If You're Not Supported Regarding Self-Care: Leave!

Yesterday’s article about the brewing further crisis we may be facing if we keep ignoring the major “to do” of having to process what we have been through over the pandemic has gotten a lot of reactions. I am very grateful to all the people who have sent messages sharing honestly and frankly. For how LinkedIn has become much more human and intensely more personal, we still spend most of our time posturing, impression managing, ensuring we remain the functional robots we feel we have been hired to be and maintaining an image we feel we worked too hard to create to let reality and honesty interfere with it.

People with stories of what they called “low-level burnout” and of “crisis brewing under the surface” and “complete mental anguish every day”. People who all knew it wasn’t right - not to themselves and not to the company either who are getting a lesser version of themselves in the process, but who felt they had no space and support to reverse it.

In today’s video, we make two key points and one of them is a frank piece of direct advice. While it may be unpopular it’s time we keep it real and call a spade a spade - we all have to stand up for ourselves and land the need and right for the human work.

The only real and true non-2019 advice is to be 110% bullish on your own self-care needs. Firstly understand why you deserve them then work out precisely what it means to you (some people can do an hour of mindfulness and breathing a day whereas others recharge their batteries with a stroll over lunch or even blocking out meetings past a certain hour) then ask for your employer to recognise them and support them. What if you go through all this trouble and they don’t? Frankly - leave. Don’t wait for it to get better, don’t presume the company will eventually come around to doing what they ought to, just leave. Go to a place where being cared for and respected and having support for self-care and the human work in the team is not considered a luxury. Thanks to the pandemic there are loads of them around and you deserve to be able to give your workplace the best version of yourself. That version is healthy and happy.

Leaders have it super hard too and they need to heed the advice above and become part of “The Even Greater Resignation”. Let’s face it, nauseating of a cliche as this is, it really is lonely at the top. What translates into reality is that leaders are rarely part of strong teams so they can’t lean on the sense of certainty and empowerment that being in a psychologically safe team brings. Furthermore, the higher people are the less inclined, to be honest about their personal human needs as if humanity is seen as a failure of leadership. This means that they are even less inclined to stand up for their rights to take care of themselves and burnout is even more prevalent.