One of the joyful wins of being a blogger and (former) corporate employee, is that I can say whatever the hell I like, and publish it with the push of a button.
Previously, when I was a corporate animal, I wasn’t senior or important enough to be completely off the wall and get away with a brush of the hand, “oh, she’s just our brilliant but eccentric leader, don’t mind her,” nor was I so new to working that no-one cared, “oh she’s learning.” So I kept my head down and talked the right talk (mostly).
One thing that always bugged me, was the question of why, when we go into corporate land to do good works for our shareholders, do we give away normal everyday speak? As one popular social media meme quips, let’s leave the “reaching out” to the Four Tops.
The tribal languages and unintelligible TLA’s seem to me a symptom of creating barriers to others, to shut out external parties who are not part of our tribe. They serve to enable a private language, like teenagers and I’m not sure it’s healthy. Are you?
While I was walking up the road in my jeans and shabby Converses on Monday to secure more caffeine between writing opinion pieces like this one, a very dapper man in a sharp suit burst out of the cafe, phone pressed to his ear shouting “but listen, if he doesn’t get the RSD to the CEO in time we’ll lose the RFP and the DMA will crash.” Ok, I made those words up but you get the picture, his poor good-looking face a contorted wrinkle of stress and anxiety.
The dear man, clearly he was about to lose his schizzle with whomsoever was on the other end of the phone. I wonder if the RSD would have mattered so much at 6pm that night, in six weeks time or six months time? He was so caught in the drama of the moment it seems unlikely he even contemplated the thought, but what if he had?
This past weekend I caught up with a good friend of mine who works in a large financial institution. She used to be a lawyer, first practice then corporate. Anecdotally she told me, lawyers have one of the highest incidences of anxiety and depression in the country. Given she is in a very senior peripheral HR function, we got onto the topics of mental wellness and how much the people in companies are really doing or not doing, to support other people in their companies.
Companies don’t make decisions, People do, we argued. Companies are not empathetic, People are. Companies do not wake up one day and decide they will be kind and compassionate today, People do.
At first pass, my dear friend observed her ‘company’ was doing a lot to help people with mental wellbeing. They had an Employee Assistance Plan (EAP), she told me. You might be familiar with these, you can toddle along to a psychologist for usually, up to ten sessions of company funded counselling. It can be very helpful in some cases, I used one such program when our Balinese conference tragically coincided with the Bali bombings, and we came very close to losing most of our team. It was helpful to talk out the experience and for some more deeply affected, probably helped prevent full-blown Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
However for many people, it takes an enormous amount of courage to first go see a counsellor, then admit to having counselling and to some, can be akin to an admission of failure in itself.
Going for psychological assistance or counselling is not a failure.
Let’s say that again.
Getting help is not a failure. It is one of the bravest and most admirable things you can do.
If you were a footballer or a tennis player and your game was off, would you pay for someone to analyse your game and help you tweak it for better performance? Course you would. Does your company pay for experts to come in and help you raise corporate performance? Of course it does.
Anyway, one of the limitations of the EAP is that counselling stops outside the room. We go back to our desks and pick up where we left off and get back to being busy getting the RSD done for the RFP so the CEO doesn’t implode, because she overpromised to a client and now you’re scared of underdelivering and incurring the wrath of the CEO because you need your job to pay your bills. Sound familiar? Goodness, no wonder we’re all stressed.
I ask you this, in your assembled group of daily companions (your company) have you considered how to support each other in being human when the going gets tough?
The EAP is a start but it’s not really enough, the real work is up to People, so what’s the answer, People?