Issue No. 475 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting spotlights a must-read book about anxiety at work—and why managers and bosses must talk about it. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for the new book from John Pearson and Jason Pearson, Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned. See Mistake #1 below.
Think of staff growth as a climbing wall. “The only thing you can’t do on a rock wall is just hang there.”
Anxiety at Work: “Generation Paranoia”
Yikes! According to the hot-off-the-press book, Anxiety at Work, “In America, workplace anxiety is estimated to cost some $40 billion a year in lost productivity, errors, and health-care costs, while stress is estimated to cost more than $300 billion.”
It gets worse! “Though the problem is becoming more serious with older employees, it’s been particularly acute with millennials and Gen Z. According to a 2019 study published in the Harvard Business Review, more than half of millennials and 75 percent of Gen Z reported they had quit a job for mental health reasons.” But…apparently many bosses don’t want to talk about it.
According to co-authors Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton (along with Anthony Gostick’s very transparent contributions to the book), “We’ve found that most young people want to be able to discuss their anxiety at work. Said one twenty-something employee in an interview, ‘My generation talks about anxiety all the time to each other.’ Rightly so, they believe that it’s impossible to fix something we are scared to talk about.”
They add, “And yet in a 2019 survey of one thousand employed adults with anxiety, 90 percent judged it would be a bad idea to confide their situation to their bosses. Sad.”
Attn: Bosses and Managers! This doesn’t work anymore:
• “Don’t bring your personal problems to work.”
• “Just fix yourself!”
• “Of course you’ll fit in here. We have a great culture.”
• “If you’re not physically sick, you must clock in.”
In early 2020, the authors were scheduled to speak to a company’s leadership team. The fast-breaking COVID news distracted the group from their scheduled topic and instead—prophetically—the authors talked about the workplace anxiety to come. Anxiety at Work is COVID-relevant with amazingly fresh insights and solutions. The subtitle is aspirational for every manager: “8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done.”
I had high expectations for this book, just published in May 2021, because I continue to appreciate and recommend the list of 125 practical employee recognition ideas from their 2007 book, The Carrot Principle: How the Best Managers Use Recognition to Engage Their People, Retain Talent, and Accelerate Performance. (Idea #54 is my favorite: “Print out and present a team member a ‘long lunch’ certificate for a two-hour lunch.”)
After seriously reviewing books for almost 15 years now, rarely does a book exceed my expectations—but this did. The authors knocked it out of the ballpark. I made more than 40 specific notes for this review, but I can only mention a few. You must read this book—and implement the practical strategies. Five big ideas:
#1. THE DUCK SYNDROME. This term “was coined at Stanford University to describe the masquerade of students at this high-pressure school, as at many colleges, working mightily to appear as though they’re doing just fine, gliding calmly along like a duck on a pond, keeping up with all of their work with effortless grace.” But—look under the surface—and those “smoothly gliding ducks are paddling like mad—just as these students are manically pushing themselves, frantically trying to stay afloat.” What’s needed? A new leadership style that combines “vulnerability with care for the individual.”
Managers: How would you know if the duck syndrome is alive and well in your organization? (Read the eight strategies.)
#2. GENERATION PARANOIA. “The fact is, this rising generation is a much more anxious group as a whole. Some have termed them ‘generation paranoia.’” The authors note an Atlantic article that “described a generation of young people who scan any room they enter for exit points and game out how they’d survive an active-shooter scenario.” According to Forbes, “four times as many millennials as Gen Xers list ‘fear of losing job’ as one of their top concerns at work.”
Managers: Since it’s inappropriate to ask, “Do you have anxiety?”—what should you do? Read Chapter 2’s “Six Methods to Meet Uncertainty Head-on,” including Method 1, “Make It Okay to Not Have All the Answers.” (See page 51 for creating a learning environment where making mistakes are standard practice. See “mistake-making” below!)
#3. COACH OPTIMIZERS TO BECOME TASKERS. “Crunch time has become the standard,” note the authors—and that’s not healthy. Taking a page from those who survive the Navy Seals “Hell Week,” managers can coach younger team members to be “taskers” (focus on the job at hand), not “Optimizers” (those who visualize and hyper-plan every job and every step). “The secret of success for the Taskers is they take this monolithic thing and break it down into chunks.
It’s task, rest.
Task, rest.”
The Taskers survive “Hell Week.” Optimizers don’t.
Managers: Don’t believe the myth that “overload is good for productivity.” Instead, read page 73 and a mid-level leader’s confession: “I made a mistake in pushing my team so hard on the last upgrade.” (They worked 16-hour days.) See the five check-in questions on page 87, including “What have you learned that we might do differently next time we are up against a task like this?”
#4. THE MOTIVATORS ASSESSMENT. “Employees who feel anxious about their career path may actually be on the wrong path,” note Gostick and Elton. They suggest that “caring managers can often help them know if that’s the case.” How? Collaborating with the authors of Emotional Intelligence 2.0, they built a very, very helpful Motivators Assessment tool—and urge managers to “Help Employees Assess Their Skills and Motivations” (Method 3 of 8 in Chapter 4). Click here for more information or to take the assessment.
Managers: Read Chapter 4 to help team members avoid mismatches in their work. Try “job sculpting” with three options: transferring work, altering work, or adding work that motivates each unique employee. (And this is obvious, but take the assessment yourself to see if you are in the right slot! Even at my age, I learned something new about myself when I completed the assessment this week.)
#5. DR. NO! I mentioned I wouldn’t list all 40 of my book review notes, so I gotta stop. But let me sneak in several more here:
• Page 109 gives coaching suggestions for how to leverage the “Dr. No” persona on your staff. “Instead of coaching Brian out of that habit, a talent magnet leader [great concept!] would work with it.”
• Page 139 is worth the price of the book to listen in on a goal-setting review between a CEO and the organization’s founder/board chair. The CEO reported that two goals were “epic failures,” but the founder’s response? “Darcy, if we had achieved all our goals, that would have been an indication that we weren’t dreaming big enough.” He added, “And I’m guessing we will apply the lessons we learned from any mistakes we made along the way?” The CEO said “yes.” Then exiting, the chairman said, “Awesome. Carry on. See you next quarter.”
• If you avoid giving constructive feedback out of fear that a team member will react badly, read page 59 on why you should not use the “sandwich” approach of “offering a negative between two positives.”
• At a hospital: “Each week one staff member received what they called the Grace Under Fire trophy, a fire hose mounted on a block of wood.” (See the five practical methods in Chapter 9, “Turn Doubts into Assurance,” including the fork-in-the-road difference between recognition and celebration.)
Managers: if you’re guilty of fostering a “socialism of gratitude” culture, see page 223—before you create more havoc by ignoring Method 4: “Provide Gratitude to High-Flyers, Too.”
Did I mention? This is a Must-Read—especially as you’re adapting to the realities of COVID, and we pray, post-COVID.
To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done, by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton with Anthony Gostick. Are you a listener? Listen to the book on Libro.fm (6 hours, 29 minutes). And thanks to Fortier PR and Harper Business for sending a review copy.
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS
1)The authors quote the CHRO at Keurig Dr Pepper: “For a long time we thought about career paths as a ladder. It was all about how you move up. The imagery we’re moving to is a rock wall, where a person can move up, sideways, a little up, and a little sideways. Everybody can have their own destination. The only thing you can’t do on a rock wall is just hang there.” How could your team use the rock wall metaphor to create opportunities for growth in your organization?
2) The section, “Millennials and Conflict,” in Chapter 6, “From Conflict Avoidance to Healthy Debate” includes a 17-word text conversation between a boss and employee late on a Friday afternoon. It spoiled the millennial’s weekend, but the boss was clueless that he had created any anxiety. The authors noted the boss needed to update his “texting awareness.” Rate our communication effectiveness here: A, B, C, D, or F?
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Mistake #1 of 25:
Neglecting the Mistake-Making Literature
Insights from Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned, by John Pearson with Jason Pearson
Hot-off-the-press! Read the new book by John Pearson and Jason Pearson and then feature a “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” segment at your weekly staff meeting.
“I needed more practice and more laps in the mistake pool.” That’s the subtitle of Mistake #1 in the new book by John Pearson with Jason Pearson. Writing on “Neglecting the Mistake-Making Literature,” John confesses:
“'Don’t make mistakes!' has been drummed into our DNA since childhood. For many years, I was too careful and avoided risks. Later, as I read the mistake-making literature, I understood the value of taking calculated risks—and that failure is not final.”
John notes that BMW gives a “Flop of the Month Award” to employees whose innovative ideas fail during implementation. He quotes John C. Maxwell, “To get maximum attention, make a big mistake. To cause maximum damage, fail to admit it.”
Each chapter features a brief and personal “mistake story,” (often a hilarious management mistake), and then what John learned after reading a recommended fork-in-the-road book. (He recommends one book for each mistake: 25 must-read books! The recommended book for Mistake #1 is Call Sign Chaos, by Gen. Jim Mattis.)
Now you and your team members can avoid these 25 mistakes by leveraging the workbook format for your own professional development or at your weekly staff meetings. This “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook” includes a bonus chapter, a “Do-It-Yourself Mistake-Maker,” with a template for inviting your team members to present one of their memorable mistakes at future weekly staff meetings!
Click here to view the list of all 25 mistakes and read the introduction to Mastering-Mistake Making. To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned (10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook), by John Pearson with Jason Pearson.
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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Are you learning from your own communication mistakes and the hilarious missteps of others? Jason has stories for you! Check in with Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).
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