3 steps to nurturing tunes of hope in your team in hard times.
Hope is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all
Wrote Emily Dickinson in the 19th Century. She portrays hope paradoxically as something light -as if it might depart at a moment, yet persistent and tenacious. Although we tend to focus on more tangible elements of well-being hope is an essential resource as we navigate a resilient path through the strains of the global pandemic.
The critical role of hope was brought home to me last week when my hopes of exiting lockdown in time for the school holidays were dashed. These are the moments that I have found most difficult during the pandemic those moments when hope that I was holding was not fulfilled. Social support is associated with the presence of hope, and in those moments when our hopes are dashed we most need others. At these times others are able to show us how the thing with feathers still persistently sings. As a team leader part of your role supporting your team through the pandemic means constantly nurturing these tunes of hope in your team.
A basic definition of hope describes hope as wanting something to happen. In well-being and therapy research it is all about how we see, understand and think about the gap between the present and our view of the future. It involves three elements: our vision of the future, our ability to generate pathways that will get us to that future, and what we believe about our ability to generate those options and move toward that pathway.
I have observed in myself and in my clients that often in difficult times our hope becomes fixated on removing the difficulty. Sometimes this is appropriate but at times the difficulty is totally out of our control and the hope of it disappearing can be unrealistic. While it is important to hang onto our hopes and expectations of things that we can do or enjoy once the ‘global pandemic is over’ (a trip to the cinema with friends anyone?) we also have to acknowledge that this is not in our control. We also have to acknowledge that for those of us in social, health and human services that it is going to be a long time before the impact of the pandemic stops influencing the complexity and volume of our work. In the middle of the enduring nature of our struggles we need to find closer and more realistic things that we can nurture hope towards. In this situation, it is more effective to nurture process hopes rather than goal hopes. These are hopes around who we are going to be as individuals and teams in the face of the stresses and strains that we face. It may be nurturing the hope that we will continue to serve our clients effectively, while growing a cohesive, wise team that is high in well-being and navigates the pandemic with resilience.
Your team needs to have their hope nurtured as this enables them to more easily nurture the hope of their clients, and we all need to hang on to hope as we navigate the challenges of the pandemic. There are 3 steps to nurturing hope in your team:
Spend some time thinking about the state of your own hopes, clarify your vision for the medium and long term. If you are having trouble being hopeful, think about who around you nurtures your own hope, be intentional about asking them to have hope-filled conversations. Be realistic about simultaneously holding hope that this pandemic will be over someday (it will!) and acknowledging that we can’t keep operating as if it will be over next week, and so can tough it out. If you can’t make the changes you desire (more resources, less demand!) set some process hopes, identify what values and qualities you hope your team will show as you deal with those restraints.
Take some time to discover the existing hopes of your team. Talk about those hopes, find ways that you can nurture and tend that hope. Discuss with the team whether their hopes are realistic given the organisational and resource constraints that you face. Take the time to nurture alternative hopes together if needed, encourage your team to generate pathways to those hoped-for futures. Provide resources for those pathways if and when you can.
Acknowledge the struggle but communicate hope. Hope is not a way of enforcing positivity rather it is a resource that helps us in the middle of the struggle. Talk about what your hopes are for your team, your service, your clients. Talk about the goals you want to achieve, talk about the process hopes that you have. Demonstrate the value of hope by making time in your busy schedule to have these conversations - yes hope-filled conversations are as important as tending to clients. Communicate your belief in your team that they can make it through the challenges that they face with resilience and tenacity.
Finally, I want to leave you with a quote from Marcus Buckingham:
Great leaders are alchemists, transforming our fear of the unknown into confidence in the future.
making friends with fear and worry during a pandemic
Yesterday I forgot to apply hand sanitiser despite being in a meeting only a few hours earlier where I was told to apply it after every client and given a bottle that was in my pocket. I had got too involved in what I was doing and it had not become top of mind any more. Fear has an important role to play in keeping us safe. In this case we could argue that I was not fearful enough, that it is fear that helps me be vigilant and remember to apply the hand sanitiser.
As we face this pandemic and the financial and psychological implications there is in fact a lot to worry about, a lot to even fear. What we don’t need to be worrying about or fearful about is our own fears and worries. When a global event of this size and scope occurs worries and fears are an appropriate and normal reaction. A greater understanding of our fears and worries can help us to better navigate our emotional response to all that is happening. This is written primarily for people who on the whole have a good level of emotional and psychological well-being. If you have existing trauma or an anxiety disorder that is being exacerbated by the current situation you should seek extra support from your health team.
Fear
Fear is an awareness of danger that is experienced physically in our bodies and also interpreted and amplified by our mind. You can see how useful fear is, and you are probably familiar with the ‘fight or flight’ response, that enables us to escape danger when we need to. The fight or flight response is a state of alert in our bodies, it involves responses such as an increase in heart rate, blood rushing to our muscles and limbs and the release of adrenaline. These responses allow you to respond quickly to the danger that you are facing. You can probably think of times when this has been helpful. Perhaps you misjudged the space that you needed to cross the road and a car was suddenly coming towards you. It is the flight respond that helped you dart out of the way just in time. Or perhaps you sped across the playground and caught your child just as they were about to fall off the climbing frame. We might even say afterwards that we did it without thinking, because our bodily response and the more basic parts of our brain took over.
At this time of viral pandemic we do face a very real danger, and it is that awareness of danger that helps us to take the protective actions we need. It is that sense of threat that helps me be vigilant and remember the hand sanitiser. However, we can develop two unhelpful responses to that state of fear. These unhelpful responses come from the work that our mind does with the fear, the amplification and thoughts that occur around our natural fear response. The first unhelpful response that some people experience is that they may be very uncomfortable with the feeling of being afraid, they then begin to judge the fear response negatively. This may become associated with the feeling that they shouldn’t be afraid, that fear is terrible and this can lead them to try to avoid or suppress the fear, or to become fearful or upset by the fear itself (rather than the threat). Suppression can make the fear worse, and people can become quite distressed by their experience of fear. To combat this extra distress we can make friends with the fear, to see it for the helpful message that it is. Some people find it helpful to just thank their mind for keeping them safe when they feel that fear lurking. The second distressing response that can occur to fear, is when we are unable to quiet the flight or fight response, so we spend all our time at a high state of alert, even when we are not in immediate danger. Physiologically the fight or flight response has a fairly short cycle that will naturally resolve and come back to a state of rest. Some people may have more trouble than others coming back to this neutral stance. This may be particularly difficult in situations like the viral pandemic when the threat is all around us, and the news is so accessible to us. So it is important that we have strategies in place to quite the fight or flight response (more on that soon).
Anxiety
We can distinguish fear which is alertness to a present danger from anxiety which is when our minds project that sense of threat into the future. Anxiety is centred on the thought that something bad is going to happen to me tomorrow or next month or next year. But our body is already going into the fight or flight mode to keep us safe from danger - except the danger is not in the here and now. This constant state of alertness can be quite distressing for both our bodies and our minds, and is often associated with a certain amount of discomfort and avoidance of actually feeling the anxiety.
Worry
Worry is a more cognitive (thought) based response to things that may happen in the future, it may not be associated with the physiological response that accompanies anxiety. Worries are the niggly thoughts that chatter away in the back of your mind - what are you going to do if your child has to stay home from school? What do you need to do? How will you entertain them? Although these worries can be associated with stress, usually they are fairly helpful in assisting us to plan and remember things and generally sort ourselves out. Sometimes however these can create what I call worry loops where the worries go around and around with no resolution or plan. We became suck in a loop going over the same thoughts. A helpful way to break these loops is to identify the emotion or feeling that is behind the worry as often the cognitive focus is a way of avoiding the emotion.
Responding to Fear, Anxiety and Worry.
Understanding the ways fear, anxieties and worries work is an important first step in helping us manage them in the face of the pandemic. We also need to put into action some strategies for responding to these nomal concerns, fears and worries. Here are 4 strategies that you can use to help with your feelings at this time, they are sympathise, soothe, specify, strategise.
Sympathise
Have you ever thought about how you talk to yourself when you are worried, fearful or anxious? Have a go at responding to yourself with extra kindness and compassion. Emphasise how normal your response is, and open up a little with curiosity about your feelings. It can be helpful to talk to yourself as you would a child, “oh dear one, you are afraid today, that is normal considering what we are facing”. It can be helpful to gently identify the feeling behind your unsettledness. Are you fearful, worried, sad, grief stricken, or angry? It can be helpful to find a kind friend to talk to about how you feel and even about how you feel about your feelings. If you are unable to chat to a friend, journalling may also be helpful. Remember that fear and worry are helpful and normal but do remain alert to any changes or distress that you may develop.
Soothe
Another useful strategy is to be able to soothe both your physiological response to fear and your feelings. Although the fear response is helpful, we do need some times when we are back in neutral and our bodies are calm. As well as the fight flight system our bodies are also wired with a soothing system and we may need to prompt that into action. One of the key ways we do that is through affection and bonding with others, this releases oxytocin and other soothing neuro-chemicals that calm our physiological alertness. You may like to identify a safe friend or family member that makes you feel connected and loved and is free with their affection, make sure you have set up ways of connecting with them (given the need for social distance). You can also take actions to calm your body directly. Breathing exercises (vagal breathing), meditation and mindfulness are all helpful ways of calming our bodies and minds.
Specify
I am noticing that people are expressing a vague and amorphous sense of dread. I suspect that some of it is grief around their expectations of safety and how the world works has been turned upside down. It can be helpful to be more curious about this vague sense of fear and anxiousness. What is it actually that you are upset about? Investigate your feelings and try and identify the root of your worries. What is it that you are actually afraid of? There are many things to be afraid of in this scenario but we will all fear different aspects of it. What is it actually that is concerning you? Is it the fear of dying alone, is it fear of leaving your children, is it the financial impact of being laid off, or is it needing to self-isolate with your 4 children? It can help to try and pin down the key one or two or three fears that are most pertinent and pressing for you.
Strategise
Once you have identified the root of your fears, you may be able to take action to mitigate them, and the ability to take action in turn may make the fears seem less pressing. Research shows quite clearly that things are more stressful when they are unpredictable and out of our control. It can be helpful to identify what is in your control, and make strategies to take action on those things that are within your control. If you are worried for you kids what do you need to talk to them about, or provide for them to ensure that that they are developing their own resilience. If you are afraid of financial recession what information do you need to help you plan for that eventuality. Maybe most importantly of all what principles and values guide how you live and how can you act in line with them each day despite your fears and worries. You can take actions to support your well-being and it is worth thinking about whether the information flow that you are exposed to is helpful for your well-being or adding to your fear and worries. Think carefully about how much information you actually need for your well-being and limit yourself to 1 or 2 reliable sources if this enables you to cope better.
You are resilient!
Finally remember that on the whole people are resourceful, adaptable and resilient and the majority cope with disaster well, and some even come through stronger and with a greater sense of who they are and what is important to them. That means that you are resourceful, adaptable and resilient and that whatever you face in the coming days you will surprise yourself in your ability to cope.
professional supervision is for everyone
External (or professional) supervision is of great benefit to everyone who works in a people helping role. For many of us it is mandatory for our professional registration, for others it is highly recommended. I believe that regular supervision can help many people who may not be familiar with it, or required to attend as part of their work role. In fact everyone that works with people should consider attending supervision. Professional supervision is described by Lane and Corrie (2006) as “A formal independent process of reflection and review which enables practitioners to increase individual self-awareness, develop their competence and critique their work.”
Professional supervision is for you - even if you have not thought about it before:
Supervision is perhaps an unhelpful naming for professional supervision. There is a tendency to associate ‘supervision’ with line management and someone prioritising or evaluating our tasks. But that is not what professional supervision is. Rather professional supervision is a safe space outside of the regular work environment, to experience facilitated reflection on your work, your self and the interaction between the two.
Professional Supervision is for you because the world is a busy, ambiguous, ever-changing place: It is a world of inputs: podcasts, blog posts and e-books. Information comes to you from so many different directions. Your mind is a hard-working receptacle collecting experiences, client work, what you read, what you hear, what you experience and see. It is easy to just keep filling your mind with more and more input. The result is that your mind begins to feel like an overflowing washing basket, all jumbled and crumpled and muddled. It then becomes easy to start to lose your sense of self, to drift from your values, to feel overwhelmed and to lose your self-confidence. Professional supervision is a powerful pause amongst the input. It is a safe reflective space outside all the demands that you are facing. It is a chance for you to get help sorting and folding all the jumbled piles in your mind, and to consider the changing world and the changing needs of your clients. Facilitated reflection with a skilled supervisor will leave you feeling neat and orderly with the increased clarity and insight that you need for sustainable, flexible and excellent work.
Professional Supervision is for you if you work with others:
Caring for or helping others requires a lot from you, professional supervision is part of how you can care for yourself as you face all those needs. Professional Supervision began in the social work profession in the late 1800’s but quickly spread throughout other professions that are centred on people helping, such as counselling, psychotherapy and psychology. Now it is common in a range of professions, from spiritual direction, and clergy to youth work and nursing, and social workers call it their gift to the helping professions. Support is an essential foundation of professional supervision, it is a safe place for you to take and process all the emotions that your work with others creates in you. A supervisor will provide support and guidance to help you work with and be curious about your emotions, and how you can use them in your work, and care for yourself in your experiences of strong emotions.
Professional Supervision is for you - if you use your ‘self’ in your work:
You - your own self is the source of and resource for your work. If you use your own presence and self, your own story and your own emotional engagement with clients then supervision is an essential support for you in this work. A supervisor can help you explore how you are being your real self in your work or whether there are areas in which you are holding back. They can help you craft your role so that you can be more authentic and have ownership of the way you work. Professional supervision is also a safe space to explore the vulnerability involved in your use of self and how you can ensure you are doing so in a sustainable way.
Professional Supervision is for you - if you want to grow:
A key outcome of attending supervision is growth. If you want to grow in your professional identity, your confidence, or in the quality and extent of your work, then a supervisor can nurture and encourage your to stretch in those areas. A supervisor can help you unpack your attitudes to feedback so that you can use it more effectively and will be there to talk through cases and client work with you. Professional supervision is an ideal space in which to explore and experiment with your own authority as a professional and to process your growth or struggles in this area.
Professional Supervision is for you - if you want accountability:
Unlike coaching or counselling, professional supervision contains a focus on the end user of the service. The clients or people that that you work with with ideally should receive a better service because of your attendance at professional supervision. This means there are many layers or relationships and systems to work with in a supervision session. Accountability is a central component of supervision, of course this is influenced by the professional standards within which you and your supervisor work. Through reflecting on your work with your supervisor you have an opportunity to consider your decision making processes and to work on increasing your ethical maturity. It is a safe space to consider complex relationships and the ethical implications of these.
If you are unsure what benefit you would gain from attending supervision - supervision is still for you.
There is a lot to be gained from attending supervision. In my own experience supervision has been transformational. It facilitated my growth as a telephone counsellor by providing safe challenges that took me out of my comfort zone, it provided emotional support and mindset shifts when I struggled with the organisations I was part of. As someone who now works by myself it ensures someone is checking on my well-being and resilience practices and it has enabled me to grow in confidence in the services that I provide. I consider supervision an essential component of ensuring that my practice is both competent and ethical.
Supervision is for everyone:
Supervision is indeed a gift, a useful and empowering practice for anyone who works in some sort of caring role with people. Working with people requires extra care and support to do well over the long term. In the not for profit sector within it can seem that each year requires more empathy, more client support, more professionalism, more learning of new skills and knowledge and more pressure to do more with less. In the face of these increasing demands working sustainably and with attention to self-care, spirituality or values, work-life balance and resilience is hard work. Therefore professional supervision is an almost essential layer of support to ensure you are working sustainably.
I LOVE to talk about supervision, so if you have any questions about professional supervision and whether it is right for you I am most happy to answer them
Using our strengths and gifts for our own self-care
Do you know your own strengths, values and gifts? It is likely that you have come across some discussion of strengths and values in your workplace, as it has become a common focus recently. Most of the discussion of gifts and strengths, focuses on how we use them to interact with the world, how we put them into practice in our work, lives or parenting. The wellbeing literature points to an association between the opportunity to use our strengths at work as being associated with greater well-being. So knowing and using our gifts can be an important step in our self-care to increase and maintain our wellbeing.
After my last post about self-care, I have had various conversations about self-care including my own. On one level self-care is easy - most of us know the principles and have some ideas of the things that help us be healthy and feel re-energised.
It is not lack of knowledge that prevents us from taking actions to care for ourselves.
Other elements are at play that prevents us from prioritising self-care. Often it can be that we haven’t developed enough self-compassion, we may not value self-care, or prioritise our needs.
It is much easier to achieve goals that are in line with our values and use our strengths and gifts. Yet most of the discussion around strengths focuses on their outward expression. A step in becoming better at self-care is to consider turning the best of ourselves inwards. Self-care may become easier if we find ways to base our practices in what we value, and to mobilise our strengths and gifts in the service of our own well-being and self-care.
The first step in this is identifying your strengths, values and talents. A good place to start is with the VIA survey that you can find here.
Then think about your values and how they can underpin your self-care. For example, if you value honesty taking time, to be honest about how you feel about your work and your energy levels may be an important self-care practice for you. I place a high value on wisdom and I see part of wisdom as caring for myself well. Self-care will become easier if you take the time to base it in some of your core values.
Think about how you can turn your gifts and strengths to yourself and your own care. We often overlook applying strengths and gifts to ourselves. The most obvious example comes from those I know and work with who have gifts of empathy and compassion. These gifts tend to be mostly focussed outwards, and it takes an intentional attempt at refocussing for them to turn that same level of empathy and compassion to themselves. Often people who are strong in communication and humour also tend to focus these gifts outwards, intentionally re-focussing these inwards may include journalling to communicate better with yourself, and doing things just for fun to express your humour rather than seeking to be making others laugh. I am trying to use my strength of curiosity to become more curious about what is going on in my own mind and to spend more time exploring my own emotional reactions to things as a way of increasing my mindfulness.
Thinking about our strengths and how we can apply them to ourselves, not just others, is a key component of helping us to prioritise and value self-care.
I have put together a weekly worksheet (also available as a pdf) to help you reflect on how your are and can use your strengths to care for yourself. At the end of each day reflect on how you used your strengths for others, what you did (or didn’t) do for your own self-care and think about how you could have used this strength to support and re-energise yourself.
As always I would love to hear how you are using your strengths as a base for self-care.
keep your creativity flowing
I spent two days last weekend at the Auckland Writers Festival. It is a highlight of my year, an event I look forward to and I planned ahead with work and parenting commitments so that I could attend. I enjoyed being around creative people, listening to them describe their creative process, hearing their passion for their work and their topics. I discovered new books and authors that I haven’t read yet, I met interesting people in the queue for the bathroom and I heard about new ideas. I left with my brain buzzing, making new connections and throwing interesting thoughts together. I left inspired and full of new ideas.
If you are in a role that requires you to be creative or innovative it is wise to be thinking about how you keep your creativity flowing. You cannot treat your creativity like it is an endless stream that will keep flowing no matter how much you draw from it. Your creativity is precious and fragile and needs tending and nurturing with care. You need to balance output with input, to be thinking about how much you are drawing from your creativity and how much you are feeding into your creativity. If you neglect the tending and the input you may end up feeling like you are wringing the last drops of water from a dry sponge as you try to come up with your next idea.
Part of my well-being practice is to pay careful attention to the effect that different people, different situations and different types of input have on my ability to be creative. I have discovered that certain people who have certain ways of presenting themselves and their ideas tend to shut down my thinking, they don’t stimulate my thoughts, and they leave me dry. Other people leave me bursting with thoughts, feeling inspired and creative, and wondering how I am going to implement all the ideas I am having. Creativity is a complex mix of personality, ways of thinking and the influence of others (including friends and colleagues). So to nurture my creativity I need to pay attention to the mix that is created around me. Part of how I nurture my creativity is to make sure that my life is balanced with lots of events and people that fire up my creative thoughts. Attending the Writers Festival is not a luxury for me but an essential practice for nurturing my creativity, and making sure that my ideas are still flowing.
