those things.
Dr. Jen Hall:
Yeah. Good. And maybe it’s really about picking your moments, so maybe just one level of filtering. Like okay, I’m having a rough day, is it something they need to know or is there some other way I could manage it right now to be there for them? Kind of like being a parent, Andi, in some ways. In this past week, which lasted about three months, I might be having a bad day three out of the seven days, but probably only on one day did it get to the level where I’m like, “Okay, I need to announce this to my kids because I really might not respond at my best.” Whereas the other days I might think, well, suck it up, Jen, because if you’re telling them every day you’re a bad day, what is that going to do to their state of mind and their wellbeing during this difficult time? So I think it’s always a balancing act and always have judgment call.
Andi Graham:
For sure. Jen, you are always a wealth of fantastic advice and a wonderful open, listening ear, so if anyone out there wants to talk to Jen and get some of that advice as well, how can they find you?
Dr. Jen Hall:
Thank you for your kind words, Andi. They can find me on my website, www.drjenhall.com, just D-R-J-E-N-H-A-L-L.com, or you can email me at jen@drjenhall.com.