When I was in graduate school, I did a summer internship that didn’t work out. It was for a small publishing company that produced two publications, one for students in high school and the other for students in college. Both related to being a young leader. My supervisor didn’t just give me assignments; she gave me a step-by-step process for the assignments, which started with an outline I was to show her before starting my work.
What she asked me to do wasn’t hard, but I didn’t relate to the subject matter—I much preferred soap operas and romance novels to leadership as a teenager—and the requirement of producing an outline before I could begin researching and doing interviews was stifling to me. I suddenly felt so overwhelmed by my feelings that I just stopped altogether, having a reaction I read one psychologist compare to a flooded engine. I left the internship and spent the summer working as a “security guard” at a small art gallery on campus, minding the door and using a clicker to track how many visitors toured the space each day. In between my clicker duties, I read novels. It was the perfect job for a person recovering from flooded-engine syndrome.
My stress profile at that period of my life was simply to shut down and stop. Since then, things have changed. My current stress profile is to go into detached, just-have-to-keep-moving-and-getting-things-done mode.
We all have stress profiles, which apparently can change as we get older and evolve. Is it worth understanding your employees’ stress profiles?
When the Worst Happens, How Do You React?
It’s a hard subject to broach, so managers may have to be trained to observe how employees react when a personal or professional crisis erupts. Do they react as I did when I was young and shut down or do they go into a robotic mode function as I started doing by the time I was in my thirties? For example, directly after getting the phone calls that my parents had died, and what needed to be dealt with immediately was dealt with, I started thinking about my work obligations and finishing what needed to be finished so none of my deadlines would be missed and I wouldn’t leave anyone in the lurch.
When Do You Panic and Lose Control?
I stayed outwardly calm during the crises of parental deaths and professional upheaval, but give me a technology glitch when I’m on deadline or I’m working on a high-stakes project, and I lose it to the point that people around me ask if I’m OK.
It’s worth talking to managers about noting their employees’ tendencies during a crisis. Do they run in a literal or figurative sense away from the crisis or do they immediately want to pitch in? There’s a place for both crisis personalities because it isn’t possible for everyone to be on the frontlines addressing the disaster. You need people carrying out the plans the people on the frontlines come up with and supporting them in their efforts. It’s hard for some people to think clearly in a crisis. Other people think clearly and have ideas on how to make things better but bite off more than they can chew and need colleagues who can take the lead from them to help head toward the solution they identified.
If there’s a large group of people in a crisis, I don’t tend to step up right away, but if I’m asked to take care of a specific task(s), and it’s something I know how to do, I’m usually happy to help. I’m even happy to help when I don’t know how to do the task, as long as someone shows me how.
Beware of the Performatively Good
A crisis is prime time for the phonies among us to strut forth offering condolences and “help.” My grandmother said that immediately after my grandfather died, many people came asking what they could do, but then she never heard from those people again. Their offers of help were shallow.
So, too, are some of the offers of help during any crisis. It’s good for managers and all of us to be savvy about the offers of help that don’t come through or have the opposite effect. Observing which employees follow through with their good words and deliver productive help gives the organization a starting point for deciding on its next generation of leaders.
Does your organization factor in employees’ stress profiles when creating development plans?