During the COVID-19 lockdown, I worked as a comms manager - it was INTENSE. Our company was considered essential, and while I mostly worked from home, we had factory and lab employees who had to report to the office.
One day, we were all living our normal lives, and the next, we were packing up our monitors, computers and setting up offices alongside our kids, who were all doing school from home.
I was so grateful my kids were in HS - because I have no idea how moms and dads with littles got anything done. It was intense, unpredictable, and scary. As a communications leader, I had to work hard to share information about how we were going to share information moving forward.
We had to shift all our plans - literally - overnight.
While we were all home, figuring out our new normal, I had job stress, everyone-home-all-the-time stress, no socialization stress and so much more stress than I've ever had in my entire life. I started seeing a therapist - online of course - because I was really angry, upset and struggling.
With everyone at home, my therapist and I worked through the things causing me anxiety and started to set up boundaries and plans that would help me manage what I was able to control. Going through the motions of listing the stressful stuff was both cathartic, laughable, and overwhelming. She had me list everything - and at first, I felt silly.
My list looked a bit like this:
Cooking
Early morning meetings
Slow internet
Messy bedrooms
Laundry
After 5PM meetings
Zoom meetings when I was still in PJs
Getting dressed for meetings I had to take on camera
Getting dressed for meetings where I thought I had to be on camera - but actually didn't
So you can see how insane it made me feel.
Well, we tackled each thing that was on my list, and when we came to laundry, she asked me to elaborate. And this is what I told her:
I do laundry for my entire family. I wash it, dry it, fold it, put in a basket and deliver to bedrooms. All I asked the girls to do was put it away. Then, I'd get the next hamper of laundry with CLEAN FOLDED CLOTHES from the last load IN THE HAMPER. I was yelling, kids were sorry, I was still mad - it was bananas. So she told me to stop doing their laundry. She advised me to teach them how to do it - stock up on extra laundry pods and let go.
I had all kinds of objections - what if they wear dirty clothes? What if they are all wrinkled? What if they turn everything pink? And on and on. She listened with kindness and said to me - maybe all that will happen, but who cares? This is something you can let go and stop being angry about it this very minute.
I felt so stupid - this was such a simple solution. My kids were old enough, capable, and I could be done with more than half my laundry responsibilities THAT VERY MINUTE. So I did as she suggested. I taught them how to do laundry and I set them free to do it. And they did it. Because I wasn't doing any more. And we all survived, and my little laundry tantrums ended, and things got a little better.
How often are we bogged down in problems that have super simple solutions that someone on the outside can see more clearly than each of us? I fear that happens a lot. So sometimes we need to look for a stranger, an expert, a friend - unburden our frustrations and stresses - ask for some help sorting things out and let our people FIND US SIMPLE SOLUTIONS. The same solutions we couldn't see.
After taking my lovely therapist's advice on laundry and the rest of my list - we found a better way to manage the overwhelm that was taking over all of our lives, one - task - at - a time. Â I found out that handing off laundry duty and learning to let go was just the beginning!
I've revisited other frustrations using her lens over the years - looking for ways to simplify, outsource, delegate, let go, give up, or re-frame the task. There is almost always another way to see a problem. As my grandmother used to say - "Give me a minute, we can figure this out."
I'm Laura, and if you need someone to evaluate your employee comms - especially if they are going through some type of change - give me a call! I can help.
