Beware of placing too much emphasis on self-care

A trend that I see emerging is that companies are increasingly introducing well-intended initiatives to encourage managers and staff to take care of themselves during these plagued times.
 
Of course, people should take breaks, manage their work/home boundaries, exercise, eat healthily, not drink too much alcohol and seek out professional counseling when their depression or anxiety is edging out of control.
 
However, putting too much emphasis on self-care can be harmful if this is not mirrored by the organisation's own introspection and re-alignment.

With all the tricks and techniques for self-care at the employee's disposal, and with all the lip-service being paid to self-care by organisations, the underlying message can quickly become: "If you still cannot cope, given all this support, there must be something wrong with you."
 
In a corporate culture where vulnerability is often taboo, one can quickly find oneself caught up in a pact of pretending all is well. And, by implication, if all of us are doing great because of how excellently we are applying self-care, then there can't be any need to take a long and hard look at how we organise ourselves to lighten our load, can there?
 
The world has changed. Organisations have to adapt. Not only by moving everyone onto Zoom or Teams and recommending self-care. But by fundamentally re-thinking what they do, how they do things, and why.
 
So how can organisations stay healthy and productive during this pandemic / post-pandemic period?

1. Focus on task. What percentage of your staff's time (especially in the case of managers) is used for activities that are directly task-related, and what percentage is expended on red-tape activities that seemed to have value pre-covid but that has now been shown to be little more than bureaucratic defences against some form of organisational anxiety? By keeping the pressure up on staff to do non-sensical administration, as if the non-doing of these tasks constitutes disloyalty, you are not only wasting time and energy that could have been directed towards real work, you are also contributing to managers' and staff's sense of being overwhelmed.
2. Make it OK to not be OK. Who is completely OK anyway? By maintaining the facade of 'being in control' of one's work, life and self-care at a time when the world is shaking, is a lie. And when lies are passed for truth, teams become unsafe. And in unsafe teams, members isolate themselves, meaning the burden to magically self-care all one's troubles away becomes unbearable. Two soldiers can carry two tar poles much further than one soldier can carry her pole all by herself.
3. How much is enough, for now? This is a difficult but important question to confront. Do we keep production or sales targets the same? Or do we lower targets when we sense that our production or sales capability is being reduced by the global situation? There is no easy answer here. Obviously, when you run uphill, you slow down, to have some steam left later in the race. No-one speeds up during an uphill when the end is not yet in sight. What happened during lockdown, however, is that the panic was immediately converted into frenetic energy, with people on Zoom or Teams back-to-back, day and night. How long can you sprint?
4. Push back upwards. If you are a team leader, you are responsible to create an environment conducive for your team's optimal performance. If there are directives from above that seem to overload or unnecessarily burden your team, it is fully within your mandate as a manager in good faith, to question their validity. We have to keep each other honest. Those at the top can also make mistakes. Their anxiety is also high. So they may from time to time do or request things that have more to do with trying to alleviate their own anxiety, than with promoting the primary task of the organisation. When you sense this may be happening, push back, question, offer alternative solutions. Guard your team's mind-space and energy.
5. Create a safe-enough team. Your team members are stressed. Their families are stressed. Your customers are stressed. Your bosses, shareholders and the government are stressed. And you are stressed yourself. Within all of this, where can your team members go to blow off steam, re-group and ready themselves for another day of work against many odds? No-where? How about the team becoming a safe haven for itself? How about creating a team environment where you can authentically admit that things are tough, where you can brainstorm ways in which to deal with unreasonable clients, where you can digest seemingly non-sensical demands from top management without splitting into us/them conversations, where you can maturely and robustly support each other in your work towards the primary task of your business?

 
Your responsibility as leader and manager is not only to tell your people to take care of themselves. It is not merely to create more opportunities for self-disclosure regarding people's struggles at home. It is ultimately to rethink every aspect of your leadership and your operation as a business to ensure robust re-alignment with a new reality. Duct tape and cable ties will only keep things together for so long.