EQ and Psychological Safety - We Need Both and We Need Them NOW

Mass layoffs, political instability, dread about what hybrid will be on offer, burnout and post-pandemic stress disorder. Leadership that’s unfit for the new job. Confusion. Everyone’s mental health is suffering. Job satisfaction and experience long forgotten as topics. All this is too true to ignore and none is looking up. In fact, from what the data tells us about our clients, most teams are in a strange state of mind. Emotional Engagement is higher but Flexibility dropped. As did Resilience across the board. We’re all worn out and across the board, there’s a feeling of unease and uncomfortable instability.

Some have asked if the Amazon “revolt” -when they insisted that workers return to the office for a few days a week, 25k (THOUSANDS!) employees took to a Slack channel to protest under no unclear terms- and the way it was squashed -they remain firm on the demand for now, presumably as a covert lay-off technique- means anything for the future of WFAA (work from anywhere, anytime) and I think it doesn’t. All of these anomalies are temporary.

Irrespective of what the company demands and what public returns to the office we will witness over the next couple of years when the dust is all settled on the upheaval of understanding hybrid, knowledge/office work will never again be performed from cubicles only. It just won’t. None of our kids will be willing to be nonsensically tied to a desk. None of them will take jobs that have no flexibility. Or no human-centred cultures devoid of HumanDebt.

Until that future, we have to accept we are part of the “sacrificial lamb” generation in terms of this major shift in the way knowledge work happens and try and cope with the way it makes us feel extra unsafe.

Teams need psychological safety more than ever. Not for performance only but for survival. Let me explain.