Greetings, it has been a long time! I know I have been neglecting the blog and my articles for quite a while. Honestly, I have been unmotivated and at times quite discouraged this year. On a positive note, we at Penumbra are working and plugging along despite mass disruption to the corporate world and our industry. I am very grateful that the business has not dried up completely and that Angela and Steve have been amazing in adapting to the new conditions. But I am also mourning a few things that I don’t think will ever come back.

Prior to 2020 I saw Steve at least every other week and Angela about once a quarter. We would meet up in a new city, meet new clients or interact with existing clients, feel the satisfaction of doing a solid day or two of work, enjoy the sights of the town we were in, and reward ourselves by eating at the best local restaurants. It has now been almost two years since I have seen Steve in person. I have only seen Angela once. I have seen four clients in person in the last 22 months.

Even though I am not happier working from home, I was curious how others were feeling about it so I recently held a poll on my LinkedIn account where I asked:

“If you started working from home last year and still are, how happy are you now compared to when you worked in person with colleagues?”

70% said definitely more happy, 11% said definitely less happy, 19% said about the same. This is admittedly a small sample but means that for employers who want to bring back an in-office work team you will likely have an uphill climb in maintaining employee engagement. And I worry greatly for our collective emotional intelligence.

Remote work does not promote empathy. A cornerstone of empathy requires us to read others. That includes subtle non-verbal signals people send with a gesture, a look, a blush, a smile. Trying to see those things in small video boxes (if video is on at all) is almost impossible. If we are in person but masked up, we also lose some very key components of communication. Sharing a smile bonds people. Laughing at yourself shows humility. Without the visual clues as to the message behind the words, language takes on a whole new meaning. This requires you to share more about what you feel, what your reactions are, and why you have a certain opinion. It requires us to ask others about those things too.

But the reality is we aren’t sharing more verbally, we are sharing less. Our firm has processed hundreds of EQi assessments since the end of 2020, and across the board, Emotional Expression (the constructive expression of emotions) is down. People are doing it less, perceived as too risky. If I share what I really feel you may get offended or you may feel triggered. I may be seen as not politically correct. We have seen too many examples this year of cancel culture getting people fired from jobs due to unpopular opinions. So we keep our faces hidden and our mouths shut. How can that ever allow us to use EQ or communicate with efficiency and effectiveness? How do we build high performing teams among a group of strangers? How do we ever have trust between us?

Employees have also become hyper-sensitive to conflict. Keep in mind that our amygdala’s have been in overdrive for nearly two years. The amygdala is the primitive center of our brain that is the emotional center of our being. When triggered, it takes over rational thought.

From Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman (pg 16):

“Incoming signals from the senses let the amygdala scan every experience for trouble. This puts the amygdala in a powerful post in mental life, something like a psychological sentinel, challenging every situation, every perception, with but one kind of question in mind, the most primitive: ‘Is this something I hate? That hurts me? Something I fear?’ If so – if the moment at hand somehow draws a ‘yes’ – the amygdala reacts instantaneously, like a neural tripwire, telegraphing a message of crisis to all parts of the brain. It triggers the secretion of the body’s fight-or-flight hormones, mobilizes the centers for movement, and activates the cardiovascular system, the muscles and the gut. The amygdala’s extensive web of neural connections allows it, during an emotional emergency, to capture and drive much of the rest of the brain – including the rational mind.”

In many ways, we have been experiencing a lingering, chronic, intermittent amygdala trigger. Small things might set us off that otherwise wouldn’t. We may interpret harmless comments from others as threats. We may feel that any setback that happens to us is the result of someone else’s negligence instead of simply bad luck or something that is the result of our own actions. We may feel like a victim.

Most employees working a desk job have also shared the stress of having a non-stop stream of meetings. We have known for years that sitting all day looking at a computer screen is terribly unhealthy. Moving around, getting exercise, and giving yourself breaks between calls are all things that you can do to help yourself and your mental wellbeing. Instead of another Zoom call, consider a phone call while you are out taking a walk. Make time for non-agenda’d communication. Turn your emails off on your phone in the evenings. Turn off audio alerts on your computer. Lose the laptop.  

Brene Brown is a wonderful author and her work has been on my mind a lot this year. She talks about the role of shame and the power it has over our behavior. There has been plenty of shame used this year in a variety of settings for a variety of reasons. She also talks about the “vulnerability armory” which is our defense mechanism against hurt and disappointment. Interestingly, in Daring Greatly she shares a participant experience in which they felt the most vulnerable and many used examples of sharing joy. She expected fear and shame, but not joy.

As one person put it, “It’s easier to live disappointed than it is to feel disappointed. It feels more vulnerable to dip in and out of disappointment than just to set up camp there. You sacrifice joy, but you suffer less pain.”  

It feels like that this year. People have opted for the safe, the comfortable, the least risky choices and sadly, sacrificing some really positive parts of life for it. Both Facebook and Microsoft have introduced the concept of the Metaverse this year. The idea will be a virtual universe that will allow us to go to work and attend meetings as avatars. Has real life gotten so painful or difficult that we must retreat into a fake world?

One of the deepest concerns I have from this year is the swift willingness some in the private sector have had to implement policies of overt employee discrimination. These are organizations that prior to 2021 seemed to me to have the highest commitment to diversity and inclusion who I would have expected to fight vigorously against any type of disparate treatment of employees regardless of the reason. Well intended or not, the net result is an endorsement of terminating employees based on their medical status. It leads me to question if discrimination in the workplace based on any factor is justified? And if it is, who decides what the criteria is? How do we protect employees from “mandate creep” and how do we prevent institutions from segregating and separating employees under the pretext of the greater good? There are not many examples from history in which those practices end well.

In 2022, I wish you good physical and mental health. I wish you love and joy, but I also wish you pain and disappointment, because it means you are fully living your real life. I wish you self-awareness and empathy and feeling human connections with co-workers. I wish you awareness and uncensored information to make the best decisions for you and your family. I wish you a workplace free from discrimination. And lastly (and I really mean this) I hope we have an opportunity to see each other in person. You can check out my new grey hair!