Firstly – thank-you, you are a special kinda folk.
Secondly – I’m so sorry if work is getting more stressful, more people leaving or off sick, huge budget cuts, and yet more people are needing our help. It’s not sustainable.
We need a new approach, to be doing everything we can to make it easier for us to be our best, to increase our capacity to cope with these pressures, and stop the downward stress cycle, and there is so much we can learn from the corporate and sports world to help with this.
I’ve worked in all 3 areas and am still shocked that those dealing with people’s suffering get less effective support.
Caring is not enough, it has to be backed up by proactive plans to cope:
- What keeps you at your best? (starting with work culture, creating psychological safety and individual needs.)
- How can we help you increase your capacity to cope (rather than leave it to chance or assume we can’t)
- What is your stress pattern, your triggers and warning signs and how can we counterbalance them?
- How can we help you recover – both when time is very, very short, and longer?
- How can the team support you with this? (it’s different for each of us)
- How do you deal with the really hard stuff? And the things that break your heart, leave you feeling helpless or angry? Or clash with your values?
- How do you still care and not numb yourself as the pressure mounts? Give it all & still have enough left for yourself?
- How do we inspire you to not only keep going, but to ‘believe’ 😉
- And…
My experience, and the evidence, is that the more we create the conditions for staff to thrive, the easier everything else becomes – including our capacity to support others. And there’s so much more we can do to aid this, but instead I hear staff say it will never be better, it’s just how it is, comments we would challenge if they came from those we support.
Combining psychological safety and doing what works is needed, not just for those we support but for us too, but also hard to do properly when we are stressed.
But what choice do we have really? We all suffer if that downward stress cycle takes hold, and the longer we leave it to reverse things the harder it will become.
And we need you well…we need more people like you well…
Thank-you for all you do…