I’m a boss and sometimes I cry
How sharing your feelings can help you get your work done
Maybe it’s because March is Women’s History Month, because the political discussion in Holland is now focused on leadership or maybe it’s because I am running a team of new people. Whatever the reason, the past weeks I decided to look into the topic of leadership a bit more in detail and reflect on my own leadership style. What are my leadership values and how do I incorporate them in my Noorderwind team?
Terms such as trust, empathy, compassion, openness dominate today’s discussion about new leadership. These terms are associated with feminine leadership. Maybe that is why to me, being a woman, those terms sound like a no-brainer when it comes to how to lead a team. Something else that might have something to do with it is, as I recently discovered in my search about leadership, I am an elephant!
Did you know that elephant herds are led by a matriarch: a female leader? I must have not paid attention in school because that fact did not stuck with me. Little did I know that an elephant is known for its ability to develop strong and intimate bonds. They mourn for the ones they’ve lost, pass on knowledge to the younger elephants and balance the needs of all members of the herd. They are characterized as socially intelligent, compassionate, open, collaborative and problem solving animals.
Ok, back to Noorderwind. Whenever I have a job interview with potential people joining our team as crew members, junior staff or interns, one of the first thing I explain is our core value to have an open environment in which we trust our team mates and can speak freely about our feelings, worries and question. Saying this is one thing, but how do I act upon this?
Putting your money where your mouth is
Each time we have new team members coming on board we organise a “User Guide” get-together. Each team member shares what his or her work ethics are, with what animal we identify ourselves (that is how I identified myself as an elephant), what excites us personally and professionaly and how we wish to collaborate together. It gives an insight in everybody’s personal lives, characteristics and team roles.
We also actually act upon it. Based on this “User Guide” get-together we make decision such as the channels we use for communication, what times we should (and should NOT) schedule meetings and establish the best feedback loops.
Another important activity I truely cherish is our Team Check-ins. Pre-corona we used to do this on a weekly basis, but now that working from the office is no longer reality, we do this on a daily basis. This way we don’t loose sight of eachother. To me the 2 most important questions of these check-ins are: “How are you doing?” and “How can we help you?” This might seems scary and maybe even irrelevant. Why should we share that we just received the keys to our new house and have celebrated this all weekend making plans on how to renovate it? Or even worse: why do we need to share that our new borns, our worries for sick relatives or the workload, keep us awake?
Well, first of all: we are all humans. We have feelings and the annoying thing about feelings is that we cannot switch them off once our work schedule starts. One way or another it can affect us while working. By sharing it with our team mates AND by informing them how we want the rest to treat us, we create a work environment that day that helps us with our jobs to be done while also getting the treatment we need. I’ve seen how opening up created a stronger bond amongst the team members, makes people feel free to be themselves in a work environment and lifts the team spirit: we are in this together!
There is also a physical aspect to these questions I learned while listening to a podcast of the sisters Nagoski. Feelings, both negative and positive, apparently go through stages: a beginning, a middle and an end. By getting it off your chest you help your feelings reach the end stage. By not speaking out, our feelings get stuck in the middle phase, which ultimately can result in physical reactions or illnesses. I’ve tried this approach as well and trust me: a migraine every (other) week is not worth it!
How are you doing?
By asking the question “How are you doing?” I want everyone in my team to feel the freedom to speak out and share their feelings, however big or small the feelings are. Maybe they are happy feelings. We celebrate it and roll out the positive energy of one person to the whole team. If the feelings are negative they can share: “you don’t have to act upon it, I just wanted you to know so you understand my behavior of today”. But if they say: “This is how I feel and I need you to be gentle with me today”, we do just that.
Only if everybody opens up you truely create an open environment. So this also applies to me: their business partner, their boss. I vividly remember their hilarious reactions to me jumping around the meeting room, expressing my happiness about an awesome project we won. When my sadness over a personal situation stands in the way of working I tell them and share: “You can help my by …” And yes, every once in a while I cry.
In a series of blog posts I will share how I put my leadership skills into practice. If you want to reach out based on anything that triggered you in this blog post, feel free to contact me!
