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How to Deal with Worry at Work

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Whenever you’re in the middle of big changes at work, you may find yourself worrying about what might happen. Whether you’re facing a reorganization, layoff, or even a process change, worry at work zaps your energy and robs you of productive time.

Worry at Work Destroys Productivity

Not too long ago, I worked on a small team in a large company. Our executive sponsor had left the company unexpectedly. We weren’t sure we would see the same level of support from the person who would take her place. I was still fairly new in my role and struggling to find my footing. I had just conducted an internal job search under similar circumstances in another department. Company policy prevented me from applying for another transfer so soon. I was convinced that my position would be eliminated, and that I would be caught unprepared.

My productivity plummeted while I waited… and waited. And waited some more, for an announcement about who would be taking over our department. This went on for months. My stress level heading into the holiday season was at a fever pitch. And my performance in my role was, frankly, abysmal. How could I be effective when I spent so much time playing and re-playing “what-ifs” in my head?

Finding Time to Worry at Work

One day, I sat myself down for a difficult conversation. While I couldn’t control the executive search process, the hiring decision, the timeline, or the attitude of the new executive, there were some things I could control. Specifically, I could control how I structured my time, how much I accomplished, and my own attitude. Still, some part of me felt that if I didn’t worry about the unknowns, I couldn’t prepare myself emotionally for the horrible events I was anticipating. In other words, I wasn’t ready to completely let go of the worry.

I decided to try a compromise. Rather than spending all day worrying, I set up a recurring appointment with myself from 4:30 to 5:00 PM each weekday. The subject of the appointment on my calendar? “Worry”

Making Time for Everything Else

This sounds ridiculous, and it is. If you think about it, it’s no more ridiculous than worrying without a schedule. When I couldn’t get anything done at work all day because I’m worried about what might happen later, I’ve wasted a whole day.

But every time I started to worry at work, I would tell myself, “Remember our agreement? I agreed to only worry about that from 4:30 to 5. It’s now 8:30. What can I get done right now while I’m waiting to worry?” And I’d start working on something. Then after lunch, same thing. “Nope, can’t worry for another four hours. What can I get done while I’m waiting?”

And do you know what happened? I got a good seven and a half hours of work done that day.

Then, when my 4:30 meeting alert popped up, I got all settled in to worry.  After about two minutes, my brain said, “Well, this is stupid. I’m not going to spend 30 minutes worrying about that.” So I moved on, and managed to get another 28 minutes’ worth of work done!

It worked so well on Monday, that I tried it every day that week. By the end of the week, I had stopped worrying completely.

One of my coworkers called me the next Monday to commiserate. “What are we going to do if they eliminate our jobs in November?” I told him about my scheduling trick and asked him to try it. It worked for him too!

Procrastination Works Too

Maybe you’re a free spirit, not tethered to Microsoft Outlook’s constant demands. There’s still a way to make this work for you.

How many people do you hear procrastinating exercise? How many people procrastinate going on a diet or paying their bills or talking to their financial adviser or signing up for life insurance? All of these things we don’t want to do, we procrastinate.

Try to procrastinate worrying. Tell yourself, “I’ll worry about it later. I’ll worry about it someday.” Or, “I’ll worry about it on Monday, when I start my diet.”

Growth Mindset for Managers

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Are you a manager or leader of a team? If so, you have a unique responsibility to seek and draw out the potential in others. You may be familiar with the term “growth mindset.” Having a growth mindset is important for our own careers. And when we manage others, we need to apply the same principles to how we view others.

Growth Mindset: A Refresher

In her book Mindset, Carol S. Dweck lays out two approaches to how we experience our lives. A fixed mindset says, “I am.”  Identity is static, unchanging, and limited. A growth mindset, on the other hand, says, “I can.” Identity is fluid, evolving, and unlimited. Think for a moment about how you see yourself and which mindset you predominantly use.

Now, especially if you are a manager, consider how you think about others. Have you already decided who on your team has reached their potential? Do you have someone who feel is “not management material”? Consider whether you’re assessing others from a fixed or a growth mindset.

We Typically Get What We Expect

People will typically match the expectations we put on them. For that matter, so do rats. Don’t believe me? Bob Rosenthal‘s research suggests that we can affect someone else’s performance based simply on our expectations of their performance. For an experiment, he arbitrarily labeled some of his lab rats as “incredibly smart” and others as “incredibly dumb.” Then researchers set about testing the rats’ performance. The “smart” rats performed twice as well as the “dumb” ones. Why? Because the researchers treated them better.

Be honest with yourself. Do you have limiting beliefs about some of the people you manage? Based on a few interactions — or worse, what someone else told you to expect — you may have decided that someone can’t present to executives, can’t lead a high-profile project, or wouldn’t succeed if promoted. If so, you may be applying a fixed mindset to others.

Try looking at others through the lens of a growth mindset. Think about the behaviors, skills, abilities, and knowledge that the task requires. Challenge yourself to find ways to develop the person to that level. As a manager, anytime you have those thoughts about another person, ask yourself why. Then ask yourself why again, and then do it again until you get to something that’s not fixed.

While there’s an argument to be made that we all have natural strengths, remember that skills and abilities and knowledge and behaviors are not fixed. Anything can be learned. Empathy can be learned. Interpersonal skills can be learned. There is almost nothing that any of us can do that we were born knowing how to do. If you can learn itm somebody else can too.

Influencing Your Manager’s “Growth Mindset”

What if you’re in the unfortunate position of having a manager who sees you as a fixed entity? I think it’s worth a conversation to challenge their mindset about you. What do you have to lose?

Have a respectful conversation about your goals and aspirations. You could ask questions like:

  • “What are the things that I would need to do to learn how to do this?”
  • “Are there classes I could take?”
  • “Is there someone that could mentor me?”
  • “What books should I read?”
  • “How did you learn this?”

I think the question “How did you learn this?” is great for two reasons. First, it shows respect for their skills and abilities. Second, it’s a great reminder that they went through a learning process to get where they are.

 

Knowledge Transfer: Increase Your Training ROI

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During one of my programs on Creating a Learning Culture, a participant asked, “How can we demonstrate a return on investment (ROI) for our training dollars?” While I’m not a financial wizard, I can tell you that it’s easy to multiply your training value with knowledge transfer activities.

What Is “Knowledge Transfer”?

Knowledge transfer is a fancy way of saying “telling other people what you know.” There are countless ways to conduct knowledge transfer. Some companies even invest in expensive software for this purpose. But if you want to improve team cohesion, interpersonal methods go a long way toward building trusting relationships.

Raise Your Hand… Politely

Perhaps you’re the self-appointed Hermione Granger of your team. You can share what you know without being a know-it-all. Try asking for accountability from your team. For example, you might say, “I just read a blog post on knowledge transfer. With that in mind, each time I attend a professional development webinar, I plan to write a brief synopsis to share with the team. Will you hold me to that?” If you do this every time your boss sends you to training, it shows you’re serious about your professional development. It also shows your manager that you’re a good investment.

Look for Cross-Training Opportunities

Ideally, everyone on your team has different skills and strengths. Reserve a few minutes during team meetings or schedule monthly cross-training sessions so each person can share. These can be formal or informal. The goal may be to actually train team members on different tasks or simply to create a greater awareness about what each person brings to the team.

One-on-One Opportunities

Use formal and informal mentoring programs, manager/employee coaching sessions, and other one-on-one meetings to talk about professional development activities happening in and around the team.

Lunch & Learns and Book Clubs

Lunch & learns are a great way to introduce new concepts. They can also be used to help a new team member “show what they know” and add value while they’re still getting up to speed. Anyone can lead a lunch & learn, and you can even rotate the responsibility.

Your team can form a book club or use rotating “book report-outs” to keep up-to-date on your industry, customers, and skill sets. Better yet, bring in your customers as experts to speak to the team! They’d love to tell people in your office about the challenges they face and how you can better serve them.

Amplify Learning Opportunities

If you’re a member of a professional association , see if you can host member webinars for your team. That way, you’re paying one registration fee (or membership fee) and sharing the direct benefits with the whole group.

If attending as a group isn’t an option, you can still pass along topics of interest to people in your organization. Forward the notification email with a subject line that says, “I thought of you, have you seen this yet?”

How are you getting the most from your team’s training & development investment? Tell me in the comments!

Learn on a Budget: It’s Easier Than You Think!

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“How Do You Learn on a Budget?”

During one of my programs on Creating a Learning Culture, a participant asked, “We’re facing serious expense pressures. How can we continue to support professional development? How can we learn on a budget?”

First of all, a disclaimer: One of my Strengths is Learner, which means I love to learn just for the sake of learning, with no end goal in mind. My other Strengths that amplify Learner are Input (collect information from everywhere), Intellection (think about ideas), Ideation (generate ideas), and Relator (talk about ideas).

My first thought was, “Is it even possible not to learn?” So, here are some tips on how you can “learn on a budget” and make it part of your daily routine!

Learning in the Morning

By the time I wake up in the morning, my husband already has the television turned to the morning news. In the two minutes it takes to make my coffee, I might learn about a new local controversy, business expansion, or human interest story.

Learning in the Afternoon

Even if I don’t go looking for new information during the day, it’s on my radio, on social media, in my email inbox. In the car, I’m likely to catch an NPR story that relates to my work in some way. If I’m not listening to NPR, there’s a good chance I’m tuned into a podcast or audiobook. (Did you know you can get free audiobooks from your local library? Talk about learning on a budget!)

Sometimes, during lunch, I’ll take time out to attend a webinar offered by a professional association, usually free for members. Trade magazines I don’t remember subscribing to show up in my mailbox regularly. There are stacks of books I’ve not read (…yet) in my office and on my nightstand. My Kindle runneth over. (You can also get print and eBooks from your library for free.)

Learning at Suppertime

When my family sits down to eat dinner together (still happens most nights), we talk about what happened during the day. I ask my kids what they tried that was new, what they’re reading or watching, and what they’ve learned. As we’re watching television together after dinner (usually Jeopardy!), we occasionally Google the answers (questions?) we don’t know much about.

Learning Anytime

Here are some more free and low-cost ways to learn on a budget:

  • Blogs
  • YouTube
  • Social media (especially if you follow thought leaders and influencers on LinkedIn)
  • Online magazines, such as Forbes, Inc., and industry-specific journals

I could go for weeks never spending a dime on professional development, but I can’t imagine going a day without learning!

What are your best tips for learning, on a budget?

Life without Closets

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In a recent podcast interview, I was asked this final question: “What one thing do you know?” My answer, in short, was that we all have closets. That statement is in no way intended to detract from the very real experiences of people in the LGBTQ+ community. Rather, while acknowledging that “closets” are most closely associated with LGBTQ+ people, almost everyone feels compelled to hold something back of themselves. Most of us hide some part of ourselves in the shadows, typically out of fear (both founded and unfounded) of judgement of and rejection by others.

A recent Harvard study found that 61 percent of people closet some aspect of themselves!

This is especially true of women, and especially true in the workplace.

I had the privilege of attending a talk by America Ferrera at a recent conference. In her talk, America said, “Diversity is impactful only when we can show up in spaces as who we are. Our power comes from existing as authentically and as fully as ourselves.”

A Balancing Act for Women

In my book, Value and Voice, I focus on women’s ability (or inability) to fully participate. The barriers to full participation are many. One such barrier is the constant balance a woman in the workplace must maintain. She must exhibit enough feminine behaviors to be accepted under the social expectations of women. She must exhibit enough masculine behaviors to be rewarded based on the norms of the male-centric work environment. In other words, she must conform to conflicting stereotypes, while still existing authentically. The truth is, women have to constantly be adjusting these things. Men don’t have to ask themselves, “Who shall I be at work today?” Women do.

Is this balancing a form of closeting? I would argue yes – very much so. Despite the prominence of conversations about “authenticity in the workplace,” most women must hold back, keep in check, reserve, or closet some portion of themselves.

And while this is far too often the case for women and people in the LGBTQ+ community, anyone can be affected. I know I don’t freely share all of me. This is in large part because of judgment and potential ramifications.

Closets Take Emotional Tolls

Closets do take emotional tolls. Holding back those things we reserve very much impacts our performance. As noted by America Ferrera, the result is that we are unable to fully realize and leverage the known advantages of diversity.

Diversity is very powerful. But the advantages of diversity can only be realized when people can freely emerge from whatever closets they may occupy.

Leaders bear the responsibility of creating safe environments for everyone. But is everyone’s responsibility to embrace each other and their authenticity, to put aside judgments, to value everyone, and to make closets unnecessary.

How do we start? It’s simple. Take interest in each person. Ask about their interests. If a person has an artistic bent or hobby, or a unique talent, ask about it! And if a person expresses themselves in attire, hair style, or body art, offer words of approval. Show an interest in the person – the whole person – and watch them blossom. When a person gives more of themselves, everyone benefits. That is the real power of diversity.

Let’s imagine, and work to build, a closet-free world.