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Examples Of Leaders Creating An Ecosystem Of Self Care

Posted by Carole Mahoney on 1/12/21 7:15 AM

Examples of Leaders Creating an Ecosystem of Self Care

Self care isn't something that should be forced into your schedule. It should be something that we do throughout the day.

Learn more from Speaker & Self Care Expert, Jeanette Bronée, in this post!

 

 

Carole Mahoney:
Did you hear about Facebook's announcement that Mark Zuckerberg is giving all of his employees the week of Thanksgiving off because they have worked so hard in unprecedented times?

What's your thoughts on that? Because, as you described that, that was the first thing that came to mind for me is, it seems kind of like, "Okay, you're burned out now so go ahead and take a trip away for a week." Versus having that ecosystem that's built into the daily culture where, and I don't know how exactly it would play out but instead of having everybody take a week off give them Fridays off, give them half a day off once a week for completely for self-care, or not allowed to answer email from this time to this time. What are some of the other examples that you've seen leaders do to help create that ecosystem?

Jeanette Bronée:
Right. I think we get ... I agree with you that having these like scattered time off is essential, because time off is when we recover and restore. I think it's important that we don't just think of self-care as time off. I think it's important that we think of it as what we do throughout the day, a lunch break.

Carole Mahoney:
Simple, right?

Jeanette Bronée:
Simple, but for example, way back in the '80s when I was working with Esprit, it was mandatory to stop for lunch. And it wasn't because they wanted to be like, "Oh, we want to make sure that you're being fed." It was because it supported a team-oriented culture, because we would sit down and not only get a moment for ourselves to just recover from whatever energy we had burned already, and refueling ourselves with food and water, but we also had that moment of interaction, a conversation, so that it created a culture of belonging and teamwork.

I have never seen anybody, or any teams, work as hard as we did at Esprit, but also supported each other as much as we absolutely could. I've never seen it anywhere else happening to that extent.

Google, also, just said that all their benefit programs about lunch, and healthy food, and stuff like that, it wasn't just about food and healthy options as a benefit. It was to create a place where people could sit down and talk to each other.

So, I think the importance here is that we understand that a sense of belonging, and feeling that we matter, that is a crucial point in not burning out. That is our emotional health. So, when we're under anxiety and pressure, and constantly focused on result, we forget the process. The process is about the emotional health that happens between physical health, "Okay. I need my meals, I need my sleep, I need my water."

Then, we have emotional health and emotional needs, which means interaction, being able to have a conversation with people that is not focused on a particular outcome.

What is the one thing that people miss the most during a pandemic? Unscheduled conversations, right? Times where you can just like, "Hey," meet somebody at the water cooler talk. All of those things that we don't have because it's not a scheduled call.

It's not based on, "Oh, I got to reach something."  That takes that edge off, where we're just humans.

Carole Mahoney:
If you think about the focusing on the process, doing the work, if you're in sales right now you know more than probably anyone else that the one thing you cannot control right now is the outcome, the result. Because there's too much uncertainty, there's politically anything else wise that people are, when they feel uncertainty they are less likely to buy.

So, as a seller, burning out, how do you get through the slumps? How do you get through those things? It really is about focusing on the process.

Want to learn more?
The full half hour session with Jeanette is available on demand on BrightTalk! Click here to watch or visit Jeanette's website to learn more and follow her on social media.

Topics: What Sales Can Learn From Series