I’m going to preface this article by saying that business is about making money, period. I think we can all agree on that, right?
We can wax lyrical about our noble intentions and how we want to change the world by *insert your preferred ‘humanitarian’ aspiration here*, but at the end of the day, we’re all in it for one reason and one reason only…to make a living.
That being said, I do believe we can use our businesses to make the world a better place, and I’m not talking about ending poverty or starvation (although wouldn’t that be amazing if we could!), I’m talking a little closer to home than that. I’m talking about the lives that you do have the ability to impact: your employees. Whether you have one employee or one hundred, you have the power to make lives better.
A majority of the active workforce will spend more waking hours at work than they will with their families, ‘surviving’ Monday to Friday and ‘living’ for the weekend. They’re under pressure, stressed out and quite often worried about money.
This anxiety-riddled, high-pressure lifestyle has a (massively under-rated) negative impact on business productivity. When people are in ‘survival’ mode, their brain stops functioning efficiently. A stress state triggers the ‘fight or flight’ response, which leaves a person unable to view challenges with clarity and logic. Their primitive reflexes take over and small issues that would normally seem easily solvable, become overwhelming problems.
If this sounds familiar, then you may have a team who is underutilising their brains and doing half the work they are otherwise capable of.
Obviously, there will always be pressures and stressors in the workplace, that’s an unavoidable fact of both business and life. So, if we can’t remove the cause, how do we treat the ‘symptoms’?
1. Be empathetic: Relate to them as humans rather than worker-bees; know them as people; understand their motivators and empower them to achieve the goals they’re aiming for in life. I know this sounds like a laundry list of inspirational quotes but if you’re empowering your team and helping them build a life that they don’t need to merely ‘survive’, then you’re changing their brain-state, and in turn, you’re strengthening your own business.
2. Promote mindfulness: Model mindful behaviour in the workplace and show your team better ways of coping with stressful situations. Let them know that it’s okay to stop and take a breath to gather themselves when they’re feeling overwhelmed. Even pausing quickly to breathe can help reset the brain.
3. Allow room for mistakes: When people don’t feel safe to make mistakes, stress-levels rise and ironically, that’s when most mistakes occur. If your team feel comfortable about owning mistakes, they’re more likely to be creative and try new ideas; and less likely to hide mistakes, shift blame and create distrust amongst themselves.
4. Encourage breaks: If you can see that someone has hit their wall and/or flipped out of their ‘logic brain’, suggest they stop and make a cup of tea, grab a glass of water, or even take a quick walk around the block if needed. It may seem like five-minutes of down-time, but that five minutes could save several hours of unproductive work.
5. Create workplace routines: Try to build some structure into the working week. We’re not talking about micro-management here, just higher-level undertakings. Whether it’s a morning meeting; weekly team catch-up; end-of-week drinks; or daily project updates, schedule it for the same time every day/week, to provide consistency.
If people feel valued, empowered, secure, and part of something bigger than themselves, then they stop surviving and start flourishing, which will ultimately have a positive impact on your business.
